SPEECH/03/48
Viviane REDING
Member of the European Commission responsible for Education
and Culture
“Is e-learning going mainstream?”
Opening of the Learntec Forum
Karlsruhe, 4 February 2003
Introduction
It is a pleasure for me to be here today at such an important and influential event,
among so many experts.
At a time when we are no longer asking the question “can ICT, the Internet and elearning help us to improve the quality of education and training?” – this having
been demonstrated through countless examples.
Instead we are asking “how and when may we best use e-learning in our schools, in
our universities, in our training colleges, in the work place …?” Our attention is
moving from the technology and the infrastructure, towards the practice, the
pedagogy, the content … We are now concerned with issues of: context,
effectiveness, efficiency, standards and quality. And we are examining the wider
implications for curricula, for training and technical support, and for organisational
change within the educational establishments.
All this at a time when our education and training systems are going through a
period of fundamental change, as we move inextricably towards the knowledge
society. A society of lifelong learning and education for all.
Mainstreaming of e-learning
We have come a long way since Learntec first opened its doors more than ten
years ago. In those pioneering days, our first attempts at e-learning solutions were
often unsuccessful: they isolated the learner, they were inflexible and dictated how
we must learn, and they tried to replace the teacher or trainer with automated
checklists, pop-up menus and help-pages.
Technology was king and we were so concerned with trying to connect schools to
the internet and putting PCs in classrooms that we often forgot to think about the
process of learning.
At work too, there was so much emphasis on reducing cost and increasing
efficiency that we often neglected to consider the impact of ICT on the effectiveness
of the learning itself. Traditional in-house company training was replaced by do-ityourself, CD-ROM based learning. But as a result, the drop-out rate from training
courses was much higher. Learners just didn’t like this new way of learning and
many companies started to question their investment in technology.
But thankfully we have learnt from those early days and technology has advanced
significantly. Modern e-learning solutions now recognise the importance of learning
as a social process and offer possibilities for collaboration with other learners, for
interaction with the learning content and for guidance from teachers, trainers and
tutors. These learner-centric approaches have put the learners back in command,
with a wealth of learning resources at their finger tips.
Teachers and trainers once more play a central role, using virtual and traditional
face-to-face interactions with their students in a ‘blended’ approach. An approach in
which they are no longer seen simply as consumers of pre-determined e-learning
content, but as editors, authors and contributors to a contextualised learning
scenario.
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With some 93%1 of European schools now connected to the Internet, with a
average of 17 pupils per PC and with the rapid uptake in broadband, we see that elearning is becoming mainstream. Just as we depend on heating, lighting, and
electricity, so now do we depend on ICT and especially the Internet. They are acting
as a catalyst for change, helping schools, universities and colleges to offer better
learning support to pupils, students, industry and society at large.
Support from the European Commission
I have been pleased to work closely with my colleague Commissioner Liikanen, to
achieve the ambitious goals of eEurope2 :

“Bringing every citizen, home and school, every business and administration,
into the digital age and online.
 Creating a digitally literate Europe, supported by an entrepreneurial culture ready
to finance and develop new ideas.
 Ensuring the whole process is socially inclusive, builds consumer trust and
strengthens social cohesion”.
The eEurope Action Plan identifies a significant role for e-learning. And this is why
we launched the eLearning Initiative and developed the eLearning Action Plan to
help the Members States co-ordinate their efforts to integrate ICT and adapt their
education and training systems.
Within this context, we see a number of Community funded programmes and
initiatives which support the use e-learning:
The Leonardo da Vinci programme has a number of projects applying e-learning in
the workplace, providing greater cost-effectiveness, flexibility and relevance for
learning at work.
The Socrates programme, through the Minerva action line, is encouraging the
innovative use of ICT for education, facilitating improvements in teaching methods
and pedagogical frameworks.
The Framework Programmes for Community research have invested millions of
Euros in state-of-the-art projects to help improve learning technologies, develop
standards, and to help us to better understand the impact of technology on
education and training.
And then there is the eLearning Initiative itself, which has launched many projects to
further enhance our understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of e-learning,
in practice:
 around 30 pilot projects to try out e-learning in schools, universities and for work;
 14 projects to understand the impact on Media Literacy;
 and 4 strategic projects to address issues of standards, quality and good
pedagogical practice;
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2
Figures from ‘eEurope 2002 Benchmarking – European youth into a Digital Age’, based on the
Eurobarometer
eEurope an Information Society for All, Communication on a Commission Initiative for the Special
European Council of Lisbon, 23 and 24 March 2000, December 1999.
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Example projects include:
 The ELDA project which offers special needs education using e-learning.
 The European Schoolnet project (EUN) which offers practical support to both
pupils and teachers using the Internet in the classroom.
 The GENIUS project which builds upon the work of the Careerspace consortium,
to offer the common diploma for ICT at several universities in Europe through
virtual services
 the DELOS project which is acting as an observatory, helping to collect, analyse
and disseminate information on e-learning throughout Europe
 and the recently launched SEEQUEL project which brings together a number of
important actors from academia & industry, including the eLearning Industry
Group, to look at issues of quality
The eLearning Portal
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the exchange of information and the
sharing of knowledge on e-learning in Europe, I am pleased to announce the launch
of a new eLearning Portal3. The purpose of which is to act as a virtual meeting
place and directory of information for all aspects of e-learning. The young and the
old, the expert and the novice are invited to use the portal to explore the world of elearning and to gain access to the considerable work that is already going on
throughout Europe.
