PROYECTOS EUROPEOS   MENON Network EEIG

HELIOS YEARLY REPORT 2007

European e-Learning Observation System: Observing, Foresighting & Reporting

 

1. INTRODUCTION

The Executive Summary of the HELIOS YEARLY REPORT 2007 ‘e-Learning for Innovation' presents the results of the HELIOS project, run by the MENON Network and its partners with the support of the European Commission and the contribution of European Education and Training and e-Learning experts/institutions in the period 2005-2007.

The title ‘e-Learning and Innovation' exemplifies the main concept around which this report has been developed and the position of the HELIOS consortium towards the understanding and analysis of e-Learning, to be understood as a means to

support innovation - in a Lifelong Learning perspective - at political, organisational, economic, social and institutional level in the Knowledge Society.

Originally conceived as an action aimed at the building of a systematic observation and forecasting exercise on e-Learning at EU and national level, HELIOS has evolved (without giving up the original aim, but getting deeper understanding in the process) into a broader action promoting societal innovation by stimulating and coordinating a collective reflection (still going on at European level) on how the evolution of learning can actually contribute to transforming and improving our society.

The two main original components of the HELIOS action, i.e.:

• Research aimed at investigating on the current state of development and future perspectives of e-Learning in Europe and on e-Learning contribution to the achievement of EU policy objectives for growth and innovation.
• Networking and observatory building aimed at actively involving European experts in the field of e-Learning in the HELIOS action and at fostering – in the medium/long term – the federation of national and sectoral ‘observatories' under the common.

HELIOS framework has therefore been enriched with a third component:

• Promotion of innovation aimed at acting transversally on the policy/decision making and on the practitioners' level so to sensitise these stakeholders on the need to open up the e-Learning theme in the direction of ‘innovation in lifelong learning processes and systems' within and outside the classic borders of education and training systems.

What HELIOS has learnt from its activity of observatory building is that the eLearning observatory shall adopt a new vision of ICT for learning: that eLearning, although remaining a main instrument to support innovation, has not to be understood as an aim or a 'subject of study' itself, but rather a field of dialogue and articulation among the many communities that use ICT for learning purposes and follow different – but related- innovation paths.

The concepts and ideas above are outlined are expanded in the HELIOS Yearly report 2007, which is articulated as follows:

• Chapter 2 – e-Learning Ontribution to EU Policy Objectives presents the main outcomes of the HELIOS thematic analysis on the extent to which e-Learning contributes to: increasing access to learning, improving employability, fostering personal development and citizenship, supporting Internationalisation and Innovation of Education and Training systems, fostering organisational change.
• Chapter 3 – e-Learning for Innovation presents the state of development of e-Learning in Europe through the analysis of the evolving ‘e-Learning territories', the concept introduced in the HELIOS yearly report 2006 to define the combinations of different aims, methods, learning patrimonies and value orientation that - better than traditional education and training sectors - may help to understand the different speed and different evolution paths of ICT for learning.
• Chapter 4 – e-Learning Developments - In and around the 2.0 (R-) Evolution provides an insight on the most significant expected trends in e-Learning developments for the years to come.
• Chapter 5 – In the Agenda presents the concluding remarks resulting from the HELIOS study on e-Learning developments in Europe in 2006/2007.
• Chapter 6 – Building the EU Observatory presents the main conclusions and recommendations for the building of a European Observatory on e-Learning for innovation.

 

2. E-LEARNING CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICY. OBJECTIVES: THE HELIOS THEMATIC ANALYSIS

The aim of the HELIOS thematic analysis is to investigate on the extent to which e-Learning is contributing to achieve the following set of policy priorities:

1. Access to learning;
2. Employability;
3. Personal development and citizenship;
4. Internationalisation of Education and Training;
5. Organisational change;
6. Innovation of Education and Training systems.

The analysis on e-Learning contribution to enhance Access to Learning led to the following conclusions:

• There is a widespread belief that technology has resulted in greater opportunities for accessing learning in general. But to date the beneficial effects on excluded groups have yet to be fully achieved, although there is optimism that in time this will improve.
• Increased access to learning is founded mainly on aspects such as quality of course content and delivery (via better trained teachers). Interestingly the role of ICT - either in terms of better software packages or ICT equipment - was judged to be less important.
• Group learning (including when using ICT as a communication device) is still considered to be more effective than individual e-Learning in improving learning opportunities.
• e-Learning still has some way to go to overcome personal support barriers and improve the quality of both course content and evaluation.
• e-Learning per se cannot be the ‘one size fits all solution', and is definitively not enough in promoting access to learning if not associated to a clear vision, strategy and an inclusive policy.
• It is fundamental to be realistic about sustainability of projects: short term summative evaluation driven by economic sustainability arguments has killed and may continue to kill innovative initiatives aimed at increasing learning access by those who learn the least and need the time and attention to become lifelong learners: many more e-Learning activities should be oriented at ‘making learning attractive', particularly towards those who are not used to learn.
• Relevant stakeholders and end users should be consulted not only in the piloting phase but also in the design of e-Learning experiences in order to understand expectations and concerns before it is too late to change the systems.

