In 2002, the elearningeuropa.info portal was launched as a European Commission initiative to support education and training through all kinds of multimedia and technological tools. Since then, the portal has encouraged the use of high quality educational contents and dialogue and cooperation for...

When you really get down to analysing it, the promises of eLearning often have yet to materialise. The question of how eLearning can be successful becomes more urgent as we move from an “early adopter” stage to a more general offering. In a European educational market, it is critically...

Blended learning, also known as hybrid or mixed learning, is an approach that has developed with tenacity in the field of education. It is by no means a new term or methodology. To learn and teach in a blended way has been and continues to be an intelligent way of conforming to different training...

Like any “new” complex phenomenon, e-Learning has been attracting, over the past decades, a lot of interest from different stakeholders in a totally horizontal manner with respect to education and training sectors. Many labels have been assigned to the act of using some kind of ICT in learning...

The notion of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has come a long way since it was coined in the 1990s. The advent of technology has meant that communities can be increasingly distributed and niche communities can be developed as people with distinct interests seek out others across the world to advance...

Following the Riga Ministerial Declaration of June 2006, an important ministerial event is scheduled to be held in Lisbon the 2 and 3 of December 2007 exclusively dedicated to analyze eInclusion signals and the intensification of political and policy actions (like the “2008 eInclusion...

The year 2008 has been declared as the European year of Intercultural Dialogue. One of our authors pertinently outlines: “This is but one sign of the growing awareness of the need to reflect on the multicultural dimensions of our society and work actively at overcoming the gaps and fear that...

In an open world as ours, interactive communication technologies generate an impact which has an influence on both individual learners and the organisations administrating learning processes. This new issue of eLearning Papers aims to contribute to the debate highlighting several articles which...

Today’s learning management systems can be perceived as islands – islands in the vast sea of learning possibilities the World Wide Web offers. Not only content can be obtained, refined and selected; learners can also adopt those tools which are important for their purposes, create their own and...

This issue of eLearning Papers is dedicated to the thriving work around Open Educational Resources (OER) by committed individuals, institutions and user communities. Five selected papers by the guest editors investigate the organisational, social, cultural, pedagogical and technical aspects of...

The economic globalization and the development of a knowledge and information society in relation with the evolution of support technologies move deeply our societies. On one hand, these factors provoke the questioning on several social activities, and on the other hand they generate a new...

In the beginning of the 21st century, we are experiencing an interesting evolution of the demand for learning both by individuals, societies and education authorities. Evidently, the acrimonious relation between the education provision and the social mandates of growth (performance) and social...

Creativity and innovation are becoming most crucial in knowledge societies due to the fact that no one can escape the challenges ahead of us. We live and tackle obstacles for good in an increasingly undivided world. In businesses and cultures, for example, most actors continue to apply a primarily...

A special publication by Learnovation in cooperation with the eLearning Papers to support the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009. Over the past decade, ICT have enabled changes in the way people live, work, interact and acquire knowledge. Successful education and training in our...

Children and adolescents in modern societies are growing up in a world where digital technologies are ubiquitous. The widespread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and online services by youngsters in their everyday life for leisure, entertainment and social interaction is...

The proliferation in recent years of tools, practices and models about teaching, learning and technology is remarkable. This issue of eLearning Papers is a good example of it, as it includes five outstanding analyses focused on the application of technology and media to educational processes....

The landscape of eLearning content is in the midst of interesting changes. While the development of digital media is providing radical new opportunities for both learning content providers and for students, the increasing bandwidth of telecommunications enables the unforeseen use of media rich...