Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: the European Commission for the European Commission for the eLearning Programme
Fabulous! Thanks very much for answering the query! It looks like we now have two other major universities with impressive numbers of users and sophistication in e-learning, so we are now four, and that's probably enough to outline our very preliminary expressions of interest thus far and maybe draw out one or two others in the next couple of days … there are significant sums involved so there is room for more! Briefly, the provisional "wish list" I've drawn up thus far -- and I am presuming that we'll be amending this considerably -- includes:
1) Detailed case studies. Creating and managing groups of student and experienced researchers in detailed user studies, plus the authoring, editing, and publication of these studies, including their translation into detailed recommendations for changes in practice, implementation design, and documentation.
2) A commitment to change. Establishing a research environment (and funding and management strucure) where research results and suggestions can be evaluated, implemented and tested, and the results publicized in a transparent way.
3) Researching, mapping, and changing organizational strategies. Establishing an institutional commitment and procedures to encourage innovation at the managerial levels. This would likely involve soliciting the expertise of consultants in corporate knowledge management (Collison & Parcell, "Learning To Fly" and Dixon's "Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know" are my current references to an extensive literature here).
4) Developing e-learning networks. A grass-roots variation of #3, but above and below institutional management levels, including the development of e-learning cohorts at the level of instructors and instructors/students and across institutions. Thus, in my institution, support for "early adopters" willing to take a leading role in the training of cohorts of student assistants, soliciting the cooperation of their colleagues, and committing themselves to tutoring, coordinating meetings, writing up reports, being an audience for others, and otherwise being part of a team. On the inter-institutional level, perhaps our organizing a series of exchanges among our institutions whereby we take turns writing up case studies of each other's initiatives, translating these studies into local terms, and experimenting with our local implementations will lead our respective e-learning departments and institutions see it as part of their mission to consider seriously the advice of partner institutions on a routine basis. We would, of course, build a project website the records and expresses our project's goals and design.
5) Interface customization and design. While the project criteria is not specifically about application design, the section "3.5 Computer Support Collaborative Learning" in the excellent article you have linked above demonstrates how our applications embody "lesson learning" in their design (and the signal advantage of including institutions using open source applications is the possibility to incorporate learning and change in the interface and data modeling.
6) Sustainable e-learning infrastructure. As I understand this, (and again, I'm new to much of this and so invite others to correct me and build on this sketch) the concern here is for winning enough faculty and departmental support from demonstrable successes can win long-term individual and institutional commitment. This would involve researching how a strategy devoted to "early wins" might be sustained. Since by nature and design some of the new strategies can not now be known, the management problem is to insure adequate flexibility, supervision, and reporting so that there is a significan risk-taking component built in.
7) A rich reporting/publicity function. I read with great interest your section "3.4 Virtual Communities", identify with the problems of "making the members of the educatoinal community aware that they are the main protagonists of the process" and the criteria of "persistence, shared assimilation, interactivity and participation" -- problems and principles upon which I am sure there is wide agreement -- and what I'd like to see is a multi-levelled online resource where users can find not simply a case study, but interviews, implementation strategies, checklists, and whatever other tools might be devised such that an instructor who says "ok, sounds good to me, I've got limited time but I'll work with you on this," can come up to speed, find what he or she needs, and experience at least an initial success in a very short period of time and with compartively little effort. I have a Spanish-speaking professor and "early adopter" colleague who is eager to be a part of this and will guarantee that our people can access all of your documentation as well as conduct interviews with you and your people. This is a problem not only of learning and implementation design, but of documentation, advertising, marketing, etc., and building a team of writers and salespeople who can assist designers and planners in dissemination and implementation. We have some marketing and writing wizards on staff that we could put together with yours, or those you might employ, so that great ideas are put to the test in a timely fashion.
All the best,
Bruce
