EDEN President’s Blog

Contribution to the EDEN President’s Blog by Morten Flate Paulsen, NKI Distance Education

I recently spent two days in the picturesque Norwegian town of Bergen, attending a captivating workshop on online education in prisons. Going home, I imagined myself as newly released, trying to find work and handle my daily life after being barred from the Internet for ten years. It dawned on me that I was deprived of basic human skills.

Understandably, inmates have limited access to the Internet. But there are technical solutions secure enough to provide inmates, even in high security prisons, access to the web. These solutions are basically based on gateways that:

1. only allow access to whitelisted domains
2. accept inbound information, but reject outbound messages
3. provides detailed log files of all traffic

Working at NKI Distance Education, I’m pleased to understand that inmates for decades have followed our correspondence courses and that several low security prisons now allow them to study our online courses. Some telephone calls, certain addresses, and special examination arrangements points to prisons, but as far as I know, NKI doesn’t have, and probably shouldn’t have, any statistics or systematic information about the extent and outcome of its prison education.

Generally, the challenges in European prison education are dire and tough. There is a broad range of individual needs that are handled with limited resources. Many inmates are drop-outs with distressing school experiences. Security, learning disabilities and foreign language issues are demanding. But The European Convention on Human Rights states in Article 2 that, “No person shall be denied the right to education”. So, in my quest to learn more about these issues, I found comfort in the thirteen recommendations on education in prisons provided by the European Council. They are all listed at a web site for the European Prison Education Association.

I also found two relevant European projects. The objective of the Pipline project was to improve prison education in Europe by making ICT available to learners and teachers. The HERO project focused on health promotion and educational support for the rehabilitation of offenders. Both projects developed, piloted and demonstrated online education solutions for high security prisons. It troubles me however, that they had to rely on inside learning management systems that deny access to the vast range of outside courses. It also disturbs me that inmates consequently are not able to continue these inside courses after they are released.

My conclusion is that online education has a potential to improve prison education significantly. First of all, it may increase the range of available courses dramatically. Secondly, it makes it much easier to stay the course in spite of the frequent relocations that are common in prisons. Finally, it may help prisoners continue and complete courses after they are released.

I am writing this entry to the blog after the Executive Committee meeting this month in London. On the picture you can see the Mall after the London Marathon, the day before the meeting.

We gathered primarily to review progress on preparations for the two upcoming EDEN meetings: firstly in Lisbon from June 11-14 and secondly for the Research Workshop in Paris from October 20-22.

Preparations for Lisbon have gone very well, and we have had the benefit of an excellent partnership with the Universidade Aberta of Portugal who have helped us enormously. We are looking forward to a very successful meeting and demand has been high for conference places. But readers of this blog can still apply!

The meeting in Paris on research, on the theme of Access, has been developed with the support of our VP Martine Vidal of CNED, France, and UNESCO who are hosts. We have also been able to have once again the support of the Ulrich Bernath Foundation for the award of best paper.

Other issues at the EC we examined included the venue of the 2009 Annual Conference, which will take place from June 10-13. I am able to tell you that we are very excited to have decided that Gdansk, Poland will be the venue, on the invitation of a range of academic and civic partners there. This beautiful and interesting city has a huge resonance across Europe and indeed the world for its central place in the changes that Europe experienced in the 1989-1990 period, which allowed us as professionals to work easily together for the first time. This period indeed represents the origins of EDEN which came into existence precisely in order to support Europe-wide professional and institutional relations at that time. So check out Gdansk on the web and claim these dates for your diary!

See you in Lisbon for this years’ conference very soon!

Best wishes,

Alan Tait

Contribution to the President’s Blog
From Morten Flate Paulsen,
Member of the EDEN Executive Committee

I recently spent some days in my rustic log cabin in the Norwegian mountains. The combination of reading, cross country skiing and fresh air was welcome. It gave me time to reflect on the experiences I made during two years’ work with the Megatrends project. The project resulted in four major reports that can be downloaded from the project’s web site at http://nettskolen.nki.no/in_english/megatrends/

The Megatrends project identified and analysed 26 successful European megaproviders of e-learning and ten conspicuous e-learning initiatives, which did not reach targeted goals. Fortunately, we experienced that it was much easier to find examples of successful e-learning initiatives that are robust and sustainable, than it was to find examples of failures.

