DISTANCE LEARNING AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES: ENHANCING THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES

Nowadays the role played by Universities as institutions that foster international cooperation is more than obvious. This cooperation embraces different activities, like research and teaching. In this line, many Universities are involved in exchange programs and similar experiences in which both lecturers and students take part. Nevertheless, there are other options which are not so common but can be very interesting as well, like courses taught together by several institutions or courses taught by a foreign University. These options are made possible thanks to the new technologies and the use of internet. So it is not necessary anymore for the lecturers to visit the other Universities, saving this way a lot of time and financial resources. Lecturers and students can connect via internet and interact almost as if they were in the same classroom. These changes open a new space for future cooperation between Universities as well as their internationalization strategies, as the courses taught can reach not only students in the University’s region, but potentially students all over the world.

In this paper we explain how we have taken advantage of the new communication technologies available at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, to offer a distance-learning course in Mexico, paying special attention to the teaching methodologies.