Fjernundervisning basert på Internett - et samarbeid mellom Høgskolen Stord/Haugesund, Høgskolen i Agder, Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag og Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet.

NITOL, a national project

(Norway-net with IT for Open Learning)

The Norwegian Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs, subcontracted the JITOL activities to academic institutions and private companies around the country. Most of the user trials, evaluation and project organisation were handled by 4 academic institutions:

• The University of Trondheim, College of Art & Science, Institute for Informatics

• Agder College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science (now: Agder College)
• Trondheim College of Engineering, Department for Computer Technology (now: Sør-Trøndelag College, Institute for Computing)
• Stord College of Education, Department of Educational Information Science (now: Stord/ Haugesund College, Department of Education Studies and Science)

Towards the end of the JITOL period, a new, national project was formed around these four institutions, NITOL (Norway-net with IT for Open Learning), sponsored by SOFF (The Norwegian Executive Board for Distance Education at University and College Level). A major goal for the project was to implement the JITOL concept into academic studies, providing a larger selection of courses, a richer and more flexible learning environment for students.

First part of NITOL ran concurrently with the second user trials of JITOL, striving for mutual benefits between the activities. JITOL activities in Norway were aiming at the ALTP group of professionals, i.e. applications of advanced (/information) technology for learning purposes. Major target groups were developers of educational software and graduate students in the field of educational information science. As a consequence of this background, the initial catalogue of NITOL courses (Spring '94), was centred around informatics and information technology, some courses with an educational profile. The expressed intention of the project group was, however, to strive for a broader selection of subjects and topics in the course menu. The present catalogue (Autumn '95) has a larger variety among its 49 course titles.

The objectives of NITOL are first of all to gain experience with IT as a major tool in open learning at higher level, and hopefully also draw some conclusions concerning the functionality of the concept. In order to obtain this experience, the project is implemented on a technical basis as well as at the pedagogical level, courses and systems are developed and tried out. The four project partners are all contributing to make up this basis for practical trials.