We focused on distance education provision and did not include on-campus e-learning. The analysed megaproviders had more than 100 courses or 5000 course enrolments in 2005. They represented 11 European countries and included 8 distance education institutions, 13 universities and university consortia, and 5 corporate training providers. From a sustainability perspective, it is worth while noting that some megaproviders have offered online education for more than 20 years. Five of them started e-learning in the eighties and ten in the nineties. The largest provider, Learn Direct, claimed to have 400 000 course enrolments in 2005. It is also interesting to realize that among the six top ranked institutions there are no universities, only corporate training providers and distance education institutions.

During the project, I realized that educational research rarely focuses on failure or on the lessons that can be learnt from failure. We found that data on discontinued initiatives was difficult to collect. Some key individuals refused to be interviewed and others would not be referred to. Important documentation is not made available, and websites are quietly closed down. It was, however useful to learn that some of the content was still available via the Internet Archive.

Identification of characteristics and trends of e-learning initiatives that failed to reach targeted goals should be vital for the progress and development of the field. It was disturbing to find that the ten initiatives we analysed spent €150M of primarily public money before they were closed down after an average of four years in operation. As tax payers, we should be concerned about how public educational initiatives have wasted money on dubious initiatives and how hard it could be to reveal details about them. So, the project analysed the ten discontinued initiatives and found that political initiatives and
consortia dominate the discontinued initiatives in this study. Several of the consortia were actually perceived as competitors of their mother institutions. Many governmental and political online education initiatives have not been
sustainable. These initiatives are often very visible and expensive. One reason for the problems might be inconsistent policy due to changing governments and political disagreements. Compromises and lack of market knowledge may
also contribute to sub-optimal decisions.

The Megatrends project concluded with 27 recommendations to help institutions obtain robustness and sustainability in online education. I believe these recommendations could be useful for EDEN-members and others who would like
to provide robust and sustainable online education.

With all best wishes for successful online education,
Morten Flate Paulsen

From Martine Vidal, Vice-President

I am on my way back from a meeting of Erasmus Mundus project coordinators in Brussels, sitting in the Eurostar.

I took the photographs in Brussels on Friday last. It is an astonishing, grove of trees made of planks, in Boulevard de Waterloo. I wonder whether “wood you are, to wood you will return” could apply. It looks like a gigantic network, with wooden neurones and links – but I am sure leaves and flowers will grow out of them when Spring comes!

I have been wishing to write in the blog for at least two reasons. First it is high time I thank Alan Tait for his collaboration and support concerning my becoming Vice President along with Ulrich Bernath. That must be the trick of presidents: coaxing people into doing their best…

The second reason for writing is that a project, very dear to me has “come out” and is now accessible on the common space of collaborating journals. EDEN has been involved in it via EURODL and will go via the fifth Research Workshop next October in Paris, at Unesco.

It all started in the middle of 2006. As chief editor of a French speaking research journal on distance education, Distances et savoirs, I thought it would be interesting to encourage reciprocal recognition among different linguistic communities of researchers and practitioners in distance education.

So, I contacted a few editors of journals specialised in the same domain, in America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and some with a decidedly European and international scope, and asked them whether they would be interested in sharing a common call for papers, on a common theme. The resulting papers would make up a multicultural, multilingual set of references on a given theme, and widen the horizon of each journal and of their readers.

Very quickly five journals answered and were tempted by the experiment, so that we could embark on “the 6 journals call” – it was very heartening, very exciting, and only the beginning …

I felt it would take some time - when you are just one journal preparing a special theme, it takes about a year to complete the thematic issue. And now we would have to synchronize the results of six journals …!

