Universidade Aberta

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

Universidade Aberta (the Open University of Portugal, UAb) is a public distance-teaching university in Portugal.

It embraces as its basic mission to train students whom, for whatever reasons, were not able at the appropriate time, to enter or complete higher education studies. At the same time, Universidade Aberta tries to meet the expectations of all those who, having obtained a university qualification, wish to convert or update it.

UAb has around 9,000 students (in Portugal, in Portuguese speaking African countries and in several other parts of the world), around 200 teachers (more than half with a PhD), around 300 employees, headquarters and other service in Lisboa, delegations in Coimbra and in Porto as well as centres in all district capital cities of Portugal.

Its web site is at http://www.univ-ab.pt/english/

Universidade Aberta has recently undertaken a large-scale modernisation exercise to integrate e-learning into all its operations.

Founded in 1988, Universidade Aberta was born out of the reflexive labour and technical training conducted during a few years by the Instituto Português de Ensino a Distância. Since then, UAb has developed this work, training teachers and experts, designing, producing and teaching courses according to a philosophy of public service.

UAb is a member of EADTU.

Reports

This institution/programme was discussed as a case study in the Megatrends project in its second report, Megaproviders of e-learning in Europe (PDF - 212 pages - EN), 2007 (ISBN 978 82 562 88184).