Meeting Notes on EU/US Meeting for Cooperation in eLearning 17-18 February 2000 European Commission IST program and the National Science Foundation EHR and CISE programs

Introduction and welcome by Mike Vildibill, Deputy Director San Diego Supercomputer Center

General introductions around the table

Context Setting - Jens Christensen Description of the EU/US overarching agreement

Description of US programs

• Research on Learning and Education
• Information Technology Reseach (Education and Workforce, Human Computer Interface, Societal Impacts)
• National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technical Education Digital Library
• Instructional Materials Development and Course and Curriculum Improvement

Description of Fifth Framework IST programs

• The Learning Citizen
• The School of Tomorrow
• Accompanying Measures

General Discussion of barriers and opportunities

• Streamline joint proposal processing - incorporate an NSF model of peer review
• Develop a best practices repository but ensure that best practices aren't adopted too early as that stifles innovation
• Best practices should be more like best processes and best practices should be driven by important questions.
• Investigate funding models for small collaborations to work on innovative projects - skunk works
• Develop models of evolution from EU and US experiences of small project success to more complex domains
• Ensure adequate post project analysis - say a 2-3 year retrospective look at project results
• Ensure that any research calls are not overly prescriptive, that review is expedited to ensure not too heavy a workload, involve EU researchers in US review and US researchers in EU review, ensure access of EU literature for US researchers and vice-versa
• Sharing of information is key to cooperation. Means of sharing will involve, at least, a community information space including programmatic information, research cooperation spaces, spaces to share corpora of educational raw data and to compare programs, and best practices information. The DB should really be a digital library that is searchable and intelligent and which contains analysis and knowledge management tools
• Context of educational research is extremely important - education is local, research is universal - understanding the context of education and learning research is critical for generalizable research results. EU-US projects provide unique opportunities to explore and understand the role of culture in learning and how that understanding can enhance the quality of technology supporting learning. There are tools to elicit cultural influences and these tools can be used across projects.
• Building a transatlantic community is important if joint research is to succeed. Promote mobility of researchers, exchange of researchers, and build US-EU researcher teams. Can public policy and discourse be studied and understood in a multinational setting?
• Build environments for studying organizations. Use what we preach and develop new means of utilizing the e-society by developing new means of collaboration
• Ensure that the needs of the disabled and other disenfranchised groups be addressed at the design stage rather than adapting a deployed system
• Develop better paradigms for sharing content and research. Current environments do not promote sharing of software and other educational objects. See if research results, particularly intervention results, can be fairly compared. How can vastly different underlying pedagological approaches be reconciled to learn from projects? How do we promote an effective community practice that allows sharing and comparison of results. Consider the development of virtual technology research center that has tools for teachers and learners and researchers
• What is required in terms of networking and other technology to make an effective elearning research program? What is needed in terms of intercontinental bandwidth?

Second Day - Presentation of Breakout Groups, ideas for specific EU-US cooperative activities, next steps.

Presentation of Distance Education Results

1. Two classes of problems

• Comparitive culture research
• Common problems (e.g. ) digital libraries

Testbeds

Develop a capacity for institutions that includes equipment, bandwidth, and people so that experiments in distance learning can be conducted at a large and sustainable scale between US and the EU. This capacity should be viewed as a tool for human science research as well as a technology testbed. Analysis capabilities should be part of the testbed.

The impact of global information infrastructure on society should be an experimental theme for research using the testbed. The research should be multidisciplinary in nature. Build on the uniqueness of the EU/US mix - particularly the increased diversity of the study populations - as a prerequiste for use the testbed. Possibly explore new business models for education but certainly exchange scientific data, cultural information, and literature,

Information resources and services for distance learning research include the following:

• technology
• cognition - HCI, Knowledge Management
• institution - community
• work practice

Finally new evaluation methods for distance learning are required. How does one measure the difference between distance and residential college? How do faculty share information on effectiveness of distance education practices? What methodologies should be used? How do you incorporate cultural understanding into distance education practices?

School of Tomorrow Session

1. Joint research on how to help different cultures adopt and adapt best practices

collaborate on design and evaluation with respect to cultural issues

• hat's feasible?
• what's appropriate?
• what's important?
• what's universal?

ultimate goal: peace corps model (e.g., celebrate and respect cultural differences)

Some concrete ideas

• ompare models of networks of schools in the use of technology. Characterize the essential components of these models
• Compare how students are engaged in using educational technology (e.g. pacing) and explore cultural differences or how learning arises out of deeper engagement - understand the difference in epistomology that arise our of cultural differences
• Exchange programs
  • get EU involved in US testbeds, e.g. ESCOT, SSIs
  • get US involved in EU testbeds, e.g., SchoolNet

   

Co-develop effective ways of how to involve teachers in the effective design of new software

Team Software Design Model

• Software developer
• Curriculum designer/educational researcher
• Expert practicioners, e.g. scientists
• Community involvement/librarians

Involving teachers in design Model seems successful in the U.S., but is it appropriate for Europe?

