The EU-US Cooperation in Science and Technology in eLearning meeting took place in Arlington Virginia, between 12th and 13th December 2001

Report on the Fourth Meeting of EU-US Coordinating Group for Research Cooperation in eLearning:

The fourth meeting of the EU-US coordinating group took place in Arlington, VA USA at the NCSA ACCESS Center and the National Science Foundation on December 11 and December 12, 2001. There were 19 participants from the European Union and 15 participants from the US. The following are links to the list of participants and a list of participant vitas.

After introductions, Dr. Jens Christensen presented the Meeting Objectives and Dr. John Cherniavsky presented the new topic to be combined with eLearning futures called the Learning Grid. Another new topic to be discussed was the development of an Accompanying Measure to support future EU/US activities. A draft Accompanying Measure was presented for discussion on the second day of the meeting. An open discussion then commenced with Miles Ellis discussing Prometheus, Tom Prudhomme discussed NCSA's interests in Knowledge and Learning Systems, Roberto Caneiro discussing the development of a graduate studies program, Dr. Angel Garcia discussing the Internet Institute, Dr. Mariano Sanz discussing the European SchoolNet, Dr. Larry Rowe discussing architectural issues around webcasting streaming video, Dr. Jan Hylén on the interests of the Swedish Education Ministry, Dr. Joseph Bremer on standards and the standardization of learning technologies, Keith Kruger on the Consortium of School Networks in the US, Pierluigi Ritrovato on Grid Technologies, and the representatives from the Distance University of Spain discussing how they serve 200,000 students.

The groups then met according to the meeting agenda coming together briefly at the beginning of the second day and then at the end to give their reports. There were four reports given eLearning for life, eLearning futures, Schools of Tomorrow, and the Accompanying Measure. Each of the breakout groups were to identify a US and an EU participant to actively follow up on the breakout group activities - to act as locomotives. The following volunteered: Roberto Carneiro and Anthony B. Maddox for eLearning for life; Tom Prudhomme and Paul lefrere for eLearning futures; Paul Horowitz and a candidate to be identified later by Jens Christensen for Schools of Tomorrow; Scott Lathrop and a member of the TRAM team for the Accompanying measure. In addition, all who participated in these groups from this meeting and the past meetings will be posted on the shared web site to be used as a resource for forming collaborations.

The accompanying measure will be developed by the TRAM team and NCSA. It will be a single proposal submitted to the EU that will be evaluated in parallel by NSF. It will support group meetings every 9 months, scientific meetings, workgroups, speaker invitations, white paper preparation, a joint research agenda and possible project consortia. It is also proposed that Access Grid technology be explored as a substitute or addition to the face to face meetings of the transatlantic group.

The next meeting will be held in Lisboa, site of the World Education Market (WEM) meeting May 21-23 and will be held overlapping the first day of that meeting - May 20 and 21^st. The special theme of this meeting will be the forming of commercial markets for eLearning in the corporate and academic communities. An additional meetings of interest is the Prometheus meeting on the 23^rd-24^th. There are additional opportunities to organize seminars the week before the WEM meeting in Lisbon.

A final admonition is not to wait and stop collaborating until the next meeting!

Agenda:

This meeting had a broad range of topics, the areas for discussion were not restricted, but the following three domains had been condensed so far during the work:

1. Learning for Life covers the areas of "Life long Learning" and "Self-learning for Work", including advanced training and how to support common activities in these areas. Merged the two areas in Grenoble in its workshop. Contacts are: Robert Carneiro and Anthony Maddox
2. Schools : A working group has been formed under the steering group. It has had parallel group meetings with the other working groups. The school as a community centre of knowledge, private-public-partnership, and young peoples (new) way of learning are natural topics combined with suggestions for common activities and areas of co-operation. Contacts are: Paul Horwitz
3. eLearning Futures (also called Distance Learning) looks at the long term perspectives in the merge of ICT and learning and the possibilities of enhancing transatlantic co-operation. Has also held parallel meetings with other working groups. Contacts are: Tom Prudhomme and Paul Lefrere

Participants in the workshop: