Marc Madou delivers a live videocast lecture from the UCI campus. Image courtesy of Daniel A. Anderson, UCI.
UC Irvine plans to resume broadcasting engineering courses to a technological institute in Monterrey, Mexico next winter, and possibly to a university in Mexico City, following a successful experiment involving live videocasting.
The project was pulled together by UCI Chancellors Professor Marc Madou, author of the “Fundamentals of Microfabrication,” the so-called “bible” of micro-manufacturing, which forms the basis of the classes. He gave lectures that were broadcast live to about 50 students at Technologica de Monterrey, 1,200 miles southeast of UCI. The videocasts originated in an Irvine classroom where roughly the same number of UCI students took the courses.
All of the students took the courses for credit, and the institute in Mexico provided some money to UCI to offset production costs.
“Our university needs to interact more with the local Mexican and Vietnamese communities,” says Madou. “There have not been enough students from these local communities at UCI.
Madou says the videocasting courses directly to universities and institutes in Mexico “also will help more Mexicans earn Ph.D’s, which will change the perception that many people have of them. Other Mexican students will see them succeed and say, ‘I can do that. ‘ ”
In addition to Technological de Monterrey, Madou says he’s had recent discussions about also videocasting the courses to the Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico City. The arrangement hasn’t been formalized.
Madou formed the broadcasting service with Rodrigo Martinez-Duarte, a Monterrrey Technologico graduate who is now seeking a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at UCI. Although their experiment seems to have worked well,
adjustments need to be made. For example, during lectures, Madou can look at a live camera shot of his students in Mexico. But the picture isn’t large or good enough for him to clearly make out everyone’s face — although he does take direct questions from the Mexican students.
In an unrelated matter… President O’Bama will today make his first trip, as president, to Mexico.
Follow Sciencedude on Twitter at grobbins and add him as a friend on Facebook.
Related story
Pew Center: 11 percent of all people born in Mexico now in U.S.
- UCI admitting far fewer students
- UCI to study youth drinking by test messaging youngsters
- Microquake near Fountain Valley’s Mile Square Park
- Pretty iridescence appears in clouds above O.C.
- Ready to Shake, O.C.? F-18s to bomb Camp Pendleton
- USGS says earthquake swarm near Yorba Linda is strange
- Earth from Space: Pretty pictures of our wild, wild planet
- Astronauts photograph water flowing into Southern California
Do you think that these videocourses will have to produce significantly more Ph.D.s in Mexico?
It won’t produce any more Ph.D.’s, however in my estimation, it will improve the breadth of their education, as they are exposed to specialized expertise that might not otherwise be available. Remember ITESM is already a top totch university.
top notch university, that is.
Gary,
What is your major in bachelors degree?
To which school did you go for your Bachelors degree?
Sanders: I have a bachelors degree in liberal arts, with a major in journalism, from Northeastern University in Boston. I graduated in 1978. Did my sabattical year at MIT in 2000.
I hope that the UC system is charging a signiificant amount of money fior these broadcasts!
Gary,
You didn’t say a word about that in your blog. What gives?
Our UC schools are so impacted that incoming students who’ve been accepted have to go to a junior college while awaiting openings. So, why do we send our educational programming essentially overseas, when our own students can’t even get in???
How about it Gary?
ocallfan: I did address the money issue. I said that the technological institute helped offset the cost of the broadcast. I didn’t go into enrollment trends because these broadcasts won’t have any impact on the number of students who are granted admission to the UC. Dr. Madou is merely livecasting classes to Mexico. They’re UCI classes. He hasn’t added classes that aren’t open to UCI students. And the students in Mexico will pay for the next round of courses. The papers they write will be graded by professors at those schools … This is all part of an increasing trend in higher ed to distribute more course material. Dozens of schools across the country, including UCI, have OpenCourseWear suites where the public can read/watch/participate in significant portions of university courses. MIT is famous for it.
In other words, if you were a junior college student preparing to transfer to UCI, you could basically take the OpenCourseWear courses, for free, but without credit, before you got to campus. Which means you’d fare much better when you actually enrolled.
FYI: it is Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey also known as “ITESM” or “el Tec (de Monterrey)” not Technologica or Technologico…Thanks! …from a former student/current employee
OpenCourseWear? Is that the dreary clothes you see on college kids these days?
When will we help AMERICANS for a change? This is just another liberal idea gone wild. UCI should relocate to MEXICO and free up some real estate here.
God, I’m SICK of this!!! How about broadcasting these courses to the poor in THIS country!
Chris: You didn’t bother to reader the messages. The OpenCourseWear courses are available to everyone in this country.
Oh really? Where? How?
I see the statement, I see no proof.
If it’s available to everyone, I’d like to see the course.
How to I get it?
It only states that schools have Opencourseware where the public can iew PORTIONS of some courses.
Not this one.
