Internet schools charter
Please consult the pdf-format charter
1. Preamble
The new information and communication technologies,
particularly the Internet, are pervading all aspects of society
and radically altering interactions, access to knowledge, power
and expertise. Marked by increasingly rapid technological developments,
the "digital revolution" is paralleled by a globalisation of information
flows offering new access to knowledge and modifying the traditional
equation of location, identity and activity. This vast momentum
for change is in the process of effecting a significant change
in society, modifying the place of Man and, in concrete terms,
leading to the concept of the "information society".
This wide-ranging change is inducing large-scale development and a need for qualified personnel in the information technology sectors (data processing, telecommunications, audiovisual, multimedia) and more generally, in all economic sectors concerned by the growth of the e-economy and e-commerce.
To meet this need, personnel levels in the high-tech education and training areas have been rising since 1998, paralleling the implementation of the government's plan of action for the information society (PAGSI).
Given the diversity of skills needed and looked
for by businesses and administrations, an exhaustive inventory
of training and education branches is necessary, which must also
take account of all curricula, in particular vocational education.
A number of local authorities expressed the
desire to see the creation of higher education programmes specifically
devoted to the Internet, and the meeting of the Comité interministériel
pour la société de l'information (CISI) (interministerial committee
for the information society) on 10 July 2000 indicated that it
wished to encourage this step so that in three years time, a national
"Internet schools" network dedicated to education in Internet
technologies and applications would emerge in all economic sectors.
2. Presentation of the quality label
The notion of the label characterises an education and training process
and is fundamentally different from the notion of certification (for example as used by the Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur), which concerns the qualification granted by an establishment.
Creation of the "Internet school" quality label
aims to identify approaches at the crossroads of technology, applications
and professions, in all sectors of activity (industry, commerce,
transport, medical, communication, leisure, administrative formalities,
etc.), characterised by a certain number of criteria concerning
their purpose, content and pedagogical approach. A process such
as this should offer the 21st century student a clearer understanding
of his future career and the resources available for adapting
to it.
The quality label should stimulate new uses of the information and communication sciences and technologies, meeting the very high expectations of businesses and public services and encouraging the start-up of new companies. The aim of this approach is rapidly to encourage all vocational higher education programmes to make this significant economic and social change, with the training and education needs being situated at all levels.
The quality label is aimed at initial levels I to III in "vocational" education or to in-service training courses leading to qualification. This concerns, but is not limited to:
- level I education (postgraduate) such as engineer training, commerce school, DESS,.
- level II education (graduate) such as professional licence or IUP,
- level III education (technical college) such as DUT or BTS,
The education and training programmes carrying the quality label will be networked and will place emphasis on partnership, both with other teaching institutions and with national and regional economic players.
The label approach aims,in all curricula whether existing or new, to implement a way of thinking and acting designed to prepare the students for the demands of the imminent "internet-based society". Generally speaking, this does not necessarily imply the creation of new specialised branches, but can also validate or modify existing courses.
For the student (or in-service trainee),
the label will provide him or her with a guarantee that the course
will offer a favourable environment with appropriate tools and
an innovative pedagogical approach, while also offering better
professional integration into the field concerned, at a national,
European and indeed international level.
For the education branch, this label
will make the programmes more attractive to the students and boost
its reputation owing to greater openness to other education and
training programmes and to industry.
For businesses and public services, the
quality label will guarantee that attitudes and reactions appropriate
to the Internet culture have been introduced into the course and
assimilated by the students.
The label award criteria will doubtless change to keep pace with changes in technology, applications and services. They are defined around seven determining categories.
3.1 Educational profile
The student who has taken a quality label course is proficient in the information and communication technologies and capable of managing their implementation. He specialises in the design of new services using an approach based on application and content. He knows how to implement Internet technology at the optimum level, in particular for managing a project concerning the deployment of a new activity on the Internet.
Apart from the scientific and technological component in the fields of digital communications, data processing, information systems and networks, his training places considerable emphasis on the economic, legal, social and management sciences.
Generally speaking, in any course with the quality label, the space reserved for teaching information and communication science and technology (ICST) and general non-technical subjects linked to the profession and/or the Internet (human and social sciences, economics, law, etc.) must entail a minimum total number of hours and, for each of these two types of teaching, minimum ratios. The label award committee will set the rules precisely.
