News Story

eLearning 2005 – Towards a learning society

Peter Scott, Friday 20 May 2005

The huge eLearning 2005 conference in Brussels involved a high level of KMi research input, as you would expect. Peter Scott chaired the stream on Higher Education, and Enrico Motta presented our Semantic Web research under the “Learing Enablers” theme.

The conference, funded by the European Union, was held in Brussels (19-20 May 2005) and invited over 500 eLearning specialists from around the world to consider its theme: “towards the learning society”. There was a great debate about the revitalisation of the EU Lisbon agenda (on competitiveness, growth and jobs) and in particular the future of life long learning in Europe. Despite considerable world wide efforts, the conference noted that the eLearning sector is still very fragmented with many “open questions” remaining.

The conference was introduced by Commissioners Vivian Reding and Jan Figel. Ms Reding, as the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, highlighted the upcoming i2020 strategy as an exciting opportunity for Europe to answer these open questions.

In addition to the KMi contribution to the academic streams on &#39Higher Education&#39 and &#39Learning Enablers&#39, KMi research was also highlighted in numerous display stands. The Prolearn and Elegi stands, for example, stood side-by-side and showed our high impact work to the commission and the eLearning delegates. The entire event was webcast by the commission; but of course KMi also ran an “informal” webcast of the proceedings via FlashMeeting so that the CNM team and some special guests could more actively engage.

The attached snapshot shows 3 of the new media team listening to part of a Brussels FlashMeeting session in the KMi masterclass public area. You wont be able to make it out on the screen – but a tiny thumbnail in the FM shot also show Marion McKechnie (from corous.com) “tuning in”. The big advantage of an FM session vs a plain vanilla webcast is the ability to cross-text-chat in the audience; and muliti-party conference chat (during the breaks – to not interrupt the conference presenter)!