Review of the book "Historia de un triunfo. The best online master in the world" by Manuel Fernández de Villalta

Abstract

This text may be of interest to those who are seriously concerned with education, especially with the problems of distance education, and particularly with postgraduate education, and is a synthesis I have developed from the book "Historia de un triunfo. The best online master in the world" by Manuel Fernández de Villalta. It tells the story of the development of an Online Master at the Instituto de Empresa, University of Madrid. For several years it has been ranked first in two rankings of distance learning masters, carried out by The Economist and the Financial Times. I met Manuel Fernández in February 1998 when the first multipoint videoconference agreement was signed at the Telefónica building in Puerto Madero, between the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Later on, I stayed at GATE (Gabinete para la Aplicación de Tecnologías de la Educación) of the UPM in Madrid. Then Manuel moved to Instituto de Empresa where he developed the Master-MBAonline project. Recently, Manuel authorized me to make a synthesis of the different paragraphs of the original text and to disseminate it among people and institutions that might be interested in the subject. The attached text has a first part (Chapters I to IV) with background and description of many projects in the world, as background. Chapters V to VII describe in detail the inception, design, launching and results of the Master.