The main outcomes of the analysis on e-Learning contribution to enhance Employability can be summarised as follows:

• e-Learning is considered very effective in itself for providing skills especially for those already in work, but less so for those entering the labour market and those at risk of social exclusion. However, ROI in e-Learning with regards to employability outcomes should be further investigated.
• e-Learning is currently thought to be most suitable for training people in basic and technical skills and less suitable for soft/ transversal skills.
• Significant potential is foreseen for e-Learning to help in the presentation of learning achievements (e-portfolio).
• Concentrating research and practice efforts on ‘quality e-Learning' is likely to improve e-Learning solutions and, ultimately, enhance the employability of e-Learners.
• The effects of e-Learning on employability can be multiplied if e-Learning is strategically integrated in the HR policy of a company, or in a strategic approach of a training body dealing with the unemployed.
• Valuing successful informal and non-formal learning experiences which took place through e-Learning, especially those who have managed to reach groups at risk of social exclusion, could enable those who took part in them in finding a better job.

The main messages arising from the analysis of the relationship between e-Learning, Citizenship and Personal Development are presented below:

• There is a strong belief that e-Learning - if associated to the broadening of learning context and learners' communities – has a positive impact in increasing tolerance and acceptance for groups at risk of social exclusion.
• Individual autonomy and freedom in learning is viewed as the main advantage of e-Learning in terms of enhancing personal development.
• The majority view is that e-Learning can contribute to a more active form of citizenship and lifelong learning i.e. by reconciling work and family life.
• An overarching recommendation for policy and practice is ‘never neglect the human factor within e-Learning'. This means concentrating investment, research and practices on two priority areas: the personalisation of e-Learning solutions, and the ‘humanisation' of e-Learning, embodied by such developments as the diffusion of game-based elements, new possibilities for learners' interaction and empowerment, the community building aspect of e-Learning.

The main outcomes of the analysis on e-Learning contribution to enhance. Internationalisation of Education and Training can be summarised as follows:

• If lifelong learning for all is to become a reality, it is fundamental to widen the availability of courses or programmes at affordable costs. The local provision of learning experiences having an international profile should be widened. There is also a need to support and enhance virtual mobility in order to increase even more the number of European students who have access to international study experience.
• The international e-Learning market has developed -and still develops- at a much lower rate than foreseen some years ago, with significant differences per country and per sector. Nevertheless, one could see a process of consolidation around multinational providers and the somehow parallel process of convergence of different learning devices, as well as content and value added services.
• There are two extreme positions in relation to the above mentioned consolidation of global players: one that suggests that globalisation will ‘homogenise' and ‘westernise' education, and the other that affirm that the reduction of space and time barriers created by globalisation will allow more dialogue among existing models without reducing the world to a single educational model. The role of ICT in learning is to further strengthen these positions.
• Virtual mobility can be regarded as mobility of identities in the cyberspace, mobility of learning devices, virtual cooperation of learning providers, mobility of learners or learning facilitators. Virtual mobility is at the edge of the debate but often underestimated in its potential. According to the results of the HELIOS survey, the informal exchanges among learners like online transnational communities, blogs, forums are the most promising developments in this area.
• According to the HELIOS desk and field research, international e-Learning is mostly exercised/developed in the following subjects/disciplines: business studies, languages, science and engineering and ICT.
• The contribution of e-Learning in promoting a positive climate for transnational collaboration and ultimately improve the learning experience can be assessed with regards to virtual or online learning communities. However, a clear cut judgement is not easy.
• According to the majority view of the respondents to the HELIOS survey, e-Learning is expected to contribute significantly to the development of the European Education and Training area.

With regards to the contribution of e-Learning to Organisational Change of European companies, the following conclusions have been drawn:

• Whereas the technological and pedagogical dimension of e-Learning have already been studied to a relevant extent, there is a need of filling in the research gaps on the impact of e-Learning in organisational change terms.

• “The status of training has always been problematic. It is perceived as a separate activity from the core business, immeasurable and unquantifiable: in other words, it's not perceived to be a core business process, but rather a ‘cost' or ‘overhead', which is frequently the first in the firing line when budgets need to be cut”¹. e-Learning should contribute to raise the status of enterprise training not only in terms of ROI (Return of Investment) but also in terms of enhancing the relevance, the quality and the flexibility of learning opportunities within companies.
• Although there is an enthusiasm to adopt new technologies for knowledge acquisition some institutional opposition to change exists. New technology often comes with a requirement to change old ways of thinking and working. Building

new motivation systems and incentives to competences development should be considered as necessary requirement for successful implementation. Rewards to proactivity and change need to be delivered early on in the implementation process; and investment should be made on support mechanisms.

• Devices and platforms available for the areas are diverse, so are the knowledge acquisition scenarios for each type of situation. It is resource- and time-consuming to create individualised learning paths. And yet this is the only way to multiply the impact of e-Learning.
• Cost of introduction is still high especially for SMEs and for countries where the take up of Information Society is not at an advanced stage. There is an urgent need to solve infrastructural problems.

