Higher Education exploring ICT use for Lifelong Learning

The HEXTLEARN Network aims at increasing the level of attention of the Higher Education Community by

• generating awareness, commitment and networking on quality assurance aspects and strategic integration of ICT in teaching, learning and the innovation of Higher Education;
• promoting mutual understanding and common purposes towards quality assurance and common innovation strategies among the groups active in ICT teaching and training in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and addressing the different lifelong learning (LLL) subsystems;
• disseminating replicable solutions to help setting up communities at EU level, establishing a community of decision makers in the context of a LLL strategy and to support the modernisation agenda for European organisations of Higher Education from a community of expert peer reviewers able to serve the quality development of ICT use for teaching and learning in HEI.

Over 300 higher education professionals make use of the HEXTLEARN project’s web 2.0 community space (http://hextlearn.eu/) by sharing their experiences. In the framework of the project, good practices on ICT use in Higher education are being discussed online and recommended for peer reviewing. Community members receive tailored news on what is happening now in ICT for Higher Education around Europe while members may establish their own groups to discuss topics of their interest.

The HEXTLEARN network maps the use of ICT by carrying out an extensive research of good practices, analysing the straightness of the different approaches in ICT/eLearning processes in implementing lifelong learning strategy in the educational institutions. Using the good practice contributions, a pool of peer reviewers carry out peer review exercises based on collaboration among experts of the ICT approaches and applications. To date numerous interesting good practices have been uploaded by community members and several Groups were created. Practices in different territories such as the Finnish Virtual University teamed up by 21 Finnish Universities or the University of Ulster’s good practice supporting both on- and off-campus students via ICT indicate that ICT use in Higher Educational Institutions is turning innovation into everyday practice.

During the peer review process international and national face-to-face and online networking actions aim the exchange of information and practices, to foster the communication and the interaction between transversal learning communities. Any institution described by a good practice at the HEXTLEARN online community is eligible for peer review in case it gets rated and recommended by the members of the online community. Peer reviews will be focused on quality aspects of the ICT use in institutional framework: learner services; learning delivery; learning development; teaching capability; evaluation and assessment capacity; accessibility; technical capability and institutional capability.

Extracted from EDEN