The eLearning portal is being demonstrated at the European Commission’s stand in
the exhibition, and my colleagues will be more than pleased to go through its
features with you.
The eLearning Programme
Our work at the Community level continues to receive considerable encouragement
and support from the Members States, the European Parliament, the Council and
the social partners.
It is in order to continue and reinforce this work that Commissioner Liikanen and I
have recently presented a proposal for an eLearning Programme to run from 2004
to 2006.
The objectives of the programme are to promote and facilitate the effective use of
ICT in European education and training systems, as a contribution to:
 increased quality in education,
 their adaptation to the needs of the knowledge society and
 the European model of social cohesion.
The proposal will establish a legal framework for our work on e-learning and
reinforce our efforts in four priority areas.
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http://www.elearningeuropa.info/
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The first priority concerns the fight against the Digital Divide.
Development of the knowledge society carries with it the risk of a new kind of social
exclusion: the digital divide. This risk applies equally to education and training,
where the absence of suitable access to the Internet or an inability to use the
technology effectively, can create a real barrier to learning.
Action under this priority will cover both conceptual and practical issues:
 We will look at Digital literacy and the different ways that ICT may be used to
acquire the essential skills and competencies needed to take an active role in the
knowledge society.
 We will identify ‘flagship’ projects in Member States which are using e-learning
successfully to help fight the digital divide
We will support European networks, associations, public authorities, public-private
partnerships, or any other form of co-operation, in their efforts to disseminate good
practice in this area.
The second priority concerns the deployment of European virtual campuses.
Universities and higher education institutions are key actors in the production and
dissemination of knowledge. And they are increasingly using e-learning as a source
of added value for their students – providing on-campus and off-campus, flexible,
virtual learning through web-based resources.
We will encourage the development of new organisational models for European
virtual universities (virtual campus) and for European exchange and sharing
schemes (virtual mobility), building on existing European co-operation frameworks
(such as the Erasmus programme, and the Bologna & Bruges processes).
The third priority concerns schools e-twinning
In schools we are seeing greater emphasis being placed on the quality of e-learning
products and services, and on the pedagogical context for their use. As I said
earlier, we are moving beyond questions of connectivity and infrastructure, to ones
associated with content, teacher training and organisational implications, including
new social interactions inside and beyond schools.
We will strengthen and develop this co-operation between schools, via an
European-wide internet-based school-twinning scheme which should make it
possible for all European schools to build pedagogical partnerships with a school
elsewhere in Europe. This will foster language learning and intercultural dialogue,
and promote awareness of the multilingual and multicultural European model of
society.
Finally, the fourth priority concerns our ongoing work to promote and monitor
the implementation of the eLearning Action Plan.
We will support activities which help to lever the results emerging from e-learning
projects in Member States and funded by the Community under the various
programmes.
We will maintain an eLearning Portal which acts as a single entry point for
information on e-learning in Europe.
Will support the sharing of experience and the dissemination of good practice
across Europe, by supporting relevant workshops, conferences and networks.
Finally, we will support the development of forecasting and analysis tools so that we
may have a better understanding of the development and use of e-learning across
Europe.
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If approved, this modestly funded but ambitious programme will help Europe’s
education and training systems to modernise – integrating ICT and e-learning into
their core operations.
We are now in a period of consultation with the Member States, the Parliament and
the Council. However, we do hope that the programme will be agreed quickly, in
time for its start next year.
The importance of partnerships
Our success in helping to move Europe forward is due to the valuable support that
we receive not only from Member States, but also from other European institutions
such as the European Investment Bank, the European Parliament and from industry
itself.
We see partnerships as an essential element of our strategy: public-public, publicprivate and private-private. We were particularly pleased to work closely with
industry in organising the eLearning Summit in Brussels in 2000 and more recently
in a workshop organised, together with the European Investment Bank, on PublicPrivate Partnerships and their role in financing e-learning infrastructures.
This is why we were pleased to see the creation of the eLearning Industry Group
(the eLIG), an autonomous group of private companies established to take forward
the recommendations of the eLearning Summit through concrete action. I am
delighted to see that its vice-chairman, Mr Mikko Laine, is here today to present this
initiative. And as I do not wish to steal his thunder, I will leave it to him to describe
the workings of this influential group in more detail.
Suffice it to say, we look forward to continuing our valuable partnership with the
eLIG.
Still a lot to be done
We have achieved a lot over the last few years with the use of ICT and the Internet
for learning and we now see the mainstreaming of e-learning into Europe’s
education and training systems. However, the story is far from over and a lot still
has to be done.
We at the Commission are actively supporting the modernisation of Europe’s
education and training systems, and our proposed eLearning Programme will help
us to continue and reinforce this work. However, we firmly believe that we can only
achieve our objectives through partnership and with your continuing support.
So finally I wish you a successful and rewarding conference, and thank you for your
kind attention.
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