The Role of Mobile Learning in European Education

Although ECLO will play an active role in all the work packages, their primary role will be the production and implementation of the Dissemination and sustainability strategies.

The plans for the dissemination of the results achieved and the experienced gained during the course of the project include the following activities :

• development of a portal website with all the products and deliverables in the public domain

• organisation of a mobile learning SIG (Special Interest Group) based around the ECLO network

• use of the ECLO network to reach stakeholders and decision makers in the EU

• publication of one or more books with ISBN numbers from the products

• publication of articles on mobile learning, especially in the European online journals, especially ELEED and EURODL.

• organisation and management, by ECLO, of an international seminar or workshop for leading stakeholders

These activities are calculated to disseminate the results of the project both within and without the partner countries. The languages of dissemination will be mainly English, Hungarian, Portuguese and Bulgarian, with dissemination in Norway being in both Norwegian and English.

The development of a portal website with all the products unpassworded and available to all will be initiated at the start of the project, as soon as the contract is signed. It will be hosted by Ericsson and will become a centre for activity in mobile learning carrying all the products of the project as soon as they are approved.

The organisation of a mobile learning SIG (Special Interest Group) based around the ECLO network will be a central strategy of the dissemination plan. ECLO has members in the corporate sector, SMEs, academic and not-for profit organisations coming from France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, Malta, Greece and Germany. To this initial grouping each of the partners will be required to contribute 40 names of their business and educational associates. It is planned to send out 4 (two per year) project progress reports to all members of the SIG, inviting comment, commentary or criticism on the website Bulletin Board. In this way the products of the project will be disseminate widely in both corporate and educational circles. 

The publication of one or more books with ISBN numbers from the products of the project will ensure that the dissemination is permanent and the products will enter into the literature of the field and held in the libraries of the world. 

The publication of articles on mobile learning, especially in the European online journals will further contribute to project dissemination. All of the partners have published widely in the fields of distance education and elearning. Mobile learning is a new field and the European journals, especially the online ones, will be keen to accept articles on this emerging field.

The organisation of an international seminar or workshop for leading stakeholders with ECLO will be a further dimension of the dissemination strategy. ECLO is a regular organised of international conferences and workshops. In an emerging field conferences and workshops are normally the channel through which innovations and new dimensions of educational practice are first broached.

The long term exploitation of the results of the project             focus on the adoption, due to the results of the project, of mobile learning in administrative and academic uses in European education institutions.

All students enrolled in higher and further education institutions today have frequent needs for information from their institutions regarding timetable changes, assessment deadlines, feedback from tutors and other urgent administrative details. Nearly all of these students carry a sophisticated communications device which they use constantly in all walks of life except in their education or training programme.

Equally all higher and further education institutions today have frequent needs for providing information to their students about timetable changes, assessment deadlines, feedback from tutors and other urgent administrative details. This project will capture administrative and academic initiatives, present them to the educational institutions of Europe, convincing them of the need to adopt this new sector of education provision.

The impact of the project is to contribute to setting up mobile learning as a viable revenue stream for the telecommunications operators. Once this is achieved mobile learning will be established as a new and innovative form of education and training provision in Europe.

Most of the activities of the project will continue during and beyond the period of support from Minerva: 

The portal website will all the products unpassworded and available to all will be maintained quasi permanently by Ericsson.

The mobile learning SIG (Special Interest Group) will live on.

The use of the ECLO network to reach stakeholders and decision makers in the EU will continue.

The publication of one or more books with ISBN numbers from the products will live on permanently in the libraries of the world.

The publication of articles on mobile learning, especially in the European online journals, will remain permanently.

The results and proceedings of an international seminar or workshop for leading stakeholders will live on in the project structures and in the ECLO documentation.

The whole focus of the project is that the introduction of mobile learning into European education should be permanent and sustainable and that the use of mobile devices in education and training should become a permanent feature of provision.

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