Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: the European Commission for the European Commission for the eLearning Programme

Thanks very much for your query, I/we at the Center for Digital Systems at the Freie Universitaet Berlin are looking into this (http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/elearning/call_2305_en.html), too, and as we would need, say, 4 partners and I am looking for at least two Dotlrn partners, I first reply in this forum.

You are right, as I understand it, that the "Virtual Campuses" category is not about developing platforms, but, as they write, the sharing of experiences, lessons learned, identification and dissemination of good practices for e-learning. Our group thinks our particular interest would be in working with universities attempting to developing university-wide implementations -- discussing not simply the successes of our "early adopters", but also, how we might involve a larger percentage of faculty: scalability being a highly relevant criteria. We think this would involve a variety of studies, preparation of detailed case studies, publication of these studies on a public website, conferences, etc. that would play to our common interest in sharing good practices.

I think we might be able to do this in away that would be directly relevant to the Dotlrn community by including two institutions such as ourselves with a centralized commitment to commercial applications, such as Blackboard, and two institutions using open source alternatives. For those of you who don't know, I implemented Dotlrn at my institution on a limited basis before taking a job with the central elearning outfit, which is using Blackboard, but remain active with a small group of dedicated Dotlrners.

By developing this project, in part, as a comparison of open source and commercial systems we could then test one or another interesting hypotheses. First, we might explore how there may be different implementation/support/learning cultures associated with them. For example, I have observed that my Dotlrn colleauges typically respond to problems with a "can do" approach that sees the technology as a work-in-progress and not a black box that is very slow to change. As the application criteria includes a component for evaluating not only quality assurance and assessment, but also, "financial related issues," we might actually be able to explore some "bottom line" issues -- issues that many institutions currently using commercial applications are keeping a close eye on. We might also look at specific application features/interface designs, such as how Dotlrn's group-oriented interface, compares or how its fabulous switchable multi-language interface facilitates international cooperation, etc. In sum, we could develop a research enterprise that devoted to problems of successful implementations more generally and at the same time would allow candid evaluation of open source and commercial lms system strengths and weaknesses.

I might add for the purposes of illustration that I am presently adapting an excellent survey of e-learning strategies from the Pennsylvania State World Campus, http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/Workload_Man.ement_Strat_5.pdf, to our purposes, including, the preparation of brief summaries of some 20 things instructors might do to increase efficiency and learning. This roadmap allows faculty to survey what might be done in bite-sized pieces and then apply for support to experiment with as they see fit. This is a user-oriented approach that is based on good teaching practices and how they might be rethought using lms systems: I am starting not from any particular technology, but from working with teachers concerned with using the technology to make their jobs easier and increase student learning.
This close-in approach, I have found, gives faculty welcom conceptual and methodological guidance, brings them closer to their students and to the technology, and does so in the context of a research activity that results in detailed case studies that are readily shared.

So, how far have you looked into this? How far might we do this on our .LRN Q & A? Might there be another European (it must be EU, and probably not a second German university) university, or developer firm associated with a university, that we might be interested in as well? I would be willing to take the lead in writing up the application, but we are operating in a very limited time-frame: the application has to be in Brussels on the 4th of July, meaning at our respective University administrations a week earlier, meaning we have about a week to hammer out the overall concept and details. Anyone else interested?

All the best,

Bruce