Montreal, May 10 2001
Challenges to French-Language Distance Education
Notes for a speech to be given at the Colloque national sur la formation à distance
Dr. Dyane Adam – Commissioner of Official Languages
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Dear colleagues and friends,
I would like to join Mr. Facal and Mr. Meilleur in wishing you a very warm welcome to this symposium.
Since it was created in 1988, the Réseau d'enseignement francophone à distance du Canada (REFAD) has always played an essential and innovative role in the development of French language distance education. It is active, present and visible. As always, the REFAD is a decisive force today in the fostering of new knowledge among Canada's francophone communities.
Not that long ago, as a member of the university community, I was like you dreaming about, imagining and establishing some of our distance education networks. So it is a real treat for me to be here again for two days to share in your reflections and debates on a connected francophonie in Canada. Thank you for inviting me.
As Commissioner of Official Languages, it is also my role to inspire our fellow citizens as much as possible with a uniting vision of this glowing francophonie. Since I assumed this position, I have set myself the objective of being an agent of change that goes beyond the traditional role of an ombudsman.
First of all, I would like to see the principles of the Official Languages Act fully integrated into the organizational culture of each and every federal institution. I would also like to show all Canadians that the Act is not only just but necessary. It reflects our country's demographic and social reality. It also allows Canada to adapt to one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century, that of reconciling diversity with globalization.
The theme of this symposium, Toward a Networked Francophonie, addresses my deepest concerns. Why? First, because at the beginning of this century distance education is called upon to play an ever greater role in the economic, social and cultural development of what I would still venture to call French Canada.
As you know, there have been considerable changes in education in the last decade. New technologies have transformed our environment, our way of life, our way of learning and our way of teaching.
Does the world of distance education sometimes make you feel like Alice in Wonderland? Are we not in fact like the Red Queen of Lewis Carroll's tale who described the workings of her unusual kingdom to Alice as follows: "In this place it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
It would be fair to say that your main challenge as experts in distance education will continue to be to move faster than technology in order to anticipate the needs of francophone communities rather than catch up with them.
This dizzying technology race is also one of the key pitfalls of distance education. Although extremely promising, the technological shift in distance education cannot by itself dispel all the fears or resolve all the problems of the inequality of opportunity of minority francophone communities.
While this shift may be essential for Canada's francophonie, it is just the start. As many of you have tirelessly repeated in the past, technological tools can never in and of themselves replace traditional educational tools. For educators and communities alike, the transition to a knowledge-based society is just one more step on the road to linguistic equality.
This symposium is intended as a opportunity for reflection. To that end, I would like to outline some of the challenges and pitfalls ahead that will require us to lace up our sneakers and keep running faster and faster.
First challenge: computer illiteracy
As you know, francophones in Canada have long had to fight against very high rates of illiteracy. We might have realistically hoped that, by now, this "traditional" illiteracy would finally have become a thing of the past.
But now another scourge, computer illiteracy, has appeared on the horizon. Will this create another split in Canadian society? Will there be a gap between the information haves and have-nots, along the same lines as the linguistic divide? Unfortunately, the statistics seem to say so.
In Canada today, 44 percent of Francophones use the Internet, compared with 58 percent of anglophones. There are several reasons for this unfortunate digital gap. It could be briefly explained by the fact that, for 40 percent of francophones, there is not enough content in their language on the Internet, and that for a third of them, the fact of being unilingual francophones is an obstacle to Internet use.
Fortunately, the governments of Canada and Quebec, among others, have made considerable efforts, not only to ensure a greater place for French on the Internet but also to achieve greater connectedness overall. Consider, for example, Industry Canada's Francocommunautés virtuelles and VolNet programs, which create special space for francophone communities.
It is nevertheless important to ensure that individuals and communities have ready access to synchronous and asynchronous distance education tools. Isn't computerization itself a major and vital educational undertaking? This is our vanguard in the fight against lack of access to information.
