Virtual education

TALLINN - Bernhard Linder has taken courses at Tallinn's Concordia International University for over six months, but has visited Estonia's capital only four times. The 29-year-old lawyer lives in Vienna while completing his master of business administration degree via a short commute on the information superhighway.

"What I like the most," he said in an e-mail from Austria, "is the idea of having a small university in my flat."

Linder is one of 70 MBA students at the school. More than half of them choose to take courses online through the Virtual Concordia program that started in the fall of 1998. The Internet-based program takes a minimum of two years to complete and is the same price as the traditional face-to-face program, about $6,000. The first students of Virtual Concordia will graduate this year.

Concordia's international focus makes it a perfect candidate to experiment with virtual education. Nearly one third of Concordia students are Latvians and Lithuanians who live in Tallinn during their study period, and all classes are taught in English. Also, many courses concentrate on foreign and Baltic affairs, especially with regard to the European Union.

"It is great for students who are not local. They can attend our classes anytime and from anywhere," said Krista Haak, coordinator of graduate programs at Concordia.

Haak added that participants in Virtual Concordia come from all over the Baltic states and Europe and as far away as the United States.

The high-tech climate of Estonia also contributes to the ease of introducing such an education program here. The widely popular Estonian Tiger Leap program brought computers into the schools and now with that knowledge, educators are bringing school into the computers.

"In Estonia, there have been online courses for a while, even before Concordia, but not whole programs" said Hele-Mai Haav, founder of the Virtual Concordia program. "Now, there is a good marketplace for the program because more people are used to computers and more people have them in their homes."

Other universities in Estonia, including Tartu University and Tallinn Technical University, offer online classes, but not an entire degree program. Enter "online education" or "virtual classes" into an Estonian Web server and anything from learning how to tie a tie to understanding mathematical formulas will pop up onto the computer screen.

The Estonian Business School offers a virtual Bachelor of Business Administration program, which takes four-and-a-half years to complete, but it is "not 100 percent online," according to Kula Tarno, director of distance learning there.

The business school's program also differs from Concordia's in that it attracts older students ranging from 27 to 40-years-old, and it is in Estonian. Most Virtual Concordia students are in their early to mid-20s.

"The reason people come to EBS is they live faraway, like on one of the Estonian islands, or their schedule is not regular, they are out of town on business, they are mid-career and want a change," Tarno said.

Nearly 70 students take part in the online business program at EBS.

Concordia doesn't plan on expanding its bachelors' programs onto the Internet because, "the students need to learn communication skills and should be in a classroom environment at their age," but will start putting more elective courses and some individual classes online, Haav said.

Haav and Tarno agree that Internet education will not replace traditional education in the future, even though convenience and long-term cost reductions are merits not to be underestimated regarding the virtual classroom.

Despite its benefits, E-education does have a few drawbacks that may keep full virtual degree programs out of the public universities for now: Technology does not come cheap and electronics are not always dependable.

"It is very expensive to set-up," said Concordia's Haak. "There are many overhead costs that I'm not sure public universities could afford right now."

Linder refers to the reliability of a telephone line as the biggest hardship in pursuing courses over the Internet. "Often the connection breaks down, which is especially unpleasant during an exam or test," he said.

However, for Linder who logs on to take classes in cyberspace, a few bad connections is worth it. "It brings the world to my flat," he said. "I chat with people from a completely different country. Talking to them broadens my mind."