When the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) was created in 1995 it was the first university to offer certified university degrees exclusively through internet based distance learning. After focusing the first years on teaching only, in 2000 a research centre was opened and investigations began relating to the crosscutting theme of information and communication technology (ICT). On its foundation UOC was designed to be a lean institution, run by an experienced authoritarian leader who saw UOC’s mission as one of satisfying the learning needs of as many Catalonians as possible. He hoped to achieve this service while still allowing the university to live out its semi-private semi-public institution status. Even though the university was not established with profit motives, it evolved to follow all state of the art private sector practices. Subsequently, a host of complementary and parallel business lines and companies were setup. Unfortunately, most ventures did not blossom and survive. In late 2005 the old leadership team was replaced and it was one of the new rector’s first strategic decisions to transform institutional culture and practices to become more academically aligned, a closer approximation to the traditional idea of a university.
There can be no doubt that when UOC started, it was a true pioneer in the application of technology and a knowledge entrepreneur, as the opportunity to develop a new knowledge service was initially realized. In fact, constant technological innovation was the only way forward, as there were neither precedent, nor peers from which to learn. However, once the technological beast had been tamed, the technology backbone turned increasingly into a black box. The complexity of the soft- and hardware infrastructure became so high that around 2000 further development became more and more difficult due to the volume of individually documented and highly complicated interrelations and interfaces. The beast fell asleep in 2002 when a decision was implemented to discontinue the current virtual campus software and start anew. Because of financial struggles resulting from entrepreneurial ventures into the private education business, UOC decided to form a political alliance with other regional universities to solicit local government funding for the development of a new campus. It took until 2006 before the partners agreed and the development project could finally be launched. Since the development of the virtual campus was retarded by these changes, the Educational Technologies Department was mandated to bring in beneficial innovations whenever possible.
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