The rapid evolution of the field of education and training in Portugal has created the need for new and different education and training modalities that are alternative to traditional systems. The present educational and training system in Portugal relies more and more on distance teaching which has affirmed itself as a privileged means of satisfying educational and training needs.
The impact that new information and communication technologies have on the economic and social development, initial and continuing education and training, is now widely recognised. Professional education and training supported by strategies that use distance teaching methodologies is not only gaining political visibility in Portugal but also getting a more visible support by distance training organisations.
In a private conversation with, Armando Rocha Trindade, President of the International Council for Distance Education - ICDE and Rector of the Universidade Aberta, distance teaching in Portugal includes open and distance learning and both formal education and training will evolve in same way as is expected to evolve world-wide. Considering that Portugal has a strong structure of distance education, both in the public and the private sector, it is believed that in higher education the trend is that conventional universities will adopt distance modes of operation to cope with extra-mural students, working students, and populations that are outside their direct sphere of influence. According to the ICDE President, these programmes are developed not only for these extra-mural students, but in the hope of reducing the cost per student compared to conventional, face to face teaching.
With regards to training, the situation is somewhat different. The duration of the training initiative, or action, for continuing training and re-conversion training have a short duration, and so, it is acceptable that costs are rather high, because the short duration makes for a bulk sum to be paid by the user almost acceptable, and they will be totally acceptable if the user is an institution who wants to train large number of its work force. So, institutional training is acceptable in terms of costs even if it is expensive. Individual training, is still, perhaps outside the economic power of most citizens. It is believed that more and more operators, both organised as large training institutions or as smaller specialised ones, will proliferate in Portugal as they do in almost all developed countries. Trindade believes this is the current trend and in a nutshell there will be a convergence between education and training, and between initial and the continuing counterparts. Finally conventional classrooms face to face teaching will merge with distance education and in, perhaps a decade, both ways of teaching will be interwoven and mixed altogether.