HEXTLEARN
Where Quality meets ICT
Quality, Higher Education and ICT. These are the keywords for a new European Union co-funded project started in this year in Budapest, Hungary. The representatives of eleven institutions from all over the continent and beyond held their new project's kick-off meeting on 14-15 January 2008. The three year long initiative is promoting quality in the strategic use of ICT in European Higher Education.
The use of ICT in Higher Education institutions is constantly spreading in spite of the many doubts surrounding the quality of first generation eLearning approaches and applications. In the same time, the universities and colleges rarely address the quality assurance of their eLearning services. While strategic integration of ICT in teaching and learning is highlighted in the policy documents, the daily practice of European Universities shows that a quality driven approach in traditional and e-learning services is scarce.
The HEXTLEARN (Higher Education exploring ICT use for Lifelong Learning) network aims at increasing the level of attention of the Higher Education Community on ICT strategic integration, by generating awareness, commitment and networking on quality assurance aspects and strategic integration of ICT in teaching, learning and innovation in Higher Education. The project is financed by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013 - Transversal Programme and will be running until the end of 2010.
The partners plan to map 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. The project also endeavours to carry out peer review exercises based on collaboration among experts of the ICT approaches and applications. International and national face-to-face and online networking actions will be serving the exchange of information and practices, to foster the communication and the interaction between transversal learning communities.
Project participants:
Coordinator: Scienter, Italy
Contractor: Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Partners:
Academic Cooperation Association (ACA)
EuroPACE ivzw
European Foundation for Quality in eLearning
ESU - European Students' Union (former ESIB)
European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN)
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Universidad de Granada, Spain
University "Politehnica" of Bucharest, Romania
Scienter España S.L., Spain
