How to manage change in Algeria to exploit the educational potential of videoconferencing?

Abstract

These last two decades, the social and cultural environment in Algeria has known, in the fields of information and communication, a great upheaval with the appearance of new technologies. University campuses have tried to follow this change by acquiring adequate and very efficient didactic IT resources (multimedia laboratories, media library, Internet space, audiovisual space, etc.). Then, a very ambitious National Distance Learning Program was set up by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, which made it possible to start up, in 2008, distance learning and videoconferences in a large number of universities. However, despite these significant investments in sophisticated equipment, the use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education has not kept pace with the same growth. There is an underuse of these work tools which are powerful tools with cognitive potential. Situation aggravated by educational, administrative, bureaucratic, and managerial routines which have generated inertia at all levels. Although theoretically the CTBTs can be considered as an educational instrument adapted to the university environment, its implementation is quite difficult to implement because it requires changes in management within the university.

The subject of this communication concerns videoconferencing. If the latter must theoretically correspond to a real need in education within Algerian universities, its use is nothing in practice. The use of videoconferencing in Algeria is most disconcerting. After five years of its commissioning, the rooms equipped with the appropriate equipment are still underused and sometimes not even used !!

One of the biggest contradictions between the MESRS objectives and the use of videoconferencing is that on the one hand the supervisory authority wishes to disseminate the teaching to a very large number of students (thousands), and on the other hand videoconference rooms can only receive a limited number of students (generally less than 100). So how do you reconcile this objective and the use of this material? Should we take the risk of making additional investments when the first investments were not profitable? We do not believe that it would be a good solution, for this we propose in this communication, after the presentation of an inventory of videoconferencing in Algeria (on the basis of a survey), uses that can meet national needs while taking into account the human potential available.