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Emphasis of Europe on virtual campuses is growing. The EC gives high priority to virtual campus projects which are demonstrably embedded in a global strategy for the effective integration of ICT in higher education institutions and are aiming at developing, disseminating and making sustainable at European level initiatives providing open educational resources, easy to access shareable contents covering a complete cycle of study (bachelor, master, or doctorate levels) and leading to a recognised level of quality of ICT tools and services fostering virtual mobility, cooperation and exchange of strategic experiences.
In this field ECTN and ECTNA, which have already a leadership in promoting European high level educational standards, should extend their action moving from multimedia to Virtual Teaching & Learning Communities (VT&LC). As clearly indicated in the volume Innovative Methods of Teaching and Learning Chemistry in Higher Education [1] presented during the meeting recently held in Dresden, networking and computing technologies are rapidly moving in that direction and the Chemistry Thematic Network should take the lead of this action by pursuing related tasks and developing suitable tools. As a matter of fact, this is indeed what workpackage n 5 of the EC2E2N project (the most recent creation of the Chemistry Thematic Network approved by the EC) aims at through its declared tasks
"The first task is to develop relationships among the Universities of the project based on the model of grid virtual organizations. This will mean designing a way to establish a Community of Practices (CoP) for education by adopting networked open and distance digital technologies.
The second task is to design a system for a distributed management of the specific features of the Molecular & Material Sciences & Technologies (MMST) teaching and learning practices so as to further stimulate student centered education. This implies the design of a set of web-based activities complementing the necessary local front and laboratory work typical of the specific educational organization of each site.
The third task will be to identify the best way of collecting and making shareable the educational material (often called “learning objects” or LO) produced by the teachers of partner Institutions after adopting agreed digital formats and feeding interlinked distributed repositories (shared repertoires). This implies the definition of suitable standards for the production and storage of such material or for the conversion of those already produced. This also implies the design of an organization of such material for an open science usage.
The fourth task will investigate how to utilize the material in the shared repertoires to support telematic activities aimed at assessing and certificating chemical and chemical engineering knowledge at various levels (from compulsory to professional education) at a professional level. This will imply the design of a system for offering this type of service not only to the students of the network partners but also to other Universities and to the general public.”
To start addressing these tasks the workpackage is gathering together most of the experts who have already contributed to the Multimedia group. The workpackage will be coordinated by the Perugia group (Lagana, Faginas Lago, Manuali, Costantini, Pallottelli,Tasso) and has already received the support of the University of Aberdeen (Wilkins), Antwerp (Vandervelde), Avignon (Vieillercazes), Madrid (Fajardo), Venezia (Paolucci), Thessaloniki (Kozakis), Vienna (Froehlich), Helsinki (Wähälä), Open University (Benneth). In the first year of the project the group will start building a proper virtual Organization and carry out the analysis of the features that such a VT&LO must possess to be an effective Teaching and Learning CoP. At the same time the analysis will be extended to the key characteristics of a shareable repository of LOs. The present is also a call for interested people to join the workpackage.
[1] Innovative Methods of Teaching and
Learning Chemistry in Higher Education, I. Eilks and B. Byers Ed., RSC
Publishing (2009), ISBN 978-1-84755-958-6
Prof. Antonio Lagana
WG Leader
© 2009 ECTN NewsLetter December 2009, 10 (4)
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