The last thematic study has dealt with e-Learning and Innovation of Education and Training Systems in Europe . The main conclusions are presented below:

• According to the majority of participants to the Helios survey, e-Learning is contributing to integrating formal, non formal and informal learning. The emergence of bottom-up on-line informal and non formal learning is taking place at a faster pace than the evolution of learning systems, suggesting the need to increase institutional commitment in fostering innovation in learning systems.
• Learning spaces are now virtual and real, self-managed and/or collaborative, public/private, and not necessarily supported and mediated very substantially by the conventional education and training organizations. New actors are gaining ground as learning providers. Will Education and Training providers be increasingly marginalized or rooted in this new scenario? This depends to a certain extent on their capability to avoid self-referentiality and establish a common ground with new actors and learning spaces.
• One of the key problems of the fi rst generation e-Learning was the lack of sense of ownership of the learning experiences, due to lack of personalisation and interaction, bad design and also technical faults. e-Learning has considerably evolved over recent years and at least tried to solve some of these problems, by providing for instance e-portfolios, multisensorial learning experience, possibilities of bottom up interaction and creation of contents.
• There is an increasing need to support the transformation process and management of change, of which ICT is an enablerand amplifier, into formal education.
• Finally, for the majority of respondents to the HELIOS survey, e-Learning is ‘motivating although raising some concerns' for the community of teachers and trainers. And this can be explained following the ‘diffusion of innovation' theory: according to this approach e-Learning tends to create divides between 'early adopters' and ‘laggards', with several nuances in between.

An overall conclusion is that e-Learning is indeed contributing to the achievement of the above mentioned policy aims, but it might do better if certain conditions were fulfilled. And these conditions embrace a wide range of issues, i.e. overcoming barriers of access to new technologies, spurring motivation to learn, acting on e-Learning supply so as to achieve a context and learner' sensitive design and delivery of e-Learning, activating a multi-stakeholder process perspective aimed at building consensus on a negotiated and shared quality strategy.

 

3. E-LEARNING FOR INNOVATION 

There are some positive signs that e-Learning in 2007 is going up again in the priorities' list of the European policy agenda. In the last few years the term was seldom used in policy making and the feeling that something went wrong with eLearning was

(and to a certain extent is still) widely spread - not only among policy makers - but paradoxically the practice of using ICT to support learning processes is more diffused and better articulated than ever before.

Differentiation is the key word to understand how this is possible: while in the year 2000 eLearning was perceived as a single mega-trend for education systems and the corporate world, experience has shown that the purpose, the pedagogical models

- or better the learning patrimony -, the organisation and the economic assumption of eLearning were very differentiated not only according to the learning sub-system (school, higher education, vocational training, corporate professional development, adult learning) but also according to the visions of the world that those in charge of promoting and designing eLearning systems had in mind. Such differentiation in what HELIOS calls ‘e-Learning Territories'² has provoked a perceived loss of meaning of the term, too broad to represent realities which have very little in common, except the use of technology (see Figure 1).

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Figura 1: The HELIOS e-Learning Territories

 

If we look carefully, e-Learning territories are the meta-contexts in which different innovation aims and paradigms are associated to the use of ICT, for learning but - more and more frequently - not only for learning. New learning practices are taking place without a clear separation from working processes, social aggregation and leisure activities. To a certain extent this is also happening within formal learning environments, such as schools and universities, but is normally ignored or not given much importance, when it is not treated as ‘intrusion' of improper activities into a serious educational environment.

From the HELIOS analysis it appears more and more evident that, while there is a huge potential of ICT to unbound and multiply the opportunities of learning informally, most of the technology enhanced learning research and policy has concentrated on reproducing formal teaching environments in a technology supported way.

 

Figure 2: The Ideal Place of e-Learning

 

The ‘ideal place' for new e-Learning is not where consolidated knowledge has to be spread - this was the vision of first generation eLearning that is still explaining much of both the superficial enthusiasm and the rejection we observed -, rather where new knowledge is developed, where innovation objectives are to be shared and achieved in a participative way. The huge social aggregation potential of ICT is becoming clearer and clearer, but learning specific applications are rare to found.

Technology designed specifically for learning and teaching has produced some impact in formal or corporate learning environments, but ‘generic' technology (for example television, the web, Google, mobile learning devices, portable PC) has certainly produced a much bigger impact on how people learn throughout their lives.

Learning takes place with full motivation when a change is perceived as necessary/desired by individuals, teams, organisations or communities: the immediate access to unlimited sources of information and learning opportunities puts the education system and even the training departments of companies and the Public Administration in a totally new situation.

Whilst it is clearer and clearer that much of what we learn is not taught by anyone, but just identified, organised and retained by each of us as a result of informal processes not led by any teacher, it would be catastrophic to underestimate the role of ‘learning process specialists' - the teachers, the trainers, the tutors, any name to define someone who deliberately and professionally supports the learning of other people- in the revolutionary process of appropriation of one's own learning that our society is experiencing also thanks to ICT.

“Much of learning quality depends on the relevance of embedded teaching”4 . In fact many teachers and trainers, many more than five years ago, can be observed embracing -at least to a certain extent – the renewal potential of ICT to embed learning in everyday's life and shifting their role from content provider towards learning process facilitators.

Some ‘e-Learning Territories' are already experiencing major shifts in the use of technology towards and innovation-centred paradigm, whilst others are still dominated by ‘first generation' e-Learning, purely reproductive of consolidated teaching practices. What should determine the ‘right' speed of change is the learning context, the ‘e-Learning Territory' and the scope of the overarching process of change.

So the focus shall be placed on the learning context, or territory rather than on the speed of evolution, as each territory presents different needs and demands for change.