You will agree, no doubt, that computerization is an essential first step in a real distance education strategy. First we must rethink the educational approach in light of the medium used. To quote McLuhan, the medium is the message. That means that education that uses all the new technologies must not simply add an electronic veneer to the existing courses.
Second challenge: new resources
We must also provide a new range of educational tools by drawing on partnerships. The new educational markets of info-knowledge must be complemented by new structures, new networks and new strategic alliances for the production and dissemination of educational resources. Moreover, the educators themselves need training in the new technologies, which is just as great a challenge as those we faced in the past.
Third challenge: recovery of rights holders
By its very nature, distance education is more individualized and more decentralized. This means that the various segments of the public must be broken down in greater detail, and perhaps that individual files, profiles and paths be created.
A few days ago, in another context, I emphasized the main challenge facing francophone teachers outside Quebec in the next decade. That is to derive full benefit from the remedial character of the education rights guaranteed under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This means extending the opportunity for French-language schooling to all rights holders, that is, all children with at least one parent who is a Canadian citizen and is a native speaker of French.
This kind of recovery, of course, implies a number of educational challenges. First, existing programs must be adapted and the means found to measure progress. Next, language problems must be identified very early on, before they lead to learning difficulties or perhaps psychological failure or drop-out. Finally, partnerships must be created to provide for the training of teachers and other professionals responsible for French-language literacy.
I believe that distance education will be called upon to play a role in this regard. The networking of communities could multiply the resources available. It would also, I believe, open up opportunities for sharing and discussion with a general public that is very interested in French immersion or intensive courses. Canada's networked francophone communities must become as large as possible and include francophiles throughout the country, especially those involved in initiatives such as Canadian Parents for French and French for the Future.
Fourth challenge: interactivity
The time has surely come to ask the basic question of what will become of teaching in an interactive age. Won't the differences between a traditional classroom in an educational institution and distance education be blurred in the interest of greater and greater bandwidth? While the debate on these issues is not new, we must agree that it remains topical.
These new capacities are not available today but probably will be in the near future. Enormous databases are being created, and video on demand and digital video are developing rapidly. It will soon be possible to download the contents of an entire library in just a few minutes.
Fifth challenge: the transformation of the teacher-student relationship
At the same time, we are witnessing a very unusual phenomenon. People are communicating more than ever but talking to each other less and less. Even in brick and mortar universities, as opposed to virtual institutions, students can register, pay their tuition, get their class notes and submit their work via the Internet. Some of them communicate with their professors by e-mail more often than in person. For their part, professors are slowly becoming familiar with the computer programs that will help them identify cases of electronic plagiarism.
In this rapidly evolving electronic universe, professors and students may in the future feel both highly connected and very isolated. Without being overly dramatic, I even wonder about potential alienation. How can we safeguard the human contact and educational support that are indispensable to the education of a whole person? How will we educate individuals who - to paraphrase Montaigne - have their heads on straight and not just full of information? We still have no answer to this major challenge.
Sixth challenge: vulnerability of community life
The creation of a large virtual francophone community raises other issues beyond the weakening of ties among individuals. It also has the potential to jeopardize community life by weakening traditional institutions. Our struggle for the Montfort Hospital in Ontario, for example, perfectly symbolizes the importance of defending, consolidating and expanding local services that are essential to our communities.
The creation of a large virtual community should make us reflect not only on what we have in common but also on the specific characteristics of each francophone community in Canada. It is a struggle for a shared heritage and its consolidation, a community action project that should bring people together while respecting differences.
In the field of distance education, this means that partnerships formed between institutions must ultimately seek to consolidate the francophone space in Canada overall. That might sometimes be at the expense of sacrificing some of the individual ambitions of educational institutions.
Seventh challenge: the international Francophonie
We may also ask what contribution a large French-language distance education network in Canada can make to the international Francophonie. The effective use of distance education can certainly help reduce the North-South gap. This is too large an issue to broach here, but I would still like to mention in passing the remarkable work being done in this regard at the Centre international pour le développement de l'inforoute en français and by the member countries and institutions of the Francophonie.
