Helena Flusfeder follows the development of distance learning that should lead to student-constructed curricula at the Open University in Israel.

Imagine hundreds or thousands of students giving live feedback to the lecturer as they watch a lecture in their own living rooms. This is the long-term goal of Israel's Open University, which already runs interactive lectures using satellite links between a central studio and classrooms around the country.

The Israeli OU is a distance learning institution modelled on the British example. It has its own special flavour and atmosphere, and was geared for specific populations: mainly people who were restricted by time and place.

From the beginning it integrated technology into its teaching processes. At first that meant TV and radio, videos and slides. Last year the two-year pilot satellite Ofek was launched, for the first time enabling a lecturer to interact with a number of classes simultaneously without being in the same room. Ofek is a joint venture with satellite communications company Gilat Communication Engineering and Arel Communication and Software. The result, say Israeli OU staff, is that students get "the best lecturer" and "the finest lesson". Lectures by leading experts, painstakingly prepared for visual presentation, are beamed by satellite around the country.

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All Israeli OU classrooms are fitted with special equipment, including a 1.8-metre antenna, a computerised lesson control system, a large screen television, and ordinary telephones for two-way communication. The main campus's broadcasting equipment includes a central computer and a studio with a video camera, a PC for computations and multimedia presentations, a special writing board and a colour scanner. Future additions to the system could include a help desk, two-way video and up to 26 receiving classrooms around the country.

The Ofek experiment has been running for a year with considerable success, according to student evaluation. But now the launch of the more powerful Amos satellite brings the prospect of DBS (Direct Broadcas Satellite) technology. Students will be able receive lectures and videos in their homes, using small satellite dishes.

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Other Israeli universities are using comparable technologies - for example, Bar-Ilan University uses point to point videoconferencing with affiliated regional colleges. The Israeli OU, however, is concentrating on technologies which provide two-way communication between one point and many. Its staff believe they are ahead of other Israeli institutions in actively integrating new technology into courses.

Michal Beller, director of the Israeli OU's Centre for the Design of Distance Teaching Methods, which is responsible for all the new technology, says that the Israeli OU is the only Israeli university committed to distance education and is integrating the most modern technologies into course material which is still mostly based on text books.

Dr Beller recently served as the Israeli OU's adviser to Unesco and the International Telecommunication Union for a feasibility study on in-service training for teachers using interactive TV. In this capacity, she was on hand to help educators work out the practicalities of bringing quality teaching to remote places in India and Morocco. She says that according to the studies done so far, these countries would be interested in buying interactive TV systems.

While acknowledging the limitations of learning at a distance she said that students, especially in the country's periphery, prefer an electronic lecture from a far-away expert to a live lecture by a less knowledgeable local instructor.

The Ofek satellite has great potential for a variety of purposes locally, in the region and worldwide. Organisations including most of Israel's banks and the postal authority are already testing the system with the idea of using it for corporate training. And the system has already reached abroad with the Israeli OU's pilot Judaic Studies programme in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Using the Ofek system more than 3,000 students there have studied four courses, all translated into Russian, on the Holocaust, the history of the Jews in eastern Europe, the Oral Law, and government and politics in Israel.

Dr Beller says: "In addition to the texts, we are broadcasting well-known lecturers who can add and update material, let the students ask questions and get responses."

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Another plan, which could jump-start regional cooperation in the Middle East, includes two training programmes for the region's professionals: a postgraduate training programme in family medicine and an update programme in management and business administration. However, following the election of conservative prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, these programmes remain on the drawing board.

There is also a proposal to introduce a creative writing workshop, connecting schools in Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. Dr Beller says the Israeli OU would put such programmes as a "first priority", if the other partners are interested.

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Another project in Dr Beller's centre has introduced computer-mediated communication to seven courses involving 400 students. From their home computers, students participate in computerised conferences and discussion groups. The first courses using computer mediated communication were in computer science subjects including software engineering, data structures and system programming. The students communicate by email, have electronic debates and collaborate through the Net.

"Computer mediated communication is not unique to the Open University," Dr Beller says. "Everyone is experimenting on how to create an effective learning environment. No one really knows how."

The Israeli OU's multimedia project aims to develop computerised, interactive learning facilities combining text, images, video and sound. Multimedia materials offered to students will include databases, interactive lessons and exercises, and simulations.

Projects include a chemistry databank, courseware in advertising management and a laboratory simulation in microbiology. Databanks in animal behaviour, art and other subjects are being developed. CD-Roms are being used to teach English as a second language, where the multimedia approach is especially valuable for dyslexics.

Dr Beller sees these technologies as supporting three developing concepts in the country's education system: independent learning, the original Israeli OU concept of individual learning, that now includes textbooks, television-based courses and multimedia; distributed classrooms using distance learning by satellite; and learning communities built on conferencing and other forms of computer-mediated communication.

The dream is that the technologies will be combined and a student "will be able to construct for himself or herself a curriculum made up of the finest programmes offered by major universities around the world, each a leader in its field - without ever having to budge from his or her home town or place of work."

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