PACE in Europe - delivering for advanced continuing education

The continuing education of European Engineers and Scientists at an advanced level is crucial to the competitiveness and technical vitality of European industry. This paper describes a satellite education delivery facility with terrestrial computer conferencing feedback to provide advanced education from European Centres of Expertise, usually based in Universities, to engineers in industry, at their own workplace.

An introduction to PACE

Why Pace?

But Continuing Education is expensive, at an advanced level it is in short supply and both the need and the demand for education are growing rapidly. Individual companies do not have the resources to meet the growing needs, which is anyway often difficult to find; in Europe, even individual nations have difficulty in supporting education, research and development in all the rapidly advancing technologies.

PACE, as a European education facility, aims to help solve these problems by broadcasting advanced level courses for engineers and scientists via satellite and installing an advanced computer conferencing network to establish feedback and interactivity. This system has several advantages:

• it shares the cost of Continuing Education among receivers;

• it gives access to the best European centres of expertise;

• it enables education to be taken in the workplace, flexibly; and

• it provides motivation for scientists, engineers and managers to update themselves.

The origins of PACE?

Five major companies in Europe - Thomson, British Telecom, IBM, Philips and Hewlett-Packard - got together in a cooperative venture to provide the necessary cash, resource and impetus and established a series of Action Groups to give life and direction to the new body. These five have since been joined by seven more sponsors - DEC Europe, Danish Enterprise/University Systems, IRI, FUNDETEC (a Portuguese Consortium), Telefonica, NORIY (a Scandinavian Consortium) and Bull. Thus representatives from companies in Belgium, Holland, France, UK, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Finland and Switzerland have given an initial commitment to help launch this unique and necessary program.

The PACE Steering Committee, chaired by Hubert Curien, former French Minister of Research and Technology, also contains representatives of the Standing Conference of Rectors, Presidents and Vice-Chancellors of European Universities (CRE), The European Society of Engineering Education (SEFI); observers from COMETT, the European Programme to encourage Continuing Education and Industry/Education cooperation, and DELTA, the European Educational Technology Programme, regularly attend Steering Group meetings.

The many faces of PACE

• firstly, as a delivery system which establishes the technical infrastructure to enable educational supply to meet educational demand through satellite and terrestrial networks;

• secondly, as an educational infrastructure which selects advanced educational topics, identifies European centres of excellence, and uses or commissions courses in those topics from those centres; and

• thirdly, as a financial and promotional organisation which redistributes payment from course receivers to course suppliers, negotiates with Industry, Education and Government for resources to maintain itself and informs and publicises its activities to existing and potential clients and users.

• industry, in the form of better-educated employees and a sharper competitive edge;

• education, in the wider markets higher education can obtain for its courses, and the challenge of new ideas and methods;

• government, in the greater wealth produced by industry and better informed research departments; and

• individuals, in the better quality and quantity of education available to them.

The PACE concept

Initially PACE courses will be taped and then distributed within 48 hours. Most will be lectures which would have been given in the normal course of events to a regular audience of students, researchers and/or scientists, and so in the longer run it is expected that there will be a greater incidence of courses delivered in real time.

Feedback will probably take place in four ways:

• In live broadcasts, by direct voice contact to the lecturer, thus offering the student immediate response to questions.

• For all courses, the lecturer will be asked to set aside defined periods of time when he/she can be contacted by telephone, thus offering the opportunity to discuss in more detail.

• For all PACE courses, an advanced computer conferencing facility named PORTAKOM has been installed for student to teacher, and student to student, interaction.

• In addition, course providers w ill be expected to devise a series of followup materials for individual study and assessment. These will be delivered both by post and by electronic mail through the conferencing system.

PACE'S organisational structure

PACE will be a non-profit organisation administered by a Board of Trustees. This board will comprise executives from those Companies which are prepared to guarantee for three years payment of the full sponsor membership fee, plus representatives of major European educutional organisations. It will contain a maximum of 20 people and, after a period of four years during the settling-in period of PACE, a plan to encourage new members to serve on the Board will be implemented.

In addition, the Board's educational function will be enhanced by Programme Advisory Groups which contain experts from both industry and education to supervise content, curriculum and educational matters in each of the subject areas and recommend the best course providers.

PACE administration, including the President, Secretariat and Faculty members, will be responsible for negotiating with the many organisations with which PACE must negotiate.

