E-LANE
European and Latin American New Education
Summary
The E-LANE project proposes the integration of solid applications already used in the context of elearning as an open software elearning platform, the design of an innovative teaching methodology oriented towards this platform, and the integration of course content from some of the most prestigious educational institutions in Europe and Latin America with the goal of providing the society with low cost educational material to reduce the digital divide and enhance life long learning.
The aim is to maximize the impact of this project both at the level of academic and non academic training and to promote a solid environment for long life learning in the future information society.
Objectives
In order to achieve this goal, the project is organized into several subprojects each of them with concrete interrelated objectives. At the conclusion of the project, a fully open source e-learning platform will be available for distribution. Furthermore, a set of courses from different disciplines and levels will also be available. These courses are organized into two main categories: basic skills and life long learning.
Aside from the open source e-learning platform and the content, the project also puts emphasis in both the methodology to develop the course material, as well as the maximum widespread dissemination of the courses.
Open software platform for elearning
A key element for an elearning platform is the underlying technology. In today's society, elearning has the oportunity to provide teaching support for large audiences. It is precisely in this context where new pedagogical resources can be deployed.
Despite the fact that several elearning platforms are slowly appearing in educational institutions, they mainly provide support for generic administrative tasks as well as some basic tools for teaching support.
At the same time, in the last years there has been a very significant effort to define different standards that allow the exchange of teaching material between different platforms.
This project proposes the integration of state-of-the-art information technology tools combined with standard support to deliver an open source elearning platform capable of supporting a large number of users and courses.
The platform has a client/server architecture and imposes minimum requirements on the client side. The different sub-systems upon which the platform is based are:
Course Content
A concrete set of courses will be produced in order to be taught with the proposed tool and methodology. By combining the effort of the partners, already proven course material will be made available to implement the appropriate courses that address the educational needs of the Latin American societies. The fact that the consortium is participated by five Latin American partners from five different countries provides the ideal scenario to create content with a lot of variety and test it in a wide variety of situations ranging from conventional university environments to communities with special needs.
The courses provided by the project are divided in two categories: basic skills and life long learning.
The first category includes courses oriented towards teaching users basic skills on a variety of context. Perhaps the most significant is an effort to convey basic computer skills to a large portion of society. Initiatives such as the International Computer Driver License (ECDL.com) are crucial to define the set of basic skill required to bring the information society closer to the citizens.
The second category includes courses oriented to enhance the learning experience of people by completing their education with additional courses. From this point of view, the project consortium is participated by Latin American educational institutions with a large experience in this context.
Innovative Methodology
Equally important to the software platform is an innovative methodology that capitalizes in the new resources provided by technology. More precisely, both the way in which courses are taught, as well as the way material is prepared needs to be taken into account if it is to be used in the context of elearning. From this point of view, the consortium counts with experienced partners with a proven history of successful projects that will deploy these new methodology and resources in the context of the provided platform. This methodology takes into account the scenario in which a person needs Life Long Education.
A second aspect that is crucial to develop material is to accommodate the required infrastructure to be able to achieve a high degree of reuse. All the universities participating in the consortium are well stablished educational institutions, and therefore they provide a large amount of content for courses that needs to be integrated to achieve maximum impact when deployed.
As result of this methodology a new paradigm for education in Latin America will be produced. This paradigm will take into account students with different needs in order to maximize the social impact of the courses.
Impact Measurement and Refinement
Social impact is of the utmost importance. The objective of the project is to maximize such impact, therefore, a carefully planned evaluation stage is essential. In this phase, all the required methods will be made available to gauge with as much precission as possible which parts of society most benefit from the courses, if they have been efficiently implemented, the required resources, their contribution to improve the surrounding environment, etc.
Derived from this detailed study, an improved platform is proposed in order to correct and improve all the required aspects. This phase is also very important, since the platform needs to be developed by taking into account as many environmental aspects as possible, but these aspects cannot be experienced until the platform is put to a test and its functionality submitted to a regular use.
Disemination and Sustainability
This objective is oriented to extend the impact of the platform, not only to the students that receive education with it, but also to the entire educational and scientific community. The fact that the platform will be distributed with an open software license will significantly contribute to its dissemination. Other technology areas have been greatly benefited by tools distributed with such licenses. Elearning should not be an exception. In fact, this disemination is expected to grow when more and more users and institutions are capable of exchanging solid and effective course material.
As for sustainability, the objective is to get involved in the project different institutions such as governments, trade unions, community organizations, etc. These organizations already have needs in terms of training. Governments in Latin America are already contributing to provide widespread education to a wider range of the population. This project is a perfect vehicle to improve or complement these projects. Trade unions are very concern with the increasingly important area of on-the-job training. Workers can substantialy improve their skills by using a flexible platform that adapts to their learning environment.