Today at the 2017 annual EDEN Conference in Jönköping/ Sweden we have held a learning cafe workshop on a very important theme in the overall discussion of Quality in E-learning: „Renewing the European Quality Agenda“.
Why „renewing“?
Well, in a time where E-learning is more and more moving from an exception to a general offering the question of quality which has always been very important to ask and to strive for, has to be asked from a different angel. Universities and educational institutions, and also national policies in general are turning more and more to embrace digital media into the core of their operations. In my view we have Europe wide reached a stage in which we went from a more experimental stage of using digital media in educational institutions to a stage where integration happens and a normalization takes place. Of course throughout Europe there is still a very divers scene.
However in this situation, the integration of digital media has to stand a test as a ’standard mode d’employ‘ and therefore needs to deliver. The question on quality is therefore not an experimental any more but becomes more crucial as digital media influence the core of higher educational institutions.
Against the background the workshop asked the question if the current frameworks which we have established throughout the past decade in Europe to assure and to develop quality for e-learning and technology enhanced learning is still suitable or needs to be renewed, and if: how.
For the workshop we have been joined by Alastair Crelman and by Cecilia Bjursel who each gave an impulse about their views of what good learning is. This was meant as a mind disrupting lead-in into the discussion on quality, because we felt that we did not want to start the discussion on quality just by directly diving into the „usual“ existing frameworks and standards.
The discussion was very lively and turned up the 4 main conclusions after 90 minutes of discussion:
- Power – how can teachers in a digital free pedagogy let go of their power and give the rains of learning more into the hands of students?
- EQF – how can we make sure that the experiences made during the past decade with innovation in learning can be used to inform better the ongoing debates in Europe, specifically ask this for the European quality framework processes?
- Openness – how can we develop quality for open learning and open education environments? How can freedom be organized?
- Culture – How can a holistic quality culture be achieved?