CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Over 60 invited participants from sixteen countries
and the United States will convene in Cambridge, Mass., February 6-7 to
look at higher education in developing countries by leveraging the
Internet, television and radio technologies. The two-day workshop plans
to establish LINC, the Learning International Networks Consortium, an
MIT-managed project that will bring together academics and
practitioners whose primary concern is quality higher education through
e-learning in developing countries.

In addition to senior MIT faculty and policy makers from USAID, the
World Bank, corporations and foundations, the following countries will
be represented: Armenia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, India,
Ireland, Iran, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Niger, Pakistan, Russia, Syria
and United Arab Emirates.

Richard Larson, professor of electrical engineering at MIT and
co-editor of Internet Forum 2001, created the concept of LINC to
address the needs of the growing youth-oriented population demographic
in developing countries and the fact that developing countries will be
left further behind unless their youth receive quality higher-level
education.

Speakers, who will address distance learning initiatives in their
respective countries, include Dr. Milad Fares Sebaaly, Provost, Syrian
Virtual University; Dr. Naveed Malik, Rector, Virtual University of
Pakistan and Dr. S. Sohail Naqvi, Ministry of Science and Technology
(Pakistan); Dr. Judy Dori, Technion University (Israel); Dr. El-hadi
Khaldi, Rector, Universite de la Formation Continue (Algeria); Dr.
Magdallen Juma, African Virtual University; Ali Meghdari, senior
faculty, Sharif University (Iran); and Yolanda Martinez de Hernandez,
Virtual University (Mexico). Participants will also hear the latest
developments on OpenCourseWare, MIT's large-scale, web-based electronic
publishing initiative to make MIT course materials freely available for
educators, students, and individual learners around the world. A full
agenda, list of thirty speakers and their topics and bios are
available at http://ken.mit.edu/linc (login email: lincpress@dev.null,
password: 48linc).

Membership in LINC is open to individuals and institutions and will be
supported financially by membership dues, foundation support, corporate
funding and governmental institutions. Some of its early activities
will include the creation of collaborative educational web sites;
starter R&D projects in developing countries aimed at new initiatives
such as alternative pedagogical models in e-learning; and the provision
of technical assistance in training the trainers who will serve as
initial key e-learning project managers.

The workshop is made possible by a generous grant from the Lounsbery
Foundation.