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3.4.3.1. Members
UOC has shown an incredible student growth rate. Today it boasts an enrolment of 40,707 students, taught by 1462 online mostly external tutors and about 160 UOC professors. The student body is emotionally and strategically coached by 305 counsellors (UOC, 2005). 93% of UOC’s students are working and 77% have previous university experience. Hence, UOC’s courses are focused on a target group of people between 25 and 45. Almost 73% of the students come from Catalunya, 22% from the rest of Spain and 5% are foreigners (ElPais, 2005), the latter coming from 45 countries (el Mundo, 2006) Despite the foreign element, the vast majority have some relation to the Catalonian language. In fact, in 2001 60% of UOC’s students were living in Barcelona (Ros Híjar, 2001). The most international part of the UOC is the doctorial program where (in its fifth edition) slightly more international than Catalonian students participate (UOC web). UOC has a slightly higher percentage of male students (56%) which is most likely due to the inequalities regarding the perception of technology as a barrier.
Even though young people also take UOC’s services in their educational development, the university’s official mandate is understood to be offering learning opportunities for adults interested in continuing their education. Many students are taking the chance to improve their career chances by enrolling in a UOC course after they just started working (31,6% of students are between 25-29). Hence, even though this condition does not play out in academic decisions, the UOC’s students are on average much older than students at other universities.
3.4.3.2. Location
In the case of the UOC, two types of physical locations exist. First, the spatial setting of the core administration, faculty and the research centre, and finally the support centres. When the UOC was founded in 1995 it took its venue in a representative building in Barcelona, which still hosts the university management and some faculty. Over the years, several new spaces have been added following the UOC’s natural growth pattern. In 2001 and 2006 a research centre in the outskirts of Barcelona and a big building in the new business district have been added, respectively. It is clear that the UOC is a highly dispersed organization by nature, even without the support centres, which are naturally spread far apart from each other.
As marketing points and to further facilitate student administration and community activities, 11 support centres in Catalonia, and eight throughout Spain, have been setup at points with high UOC student populations. Additionally, as described in the history, UOC has one subsidiary in Mexico which also hosts a support centre. As a more strategic global effort, UOC has setup support centres in Beijing and Brussels as well.
Even though physical location has to be read in a less dominant context than with the other universities (because it does not directly influence the learning experience) it remains an important aspect of inquiry. For the UOC, the fact that its administration is distributed widely across Barcelona hinders cross-departmental collaboration and a community atmosphere, even though UOC’s staff is naturally very computer savvy and capable of replicating many communal aspects through online substitutes.
For the students, the availability of the support centres makes the learning experience less virtual, which can improve learning and motivation for some students. However the exploitation of the support centres as a collaborative learning space is generally not fostered as conditions are meant to be equal for everybody (UOC student 21).
3.4.3.3. Specialization
The UOC is offering the equivalent of bachelors and master degrees in eight academic disciplines. While most of the disciplines are selected for their suitability for distance education, there are also some studies, like psychology or languages, where the limits of online pedagogy is a great challenge to the professors. Nevertheless, UOC’s specialization can be clearly stated as Social Sciences and Computer Sciences. In fact, of UOC’s 40 thousand students: nearly 20 thousand are doing Business Studies, 11 thousand are in Computer Sciences and Multi-Media, 8 thousand are in psychology and Educational Sciences, 6 thousand are in Law and Political Sciences, 4 thousand are in Humanities and Languages, while the rest are enrolled in rather small faculties (UOC, 2005).
In research, the UOC has decided to focus on one theme – information society. Research was added to UOC’s practices in 2000 when the internationally eminent sociologist Manuel Castells was chosen to guide the efforts of the university in this gambit. The university’s thematic research centre, the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), was founded with the aid from the Catalonian and Spanish government and the European Union [i], and the UOC began its work on a large-scale multi-sector research project (PIC) to investigate the conditions of the Catalonian region in regards to the “information society.” The IN3 also houses the virtual PhD programme on the information and knowledge society that accommodates and frames this present research project.
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[i] Who subsidized the building
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