The first letter
After sixteen years of its establishment by Decree No. 25 of 2002, the Syrian Virtual University proved that it was not a traditional university neither in its ideology, its educational system, its working mechanisms, nor in the thought that was behind its establishing, support and development.
SVU is the Syrian Governmental University, that since its beginning has kept up with the spirit of the age in the concept of education in its modern model that is based on learning, academic flexibility, mixed multiple courses, and the merging of specializations, the upgrade of the certificates, the diversity of the inputs, and the integration of knowledge with skill.
SVU is the governmental university that sought to promote dissemination of knowledge on a wider scale by actual application of its logo (beyond the boundaries of time and place) and through collecting reasonable tuition fees that allowed a large segment of the Syrians to ensure their scientific achievement and guaranteed the financial independence of the university which helped to finance its work and activity without being a burden on the treasury of the Syrian state.
SVU is the governmental university that has embraced since its establishing the concept of lifelong learning. It enabled many Syrians to pursue their studies after intermission or layover, allowed others to pursue their studies in SVU alongside their studies in other universities and specialties in order to acquire multiple knowledge and skills and opened the door to a third segment of Syrians to pursue their study and work at the same time. In addition to launching the Lifelong Learning Center which over time has become one of the foremost virtual qualifying centers on the regional level.
Therefore, the Syrian Virtual University today has become the closest Syrian university to the modern model of universities known as the fourth generation universities; universities of the era of knowledge and information and universities of Google, Facebook and YouTube world where the education is no longer brain filled and its assessment is no longer based on input measurement (i.e. the student’s potential, the professor’s certificate, the buildings and the halls), but rather on the measurement of (outputs). Thus the education became independent in its economic model from the traditional form of government or private funding for the university institution, independent in its academic model of time and place, relying on the electronic book, globalized and open to the world in terms of knowledge and based on the free information that is provided by the university according to the principle of creative commons.
Because SVU has been, since its establishing, a modern, developed, different and unconventional, it has faced many difficulties and challenges and it was faced with a rejection and conservatism by every traditional conservative thought that does not have the insightful vision that was behind its establishing and emergence. But the days and developments which have taken place in our world over the past two decades have convinced many that the vision behind establishing this academic structure was a vision that has foreseen the future; thus it introduced to Syria a modern university that is the most harmonious with the spirit of the times which we live in and with the spirit of modern university education.
The key to our success today is to trust in our abilities and the capabilities of the Syrian Virtual University students, their potentials, achievements and skills within this distinctive and different academic system. These students are the human resource of knowledge that will allow the new Syria to return to its glory after the lean years of war. They are our hope and future. Despite the difficulties that still hinder the university’s management and students; however we are confident that the future will be to the Syrian Virtual University and its students and this will be proven in the coming days.
Dr. Eng. Khalil Ajami
President of the Syrian Virtual University
Nov. 2018
The second letter
In an environment that is not accustomed to accepting even the minimum standards of reliability and quality, even though it lives in an era where quality standards have become the foundation and guarantee of proper continuity, there can be no acceptance of any continuous digital documentation that might affect your work, whether this work is lectures, exams, calculations, discussions, or others. That is because such documentation becomes a revelation of all the flaws, loopholes, and faults!
In an environment that is not accustomed to using digital technologies except for entertainment and leisure, even though it lives in a time when the "genes" of business, economy, science, and education are "digital genes," there can be no serious acceptance or recognition of professional or academic work mechanisms that rely on digital technologies!
In an environment where thinking still revolves around "information" only, even though it lives in an open digital age in which information (free by nature) is no longer important except in the context of the knowledge it generates through its integration with other information, there can be no acceptance or recognition of the logic of open science, open content, and creative commons among those who believe that by possessing "a certain piece of information" they have "struck gold," even though they themselves had copied it from somewhere else!
In such an environment, a different culture that strives to integrate digital logic into the genes of its work, operates according to the concepts of open science and creative commons, and aspires to adopt the logic of learning for building knowledge. This culture must inevitably suffer from deliberate marginalization, repeated rejection, and relentless prevention!
For all the above-mentioned reasons, it is impossible to look at the Syrian Virtual University as just a public university, otherwise its struggles would have ended a long time ago, and it would have been integrated into the context of the Syrian educational environment, university and pre-university, smoothly and easily, and without any controversy!
However, this university, through its structure, working mechanisms, and way of approaching the learning process, constitutes a complete and new culture that many are not used to, even though it has not yet reached the desired level and it still needs a lot of work and effort.
It is a culture based on: firstly, complete digital documentation of all aspects of work to allow anyone who wishes to review it and verify its effectiveness, or address its loopholes and expose its flaws; secondly, on adopting the logic of learning and acquiring knowledge and trying to avoid indoctrination in a time when information is at our fingertips; and thirdly, on adopting a relatively independent economic approach that relies on self-resources as the sole means of financing and is based on an acceptable financial return (this is important because it causes many wars to be waged against this type of education inside and outside Syria by those who have turned education into a trade), and in a way that allows the learning system to continue its work without being a burden on the state that launched it, and without being a burden on the student who wishes to pursue it.
The path is still long, but the Syrian Virtual University has, in Syria and for about two decades, formed a new culture that is beginning to take root over time despite all the difficulties it has faced in its narrow or wider environment. However, this long path is an upward path that is working to consolidate this culture as a dominant culture that will reshape education in Syria with its new form and renewed capabilities. We are confident that some people are capable of resisting development, exclusion, marginalization, and prevention for some time, but it is impossible for them to resist this development and progress and continue with exclusion, marginalization, and prevention all the time!
Syrian Virtual University
September 2019