For engineer training, a minimum volume of about 1200 hours supervised teaching and at least 6 months placement, mainly with the users (businesses or local authorities). In this curriculum, the number of hours devoted to the ICST is at least 50%, while that devoted to general non-technical teaching linked to the profession and/or the Internet (human and social sciences, economics, law, management entrepreneurship, etc.) is at least 30%.
For the other courses (DESS, commerce schools, graduate and postgraduate), the label award committee will propose minimum requirements for hours and ratios.
The training and education programme comprises a significant international aspect: hiring, pedagogical methods, placements, etc. are used to place the students in an international context.
3.2 Education and training content
Education and training covers several teaching categories. Next to the general teaching directly linked to the targeted careers, two other types of teaching must be proposed. Their importance varies according to the branch concerned and can be gradually incorporated into the curriculum. The pedagogical approach can differ according to the professional sector and to the level and the competence of the students.
Teaching of Information and Communication Science and Technology
This teaching forms the core of the science and technology programme. It concerns elements of digital communications (signal processing, compression, encoding, cryptology, etc.), data processing and information systems (architecture, algorithms, distributed systems, language, software engineering, databases, security, cooperative work, etc.), communication systems (networks, architecture, protocols, administration, quality of service, security, etc.) and services (mobility, multimedia, etc.).
Courses specifically developed
The courses specifically developed are linked to the application sectors. They benefit from the skills available through local research centres and businesses, and retain a high degree of pertinence and relevance. They include a science and technology aspect of varying importance and develop an applications aspect linked to a particular sector of the information society. They receive particular attention from the professional world and lead to studies and projects conducted in close collaboration with these professionals. These courses, for example, aim to ensure that students can adapt to the complex context created by the new economic models ("e-services", etc.).
3.3 Pedagogy
Pedagogy is an important criterion in awarding the label. It concerns the methods, techniques, resources and placements, emphasising in-situation work.
Pedagogical methods
The pedagogical method aims to ensure that the students are constantly active participants in their education. It places considerable emphasis on their personal projects. In addition to simply conveying their knowledge, the teaching staff help guide the students with their choices and help them refine their professional projects. They are a resource that the students must learn to put to good use. With this in mind, classroom lectures must be limited in order to leave enough room for tutorials: self-teaching, supervised work, practical work; supervised personal work, group projects, in particular in the field of Internet applications, etc.
The contribution from professionals in the field concerned supplements that of the teachers and is of particularly great value given the objectives. The School will therefore benefit greatly from obtaining the services of large numbers of visiting teachers from the economic world, as they can transmit more than just knowledge, they can impart know-how. They make extensive use of pedagogical methods offering in-situation experience of real cases encountered in the company (case studies, group projects, placements, etc.).
Information and Communication Technologies for Teaching
The Information and Communication Technologies in Teaching (ICTT) are naturally present in the teaching programmes carrying the quality label. They allow pedagogical systems such as self-teaching or on-line teaching allowing contact between persons who can be great distances apart.
They are added to or integrated into the use of conventional IT and other tools, specific to the activity sector.
Teaching uses the ICTT: interactive remote teaching, video-conferencing, customisation of individual tracks by combining self-teaching and tutorials, building on acquired experience through the potential of electronic forums. The ICTT also give the student a taste of the tools he will be using in the professional environment and that he will be required to use for the further training he will be following permanently during the course of his career.
Resources
The teaching programme must give the students easy and permanent access to IT resources and broadband Internet. Technological platforms able to conduct full-scale testing of new services, in order to evaluate their impact, must also be accessible within the immediate vicinity of the school.
Company placements
These placements, lasting about 6 months, aim to place the students in a real situation in an environment representative of the economic sector downstream of teaching. Apart from using the knowledge and skills acquired during their teaching, they should allow in-depth study of the context in which they take place (organisation, interaction between players, economic stakes and issues, etc.). For these reasons, they should mainly take place at the users (businesses or local authorities) and if possible in an international context.
3.4 Networking and Partnerships
The courses carrying the quality label constitute a network. This is a key element in the notion of the "label" and consequently the network must encourage an exchange of experiences, promote the definition of common standards and, insofar as is possible, the consolidation of resources (candidate selection process, exchange of teaching courses and teachers, student exchanges, complementary specialisations, and so on). The members of the network will regularly circulate information to each other concerning what they are doing, in order to make this networking a reality.
The courses carrying the label are heavily service-oriented and can develop institutional partnerships aimed at related training programmes (architecture, art, management, environment, health, etc.).