What was not understood by early e-Learning marketers was the weight of services, context and learning community to determine the satisfaction of learners, whatever learning approach is used. By making efficient e-Learning almost a synonym of ‘lonely‘

learning, they contributed dramatically to the doubts on the possible quality of such a learning experience.

Recent trends observed are all in the direction of enhancing and refining the human component of eLearning approaches, practically in all e-Learning territories - “The chance of joy through emancipation and control”5 of the learning process has to be shared with others.

Simply said, the new place for e-Learning as a catalyst of innovation and as an enhancer of informal learning processes requires a completely new policy approach, in which education policy makers are not the only, and maybe not even the main actors.

Learning has to be encouraged and rewarded when and where it occurs, at the workplace or in civic behaviours: local and regional development policy makers are very well placed to implement meaningful policies in this respect.

 

4. E-LEARNING DEVELOPMENTS – IN AND AROUND THE 2.0 (R-) EVOLUTION

It might indeed be true that the landscape of e-Learning territories is rather differentiated. And yet it has been turned upside down, over the last two or three years, by the so- called ‘2.0 revolution'. It can be argued that e-Learning cannot be observed

anymore only from above, i.e. from the perspective of the designer and developer of e-Learning course or the e-Learning industry. This observation needs to be complemented by looking at e-Learning ‘from below' i.e. by analysing informal and bottom e-Learning practices emerging from users.

Many emergent and intertwining shifts in practice and change processes have been considered as an integral part of a new evolutionary stage of World Wide Web that has been labelled as Web 2.0.

The main principles of Web 2.0 applications can be summarised as follows:

• The web becomes a platform delivering (and allowing users to use) applications and services entirely through a browser.
• These services were not web-based before, or in the Web 1.0 stage.
• Users own the data on the web and exercise control over them. They can manipulate, share and modify them easily and freely.
• Network effects are created by an architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in sharp contrast to hierarchical access-control in applications, in which systems categorize users into roles with varying levels of functionality.
• Innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of ‘open source' development).
• Appearance of lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication.
• Different patterns of on-line participation, based on the ‘Long Tail Paradigm' i.e. many low-popularity articles, posts in blogs or other data, collectively, create a higher quantity of demand than a limited number of mainstream websites.
• Rich, interactive, and user-friendly interfaces.
• Some social-networking aspects (see below).

There are several examples of new online services and activities that embody these principles:

• Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia based on the unlikely notion that an entry can be added by any web user, and edited by any other, is a radical experiment in trust, applying Eric Raymond‘s dictum (originally coined in the context of open source software) that „with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” to content creation. Wikipedia is already in the top 100 websites, and many think it will be in the top ten before long. This is a profound change in the dynamics of content creation!
• Sites like del.icio.us ³, myspace ⁴, Flickr ⁵, iTunes ⁶, and YouTube ⁷ have pioneered a concept that some people call ‘folksonomy' (in contrast to taxonomy), a style of collaborative categorization of sites, photos, music and videos using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags. Tagging allows for the kind of multiple, overlapping associations that the brain itself uses, rather than rigid categories. In the canonical example, a Flickr photo of a puppy might be tagged both ‘puppy' and ‘cute' - allowing for retrieval along natural axes generated user activity.
• Other services are going beyond traditional Internet usage patterns to encompass activities formerly done in presence (e.g. an auction), through PCs (e.g. work on a spreadsheet, scheduling meetings), through a music player or the telephone. Examples are eBay ⁸, Doodle ⁹, Craiglist ¹⁰, Skype ¹¹, Dodgeball ¹², WorkACE ¹³.
• Even much of the infrastructure of the web-including the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, PHP, or Python code involved in most web servers-relies on the peer-production methods of open source, in themselves an instance of collective, netenabled intelligence. There are more than 100,000 open source software projects listed on SourceForge.net. Anyone can add a project, anyone can download and use the code, and new projects migrate from the edges to the center as a result of users putting them to work, an organic software adoption process relying almost entirely on viral marketing.

Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn‘t have a hard boundary. There is still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means ¹⁴. And yet a main common denominator can be identified, i.e.: the socialization of the Web. In a wide sense, all the above mentioned technologies can be classified as Social Software (Boyd, 2003). They can be considered as a supporting layer for the growing amount of services that are emerging just right now in the Web, paving the Web 2.0 way.

But it is not just about technologies. We are certainly talking about a certain kind of user, the digital native - capable of leading the way in the prosecution of a new technological frontier. Users can create, edit, publish, share... content (every kind of content) by collaborating through the Internet in a social manner i.e. giving their actions a social significance.

Just to mention the most well-known services (whose adoption is increasing at a double digit rate), there are different blogging services like Blogger, TypePad or WordPress; users can share our photos in Flickr, defining our different social circles (friends, family, colleagues); they can defi ne, manage and extend their social (personal or even professional) networking (contact networks) with Linked-in, eConozco or Orkut services; they may also collaborate on line with project management tools like BaseCamp or wiki services like SocialText or eApuntes; they can publish their videos or audio clips in OurMedia, or broadcast their podcasts through Odeo; they can access to encyclopedia-like articles with an outstanding update frequency in Wikipedia...

Moving to e-Learning 2.0, this refers to a second phase of e-Learning based on Web 2.0 and emerging trends in e-Learning.

The term itself is meant to imply that the traditional model of e-Learning as a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read - and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual. The e-Learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students.

