education sector. There were only 12 institutions (9.2%) classified as companies or
corporations. None of the institutions seem to provide enough online courses and support
services that this analysis would characterize them as virtual or online universities.
Table 9. Distribution of institutions per category
Type of institution
# Institutions
Percent
Virtual and Online University
0
0
University 9
6.9
University Department or Center
55
42.3
College 14
10.8
Open and Distance Teaching University
10
7.7
Distance Education Institution
3
2.3
Consortium 7
5.4
Company or corporation
12
9.2
Secondary education
2
1.5
Organization or Association
12
9.2
Undefined 6
4.6
Sum 130
99.9
In the following paragraphs, the characteristics of provision for each of the types of institution
is discussed based on a qualitative text analysis of the information received from the open
ended question in the fill in form.
Virtual and Online Universities
Aoki and Pogroszewski have developed a virtual university reference model in which they
state:
"The term, virtual university, has been overused without paying due
attention to its meaning. Many have used the term referring to online
courses, i.e., courses offered through the Internet at a distance. Some have
used the term referring to online course catalogs, i.e., electronic databases of
online courses. Here, the term, virtual university, is defined to be the
infrastructure for providing students with a learning experience and related
support services to complete a degree program partially or totally online and
for providing faculty members with resources for teaching and doing
research effectively online." (Aoki and Pogroszewski, 1998)
In addition, one may argue that a virtual university must have a substantial number of online
students and a broad range of online courses.
A number of institutions used the term virtual or online university as a part of their name.
Among these were The African Virtual University [4] (
http://www.avu.org/
), The Virtual
University [16] (
http://www.ibase.org.br/~ined/
), Universidade Virtual
[19]
(
www.universidadevirtual.br
), The Virtual Online University [130]
(
http://www.vousi.com/intro/
), The Virtual Open University [32] (
http://avoin.helsinki.fi/
),
and The Lund Virtual University [89] (
http://lvu.lu.se
).
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