European report on best practices in lifelong learning strategies using ICTs

This project, called Hextlearn, funded by the European Commission, came to an end in October 2010. There are four main outcomes:

• a report on Good practices and methodologies for HEI using ICT in the different fields of LLL
• a report on Peer Review as a methodology to enhance quality of ICT integration in teaching and learning
• a Living Toolkit for sharing best practices.
• an ongoing Hextlearn community

There are several points to note about this project, particularly for people outside Europe.

The emphasis here is on lifelong learning, which in Hextlearn language, is classified into nine different ‘territories’:

• campus education (CE),
• corporate training (CT),
• continuous professional development (CPD),
• adult education (AE),
• local and regional development (RD),
• school teachers’ training (ST),
• distance education (DE),
• international virtual mobility (VM),
• PLA guidance and development (PLA)

‘Good practice’ also has a somewhat curious definition. An institution was included as good practice using the following criteria:

• BIG – scale of operation,
• RELIABLE – available evaluation of results/impact
• RELIABLE – quality assurance at place, (later merged with the former factor)
• FAMOUS – international/national reputation/visibility,
• MODEL – transferability (demonstrated or hypothetical),
• NEW – degree of innovation.

Interviews were then held with those institutions that met the good practice criteria, from which a number of ‘recommended’ practices were identified by ‘territory’.

These recommendations should come as no surprise to anyone with experience of using technology for teaching and learning. I was left with the impression that this was a typical European Commission project: lots of busy work across many European countries, ending with a report that leaves one feeling that something essential has been missed. However, the main value that is likely to come from this project is the networking of people across Europe interested in using ICTs to support lifelong learning.