The connection between these two facets of the same emergence process is the e-Learning 2.0 metaphor described by Stephen Downes in an online article.

Partially relying on Stephen Downes' approach, the HELIOS consortium has summarised the paradigm shift towards e-Learning 2.0 as such:

• Learners create content, collaborate with peers through mechanisms such as blogs, wikis, threaded discussions, RSS and others means to form learning.
• The learning experiences are learner-centered, taking advantage of many sources of content aggregated together into learning experiences.
• Teachers (if any) and learners (students) are peers within social networking environment.
• Learning experiences are increasingly featured by knowledge management, collaboration and search.
• One could argue that we are moving “From Communities of Practice to Social-Networking” (Downes).
• Finally, there is shift from traditional learning applications and systems managing learning objects within a pre-defined learning architecture to an open learning environment composed of interoperable loosely coupled open-source platforms and tools aimed to support the social interactions of peers.

There is some criticism of eLearning 2.0 as a term, primarily citing the lack of clear definition. There is also widespread support for dropping the ‘e' and just calling it Learning 2.0.

HELIOS does not intend to enter in this semantic dispute, as it is certainly most important to focus on the possible implication for learning of the 2.0 revolution.

This topic is not yet dealt with extensively. However, according to Mark Prensky, thanks to the widespread adoption of 2.0 services by digital natives, “traditional training roles should be reversed. In the old days, new workers were considered people who didn‘t know anything and who had to be trained to do things the way the company did them. But young people expect from day one to be making contributions and they can write programs that change the way business is done.”

Further research is certainly needed in this respect. The main question for researchers and practitioners at the moment is ‘where does the e-Learning 2.0 paradigm apply right now?'

There are evidences of the fact that it is more widespread in the debate than in practice, although the following paragraph attempts to illustrate some emerging practices of e-Learning 2.0.

However, while some of the features described above are observable in on-line communities, the full implications are still rare to find in any given learning environment. ‘Structuring the new' according to traditional teaching models is practically impossible and would not anyhow make sense. One provisional conclusion is that new ‘structural philosophies' and pedagogic models are needed in relation to e-Learning 2.0.

The disruptive potential of e-Learning 2.0 and Web 2.0 has been underlined by many authors. In a nutshell, it can be summarized as follows:

• Endless possibilities of creating, editing, publishing, sharing, commenting content (every kind of content) by collaborating through the Internet in a social manner.
• Dramatically lower effort to compose e-Learning solutions based on Web 2.0 technologies and tools.
• The trend toward student centered design and the end of the ‘hierarchical way of learning'.
• The unfolding of the connectivism paradigm, in which learning become ‘network creation'.

However, the emergence of e-Learning 2.0 has also created some concerns in the educational community. These can also be regarded as challenges. Some of them are presented below:

• The boundaries are not clear , and not all the authors agree on the fact that we are witnessing a radical change. Moreover, according to some observers e-Learning 2.0 should not be perceived as a substitute of e-Learning 1.0 (whatever it is the difference) but rather as a complement.
• Despite the claims of a pedagogic revolution, there is still little research on the evaluation of e-Learning or learning 2.0 experiences . We see, on the contrary, a certain fear or inertia of formal education to incorporate in the curriculum e-Learning 2.0 experiences, also due to the fact that e-Learning 2.0 is the realm of digital natives, and it is not yet fully understood by teachers and trainers.
• As it is the case of any informal learning experience, the certifi cation and recognition of competences developed through e-Learning 2.0 is still an open issue.
• Motivational aspects and the learning styles of new learners identifi ed in the literature as ‘digital natives' (Prensky) or the ‘net generation' (Oblinger) are not yet adequately taken into consideration.
• Not all learners are digital natives and not all digital natives are autonomous learners: the fact that learners are ready to adopt or learn to adopt quickly e-Learning 2.0 cannot be given for granted, nor the need for critical and networking skills to master learning in the ‘2.0' era can be ignored.
• Key issues to be considered are the credibility of socially generated knowledge and the risk of manipulation and persuasion by digital native leaders: e-Learning 2.0 poses serious concerns in terms of scientifi c validity of self-created and managed learning. Furthermore, the risk is high that the ‘student-centred design' supported by e-Learning 2.0 leads to an alternative, but still ‘hierarchical way of learning', where a new minority of digital native leaders governs the online socialisation and learning processes.
• Last but not least, traditional learning cannot (and will not) disappear from the scene: if it is true that online social networking and social tools are very useful for the acquisition of critical and networking skills, and if it is true that learning increasingly happens by networking, we cannot deny the need for traditional learning models when we have to address specific targets or specific needs. As mentioned in Chapter 5, the future is not traditional learning nor e-Learning 2.0 rather a combination of the two adapting to the different needs, features and concerns of the learning context (territory) and of its learners.

 

5. IN THE AGENDA

This section presents the concluding remarks resulting from the HELIOS study on e-Learning developments in Europe in 2006/2007.

e-Learning is back - call it as you like!

There are some positive signs that e-Learning in 2007 is going up again in the priorities' list of the European policy agenda. In the Education Unites Conference of the European Education Ministers (Heidelberg, March 2007), for instance, Ministers stressed the need to consider the opportunities resulting from the use of e-Learning in promoting lifelong learning thereby witnessing the fact that e-Learning has regained the political attention. These positive signs are mirrored in practice by the fact that e-Learning keeps on growing steadily across the e-Learning territories, though at different speeds and with different challenges. Different speed, priorities and challenges feature also the national strategies addressing the issue of innovation in learning, witnessing the key role of geographical context (beside the learning one) in determining the effective state of development and potential for growth of e-Learning. Therefore, no ‘one-size-fits-all' conclusion can be drawn on e-Learning trends and speed in Europe : these differ according to the learning context (e-Learning territories) and according to the geographical, political and socio-cultural context. This confirms the need (anticipated in the L-CHANGE report 2003/2004) for “converging European aims accompanied by adapted policies/strategies to meet the different needs of quite differently matured national markets” ¹⁵.

The “Knowledge Sharing” Mantra vs. Digital Rights Management: Enemies or Allies?

Following the mantra based on the concept that knowledge is the only asset that multiplies by sharing, a set of movements upporting ‘free circulation and sharing' of content and software have emerged in the last years. Copyleft, copydown, creative commons, no-copyright movements are addressing in different ways the issue of digital rights of User Created Content (UCC).

In the software arena, Open Source, free software, FLOSSE movements are supporting the sharing of source codes and the possibility to personalise and adapt software according to one's needs and to share this with others as opposed to proprietary software whose profit is based on the unavailability of source codes.

Of course this phenomenon has strong implications on learning.

On the software side the move to Open Source is already a consolidated strategy in many e-Learning territories (ICT for learning in school and ICT for learning in Higher Education. Increasingly the same trend is recorded in the territories relevant to VET, teachers' training and more in general in e-Learning in public administration).

As for UCC and copyright, “the general question is what are the effects of copyright law on non-professional and new sources of creativity and whether copyright law may need to be examined or does not need to be re-examined in order to allow co-existence of market and non market creation and distribution of content, and spur further innovation. […] The idea that the IPR system may not have kept pace with progress in this sense and that content production based on the reuse of existing materials […] should not be penalised per se has been echoed at the policy level […] More fl exible and effi cient licensing processes for copyrights have been suggested in the digital context […] this could for example involve the creation of clearing houses to/centres for the attribution of rights to UCC and other creators” ¹⁶.

The e-Learning Winds of Change: Different Speed for Different Territories.

Some eLearning territories are already experiencing major shifts in the use of technology towards an innovation-centred paradigm, whilst others are still dominated by ‘first generation' e-Learning, purely reproductive of consolidated teaching practices.

This table characterises the expected evolution from ‘e-Learning 2000' towards ‘innovative e-Learning 2010' , but does not mean - not at all - that the HELIOS team expects to see only ‘i-e-Learning' in 2010.

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Table 1: From e-Learning 2000 to Innovative e-Learning 2010

 

What the table is useful for is to detect differences in the direction and particularly in the ‘speed' of change in different eLearning territories. Typically, the speed observed is higher in informal learning environments, still relatively high in corporate environment and rather low in institutional education and training. Provocatively, one could ask: ‘Are high speed territories those in which professional teachers and trainers are less involved? Or are they those in which education policy makers and formal curricula have little to say?'

More reflexively, we should ask ourselves whether ‘high speed' is a good in itself, or should we not rather aim at ‘the right speed'.

In spite of the recognised excessive resistance to change of institutional educational systems and - to a certain extent and sometimes for well justified reasons - of ‘professional' teachers and trainers, there is already some consolidated evidence that when ‘high speed' is required by policy makers - especially when accompanied by frequent variations in the direction of march - it may result counterproductive and frustrate authentic innovators, so loosing their constructive energy for ever. For example, one thing is to explore the potential of Second Life for learning purposes, another is to assume that learning practice will change at the speed of thought of visionary thinkers. What should determine the ‘right' speed of change is the learning context, the ‘e-Learning Territory' and the scope of the overarching process of change: if an individual feels an urgent need to re-shape her/his life, nothing -no learning supply - can appear fast enough with respect to this need; if the change affects a complex system like education institutions, the pressure to change is maybe partially balanced by the pressure to preserve stability and meet the expectations of a complex set of stakeholders. In such a context the strategy becomes then increasingly - as for instance in the case of higher education institutions - to create spin offs (such as online master degrees) to get a high velocity model where the demand for it is stronger.

‘e' for Experience?

In 2004 Marc Canter wrote ¹⁷: “The pursuit of digital convergence has been burning in the hearts and minds of both end-users and vendors for over 10 years now and mature, highly evolved products and services are starting to reach mainstream market.

[…] Digital Lifestyle Aggregation is the notion of a software layer that unites all of the aspects of digital convergence. Whether it be a media collection at home, a calendar of memories of road trips or to do lists for a picnic in the park - DLAs (Digital Lifestyle Aggregators) will become a major part of our lives in the future”. This is actually happening at the moment, with applications such as Claimid or Boxnet allowing multiformat, multidisciplinary, multilingual and multiidentity storage of information of individuals' digital identities. The potential implications for learning are manifold and range from the possibility to have easier and faster access to people and content to the possibility to present one's digital identity (including e-Portfolio) in a multi-level format.

The combination of digital convergence, social software and e-Learning leads therefore to a personalised learning agenda that is not only about software options and learning styles but the whole experience of learning.

Maybe the time has come to define e-Learning as ‘experience learning' as the ‘electronic' component has been fully incorporated in the notion of learning (especially informal learning), at least by digital natives.

The Issue of Reliability in a Wiki World and its Implications for Learning.

Web 2.0 and e-Learning 2.0 have the merit of having led the user/learner far closer to the centre of content creation and learning processes. Does this mean we are heading towards a clash with traditional learning models? HELIOS does not believe so.

We do not believe that in the future - be it near or far - education will only lie in the hands of learners, though the possibilities provided by available technologies and social tools are going to increase - positively - the role and participation of learners in their learning process.

We shall not be bewitched by the excessive hype and expectations on user content creation as the risk for a second Bubble burst in the field of e-Learning is high. The role of reliability of the created, shared and networked content as well as the issue of scientific quality (see for instance the split Wikipedia/Citizendum ¹⁸) remain key in determining the future of (e) learning.

 

New ‘Learning' Tools for Knowledge Society Skills: is Education lagging behind?

Online social networking and social tools such as wikis and online games are already used for learning purposes but yet not regarded as serious learning. According to BECTA ¹⁹“In the medium term we can expect to see social tools being used to help develop critical skills such as networking, search and assimilation of new topics, sense making, pattern recognition, and decision making as well as in the development of shared values. These tools are about connections and context and not content [and]

[…] they operate at the intersection of technology, teaching and creativity”. This implies the emergence of what BECTA names the “hidden curriculum of new media literacies”, which is not yet considered relevant enough by formal education though it is made of the key competences and skills for the knowledge society. If the attention of policy makers is already high in the field of prior and informal learning recognition, a further effort is required in monitoring, analysing and recognising the value of social tools for learning and in supporting their use in formal education for the acquisition of critical and networking skills by young generations.

As from the main page: “The project, started by a co-founder of Wikipedia , aims to improve on that model by adding „gentle expertoversight“ and requiring contributors to use their real names”.

 

6. BUILDING THE EUROPEAN OBSERVATORY

By googeling ‘e-Learning + Europe', one finds more than 1,300,000 responses including web portals, reports, most of which seem extremely relevant to the query, showing that information on ICT for learning is there and abundant, at national and at international level, virtually covering all sectors of Education and Training. By browsing these results, it clearly appears that a number of international organisations are professionally collecting, analysing and producing information on e-Learning (i.e.

Eurostat, Eurydice, IEA, OECD, EUN, Eurobarometer as well as observatory projects within the e Learning and IST programmes).

If one searches in languages other than English, it appears that in almost every European country some work is being carried on in order to understand the impact of ICT on learning systems and to design policies that take this impact into account.

But if we look a bit deeper at the information that those many sources provide, it appears that different methodologies are used to provide different outputs in terms of timing, geographical coverage, and target users. In other words, most of the times the existing information on e-Learning is scattered and difficult to compare, this representing an obstacle in the understanding process that EU and national decision makers shall put in place to improve the performance of their education and training systems on the basis of what works and of what does not work in EU countries and networks.

In order to contribute solving this problem, HELIOS has carried out, in parallel with its analysis, surveying and reporting component, an exercise aimed at the establishment and consolidation of a sustainable observation platform of European e-Learning based on what exists able to dynamically monitor the progress of ICT for learning in Europe and in EU countries vis-à-vis policy objectives and to forecast future scenarios of e-Learning evolution, thus closing the gap between the large amount of ‘fragmentary' data existing today about e-Learning policies, practices, research and market and the need for understandable, usable and coherent policy-related information by European national and local policy makers. In carrying on this work, HELIOS has worked to avoid any kind of competition with existing observation mechanisms and has tried to stimulate synergy and networking among those mechanisms in view of the creation of a sustainable co-owned platform for the systematic monitoring, assessment and forecast of current and future developments of e-Learning in Europe.

The rationale of the HELIOS exercise of building a network of national observation points was based on the need to contextualise observation efforts at national level and at the same time on the condition that a common analysis approach should be followed in the interpretation and provision of information feeding the European platform.

To achieve this, HELIOS worked at the national level in some countries by activating some ‘dynamiser' tables to build national observation units, by aggregating all the actors that have a stake on e-Learning to observe e-Learning developments and impact in the country in terms of indicators, methods, informants, procedures and timing. To complement this, HELIOS worked at the EU level to ensure that all national observation units would be able to provide relevant information and recommendations to policy and decision makers, practitioners and stakeholders in their respective country and at the same to contribute - under a federative model - to the continuous update of the European observation platform.

The most common situation that HELIOS found in EU countries is the one where some observation activities in the field of e-Learning are carried out by institutions or organisations in a fragmented way, with a strong risk of replication, overlapping and lack of homogeneous information. The HELIOS approach in this case has been to identify the institutional and technical/ operational actors active in e-Learning observation and activate a process of concertation aimed at guaranteeing a full coverage of e-Learning observation through the synergic action of the identified members. Three practical cases can be mentioned: In

Italy , Greece and Germany , HELIOS has identified the need to articulate the existing observation capacities by stimulating synergy and networking among the existing institutions and actors. For these three countries, three action plans have been put in place, and some interesting results have been achieved.

