EDEN President’s Blog

Dear EDEN colleagues and friends, I’m pleased and honored to take over as the 7th President of EDEN after Erling Ljosa (1992-1995), Tamás Lajos (1995-1997), Valerio Grementieri (1997-2000), Erwin Wagner (2000-2003) Ingeborg Boe (2003-2007) and Alan Tait (2007-2010). The length of the list reminds me that e-learning no longer is a new development; EDEN will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year and it is strange to acknowledge that I taught my first online course 23 years ago.

My first recollection of EDEN was from the very early 1990ies when I discussed with Erling Ljosa how a new European organization could establish an electronic newsletter for distance education. The first tangible result was published in a 1992 issue of DEOS, where I included Erling Ljosa’s reflections on our field, and now we can contemplate on how Europe, EDEN and distance Education has changed during the last two decades:

I sometimes ask myself who we are, we who have been grasped by a lasting interest in this strange thing, distance education. Are we a gang of outcasts, people who for some accidental reason have stepped outside the more firmly established educational society? Are we technological wizards who think learning is oozing out of machines and cables? Or are we the true visionaries looking into and trying to create the future structures of education?…The future of EDEN will grow from our ability to create links across national and regional boundaries, and between people and institutions with either similar or quite different experience, but with common interests and aims in the field of distance learning. Europe is a fragile and complex mixture of societies and people. I hope that by creating new and stronger links in one of the growing fields of education and training, EDEN will contribute significantly to the development of educational opportunities within the whole of Europe.

Now, nearly 20 years later, I’m really proud of what we have achieved and what we are doing in the field of distance education and e-learning. The members of EDEN have made it possible for millions of students to get the education they want, and we should all be really proud of this important contribution to the society.

As I said at the Annual General Meeting, the three favorite words in my e-learning vocabulary are: Flexibility, Cooperation and Transparency, and I hope and think these words will be used frequently during my EDEN presidency. One issue which is related to transparency is that I want the members to have easy access to more information about the representatives in EDEN committees and groups. Therefore, I’m especially enthusiastic about the new NAP-members area which could become a very useful service for EDEN members. It already has more than 1200 members and a potential to grow considerably. For those of us who struggle to remember names or faces, it is useful to know that the NAP area already includes a lot of names, pictures, EDEN roles and further information about friends and colleagues. Now, I hope to see new “NAP-friends” and additional information every time I log on.

I’m also excited about the impressive list of EDEN Fellows and I contemplate how we can initiate an interesting and useful forum for the EDEN Fellows. There are now 13 EDEN-Senior fellows and 30 EDEN-fellows. Some of them have already started to make the information in their NAP-presentations public and I’m sure public NAP-presentations of these distinguished ambassadors will enhance the online visibility of EDEN. Their public NAP-presentations are available via this list.

I’m confident that I have a strong team of people who will help me develop EDEN further. I’m looking forward to continue a good relationship with Secretary General, Dr András Szûcs, Office Manager, Anna Wagner and their excellent Secretariat in Budapest. The figure shows the Secretariat from a screenshot of my NAP-page titled friends collection. You can also see their NAP presentations.

I’m also really happy to have two very good and hard working colleagues as Vice-Presidents. Antonio Teixeira (Portugal) and Alan Bruce (Ireland). The EDEN Executive Committee meets about 4 times a year and contributes a lot to the success of EDEN. Now, after the Annual General meeting, we have increased the number of EC-members to eleven and I’m pleased to welcome our new colleagues Gilly Salmon (UK), Costas Tsolakidis (Greece), Deborah Arnold (France), Airina Volungeviciene (Lithuania) and Ene Koitla (Estonia) as new members of the EC. The figure shows all the EC members from a screenshot of one of my NAP-pages. You can also see the presentations of the EC-members.

Together with 190 institutional members and a lot of competent and devoted members, I’m convinced that we together are able to continue the successes of EDEN.

Taking over as President of EDEN after Alan Tait, is both a privilege and a daunting challenge. Alan established this blog when he was elected as President of EDEN at the annual conference in Naples in June 2007. His first entry was posted shortly after and during his presidency Alan published 20 interesting and well written blog contributions about the developments of EDEN along with his personal experiences and reflections from the field of distance education and e-learning. His blog is now moved to EDEN Past-President’s blog.

When I realized that it was my responsibility to continue Alan’s prolific blogging, I briefly considered engaging him or another professional blogger as a ghost writer or substituting the President’s blog with the President’s Tweets. Backed by Steve – the ghost writer - Wheeler, or limited by 140 characters per tweet, I realized that I could become as productive as Alan.

Joking aside, Alan has an impressive EDEN track record. He has been on the EDEN Executive Committee (EC) for six years and the president for the three years I have been on the EC. As the incoming president, and on behalf of his EC, I would like to say that Alan has led our work in a very stimulating, open, constructive and friendly way. So, at our EC meeting in Valencia it was a pleasure and honor for us to give him a blue and gold metal plaque with the following inscription:

Alan was among the founding members of the Budapest Platform, the immediate predecessor organization of EDEN in 1990, and he actively supported the preparations leading to the launching of EDEN as a European association in 1991. When I searched my personal files, I found that Alan was one of the contributors to a DEOS newsletter which in November 1992 distributed an electronic version of the first printed EDEN Newsletter.

At that time, I was a doctoral student at Penn State University working at the American Center for Distance Education for EDEN Senior Fellow Michael G. Moore. There, I established DEOS – the Distance Education Online Symposium. Now, I find it really interesting to read this historic issue reporting from the first EDEN conference in Krakow. Regarding my high expectations for the newly established online NAP Members area it is useful to reflect on how Alan explained the aims and activities of the EDEN NAP when it was established nearly 20 years ago:

EDEN’s Academic and Professional Section held its inaugural meeting during the EDEN conference in Krakow. The Academic and Professional Section aims to provide a vehicle for the professional development of colleagues in open and distance learning across the whole of Europe. It will reflect the wide range of educational interest in education at both secondary and tertiary levels, in training and vocational development, in broadcasting, and in enterprises. It was agreed at the meeting in Krakow that the following range of activities would be appropriate:

• Conferences and seminars
• Staff exchanges and secondments
• Specialist grouping eg. research; management; student support,
• course writing; evaluation etc.

The ideas were generated by the 50 or so people present at the meeting, and it was resolved to work towards the first Academic and Professional Section Conference which will take place in Cambridge UK in September 1993.

The Academic and Professional Section of EDEN will complement EDEN’s main work. It will be open to all practitioners on the European regional basis. Those interested in finding out more about the Academic and Professional Section are invited to contact Ms Kerry Mann, Executive Secretary, EDEN.

From my perspective, with experience as editor of DEOS, I’m especially impressed by Alan’s long standing contribution as Editor of EURODL since it started in 1997. I was also pleased and thankful when he assured me that he would keep on as Chief Editor of EURODL. I’m also proud to remember that I initiated and enabled EURODL’s predecessor, ANDREA, which was established in September 1994. ANDREA is an acronym for A Network for Distance Education Reporting from European Activities, but I must admit that I struggled hard to come up with these words so that the newsletter could be named after my daughter. My mentor, EDEN Senior Fellow Torstein Rekkedal, was the editor of Andrea, and you can still read his first issue.

So, finally a warm and heartfelt thank you to Alan, we know that he will continue to support EDEN as a Senior Fellow and wish him all the best for the future.

Morten Flate Paulsen
http://www.eden-online.org/nap_elgg/pg/profile/morten