Education and training

European Commission Directorate-General For The Information Society And Media

Description

Project fact sheets
Information technology and telecommunications
Education policy
Vocational training
Target audience: All

Sujets

• Information society (disambiguation)
• Information technology
• Project management
• Education
• Vocational education

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-THE-INFORMATION-SOCIETY-AND-MEDIA
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 19 Mo

Extrait

European Commission
information
society
technologies
Education and Training
PROJEC T FACT SHEETS
second updated and enlarged edition
Λ Γ j Λ r \ r
J
m information Society European Commission
Education and Training, 1ST Programme
Information Society DG, D/3
Bâtiment Jean Monnet
Rue Alcide De Gasperi
L-2920 Luxemburg
E-mail: [e-mail]
Tel.[phone]
Internet:
http://www.cordis.lu/ist/
http://www.proacte.com/ Foreword
Information and communication technologies are
changing dramatically the way in which individuals live
and work and organisations operate, creating the basis
for the Information Society in which we live today.
This was explicitly acknowledged in the title of the
so-called "Information Society Technologies" research
programme. Nowadays there is a shift towards a more
ambitious concept: the knowledge society, recognising
the crucial role that the skills of the citizens will play
in the future competitiveness of the emerging
knowledge-based economy.
This has been equally acknowledged by the Council of the EU at the launch of
the e-Europe initiative. Indeed when setting out the objective for Europe to
become the most competitive and dynamic economy in the world particular
attention was paid to digital literacy and skills in general as preconditions.
E-learning is recognised as essential to this transition and will soon become its
engine. Indeed e-learning technologies will play a fundamental role in ensuring
that the all-pervasive, and sometimes overwhelming information available
nowadays, is converted into relevant knowledge for Europe's citizens, industries,
communities and organisations, the way they need it, personalised and
accessible, whenever and wherever needed.
The European Commission has launched several initiatives in order to create a
critical mass of "resources" able to support, guide and stimulate research,
technological development and innovation in education and training. The main
one is the 1ST (Information Society Technologies) research programme, where
education and training is one of the key priorities and is leading to the
development of new open platforms for e-learning and applications for schools,
corporate training, universities and lifelong learning in general. The activities in
this area cover both R&D work on common methodologies and tools and specific
demonstrations in several market sectors.
As horizontal activities, some accompanying measures have been launched.
These projects will support R&D projects in their clustering, reinforcing
validation, evaluation and dissemination activities. Some of the topics
addressed are standards in multimedia technologies, re-elaboration of R&D
results of education communities and market watch of learning technologies. I
The nature of all the projects involved in this initiative is described succinctly
in this document.
The European Commission also promotes some complementary initiatives in the
field of education and training which complement and support the research
activities carried out within the 1ST programme. Among these it is worth
highlighting the initiative on standardisation of learning technologies (CEN-
ISSS workshop) - it is broadly admitted that standardisation is important to
ensure that a critical mass of learning systems, services and contents can be
established in a cost-effective way, taking into account Europe's cultural and
linguistic diversity. Ensuring a critical mass of actors for the deployment of
these technologies is the key remit of the Memorandum of Understanding,
PROMETEUS (Promoting Multimedia in Education and Training in the European
Society), which provides a platform for reaching consensus and bridging current
research with actual implementation. An exchange of experience and knowledge
takes place through the international activities.
The stakes are twofold: on the one hand e-learning is an enabling application
area with a strong potential impact on the continuous education and training
of individuals, on the quality of life and the competitiveness of European
industry; on the other hand it is an emerging market which is going to boom in
upcoming years according to all forecasts. The outstanding quality of education
and training systems in Europe should be coupled with information and
knowledge technologies, to ensure that Europe will be able to meet the growing
demand for lifelong learning and will become a key player in this market.
Luis Rodríguez-Roselló
Head of Unit
Multimedia Applications for Education and Training
Directorate General Information Society Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now widely used in
education and training, enabling the implementation of new pedagogical
paradigms (e.g. distance learning, sharing of course materials, virtual
laboratories). While there are many practical benefits in the use of ICT, the
production of learning content is expensive. At the same time, new learning
requirements are emerging, with a shift towards personalised learning
services flexibly delivered. Thus, more cost-effective learning environments
are required based on open standards and reusableg objects.
Significant contributions to reusable, interoperable and platform-independent
approaches have already been made under previous EU RTD programmes. For
example, ARIADNE, a TAP FP4 project, developed a distributed repository of
learning objects based on open platforms and metadata standards. Project
participants share their educational resources through interconnected
educational databases known as the Knowledge Pool System (KPS). Teachers can
combine content selected from the KPS with their existing materials to create
courses online relatively quickly and easily. Learners and authors can work from
anywhere provided there is Internet access to the nearest KPS node.
ARIADNE, together with other FP4 projects such as REM, has been closely
involved international standardisation activities, such as IEEE LOM (Learning
Object Methodology) and the IMS project (Instructional Management Systems).
This work is being continued under IST's action line on Open Platforms and Tools
for Personalised Learning. This aims to prove the concept of re-usable learning
objects and open platforms as a cost-effective way of implementing and
maintaining flexible learning services. It also aims to further develop an open
architecture for building education and training applications and services.
Active contributions to international standardisation activities and to European
best practice are also key objectives.
The work focuses on the development and validation of reusable components,
and is closely linked to component software engineering. New tools and
processes are being developed for producing and maintaining reusable learning
objects at different levels of detail ("granularity"). Tools and processes for locating and sharing learning objects are also being developed, including A repository for learning
solutions for operational issues such as intellectual property rights, resources
accreditation and payments. Another area of interest is the assembly and The EASEL project is addressing the
maintenance of new types of flexible learning environments based on reusable standards-based provision of online
learning objects. The work also feeds into longer-term research on advanced learning based on state-of-the-art g environments and innovative pedagogical approaches. repository technologies. The objective
is to offer educators an environment in
In technological terms, the main development areas include: learning object which they can readily combine
manipulation (metadata generators and retrieval systems); learning object existing learning objects to create new
authoring systems; security and trust infrastructures (APIs, smartcards); online educational offerings. The work
knowledge repositories; and language translation. involves the development of an XML
metadata repository for storing
The CODEX-IP project, for example, is researching tools to develop and maintain descriptions of learning objects,
language-independent learning objects across IP-based networks. TELENET is assessment modules for interrogating
developing a smart card based secure infrastructure for the exchange and objects, a Web-based search gateway
delivery of learning materiel. An advanced lecturing system that uses the high
and a construction kit. The project is
bandwidth available to academic institutions to deliver real-time, specialised
working closely with the IEEE Question
courses to students in different locations is being developed by VIRTUAL & Test working group, which is
BLACKBOARD. developing classification and
management systems for learning
objects. Further info !
1ST Action Lines:
IST1999 Hl.3.1 Open Platforms and Tools for Personalised Learnins
Project References:
3DE IST-1999-10697 http://www.3DEproject.com
CODEX-IP IST-1999-12021 http://www.codex-ip.com
DIVILAB IST-1999-12017
EASEL IST-1999-10051 http://www.fd3r0up.com/easel
EMBER IST-2000-20469 http://www.bioinf.man.ac.uk/ember/
FM-Ultranet IST-1999-20865