It meant that the six would be ready by the beginning of 2008. This was the “triggering” point 2008 is the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 26th article proclaims he right to education. Distance education has an important role to play there, and has played a role in many instances. For example, my own institution, Cned (although it was called differently then), was created at a time when the right to education was threatened by war, in 1939. At the time, a number of schools were being used for something else than education, teachers were sent to fight, children were moved to different safer parts of France, and correspondence courses were organised to ensure education went on all the same.
I also thought that researching distance education not just for its technological, pedagogical or other intrinsic values, but as a specific tool ready to be set into action in specific circumstances might be a stimulating way of looking at it, and beyond – I will sound pedantic - of transcending it …

It was great when all other five journals agreed on the theme, enthusiastically. We were already deep into intercultural issues for finalising the call for papers, when one day in September 2006, John Bourne (JALN) wrote to me (from a conference on distance education he was attending):

“Tell you what - I’m going downstairs to the conference and I’ll ask my colleagues who have gathered for breakfast about their views about right to education, right now…”

And a few minutes later :

“I talked to a lot of folks - no one at this conference had heard of the right to education. Interesting that this term isn’t in common use among this group”.

I felt it made the collaboration among us six even more relevant. And we rephrased the call, with “distance education and right or access to education” which made more sense to everybody.

We had to organise an agreement between the journals so that each of us can publish in their own journals some translations of the articles from the other five (that was not an easy thing to do, technically and legally, and the documents had to go round the world in as many copies as signing journals). Think too that some journals are free, for others, usually those with printed version like Distances et savoirs, you have to subscribe to get it – so it was a very unusual occasion, and a real achievement to give full access to every paper !

Then the website was created, papers from all six published. A few more texts are still coming in but there are more than 40 now, from all over the world. I won’t say more, just go and read them, and send comments !

And also: come to the EDEN 5th research workshop in Paris, Unesco, 20-22 October 2008 ! when we will enlarge on the theme. You might meet some of the authors, you might feel tempted to submit experience and present papers on close topics. The field of ICT and the “right or access to education” is wide open to you. Welcome to the workshop website where the call has recently been published!

When the time comes, we’ll tell you about the “making of” that Research Workshop too, but don’t forget that we have another appointment before: EDEN Annual Conference in Lisbon, next June, where we will be awaiting you in our usual fashion!

EDEN’s secretariat is getting ready with flowers …

I have been reflecting on the fact that many of those who work in the field of distance learning are taking time at present to stand back and ask about the ethical bases of their and their organisations’ practice. Distance learning had a stance in its first modern phase – say the 1970s and 1980s – of challenging power.

Despite the fact that the major institutions at that time were the state established open universities in one form or another, the ethos was of challenging a conventional higher education system that was inadequate in its capacity and in its thinking to want to expand opportunity to those who were marginalised and excluded, and hostile to innovation in technology-supported learning. These institutions were accompanied in this endeavour by some NGOs and a wider range of institutions that took on the dual mode identity and practice, as for example in Australia. At the heart of the endeavour from an ethical point of view lay what we would now call social justice.

This term has a wide variety of meanings from the soft end of simply opening up opportunity (and that is no bad thing of course), to more radical notions of challenging power structures and elites. At its heart lies the notion that all in our societies are full citizens, with the same needs, rights, expectations and obligations. To attempt to steer by the core notion of social justice demands the explicit making account of how distance learning seeks to include the excluded, challenge the elites, and seek through the ‘open’ concept that is so often associated with distance learning to regard all of society as full citizens.

Core questions for consideration in this context would include:

• how do we ensure that the needs for organisational survival in a competitive landscape do not obscure but can be brought to serve the ethos of social justice?
• how do we respond to the need for curriculum to serve a population that has to find a sustainable livelihood in a competitive world?
• how do we place sustainability and environmental concern at the heart of our educational practices?
• how do we examine what openness and inclusion means in our varied societies, and how do we articulate explicitly our understandings of this?

