Principal Investigator Richard Larson
Project Website http://linc.mit.edu/
The Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC) is an MIT-managed international initiative that began in 2001 and is operated by a growing team of MIT faculty, student and staff volunteers. LINC’s premise is simple and compelling:
With today’s computer and telecommunications technologies, every young person can have a quality education regardless of his or her place of birth.
Until recently, the assets of a country lay buried underground, such as oil, gas, gold, silver and diamonds. Today, the key assets of a country lie ‘buried between the ears of its citizens!’ Educating the mind – that is the key to a better tomorrow for all.
LINC is an international community of individuals and organizations that focuses on higher education in emerging countries and the role that technology can play in expanding educational reach. It is a collaboration of educators from around the world whose purpose is to share best practices and to learn from each other’s mistakes, in order to move forward with successful distance learning projects in tertiary education in their home countries.
LINC is a hybrid, a professional society whose participants include scholars, practitioners, students, corporate executives, government officials and foundation professionals. Their goal in collaborating through LINC is to help build on-the-ground expertise and virtual distance learning communities in each of the respective countries seeking such assistance. Their focus is not on the narrow engineering aspects of technology but on pedagogical issues, educational content, financial planning, political constraints and organizational issues. Technology fits into this in a natural way – as defining what can and cannot be done in various regions.
The hybrid part of LINC arises because LINC also supports various programmatic initiatives. In that sense, LINC is a ‘professional society with an entrepreneurial attitude,’ one that applies new and modestly priced distance-learning initiatives in various countries and regions around the globe.
Initially LINC supports the following activities:
(*) An annual international symposium on best practices in e-learning
(*) Publications, including a magazine reporting case studies and a refereed journal reporting on LINC-relevant research
(*) A collaborative interactive web site that will support those who are focusing on LINC-related activities
(*) Starter R&D projects in developing countries aimed at new initiatives such as alternative pedagogical models in e-learning
(*) Provision of technical assistance in ‘training the trainers,’ who will serve as initial key e-learning personnel in a country
(*) Involvement of college and university students studying in developed countries in internships on e-learning in developing countries
(*) Creation of collaborative educational web sites to which all LINC members can contribute and from which all can access contributed materials
(*) Identifying and encouraging foundations, private firms and governmental institutions that may want to scale up one or more LINC-supported starter projects to significant size
(*) Facilitating the matching of expert resources to the e-learning needs of any particular LINC member
(*) While LINC commences activity as a MIT-managed project, it is possible that eventually LINC will spin off as a separate internally managed organization
LINC is funded by foundations, corporations, individuals, and by MIT. It has had the enthusiastic support of MIT’s President, Provost and Chancellor.