Faculty not Factory

The main goal of the School for Distance, Electronic and Continuing learning in New Bulgarian University is to manage the programs for part-time students. The heritage from the Communist period in higher education had many difficulties (including the forms of education for part-time students and programs). The part-time learning was “second hand” education in all of its dimensions: learning materials, schedule, and gravity of diploma. Nowadays, when the trend is in blended?learning and e-learning, the aim for the School for Distance, Electronic and Continuing learning is to transform the methodology of learning in part-time programs without making the University into a factory for diplomas or a diploma mill. The administration of the School decided to create a standard for e-learning to describe the frame of the education process. This standard is playing the role of a contract that guarantees students the minimum of the services on which they can rely. In the same time the standard provides the Administration of the School guidelines to handle cases of suspected cheating on the examinations and/or evaluations. From one side, students can send their papers and do test on line. From other side, the University can use software for plagiarism and many settings in testing to guarantee the quality of the work. In teaching process programs can begin utilization of records of the lectures simultaneously making the lectures non-obligatory. Most of the learning materials can be made available in digital copy in the platform for e-learning. Shortly after this stage, virtual classrooms can be introduced into the education. After the first two years of on-line testing, analysis demonstrates that the GPA is decreasing, contrary to expectations. Effective instruction should introduce a blended evaluation of tasks. Each student must choose a topic from several proposed from the faculty and submit a paper electronically. The material is checked for plagiarism but the student must present the work before an academic jury on campus with all other students who have worked on the same topic.. If some students show differences between the grades of the on-line paper and the campus presentation, they become objects of special attention when doing on line testing. They may be required to do a second test. Also the Faculty uses the possibility from the program to gather students twice a year for outdoor activities. In those activities, trainers divide students in teams and give them tasks for teamwork. The outcomes are that students become more responsible participants in the learning process. It is clear that in the future higher education will become more and more practically oriented. Elements from continuing education and team building programs will become more and more important and efficient.