Higher Education Exploring ICT use for Lifelong Learning

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

The Higher Education Exploring ICT use for Lifelong Learning (HEXTLEARN) project was selected in 2007, and is funded from 1 November 2007 until 31 October 2010 by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme, Key Activity 3-ICT.

The HEXTLEARN web site is at http://www.hextlearn.eu/

Summary

The use of ICT in Higher Education institutions is constantly spreading in spite of the many doubts surrounding the quality of first generation eLearning approaches and applications. In the same time, the universities and colleges rarely address the quality assurance of their eLearning services. While strategic integration of ICT in teaching and learning is highlighted in the policy documents, the daily practice of European Universities shows that a quality driven approach in traditional and e-learning services is scarce. The HEXTLEARN project wants to set up an international community of Higher Education Institutions willing to share their experience related to different aims and ways to use ICT: support to campus students, distance education, continuous education, cooperation with enterprises and regional development projects, training of teachers.

Therefore HEXTLEARN network aims at increasing the level of attention of the Higher Education Community on ICT strategic integration by

• generating awareness, commitment and networking on quality assurance aspects and strategic integration of ICT in teaching, learning and innovative in Higher Education;
• promoting mutual understanding and common purposes toward quality assurance and common innovation strategies among the groups active in ICT teaching and training within Higher Education Institutions, and addressing the different Lifelong learning subsystems;
• disseminating replicable solutions to help set up communities at EU Level establishing a community of decision makers in the context of a Lifelong learning strategy and to support the modernisation agenda for European organisations of Higher Education from a community of expert peer reviewers able to serve the quality development of ICT use for teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions.

Outcomes

HEXTLEARN is aimed at contributing to the deployment of Lifelong Learning strategies through ICT within the Higher Education Institutions

The main outcomes of the networking action will be the peer review method implemented and exploited, and the networking itself as well, and the main outputs will be:

• a report on “Good practices and methodologies for HEI using ICT in the different fields of LLL”:
• a “Living toolkit” as a web-based service continuously update and improved, to be used as a reference to identify criteria to enhance quality among the university teams which are active in the different roles of LLL.

The short term impact envisaged is the increased awareness, commitment and networking on quality assurance aspects and strategic integration of ICT in teaching, learning and innovative in Higher Education, while the long term impact is the network contribution to the improvement of Education system in Europe.

Partners

• SCIENTER- Italy
• Budapest University of Technology and Economics - Hungary
• Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) - Belgium
• EuroPACE ivzw - Belgium
• European Foundation for Quality in E-learning (EFQUEL) - Belgium
• European Students' Union (ESU) - Belgium
• European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) - UK
• Institute for Innovation in Learning (FIM-New Learning) - Germany
• Universidad de Granada - Spain
• University "Politechnica" of Bucharest - Romania
• SCIENTER Espana - Spain