An innovative project that is enabling school students in Australia and South Korea to visit each other’s classrooms via the Internet was strengthened by the signing of new international agreements at the University of New England last week.

The day (Thursday 8 September) began with a videoconferencing link between students at Armidale’s Ben Venue Public School and their counterparts at Cheongsol Primary School in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Representatives of the NSW Department of Education and Communities, UNE, and two leading IT companies visited Ben Venue School to observe the Australian end of the live link.

Later that day, Memoranda of Understanding were signed between UNE, which leads the “Australia-Korea ConneXion” (AKC) project, and the two technology companies – South Korea’s Samyang Data Systems and Cisco International. These MOUs build on the cooperative relationship between UNE and companies that supply and maintain videoconferencing equipment for the project.

Ben Venue Public School is one of six Armidale schools – both primary and secondary – involved in the AKC project. On Thursday a panel of Ben Venue students spoke to their Korean counterparts about aspects of Australia’s natural and social environment, and there was an impressive demonstration by two young Ben Venue gymnasts – Stephen Offner and Caitlin Schuman. It was then time for the Korean students to reciprocate with their own presentation. Currently there are 10 Australian schools and 10 South Korean schools involved in the AKC project, with the primary schools engaging in this kind of exchange once a week, and the secondary schools once a fortnight.

After the demonstration, the visiting delegation – led by Mr Yeongju Choi, CEO of Samyang Data Systems, and Mr Andrew Thompson, Director of International Business Development for Cisco Systems – travelled to UNE to meet the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jim Barber, and the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of The Professions, Professor Victor Minichiello, for the formal signing of the MOUs.

Mr Choi said he believed that the MOU was “a milestone in a partnership” that was contributing to “mutual understanding between cultures”. “This partnership will help our dream come true for children in Australia and Korea,” he said. Mr Thompson said that Cisco International was keen to find partners who would be leaders in the next wave of educational innovation, and that the company was impressed by UNE’s involvement in this process.

Professor Barber told the visitors that UNE shared their vision of educational innovation through the creative use of new technologies, and that the possibilities were “very exciting”. Both Professor Barber and Professor Minichiello thanked the UNE project team, led by Dr Myung-sook Auh from UNE’s School of Education, for its work on the AKC project itself and for facilitating the events on the day. The project is conducted through the UNE-based National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMERR) with the assistance of SiMERR’s Director, Professor John Pegg, and his colleague Dr Chris Reading, who are both members of the project team.

“Currently, the project is designed to help Australian students in rural and regional schools learn more about other cultures by working with same-age peers in that culture,” Professor Minichiello explained. “In the case of Korean students, the focus is on learning about Australia and Australian ways and, in doing so, to practise their skills in speaking English.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH of UNE’s Dr Myung-sook Auh displayed here was taken at Ben Venue Public School during the video link.

The two men who have guided a student-exchange program between the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, and the University of Macerata in central Italy over the past 10 years met again at UNE last week.

Alfredo Luzi, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Macerata, visited UNE just a few weeks after the arrival in Armidale of the latest exchange student from Macerata.

“The success of the program is largely due to the close working relationship between me and Brennan Wales, Convener of Italian here at UNE,” Professor Luzi said, “and the personal support we’re able to give the exchange students. It’s important for them to have a mentor they can turn to.”

“Everything here is very different from student life in Italy,” said the recently-arrived Italian student, Elisabetta Angelini (pictured above with Professor Luzi). “It’s much more informal here. In Italy, for example, we have oral exams, while here you have assignments.”

Laura Churcher, a UNE student who spent last year at the University of Macerata, agreed that the academic side of student life in Italy was “much more formal”, but added that the formality of the classroom was balanced by “always having coffee and gelato with friends” after class.

“It was an amazing experience – living in a typical Italian village and studying at an Italian university,” Laura said. While in Italy she completed an internship with the coffee-machine company Nuova Simonelli, which she recalls as “an altogether wonderful experience during which I drank a lot of coffee”.

After completing her UNE degree program in International Business and Languages, Laura hopes to return to Italy and put her knowledge of the language to use.

For her part, Elisabetta is finding Armidale “a perfect city to study in”. “Australians are friendly and kind,” she said, “and I love the Australian accent”. She is living in Wright Village, UNE’s complex of self-catering flats for students.

A student of foreign languages and literatures, Elisabetta’s semester of study at UNE will count towards her Macerata degree. Her ambition is to teach Italian in an English-speaking country.

UNE and the University of Macerata are of a similar size, and are both located in small regional cities. The exchange program gives students a much-appreciated chance to experience life outside the capital cities. Since it began 10 years ago, a total of around 30 students have taken part in the program.

The signing of an agreement at the beginning of 2011 renewed this successful program for another five years.

The University of New England has repositioned itself at the forefront of distance education in Australia through a deal agreed between UNE and the international education services provider Pearson on Sunday.

The partnership entails world-standard delivery and marketing of UNE online courses throughout the nation and overseas. It is the first partnership of its kind in the tertiary sector outside the United States.

It will provide a guaranteed revenue stream for the University and is expected to increase external student numbers each year.

Through the partnership with the University, Pearson will make its online systems and marketing expertise available to enhance the way UNE delivers its distance education course material.

The UNE Council has also approved the first step towards a staged upgrade of the residential colleges on campus through further partnership agreements with the private sector.

Robb College will be the first to undergo extensive re-development with expressions of interest to be called for this week. All 190 rooms at the College will be upgraded.

The Chancellor, Dr Richard Torbay, said the two deals were integral to the University’s Strategic Plan, which received unanimous support at Sunday’s Council meeting. “We are back at the top of the game, and it’s an exciting development for the University based on two of its outstanding features – distance education and the residential college system,” he said.  “Bringing the colleges up to date will attract greater numbers of internal students to Armidale.

“Through the partnership with Pearson we can grow UNE’s proven excellence in delivering distance education. We will have greater numbers of external students, and that will create more academic and other staff positions in the long term.”

The Chancellor emphasised that UNE would continue to control all course content and academic standards, and that there would be no job losses on the campus as a result of the agreement.

“In effect, it means that the University’s five-star rating for student satisfaction will now be matched by a platform for delivery in the very competitive national and international online environment,” he said. “The competition in the public and private tertiary sector is fierce and the uncertainty surrounding enrolments with next year’s deregulation of the market has created a lot of nervousness.”

The Chancellor said that Council was confident UNE could withstand the challenge by building on its existing strengths through world-class online course delivery and a rounded university education experience through the residential college system.

Pearson is the world’s leading education company. From pre-school to vocational, university and professional studies, its curriculum materials, multimedia learning tools and testing programs help to educate more than 100 million people worldwide.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows the Chancellor of UNE, Dr Richard Torbay (right), with the Chief Executive Officer of Pearson Australia, Mr David Barnett.