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Top1. The Role Of Technologies In The New International And Cross-Cultural University
The key challenge for universities today is to respond effectively to all the social changes and developments required by the new European higher education system, both in terms of governance and, cultural policy, which involves a gradual process of integration of a perspective, international, intercultural and/or global in scopes, functions (teaching, research and services) and universities’ mission (Knight, 1997). The forces behind this transformation, clearly illustrated by Ward (2000), oblige the various institutions to question tasks, roles, and academic skills and to create learning environments that foster innovative educational and professional perspectives which produce new guidelines, standards, objectives and practices which attempt to secure the interests of all stakeholders and meet the needs of increasingly diversified student populations.
For example, the rapid increase in demand from senior students to access higher education is forcing universities across Europe, often located in a trans-national and trans-cultural region, to confront themselves with cross-curricular courses and unusual educational strategies aimed at curbing the current forms of social exclusion (Ribble & Bailey, 2005; Ribble, Bailey, & Ross, 2004; Underwood & Szabo, 2003, 2004; Van Soest, Canon, & Grant, 2000). On the other hand, the emergence, alongside the more traditional functions, such as education (construction of knowledge and skills) and research (production of knowledge and competence), of lifelong learning, perceived as a “continuous process by which every human being may extend and adapt his/her knowledge and skills, the ability to give an opinion and act on it” (Knežević-Floric, 2008, p. 201), should enable individuals throughout their lives to pursue virtuous learning paths and continuously update their cultural and professional profiles (Cranton, 1996). According to Knezevic-Floric (2008), in fact, the first step in lifelong learning is made when a more flexible understanding, assessment and enhancement of various forms of education and training is obtained.
In this sense, the technologies from an educational point of view are considered appropriate means to provide university teaching staff with the opportunity to prepare appropriate educational activities and actions to ensure a quality education to all categories of subjects (Alkan, 2005). For this reason, Europe has made a long-term commitment to press universities for technological innovation (Distance Education Report, 2000), especially with reference to teachers’ competences (Aho Report, 2008) that could determine a multiple access to higher education by those segments of the population traditionally excluded from the university (Galliani, Zaggia, & Serbati, 2011), that obliges us to rethink teaching and research in a new way. However, if it is true that learning is the prevailing paradigm of the new cyber communities (Haterick, 2000), it is unthinkable that, as a consequence, teaching does not need to develop multimodal strategic interventions intended to effectively meet the emerging training needs of those populations, thus allowing academics to take charge of specific responsibilities towards the teaching offer.