Based on the partners’ experience on barriers to e-Learning, ‘Better e-Learning for All‘ (‘Better-E’) proposes a global approach to create better e-Learning.
The Project’s name is already providing information about its objectives by demanding an upgrading on the quality of e-Learning practices and simultaneously an enhancement on the number and characteristics of the Organizations and people to involve in e-Learning.
Partners are aware of the common cross-border barriers to e-Learning in the context of Adult Education as these had been identified by the partners previously. These barriers had been divided into several categories:
– Accessibility: the physical and technological infrastructures in which the learning occurs and through which the material is presented.
– Availability: appropriate learning resources.
– Presentation: the social infrastructure in which the material is presented.
– Stakeholders: learners, trainers and organizations.
– Courses: course content and pedagogy.
Considering these barriers as an ensemble, ‘Better-E’ proposes tools and methodologies to diminish them, providing solutions both from technological and pedagogical perspectives. The solutions will be gained with due consideration of the fragile autonomy held by stakeholding learners, and the empowerment necessary for the changes to take place.
‘Education’ and ‘Training’ are not foreseen as the only key scopes for e-Learning practice as the ‘Better-E’ Project sets out to foster Social Inclusion and Cohesion as identified objectives achievable through an improved implementation of e-Learning practice. The enhancement of both the practice and the quality of e-Learning, the increasing of the number and type of e-Learning promoters and, above all, addressing significant social issues through better e-Learning practice are all being identified as significant if intangible results from the project.
The project Objectives are, among others:
– to propose, to test and to create a user-friendly and pedagogy-centered e-Learning Platform for course promotion;
– to introduce and to incorporate e-Learning into organizations (chiefly training-provider NGOs) usually not currently including e-Learning practices;
– to promote e-Learning as an inclusion device, in the context of traditional Education and Training being regularly considered to be a mechanism for social inclusion while e-Learning is not
– to use e-Learning to encourage active citizenship and entrepreneurship through initiatives fostering green skills, entrepreneurial mind-sets and appropriate skills.
The Project will directly target two main groups: (1) Training Provider NGOs, and (2) their targeted audiences. The philosophy sustaining it is the need to generate e-Learning best practices as close as possible to organizations providing Adult Education and Training Systems but usually without the application of e-Learning. Engaging them with e-Learning practice will consequently benefit their learner target-groups by engaging the learners in ways that will reduce the potential and risk of social exclusion.
The Project foresees the direct involvement of dozens of NGOs from the partner countries.
The scientific, pedagogical and technological scopes of the deliverables are prepared and will be applicable to the entire range of e-Learning stakeholders, including Schools, Universities, Private Training providers, among others.
Project promoters will engage in Preliminary Research to upgrade the State-of-the Art for the application of e-Learning with regard to a range of organisations, policies, countries and learner backgrounds. The partners will then conceive, test and launch the ‘Better-E Platform’, an online tool to fully conceive e-Learning courses, embedded with technological solutions while addressing important pedagogical concerns.
To test the Platform and engage final beneficiaries, the Partnership proposes the conception, testing and delivery of two e-Learning courses: (1) ‘Entrepreneurship’, promoting active citizenship through enterprise while applying innovations that can break the cycles that perpetuate social exclusion. (2) ‘Easily Moving from Learning to e-Learning’, an instruction course that includes in part a guide to the use of the ‘Better-E’ Platform.
The ‘Better-E’ title not only seeks to engender thoughts of better e-Learning, but also may identify ambitions for a ‘Better Europe’, by means of strong European Partnerships contributing for better common societies. It may also recall a common pronunciation with the word ‘Battery’, symbolising energy generated through partnership, aligning the project with the Erasmus+ global priorities and aims.