They must find economic partners (national and international) to assist with operations. They must obtain assistance from these parties, who contribute to defining the teaching and research programmes, are involved in teaching and participate in financing. Representatives from the downstream sector have a seat on steering and decision-making bodies.
The geographical location of the courses carrying the label must encourage exchanges with the local economic fabric which uses ICST. To ensure a balanced picture, the network will be integrated into a coherent regional arrangement, which will be set up as the network deploys. The label award committee (see chapter 4) may on this occasion recommend grouping of candidate courses if regional problems were to arise.
3.5 Research and Development
Research, run by permanent teaching staff, is an important aspect of the courses carrying the label. There are two types of research work: either in collaboration with research laboratories, or research work done within the context of the teaching course itself.
As these are quality label courses, the pride of place given to innovation in a highly competitive context makes it essential to focus on applied research. Networking offers the ability to develop this work in partnership, mainly with the downstream economic sector, but also with other research establishments and centres.
Research is primarily oriented towards the application sector, which is covered by the teaching subjects specifically developed in the courses. It provides extensive coverage of the emerging applications. Exploratory research must maintain the high level of competence of the teaching staff and create a methodological foundation for more applied research. Owing to their vocation, the teaching courses have appropriate resources enabling them to design innovative services making use of the Information and Communication Technologies. This is in particular the case with experimentation platforms, which are innovative networked communication and broadcasting systems for experimenting with new services and estimating the capacity for transition to a larger scale for a large number of users.
3.6 Entrepreneurship
An entrepreneurial vocation is encouraged in the courses carrying the quality label, through teaching and research, with the Information and Communication Technologies sector remaining buoyant and favourable to local, national and international economic development.
The course programmes thus include an introduction to entrepreneurship. They also propose preparation for the start-up of activities and businesses through specific teaching programmes (e.g. creativity, project management, ICT services and applications, intellectual property, technology transfer, aspects of company and labour law, etc.) along with support and operational assistance with start-up (e.g.: incubator, specific training, advice from scientific and legal experts and company managers, etc), particularly focused on the international markets. For this, the courses with the quality label will rely on the network and on local economic partners, jointly with the regional incubators.
As a natural extension of research, entrepreneurship must also be seen as a means of valorising the innovative service concepts produced by it.
3.7 In-service training
In-service training must be among the candidate programmes for the quality label, as the identified ICT needs cannot be met by initial training and education alone. In-service training will be an essential complementary branch.
In accordance with point 2 therefore, the label concerns "vocational" initial education and in-service training courses leading to a qualification. This latter aspect enables personnel with ICT experience and who have shown their potential (vocational training with qualification) to advance professionally. In this case, it should allow access to training for those with atypical profiles, through the Validation of Acquired Professional and Personal Knowledge programme, possibly in a specific curriculum.
Quite apart from its qualifications aspect, in-service training provides companies with courses which are made particularly necessary by the constant changes in the information and communication technologies field, particularly with respect to the Internet.
It concerns currently active personnel, in particular for updating the knowledge and skills acquired by those personnel who have already taken quality label courses. It anticipates the professional transition to the ICT by personnel active in other sectors (career shift) and assists with the professional changes made necessary by changes in economic activity (new career).
The supply must be tailored to the demands of the downstream economic sector. Quality label courses use pedagogical methods making extensive use of ICTT resources to propose distance learning courses combining on-line teaching with high-quality tutorials, specific to the customer's particular context.
The label awards procedure described below is different from the qualification process, which normally takes place beforehand.
4.1 Label award process
The courses must emphasise their ICST specialisations and the relevance of what they propose to the Internet-related professions.
They must demonstrate their ability and their commitment to an active and constructive participation in the network created by the Internet schools as a whole.
The candidates submit a dossier describing the main characteristics of the teaching process, providing clear answers to the label award criteria set in these specifications.
4.2 Awarding the label
The "Internet school" label is granted by a label award committee,
made up of representatives from the administrations in charge of national education,
research, regional planning, culture and communication, defence, government reform and industry
and the information technologies respectively, a representative of the Secrétaire Général de la Défense Nationale,
representatives from local government, representatives from the Group of telecom schools (GET)
and the "Internet schools" network, as well as representatives from the professional world.
As and when necessary, a specified number of ad hoc experts can be brought on board.
The dossiers examined by the label award committee are investigated, proposed and reported :
The label is granted for a period of four years, and can be renewed in particular on the basis of the professional development of its graduates.