What experience has shown is that building national observation units, although it might seem the most logical ‘first step', does not work if it is not accompanied by a strong EU policy interest, accompanied by some funding support. Even when national units have been created, without a strong EU policy direction and direct support those Units tend: both to: 1) naturally follow the national policy objectives; 2) be fragile and depend on the continuity of political support; 3) adopt national-specific methodologies and produce data that are difficult to compare across countries. The answer to the question that opens this paragraph, ‘shall the EU e-Learning observatory be built on national observatories?', seems therefore to be ‘no, unless it is accompanied by a strong EU centred policy driver as well as from a strong technical and financial support mechanism'.

While stimulating the EU-national dynamic, HELIOS reflected and validated with the many organisations involved in its Observatory Building exercise on the conditions that should be in place for an e-Learning observation mechanism to be sustainable and to develop its full potential.

A first condition would be to open-up the e-Learning theme in the direction of ‘innovation in Lifelong Learning processes and systems' : HELIOS believes that this broader ‘conceptualisation' (that includes ICT as one of the innovation drivers of E&T systems and processes) could be able to raise the policy attention and support both at the EU and at the national level

A second condition would be to base the observation mechanism on a differentiation principle , able to look at the different territories and their dynamics in a separated but comparable way: HELIOS believes that only by looking into the specificities of the e-Learning territories the real trends can be understood in their context and foresight becomes meaningful.

A third condition would be to strongly bind the observatory work and foreseen results to Lifelong Learning policy objectives . HELIOS believes that:

The fourth condition is that only by positioning right in the middle between policy objectives and successful practices the observatory can deploy its full value .

Once those conditions are in place, it is important that the observation mechanism responds to the needs of the e-Learning decision makers, practitioners and researchers of today and - if possible - of tomorrow: HELIOS believes that the functions that the EU observatory on e-Learning shall gather go beyond the mere observation-analysis-reporting scheme , and should include:

• Support to valorisation of usable results, of success cooperation practices and of sustainable projects.
• Direct support to Lifelong Learning intended as a tool to achieve the EU macro objectives such as inclusiveness and growth.
• Outreach of ICT for learning much beyond the Education and Training ‘experts communities', calling for and gathering communities working on learning and on policies well beyond those specific to Education and Training systems.
• Articulation of the national, local, and EU level, to make sure that the linguistic, cultural and methodological barriers that hinder the smooth circulation of data across these three levels are properly overcome.

E-LEARNING FOR INNOVATION

Executive Summary

 

HELIOS YEARLY REPORT 2007

Authors: Stefania Aceto, Claudio Delrio, Claudio Dondi, Thomas Fischer, Nikitas Kastis, Roland Klein, Walter Kugemann , Fabio Nascimbeni, Margarita Perez Garcia, Nirina Rabemiafara and András Szûcs

 

Editors: Stefania Aceto, Claudio Delrio and Claudio Dondi

Research Team:

Alphametrics , United Kingdom : Tim Harrison, Nirina Rabemiafara and Terry Ward

FIM-NewLearning,

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität

Erlangen-Nürnberg , Germany : Thomas Fischer, Roland Klein and Walter F. Kugemann

Istituto per lo Sviluppo della

Formazione dei Lavoratori

(ISFOL), Italy : Marianna Forleo, Claudia Montedoro and Vitalia Schirru

Lambrakis Foundation

(LF), Greece : Nikitas Kastis and George Neofotistos

MENON Network EEIG: Tapio Koskinen, Margarita Perez Garcia and Fabio Nascimbeni

SCIENTER, Italy : Stefania Aceto, Claudio Delrio and Claudio Dondi

European Distance and

E-Learning Network ( EDEN ),

United Kingdom : Ildikó Mázár and András Szûcs

Research Coordination: Claudio Dondi

Project Offi cer at the

European Commission: Maruja Gutiérrez Díaz

Project Officers at the

Executive Agency: Elena Coello and Brian Holmes

Publisher: MENON Network EEIG, 20 Avenue des Arts, B-1000 Brussels, Phone: +3226393030, Fax: +3226443583.

E-Mail: info@menon.org ,

Web: http://www.menon.org

 

An electronic version of this document can be obtained at the HELIOS web site:

http://www.education-observatories.net/helios

 

¹ Lesley Mackenzie-Robb “E-learning and Change Management – The Challenge” Vantaggio Ltd http://www.vantaggio-learn.com/vantaggio_CM.htm

² HELIOS Consortium “Evolving e-learning: The HELIOS Yearly report 2005/2006.

Menon Network 2006 http://www.education-observatiories.net/news

³http://del.icio.us/

⁴ http://www.myspace.com/

⁵ http://www.flickr.com/

⁶ http://www.apple.com/itunes/

⁷http://www.youtube.com/

⁸ http://www.ebay.com/

⁹ http://www.doodle.ch/

¹⁰http://craigslistfoundation.org/

¹¹http://www.skype.org

¹² http://www.dodgeball.com/

¹³ http://www.workace.com/

¹⁴http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/not_20.html

¹⁵Scienter, Menon Network et al, “L-change Yearly report 2003- 2004” , Key Messages, p.6.

¹⁶Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, Committee for Information, Computing and Communications Policy: Working Party on the Information Society, Participative . Web: User-created Content DSTI/ICCP/IE (2006)7/final

¹⁷http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3085

¹⁸http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page.

¹⁹Emerging Technologies for Learning, BECTA 200