Sunday, June 3, 2012

iPodia Alliance: "classrooms-without-borders"

All dreams need doing! Doing iPodia by an institutionally and geographically bounded traditional university is very hard. But, together, a group of brave innovators can change the landscape of the century-old ivory-tower model of higher education. This is why we created iPodia Alliance.

What is iPodia Alliance?


iPodia Alliance is an independent, not-for-profit, international consortium among leading higher education institutions in major world cultural regions for the purpose of developing, promoting, implementing, and dissimilating the iPodia-style of education paradigm and learning opportunities to create a borderless world-classroom for all. Our end is iPodia, and iPodia Alliance is a means to achieve this end.

What is the current membership of iPodia Alliance?


iPodia Alliance currently includes six chartered members:
  • University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A, 
  • Peking University in Beijing, China, 
  • National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, 
  • Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, 
  • KAIST - Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, and 
  • RWTH University of Aachen in Aachen, Germany. 

The Viterbi iPodia Office at University of Southern California serves as the Administrator to provide required administrative supports to all Alliance members free of charge. iPodia Alliance is now expanding its memberships to include a few more leading universities from other world cultural areas, such as IIT-Mumbai - India Institute of Technology in India, Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, Africa.

What are the membership selection criteria of iPodia Alliance?


As an organization which focuses on promoting intercultural active learning globally, iPodia Alliance selects its members based on criteria different from other existing university ranking schemes. First, we mainly target at higher learning institutions in geographical regions that represent major world cultures which complement one another. Second, the university must have established undergraduate and graduate programs whose quality are compatible to that of existing Alliance members. Third, a university can also be considered for membership if it brings strategic values that are deemed important to the Alliance by the iPodia Executive Board.

What are the operational principals of iPodia Alliance?


There are three principals that govern the operations of iPodia Alliance. Firstly, the "equal-reciprocity" principal encourages members to strive for a balance between the iPodia courses offered to and received from the Alliance within a certain period. This ensures equal contributions and mutual benefits among all members. Secondly, the "revenue-neutral" principal suggests that members are responsible for the costs of their participation in all activities and no money (e.g., tuitions, etc.) will exchange hands between any Alliance members. This promotes the not-for-profit culture for the Alliance members to focus on win-win collaborations. Lastly, the "no-joint-degree" principal declares that the Alliance's main goal is to share courseware development and delivery rather than create joint degrees among its member universities. This enables all Alliance members to maintain the independence and uniqueness of their curricula.

The global learning network established through iPodia Alliance represents a virtual "world-classroom" or "classrooms-without-boarders," in which all collaborating institutions retain their independent identities and unique curricula, but work together strategically in course development and classroom delivery in areas of mutual interest and global importance in the 21st century.

For more information, please visit the iPodia official website.


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