Europe 

As a project funded by the EU, the researchers have focused especially on institutions in 

Europe. However, the researchers had no success in obtaining catalogue entries from 

institutions in the two EU countries France and Greece. However, the analysis includes an 

interview with CNED, the National Center for Distance Education in France <132>. CNED is 

not a University but woks in consortia with the French Universities in order to provide Degree 

level diplomas and certificates by the University. Another interesting institution that is not 

included in the catalogue is the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (

www.uoc.es)

. However, the 

interviews include an entry from GECSA   Gestion del Conocimiento s. a <131> which is a 

private enterprise managed by the Universita Oberta de Catalonya and the Spanish Telecom   

Telefonica. A selection of interesting catalogue entries is compiled in the following. 

In a conclusion presented in the CISAER interim report, Ana Dias wrote: 

In Southern Europe and South America we found several initiatives dealing 

with the cultural and structural change in the Education and Training Sector. 

Those initiatives are exploring the pedagogical issues. We found projects 

that include virtual classrooms, virtual libraries, virtual coffee shops, chat 

rooms and other virtual structures. 

The Government of Cyprus [29] (

http://www.kypros.org/Greek

) offers a course in learning 

Greek. The course is on an open web site. Kypros Net, in conjunction with the Cyprus 

Broadcast Corporation, offers the possibility of learning Greek on the Internet. The course 

consists of 105 lessons contained in audio files plus a web board for student interaction. There 

is an English/Greek dictionary, spell checker, and downloadable Greek fonts. 

The University of Helsinki [32] (

http://avoin.helsinki.fi

) in Finland has 160 students in 10 

courses about law, mathematics, chemistry, academic writing, communication, data 

processing, etc. They are using simple technology, courses should be used by modems from 

homes. They are building an open learning environment, where it is possible for anyone to 

study, get guidance and get office services as well as communicate with peer students. 

Helsinki university is the largest university in Finland, and they try to offer virtual courses 

from different university fields. The amount of courses is increasing all the time, but most of 

the courses are on basic level. They have collected all Finnish open university courses in one 

database (http://www.avoinyliopisto.fi/). There, one can find all the virtual or distance 

education courses offered by Finnish open universities. 

Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche   C.N.R. [50] (

http://www.itd.ge.cnr.it/

) in Italy has 150 

students in 5 courses in open and distance learning for small and medium enterprises, 

environmental education, and teachers training. Based on FirstClass, ITD tutors propose an 

online project based approach. According to the content and objectives of the course, students 

may work in groups or individually. According to distance of students from ITD, there may be 

face to face sessions or videoconference sessions as well. In the case of the ODL for SMEs 

course, trainers based in Genoa also attend face to face lessons. In the case of the International 

course Eumedea, on environmental education, training takes place mainly online and 

occasionally through multi point videoconference. ITD is also partner in the T3 project 

(

http://www.ex.ac.uk/telematics/T3/welcome.html

) where a number of teacher training 

31