• teacher preparation and certification differences
• teacher as critical elements of software deployment

Difficulty of studying more radical models may be easier with a larger community to draw from

Concrete Ideas

• Help schoolNet evolve its ideas for teacher involvement based on lessons learned from U.S. projects
• Apply lessons learned from EU onproviding policy frameworks ("infrastructure") in the US (eg. Emiliani's "Design for All")

Learning Citizen - Lifelong Learning

The group broke down into two general philosophical positions. The economists and the quality of lifers. The economists wanted to keep the knowledge of the workplace up to date, wanted knowledge management tools, and desired collaborative working and learning spaces. They viewed lifelong learning as an economic necessity in the changing world. The quality of lifers wanted informed citizens, participation empowerment for medical, finances, education, career, decision making, and participation in local politics. Underlying both camps was the generic question of what motivates learning and whether learning is "hard" or "fun" and how to make it "fun" if its going to be lifelong.

Arguments in favor of cooperation

• transcending political arguments
• standards - use of metadata for these materials
• US leading - Europe Leading areas of mutual benefit
• Meta-analysis of empirical data - too little of this data analysis
• Ensure that the Digital - Divide is not widened - good way for cooperation

Research Topics

1. The (flexible) environment
2. Models of cooperation (human/agents)
3. Auhentication of information
4. Information technology to bridge the gap between "demand and supply"
5. Knowledge management framework - includes the skills, functions, and capabilities for the use of this framework - couple this with learning management. Replace career path with learning path

Example Content Areas

• vocational training
• medical information
• career planning
• safety
• financial planning
• educational system

Session on research contributions of the participants and thoughts on cooperation from their research perspective. Only US-EU cooperation opportunities are recorded in this list:

Geoffrey Fox - Would use Transatlantic work to improve educational software system Tango by utilizing input from a wider community.

Pietro Emiliani - Is interested in technologies for the common people. The cooperation would provide a natural testbed for those technologies and build a larger commercial market for them.

Nicolas Balincheff - A technology center joint between the US and EU would support his research well.

Hermann Maurer -Software sharing over a wider population would aid in development and testing of software environments.

Mariano Sanz - Developing partnerships with school networks in the US would enhance research on the school nets in the EU.

Louis Gomez - Same desire as Sanz in seeing comparisons of school nets.

Scott Lathrop - EU-US research will widen the pool of policy research questions.

Tom Wason - Standards is a natural international cooperative effort. A project such as a GIS digital library project would also provide a good research testbed to explore issues of differences in learning and culture.

Roberto Carneiro - Have US firms participatation would give more and better information for Knowledge Worker comparisons. Similarly have US kids paticipate in European Kids project.

Mark Schlager - TappedIn as a learning environment is a natural international activity.

Kurt VanLehn - How do you consruct knowledge? A multi-cultural approach would provide valuable information.

Terry Mayes - Explore vicarious learning in US contexts as well as EU contexts.

David Kirsch - International cooperation important in understanding scaffolding required for general distance education - particularly in a multinational education market.

Christine Borgman - Good collaborations clearly possible in GIS (and DL in general).

Maria Klawe - Cross cultural studies are important in trying to understand things such as gender differences in learning environments. EU-US collaboration is very important here.

Bjorn Pehrson - Explore electronic villages on a more international scale.

Matthias Rohrbach -- Work with the US on new user interfaces.

Gerhard Fisher -- Cultural understanding is important in lifelong learning. UseUS-EU projects to gain that understanding.

Rebecca Alden - Provide an information sharing resource for EU-US researchers.

Jacobjinn Sandberg - Investigate accreditation issues via software in a larger EU-US context.

Wilhelm Bruns - Work with real reality model in US technical education institutions. It would further refine and validate the model

Tom Prudhomme - Use cooperation to scale distance education ideas.

Ann Redelfs - Use cooperation as a means of sharing databases.

Other Actions

New Partners

Vocational Education - Department of Labor, NIST, DoD - Federal Training Institute. Central and Eastern Europe and others should be contacted regarding future possibllities for research cooperation.

Web Site PROACTe Project - includes information about agreement, sector implementing arrangement, monitoring group, programs on each side, criteria for participation, deadlines, organization of materials, links to ongoing projects, canadian projects. Joint research office for reusable education objects. Set up web site so that patterns of access can be recorded for future analysis.

We need to appoint names of monitoring group. Additional US members to be appointed shortly.

Lifelong Learning: Jacobijn Sandberg, Hermann Maurer, Gerhard Fisher (US)

Distance Learning: Nicolas Balacheff, Tom Wason (US)

Schools: Pier-Luigi Emiliano, Moriano Sanz, To be Named (US)

Vocational Training: Wilhelm Bruns, To be Named (US)

Next Meeting to be held in Europe - probably September 2000.