Here’s the proof: http://ocw.uci.edu/courses/
The Tecnologico de Monterrey is an elite private college, so not too many poor go there. It is also one of the top 35 business schools in the world.
Gee, I’m SO glad my TAXES are being used to better education in Mexico! Meanwhile, tuition to attend UCI spirals upward.
This needs to be stopped immediately.
Providing “Some funds to help offset the cost” just doesn’t cut it.
These are CALIFORNIA taxes paying for this.
Broadcast to Saddleback college, or Cal State Fullerton, or even U.C. Riverside.
Heck, put it on Orange County PBS. Let us ALL benefit from OUR taxes!
California tax dollars were not used to pay for the videocast. The cost of the videocast sent to Mexico was paid by the Mexican institute in Monterrey, as it notes in the story.
Gary, it is not the cost of the video transmission. I can broadcast a video with a $200 digital video camera. It is the cost of our educational infrastructure which we do subsidize.
And, when Madou states:
“Our university needs to interact more with the local Mexican and Vietnamese communities,” says Madou. “There have not been enough students from these local communities at UCI.”
- it is not up to us taxpayers to compensate for a lack of interest in education by any specific ethnic group.
LOL @ HBgeek.
anyway, I agree UCI should just make more classes available online to current students, or those who get accepted then turned away from attending the school because there are “too many students”.
if they’re not doing that, then this extracurricular stuff is just total fluff and a waste of our taxpayer dollars since we are subsidizing it, in addition to lowering the tuition costs of most attending there and funding the vast majority of their operating budgets.
Common people. This is good. If the world is better, than we can be better. Where are all the humanitarians?
Sorry: “Come on people” not “Common”
Gary,
It’s interesting that the OCR pays you to police and censor your own writings.
Americas help enough AJ. it’s time to help our people. By the way- do you all realize when you call Chase bank or Wells Fargo bank you never speak to the United States? These jobs are all outsourced. So, come on now AJ we need to help ourselves.
You are absolutely right. We should help ourselves. But let me ask you this: If this were a European country, would you feel the same?
Emphatically YES!
I don’t get it..what’s the issue here, UCI is selling lectures to a university in Mexico. If the country were “Sweden” not “Mexico” I don’t think there’d be half the # of comments in here.
Idiots. UCI is making money, as it should.
No “Grag”, I’m not an idiot. Try to keep the personal insults to yourself.
The lectures aren’t being exported to another country, are they? Your argument is moot and no worth my or anybody else’s time.
How is your comment worth more time than Grag’s?
I think it’s great that UCI is doing this. Education is good for everyone, right fellow OCR commenters?
If UCI was a private university and wasn’t subsidized by our CA state taxes, I would have no problem. I don’t want my taxes being spent in this manner.
We already subsidize Mexico’s corrupt economy. Money sent back by Mexican ex-patriots is Mexico’s second largest source of GDP revenue, second only to their thriving oil industry.
I’m a PhD. student and I had the opportunity to be a participant of this program, I want to share my experience with you far beyond the economic issues.
Taking a class with Professor Madou would be possible for me and other students of the program due to the agreement between Tecnologico de Monterrey and UCI but it also have housing and traveling implications and costs. It also would be possible to have Dr. Madou here in Monterrey but only for one or two days. So the answer was to have the lecture broadcasted.
The class was a complete success since its announcement, about 35 participants were registered, an outstanding number for a class with this level of specialization. We are students of masters and PhD. programs majoring in Electronics, Chemistry and Biotechnology. As stated before, we receive credits for this subject and the homework and tests were evaluated for the assistant professors here and Dr. Madou himself. There were minor logistics problems as one day that we only have the audio during 15 mins but everything got fixed.
Im very pleased and happy for having the opportunity to receive a lecture directly from a world guru in the Miniaturization field here at my school.
Greetings
The registration
As a graduate of the University of California system, and now a student at a private medical school in the US who is rapidly tumbling into an abyss of debt as I write, I am frustrated by the costs of education in the US, and the inability of our education system to ensure that we are able to educate our own through adequate funding and support.
However, that in no way makes it any less worthwhile to reach out to other academic institutions (or even “ethnic groups”!) by broadcasting lectures at virtually no cost to the host institution (and undoubtedly at a significant cost to the students in Mexico themselves and the university; I am sure they are doing their part as was stated in the article). Besides the principle, which should be applauded and not faulted, of wanting to provide an opportunity for a very highly specialized field to be accessible to all and to advance each individual’s education as well as the breadth of knowledge that can be shared and lead to new discoveries in the field, this is also an excellent opportunity for UCI and the University of California to gain more credibility and support.
Hopefully, eventually, our own state and federal governments will attempt to remedy our education system, and maybe help me pay back my loans instead of ending our federal loan programs and forcing higher interest rates on me as has occurred in the past year. In the mean time, we can focus our energy on more positive things, like advancing education for everyone, not only ourselves!