Improving the teaching quality by implementing distance learning at the University of Wroclaw. Problems, hindrances, possibilities, and future perspectives.

Although distance learning, with special consideration of online education, is not anything brand new, European universities seem not to consider it to be the key to educational success. With few, although brilliant, exceptions, higher education in Europe is still focused on traditional classroom, making it global by the means of international students exchange. One must admit, that the more East we go in Europe, the less popular the online form of higher education is. In Poland, for example, it is quite often treated more as the hindrance of the education process, than the facitity in gaining the desired outcomes. Even, when this form of teaching and learning is implemented at the higher education institution, it is mostly seen as the new, innovative way of including more technology in the teaching process, and not as the new approach to higher education, by the means of which the quality of this education can be improved. This presentation will discuss in details the process of implementing distance learning at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, with special regards to its role in improving the overall quality of this University's education. This implementation started in 2014, when the small think-tank for distance learning by the rector of the University of Wroclaw was created. After two years of work, the University policy of distance education was created, and in 2016 there was established a Centre for Distance Learning. From this time on, the main concern of this Centre, as well as the educational division of University management, is to make online education not a mere novelty or gadget, but a tool for improving the quality of education. This is a multi-stages task, including training of faculty members in the blended approach to e-learning, creating the new evaluation system, in the form of a road-map, that should facilitate the process of creating new online courses, as well as improving the existing ones, and introducing the brand-new system of training all freshly employed instructors in such educational basics as course outcomes, assessment techniques, and active learning methods. Moreover, since the end of 2016, University of Wroclaw includes this new approach of improving the overall quality of education by supporting the development of e-learning into grant proposals, looking for external sources of funding this deep, and ground-breaking change in its policy. During this short time after the Centre for Distance Learning was created, there emerged also some hindrances to these changes, and some of them, that will also be discussed here, were quite unexpected. We were quite well prepared for the reluctance of University instructors, and senior management (directors and deans), but we were quite surprised by the negative reaction of our students. After two years of carrying this task we have a lot of experiences, also from mistakes we had committed, hoping that all these difficulties help us to work out such a way of future improvement, that will be effective, succesful, and acceptable fo the whole University community.

Presentation will include pointing particular issues and problems, based on real hindrances in implementing the distance learning at the University of Wroclaw, to enhance discussion and encourage coming up with ideas by the attendants as if  they were participants in the real decision making process.