Distance and e-learning through its flexibility and its commitment to innovation has the potential to engage with these core ethical issues, which revolve at heart around the issues of sustainable livelihoods for us all.

This entry to the blog is written shortly after the Executive Committee meeting in Lisbon, preparatory to the main EDEN Annual Conference to take place there from June 11-14 this year (see details of the conference elsewhere on this website).

The Committee enjoyed the hospitality of our partners for the conference the Universidade Aberta of Portugal, and we met in the beautiful Palacio Ceia.

One of the real joys of working for the EDEN is the access it gives you to the cultures, cities and landscapes of Europe, and Lisbon is one of the most charming cities I have ever visited. The Rector, Professor Carlos Reis was generous with his time, as was Pro-Rector, Antonio Teixeira, and have made preparations for the conference a real pleasure.

The Belem Conference Centre has some very exciting features in ways in which the space can be used for social networking, and I hope that as many readers of this blog as possible can come and see for yourselves how we will use this to conference participants’ benefit.

One of the things we discussed at the Executive Committee meeting was the emerging definitions of blogging and how we should optimise the blog that appears here. We have agreed that all members of the Executive Committee should have the opportunity to contribute as and when they can about their work for EDEN, so that we keep members in touch, and we hope reflect in our work what EDEN members want to see the Network doing.

There were a number of signs about the high levels of interest that exist in EDEN amongst members, including the new members both at institutional level (5 new members) and individual level (nine new members). This is a really strong sign that EDEN continues to build as the hub of distance and e-learning for Europe, and is increasingly being seen as such outside Europe too: we have particular strong interest from the USA with relations with the Sloan conference and the US Distance Learning Association, and with China.

We were also very pleased to see that there were 10 nominations for the 6 places on Network of Academics and Professionals Steering Committee, a very strong signal of member interest in EDEN’s life.

Last but by no means least we reviewed with Vice President Martine Vidal preparations for the 2008 Research Conference to take place in partnership with UNESCO in Paris from 20-22 October. The themes will be on research investigations into access and the contribution that distance and e-learning has been able to make.

I arrived home to enjoy a lunch for my birthday with my family, and to discover that my daughter will have a son in June: our third grandchild! So altogether a wonderful week professionally and personally.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

Dear all, Can I begin by offering best wishes to all EDEN members and other users of this site for the New Year 2008. I hope you all enjoyed a good holiday and found time to refresh with family and friends before facing the challenges and opportunities of this coming year.

I would like to report on the outcomes of the Executive Committee meeting held in October, in a memorable event organised by our outgoing President Ingeborg Boe, on the Merchant Vessel Midnatsol travelling between Trondheim and Tromsoe in Norway. This gave the new Committee a chance to get to know each other well and build the team spirit and understanding that is so valuable in any organisation and more difficult to create in international contexts where we meet less frequently. The meeting was invaluable for me as incoming President and I hope this blog too contributes to such a spirit for EDEN as a whole.

At that EC we elected a new Vice President Martine Vidal, who is Chargée de mission for research to The Rector, General Director of CNED, the Centre National D’Enseignement a Distance, based in Poitiers, France.

Martine has been particularly active in building our relations with the Sloan Consortium conference, which support EDEN’s role as an important European partner for innovative and flexible learning in the USA. Martine is also Editor of the CNED journal Distance et Savoirs, and has led in an activity which will result in a special the issue on Human Rights and Distance Education across 6 journals, including our own EURODL . Martine is a wonderful colleague to have as a Vice President, working as hard as she does for EDEN, and with the very active and well known Uli Bernath as the other VP, EDEN and I are very lucky to have such a strong team.

October also saw the Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm, led by former EC member Carl Holmberg of Swedish Agency for Flexible Learning and Nikitas Kastis, Chair of the Open Classroom Working Group, Lambrakis Foundation, Greece. This successful meeting of some 135 participants examined the issues around the new technologies and teacher development, and I was very pleased to be able to attend the final day.

