by Fr. Michel Van Aerde op, Provincial of Toulouse 1
Teaching over the Internet has begun to transform the landscape of higher education. The British Open University has 160,000 students following correspondence courses in practically all disciplines. 2,000 of them are using the Internet to obtain degrees. In France, 550,000 people are following professional corrspondance courses through the CNED (Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance). Philosophers, educators, information specialists and even economists are discussing the impact of this new media on education. As in the Middle Ages, as well in the first decades of evangelisation in Latin America and the Philippines, the Order of Preachers is active in promoting university level education.
The General Chapter of Bologna (July, 1998) devoted considerable time to this issue. At that meeting the Domuni project was presented. The project consists in the creation of a network of all the Dominican educational institutions willing to recognise to mutually accept the equivalence of their canonical degrees. At the core will be the Dominican institutions; later, other non-Dominican centres interested in the project may be associated: seminaries, universities, faculties of various religious institutions or specialised research institutes. There is no particular technical difficulty in achieving this goal: The Internet site is already set up and is functioning. The virtual institution is networked and is called DOMUNI, (www.domuni.org). In the Dominican priory of Toulouse, it is connected by fibre optic cable to the local French university network RENATER. Students are enrolled from all five continents.
At the academic level, protocols are being established among existing centres to facilitate the expansion and recognition of DOMUNI. Students living at a distance will connect via Internet to the nearest centre of studies on the network. Following established procedures of that institution, the student will enrol for courses and receive a tutor to accompany him in his or her work. Students will pass the examinationss in the traditional way; they will sit these examinations in the nearest networked centre under the supervision of a tutor or proctor. Upon successful completion of degree requirements, students will receive a diploma from the institution in which they are enrolled. No new authorization is necessary from the Roman Congregation. Most institutions of higher learning are now acquiring the capacity to teach at a distance. This is the case of the Institut Catholique in Strasbourg in France. For several decades this Institute has more students working at a distance than those who are physically present on the campus. It is through this means that many French Dominican nuns are now completing their studies.
Other University networks are in the process of establishing distance education through the Internet. This is the case of Louvain University which is establishing a cooperative agreement with other European universities, such as the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Belonging to one network does not exclude belonging to othernetworks. The question facing the Order now is a political one,: Should the Dominican Order establish its own proprietary network to facilitate the expansion of DOMUNI? There are also a practical aspects to this question: Will the Order be capable of establishing and nuturing DOMUNI in a rapid manner? The effect of first mover in the distance education market means that it is important to be a pioneer to establish visibility and credibility. Once others have begun to offer the same services, it will be much harder to establish or expand DOMUNI.
The General Chapter of the Order in Bologna decided to establish DOMUNI and move quickly to implement the decision. The Dominican project has several important advantages over other institutions and a set of valuable assets. Many universities have considerable financial and human resources, but often have problems cooperating together due to their different approaches to learning and their different degree programs. Dominican centres of studies have a common past, a common series of objectives, and mutually recognizable degree programs : canonical degrees.
How should the network be organised administratively?
A strong centralised structure is not appropriate. The Internet is fundamentally a distributed system without centralisation, and the distance education models should be network models without centralized controls; the Order of Preachers itself is historically a decentralised institution. The government of the Dominican Order is a federal structure which encourages local initiatives. A "president" will be name to head DOMUNI network. The president will preside over the academic "senate" (analogous to an elected General Chapter) made up of the rectors and a certain number of "delegates" elected by faculty of each of constituant institutions in proportion to the number of the students enrolled in DOMUNI.
As an example of how DOMUNI would work, it is useful to consider some different types of students.
One such potential student would be "Pablo Quispe", a Quechua peasant who has emigrated into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. Having had followed the courses for a theological degree (baccalaureat) in the seminary of Puerto Maldonando run by the Dominicans of of the Vicariate ( Province of Spain), he can continue to follow courses leading to a canonical Licentiate via the Internet. Pablo choses a tutor from among the professors at the Puerto Maldonando seminary, and several supplementary professors from the University of Salamanca in Spain. Although he may have access to a local library, he will also be able to consult and use more specialised books and research tools, via the Internet. After completing his studies, he sits his final examinations exams in an institution which belongs to the DOMUNI network. Lastly, he has to write his final thesis. Instead of working in a European or American university which is in a completely different cultural world than his own and far from the practical everyday experience he needs, he can work on his thesis using the Internet in constant contact with his professor and his tutor - each on a different continent. Pablo would thus be able to continue his studies while avoiding a costly and perhaps traumatic prolonged stay abroad away from his home community.
Jean-Marie Mérigoux a Dominican friar living in the Domincan Centre for Islamic Studies in Cairo. He is a lecturer in the university, and through Internet, he would like to share his experience with other people around the world. Through the DOMUNI network, Fr Merigoux can now propose a course on Eastern Christianity, as he has lived for many years in Iraq and in Egypt. This course will be of interest to many students and even for those.
M. René Tixier is a layman, responsible for the teaching English at the University of Toulouse in France. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the well known mystical text The Cloud of Unknowing; he proposes to share his knowledge in a bi-lingual course, on the English mysticism of the Middle Ages, offered in English and French.
Many seminarians, laypeople and religious, many of those involved in the ministry, would like to work on different academic subjects; thanks to the new, interactive digital technology of the Internet much of the source material (libraries, books, reviews, image banks, audio recordings, etc.) are now more available. Theology students, for the most part located in capital cities around the world, no longer have to be dependent on a few overworked professors, who themselves have been deprived of the intellectual stimulus and means for further research over the last decades.. Many libraries themselves are no longer to keep apace with the acquisition of new books or collections, given the price of books, the cost of transport and the storing capacities. Now, through digital technologies, collections can be gradually made available in a networked form, distributing the costs of acquiring , archiving and making available to the public specialised reading materials. In Europe access to theology is relatively easy for priests and religious whose institutions centre around their education at great sacrifice. For the laity, such studies are a luxury, which can be offered only by the "new communities" which function in manner that is similar to that of religious congregations, or accessed by retired persons who have the time and money to pursue further studies at their leisure.
The laity, religious priests and nuns, the clergy with a limited possibility for complementary studies, all find themselves deprived of the possibility for further studies, unless they have recourse to the traditional method of studying by correspondence, a method that is time consuming, expensive and fundamentally anonymous. Furthermore, such an approach does not resolve either the problem of access to libraries nor that of supervised, proctored examinations to certify degrees. Teaching over the Internet resolves all of these problems.
By way of experiment, a trial project is now underway. The files on the Toulouse experience is at your disposal with information on the techniques, the administration and the economics elements of the DOMUNI's project as it now functions.
The project of the Order is ambitious. It is at the same time well within our grasp. On the basis of the existing centres of theological and philosophical formation, it is relatively simple to set up a coherent and relatively homogenous network of educational institutions over the Internet.
The course offerings will be gradually increased over time. Course "credits" will be standardized DOMUNI degrees will have an international equivalence, due to their conformity with obligatory canonical norms and due to the agreements between centres within the framework of DOMUNI. The student will be able to follow the courses of "his/her" centre of studies as well as those of all other centres of the network. The DOMUNI network will become a virtual academic institution for the whole Order of Preachers, thus continuing the long tradition of offering the tools to the world for the pursuit of Veritas/Truth!
Fr. Michel Van Aerde op, Provincial of Toulouse.
(1) M. Van Aerde OP, DOMUNI Theologische
Wissensvermittlung über Internet, in: Wort und Antwort, april-juni 1999,
pp 79-83.