Innovation in online teaching in a Mexican university

By Tony Bates. I spent last week in and around Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco in Mexico. The Universidad de Guadalajara, whose origins go back to 1586, is the second largest university in Mexico, with about 130,000 students distributed between 15 campuses across the state. It also has a long-standing distance education program, now called Virtual Campus, which offers fully online programs, often through local ‘casas’ or study centres with Internet access (only about 40% of Mexicans, and almost none in the lower socio-economic groups, have Internet access at home, mainly due to lack of competition in the Mexican telephone industry). More...