We now look forward to planning the main EDEN conference for 2008 in Lisbon, 11-14 June to be precise - and the Executive Committee will meet in Lisbon in February with the colleagues from the Universidade Aberta to further develop our activities. The theme of the conference on ‘New Learning Cultures’ will provide the basis for serious discussion for all EDEN members from practitioner and academics and research backgrounds about the issues of cultural change and intercultural complexity in today’s learning environments. There will also be the chance for fun and conversation with the many EDEN participants in the beautiful city of Lisbon. I hope very much to meet you there.

I also want to mention for the Research Community in particular the meeting in Paris from October 20-22, 2008, in partnership with UNESCO, of our EDEN Research Conference. The main focus here will be on researching and promoting access to education and learning, and is again led by Vice President Martine Vidal. More about that soon.

Two last things to mention: firstly that the EDEN journal EURODL is looking for suggestions for themed issues: could suggestions be sent to me. And secondly that we will in the future open this blog up to other members of the EDEN Executive Committee so that we can as a whole engage with and be accountable to you, our members.

With all best wishes for 2008,

Alan Tait

Transcontinental liaisons

Dear all, time to post another entry to the blog and let you all know what has been happening over the last month. We have seen the last days of what was a very wet summer in England now changing into a pleasant autumn. I took the chance to sit and work in the garden over the weekend (my dog Jack is also enjoying the better weather!).

From an EDEN perspective, we have been developing the role that EDEN plays as a European promoter and representative of the world of distance and e-learning for other regions in the world. Our Vice President Uli Bernath is going to represent EDEN at a conference in Beijing this month, following up the very positive links we made with senior representatives of the Chinese Central Radio and TV University at our last EDEN annual conference in Naples. Uli will be speaking on the theme of quality assurance at a conference organised by the Open University UK which will be attended by more than 50 Chinese Universities who are offering distance and e-learning, as well as by a number of European institutions. We hope in this way to develop a presence for Europe as promoter of distance and e-learning on behalf of all our members in China.

Martine Vidal of the Centre National d’Enseignement à Distance (CNED) in France, and a senior Executive Committee member of EDEN, will also be representing EDEN in another region of the world, namely the USA. Martine will go for the second time on EDEN’s behalf to the Sloan Consortium conference in November in Orlando, Florida. The Sloan conference is a significant event in the distance and e-learning world in the USA and brings together a range of US institutions committed to online learning. Martine’s contribution will build the European presence, and represents an important element of the Executive Committee’s wish to build the profile of European distance and E-learning in other regions of the world.

On the Executive Committee we are all preparing now for the next meeting of the EC which takes place in Norway from 18-20 October. Our former President Ingeborg Bøe has organised an unusual venue for the meeting, namely the vessel MS Midnatsol, which will sail from Trondheim to Tromsoe up the Norwegian coast. We have a range of important issues to consider, including the organisation with the Universidade Aberta of Portugal of our annual conference in June 2008 in Lisbon, and our research conference in October 2008 in Paris, supported by CNED (visit the EDEN website regularly for emerging details). We also intend to step back and consider more broadly the priorities and activities that we should be taking up for the next period, and which I, as President, am committed to delivering with you all. Your suggestions are very welcome.

Lastly, I should mention that EURODL has a new Assistant Editor, Mirjam Hauck, who is a senior lecturer in German at the OU UK. Mirjam brings a range of new and innovative ideas, and one we are going to consider is the possibility of using an ‘open refereeing’ system, where articles can have part of their refereeing process undertaken by visitors to the website. More of this soon!

So enough from me for this month, and stay in touch with EDEN!

Best wishes,

Alan Tait

This is the first entry in a new feature on the EDEN website, the President’s Blog. My aim through this blog is to be able to share with EDEN members and all visitors to this site more about the ways in which the role of EDEN as the premier professional and practitioners network for distance and e-learning in Europe is developing, and equally to offer the opportunity to learn from the comments and suggestions of readers of the blog about the services and features of EDEN you would like.

Read more…