The E-LEN project

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The E-LEN project

• http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN

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E-LEN Project objectives

• E-LEN Project (http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN) is
  partially funded by the European Union under the
  Minerva programme
• We formed a European network of institutions with
  e-learning expertise
• E-LEN is working with the e-learning community to
  construct a knowledge base for educational
  design. Were focusing on
• re-usable design knowledge, and
• supporting the work of multi-disciplinary
  e-learning design teams.

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E-LEN Project consortium

• University of Cyprus (co-ordinator)
• The Learning Lab, University of Maastricht (NL)
• CSALT, University of Lancaster (UK)
• A Priori Ltd (UK)
• Ilmenau Technical University (DE)
• Hypermedia Open Center Politechnico di Milano
  (IT)
• InterMedia, University of Bergen (NO)
• NITOL (NO)
• National Technical University of Athens (GR)
• Open University (NL)
• University of Lugano

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E-LEN Project Approach

• Our approach involves
• We work on offering guidelines for setting up and
  running an e-learning centre
• the term e-learning centre is used to describe
  a unit within a larger organisation (such as a
  university or a company) that has the role of
  helping the members of the organisation to create
  e-learning opportunities (courses, resources,
  learning communities, tools, etc.).
• the production of design patterns and a pattern
  language for e-learning

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E-LEN Project and patterns

• A pattern describes a problem which occurs over
  and over again in our environment, and then
  describes the core of the solution to that
  problem, in such a way that you can use this
  solution a million times over, without ever doing
  it the same way twice (Alexander et al., 1977)

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Patterns are meant to

• Help us tell a relevant example of a learning
  activity with a formalism
• Capture expert practice
• Communicate expertise to others
• Present strategies regarding common recurring
  instructional problems
• Provide a vocabulary of instructional decisions
• Collaborate with others in designing learning
  activities

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Initiatives around patterns

• Repositories of patterns exist for various
  disciplines and offer the chance to re-use design
  expertise within their corresponding communities.
  
• Examples are in object-oriented software
  engineering, hypermedia and humancomputer
  interaction.
• We believe that it is now timely for the CSCL
  community to engage in a similar initiative.
• We have formed 4 special interest groups (SIGs)
  in which experts and motivated interested people
  collaborate using the Blackboard/Polaris
  platfrom.
• Each SIG is being moderated and facilitated by
  experts. The SIG on collaborative learning is
  being moderated by prof. P. Goodyear

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Special Interest groups on patterns

• We have formed 4 special interest groups (SIGs)
  in which experts and motivated interested people
  collaborate using the Blackboard/Polaris
  platform.
• The SIGs are
• Lifelong learning
• Collaborative learning
• Learning Management Systems
• Adaptive learning
• Each SIG is being moderated and facilitated by
  experts.

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Next steps

• Most of our work will be expressed in terms of
  design patterns for e-learning, which will be
  placed in the public domain.
• We are inviting people to participate in
  critiquing and refining the design patterns.
• The more views we can incorporate from members of
  the e-learning community, the richer the
  repository of e-learning design patterns will be.
• Please register your interest on the E-LEN
  website, and we will email you to let you know
  how you can participate.

http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN