Universities in dialogue in a world without distance

The globalization processes we are witnessing have a deep impact on the world of production, on labor, on financial and economie markets, but also on the transfer of knowledge and the acquisition of information and, consequently, on educational offers available in our society. Thanks to the Internet, millions of people speak to each other using telecommunication networks in a multicultural way: they transmit needs and desires, they buy products, receive information, attend training courses, and socialize with groups of people of different cultures. The Internet is unveiling a new continent; it connects interactively, in a synchronic and diachronic way, users of different countries of the world. It brings about significant change as far as the de-materialization of the production and knowledge worlds is concerned, and it promotes dialogue between universities across the world that can jointly create new knowledge to be fed into telecommunications networks. Today, thanks to the new technologies, anybody, anywhere, if he has the appropriate technological tools and materials, can build a space to set up individua! training and self-leaming envrronments. Museums, cultura! centers, cyber-cafés, etc., are the new places where knowledge is disseminated in the local area, but they are also the points to access knowledge worldwide. The new technologies allow delivery directly from the university to the user's desk-items such as lessons, multimedia products, databases, auto-evaluation systems, organisation of exams-by means of a simple personal computer (PC). In so doing, they promote collaborative learning processes inside dynamic virtual spaces. In virtual classrooms, it is possible to reproduce teaching and leaming activities as they occur in real classrooms, but it is also possible to increase the amount of information significantly and start up multiple interactions in real time among individuals who belonging to different cultures, are embedded in different traditions, or have diverse educational backgrounds reflective of their respective country's structures. Physical distances are eliminated and global communication systems are truly drawing people and cultures together. Our way of life, our ways of leaming and thinking are being transformed. In this context, the very idea of education and training is changing, and this requires specific public policies. The communication of lrnowledge in this society without distances gives rise to a new reality that is characterized by the fact that the amount of information available outside "school and university structures" results in lrnowledge and skills acquisition also taking place outside traditional educational and training structures. Anybody can learn from those who feed the information networks. Tue process, enhanced by telecommunication technologies, tends to create a pedagogica! society inside the lrnowledge society and develop a new market: the market of educational contents. Many initiatives related to e-learning are creating a lrnowledge industry that is going to have a significant impact worldwide. All over the world, universities could become the protagonists of this market. Therefore, it is necessary that, besid􀁌s a new model of social ethics, it is now necessary to establish new system_s, new public policies, and also new organisational models for universitiès_ a.:t a local, natiornrl;· and intemational level, which can integrate presence with distance. Universities should be enabled to meet the complex educational needs ofthe people of the 21 st century. Actually, the 21 st century citizens should not only acquire specific, but also critical and creative skills; higher education should supply the tools that will enable them to solve complex problems, and create models and development systems suited to each individuai regional setting, but they shò'uld also be related to • intemational ones. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate lrnowledge which meets intemational, national, and local needs in curricula which transmit new values and new attitudes with regard to 􀀨bor and production. They should develop language learning and learning about cultures of different countries, as well as leaming respect for cultura} differences, but they should also master new technologies and their languages. In the 21 st century we ought to be able to combine professional skills and competencies in order to be able to experience complexity. People should "leam how to leam" by using the new cognitive technologies in order to develop the ability to select, to master, to assimilate infonnation, and to use it quickly and effectively. Therefore, the problem is no longer if education reproduces social inequalities or not, but today the question, asked by universities worldwide, is how to adapt to this system and create, in the framework of a globalized economy, systems thàt can develop integrated teaching and leaming processes, since they use different languages to communicate lmowledge. They should also be open processes as there should be no spatio-temporal limits. University systems should develop educational and training spaces "intra muros" and "extra muros" so as to give students the possibility to attend university in periods of residency and by distance-learning arrangements. I think that universities, which have always been the centers where knowledge is created by means of research and communication of information through teaching, should guide this process. This could be achieved by engaging in constant dialogue with a variety of educational environments since the entire world is presently undergoing great change.