The University of Malta has joined forces with several other higher education institutions in Europe and the Mediterranean to develop online courses that will contribute to science degrees of the participating institutions.
The network, set up with the help of EU funding, is called ODISEAME - Open and Distance Inter-University Synergies between Europe, Africa and Middle East. The other partners are institutions from Spain, Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Germany, Jerusalem, Jordan, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority.
The Literacy Unit of the University of Malta is a major partner in this three-year project. All the courses will be offered in the languages of the partner institutions as well as in English. The Malta team, composed of Charles Mifsud, Marjes Zammit and Rowena Grech, is developing the scientific English language component to support the courses.
The online courses will be offered to students from any of the participating institutions. The subjects covered are all in the scientific field, such as in engineering, medicine, veterinary sciences and the medical sciences.
Some of the courses will be offered via the internet at specified course times. Others may be downloaded to offer more flexibility of learning with regard to time and space.
Their content is being designed by a working group of specialists that includes educators and psychologists, experts in business administration, telecommunications and computing engineers, graphic designers, and experts in the particular subjects to be offered.
The team from the Literacy Unit is developing online programmes for the teaching of English for technical and scientific purposes.
It is also involved in researching the e-learning process and the development of e-learning models. In fact, a chapter called A Framework for Autonomous Language Learning via the Internet, authored by Dr Mifsud and Ms Zammit, is to be included in a refereed book on Best Practices in e-Learning to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, New York.
ODISEAME, a EUMEDIS project, is intended to be a means of improving the higher education offered in the partner regions and of strengthening the relations between these countries in different fields, such as research and education. Shared research into the pedagogical aspects of "telelearning" is a major component of the project.
Apart from the "multilingual virtual learning space", the project will result in a handbook on how to design and implement "virtual learning experiences", and in a group of teachers with the ability to successfully design and implement such courses.
EUMEDIS, an initiative between EU and Mediterranean countries, aims at helping to expand and improve the quality of the information society in the Euro-Mediterranean region, in the pursuit of economic development, quality of life and mutual comprehension.