Eighth challenge: evaluating distance education
Finally, the task of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of distance education is a challenge in itself, since such education must be oriented toward meeting the needs of each client group. The development of such a program will allow administrators to better identify the pedagogical, economic and social strengths and weaknesses of this type of education.
One of the key issues in such an evaluation should be student recruitment and retention. What is the client market today and what will it be tomorrow? What are its needs? What is its perception of the services offered? Do these services meet specific quality standards? We have been asking these same questions for ten years, but unless this basic information is constantly updated, distance education might always be viewed as a poor relation of the educational system.
These, dear colleagues, are some thoughts that I wanted to share with you about the challenges facing distance education. If some of these themes ring true to you, it is because you have already understood the importance of running faster and faster.
But it is not enough simply to run; we must be careful not to trip or fall into the pitfalls along the way. I will concentrate on four of the greatest and most foreseeable pitfalls.
First pitfall: lack of focus
This refers to the tendency to try to do a bit of everything at the risk of spreading oneself too thin and overlooking the need to develop a broad strategy that meets the numerous economic and social development needs of individuals and communities.
Such a strategy must be holistic and must reflect the role of all stakeholders in setting specific and measurable objectives for themselves. It must prepare Canada's francophonie not only to focus on the acquisition of new knowledge but also to be committed to lifelong learning.
In the race to globalization, Canada's francophonie can come out at the head of the pack only by achieving excellence. Above all that means being well-organized and preparing ourselves.
Second pitfall: too much emphasis on technology
The development of the Internet has in part become a huge undertaking to commercialize information. It is therefore not surprising that, in a climate of free trade, we are now witnessing more or less open attempts to commercialize education. But education, like culture, is not primarily a commercial product. It is above all a heritage to be developed and passed on. We must therefore be extremely vigilant in order to eliminate from the world of distance education any approaches that rely too heavily on the commercial dissemination of knowledge.
Third pitfall: reductionism
The unavoidable advantages that technology offers for distance education can present a great temptation to sacrifice the content of knowledge on the altar of technology. Just as the spell check function on a word processing program can never replace a solid understanding of grammar, the cleverest computerized presentation of educational material will never replace the teacher or the effort required of the learner. Knowledge must not be a slave to technology; rather technology must serve the purpose of knowledge.
Fourth pitfall: trick mirror
I spoke earlier about the commercialization of education, but there is yet another threat to education. Carried away with the prospect of delivering educational services at a lower cost, some specialists dream of the day when they will be able to substantially reduce their infrastructure costs.
Will that lead to the creation of two classes in society with respect to education, one group being urban, affluent and equipped with brick and mortar institutions, the other regional, underfunded and virtual? Might the digital gulf between anglophones and francophones create new gaps, this time as a result of computer illiteracy?
Under these conditions, will distance education, far from being a tool for development or even emancipation, become the source of new inequalities, especially for minority francophone communities?
It is clear to me that educational services, like other essential services, must be provided by real institutions, anchored in the communities they serve. An effective virtual network could not exist without them.
I do not wish to end on too futuristic a note. By presenting some of the challenges and pitfalls that lie ahead on the road of distance education, I simply hoped to suggest to you that the future is always full of opportunities and threats. But above all, the future is something that can be shaped and built. The future is a blank page to the architect of tomorrow.
This symposium offers an opportunity for discussion on the needs of distance education. You will be called upon to make recommendations to guide the future direction of REFAD and the various community stakeholders. You will be asked to discuss ways of making Canada's francophonie both a real and a virtual place for sharing, mutual assistance and modernity through judicious use of the new technologies.
If you can keep running faster and faster, fast enough to step into this vast world of the future, you will finally have the right to feel comfortable in your running shoes.
Enjoy the symposium. Thank you.