The phases of PACE

• Preparation (July to December 1987) - the full-time secretariat and seconded staff from the sponsors were recruited to prepare for the first PACE broadcasts. Negotiations began with education providers and other groups through the newly set up Programme Advisory Groups, and a Technical Action Group was convened to set up the technical infrastructure which would enable PACE to operate its various video, audio and data networks. In the event the technical task was infinitely less difficult to solve than the many regulatory and procedural protocols which this committee became involved with. At the same time, work went on to establish PACE as a non-profit entity and to find a suitable location for it.

• Limited Pilot (January to August 1988) - courses and Special Events for a limited experimental audience from sponsoring companies and chosen universities are now being transmitted. This period fulfils three major functions:
  • to ensure that the technical infrastructure works, that courses can be delivered and that the feedback mechanisms work;

  • to make sure that the level of each course is right for the target audience, of effective video and pedagogical quality, and to learn an acceptable mix of presentational techniques in the new medium; and

  • to test out a language strategy which reaches as large a proportion as possible of the audience.

• Full Pilot (September 1988 - August 1989). Planning has of course already commenced for the full pilot phase, in which courses will commence in all the selected topic areas and industry will be invited to register students for these. This is a time when receivers will be paying for their education though not a full price initially. In addition, new strategies will be initiated to attract students from small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), a particular focus of the European Commission's concern, and to try out ideas concerned with assessment, accreditation and coordination.

• Year One... (from September 1989). In this full courses will be delivered by major European Centres of Competence. Many of these will probably be offered for European accreditation and perhaps degree-awarding.

Membership of PACE

• Full Sponsor - which gives the right to sit on the Board of Trustees and to pay a sponsorship fee of 90,000 ECUs (about A$160). PACE Full Sponsors have the right to influence the direction and curriculum of PACE through membership of all Programme Advisory Groups and to a seat on the Steering Committee and Trustee Board; and

• PACE Client - a company or university which uses PACE services and pays a fee based on the number of sites and students.

The language question

• Firstly, it would be extremely costly to provide a large range of languages.

• Secondly, the language which course providers feel most comfortable with is their own.

• Thirdly, a large majority of European engineers and scientists accept English as a lingua franca for communication and many research papers are written in that language.

PACE courses

PACE FIELDS

Microelectronics Expert Systems Software Engineering Telecommunications Technology Management Advanced Manufacturing Technology

Special themes from these fields are being delivered as both short and longer courses, and also as special events. In addition special events will deal with such additional fields as Superconductivity and other important technological breakthroughs with immediate interest. The latter lectures will be given by the most up to date experts, with supporting materials and systems. PACE courses to date have included the Essentials of Logic Programming from one of the foremost European departments in this field at Imperial College, London, and Functional Languages and Prototyping, from several French research departments at the Sophia Antopolis Research Park near Nice.

Selection of course providers

A typical PACE course

• Video Delivery of lessons from the Centre of Excellence. These may be either live or taped for slightly later delivery.

• Voice Feedback, by telephone. This may be either immediate or at a slightly later time, or both.

• Follow-up Materials, which take the form of lesson notes, assignments and assessments.

• Computer Conferencing Link for student to teacher interaction, and for delivery of materials.

PACE recommends, if possible, an in-company tutoring facility for courses with large numbers of students at the same site, or the use of a local university for follow-up assistance.

Where will PACE fit into a company's education structure?

Assessment and accreditation

It is expected that, in the longer term, such examinations will lead to the award of a credit. The collection of appropriately similar credits will lead to the award of a PACE degree. The exact details of a degree-awarding scheme have yet to be worked out, and it is possible that the European Commission ERASMUS program will provide a focus for work in this area.

PACE finance

• from Sponsoring Companies in the form of subscriptions and site fees; and

• from Students in the form of course fees. These will usually be paid by the employer.

Additional potential sources of income are national government subsidies, foundations and other European programs, though these are not taken into account in the present financial planning cycle.

Ultimately, it is expected that PACE will be self-supporting by its third year of operation.

Additional costs to industry

• Receive Station (downlink);

• Study Centre and furniture;

• Television equipment;

• Videotape equipment, for recording and playback, with possible part time technician support;

• Education Coordinator;

• Workstation (for Computer Conferencing); and

• Line costs for telephone and data.

A final reflection on PACE to date

• the enormous amount of goodwill it has received from industry, universities and government, particularly the European Commission COMETT project;

• the drive of industry from its twelve sponsoring companies. These have given expertise, cash and a great amount of personnel resources to help set PACE on course;

• the vision of its founding organisations initiated from a glimpse of a similar USA facility and continued through its secretariat and steering committee;

• the determination of its committees, and particularly its technical Action Group, to steer a course through the minefield of European regulations and legislations; and finally

• sheer hard work and, probably, a lot of good luck too.