Web-based Learning and Teaching – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education

Open and distance learning at the higher education level is a central issue of today, and seems to be a strong contribution towards the democratisation of access to learning. The advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) together with several applications offer new perspectives, such as the e-learning, networked learning and other ICT enabled environments. However, these new approaches to the teaching/learning process are still at an immature stage – if their adoption represent opportunities, it also brings in new challenges. Although some of these concepts exist for several years, there is still no clear understanding on the way these approaches will evolve and become current and useful practices. Aware of the potential of these new dimensions of teaching and learning that ICT can enable, the main concerns of the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA) in the promotion of quality in the teaching/learning process are based on the exploitation of ICT in two ways: (1) democratising the access to the information, assuring a permanent enrichment of knowledge to the community of teachers and students and (2) enabling innovative teaching and learning practices and processes. The paper discusses the exploitation of ICT potential in the teaching & learning process in higher education, draws the actual situation of ICT usage in the teaching & learning in Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA), introduces its expectancies and identifies and discusses the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats associated to Webbased learning and teaching technologies using a SWOT analysis. Finally it proposes / discusses an action plan to align IPCA with the recent developments in the domain, supported by the identification of a set of critical success factors.