Sustainability; scalability and transferability: Workshop Summary

The initial point was made that the three dimensions of transferability, sustainability, and scalability are interconnected and that it is difficult to talk about one without talking about the others.

The point was made concerning transferability that a tool can't be implemented everywhere just as it is--local adaptations have to be made to address different needs in different places; in other words, the innovation must be flexible and easily transferable. To accomplish this, a redefinition of educational boundaries is being attempted through close cooperation of programmers and researchers to open up possibilities for change in European school practice through best practice.

Some projects have been promoting open source software and solutions which can help spread up transferability. Perhaps common credit systems, common degree systems, and common grade systems will help make education innovations more transferable. Having common learning management systems could help transferability by making it easier to collaborate and exchange contents. But often it is not the particular learning objects that need to be transferred but the processes that involve similar human processes rather than similar technologies. Addressing the difficulty of transferring intangible things is, perhaps, the key to transferability.

A big issue concerning transferability is the content of the objects. Some see that there is a bigger effort being made to protect content than to share it. This has to be dealt with and it doesn’t have anything to do with technology—it’s a human problem. Teachers are used to publishing books and getting paid through a publisher and the new model is based on the institution owning the content, and this isn’t acceptable to many. Some say, though, that at their institutions this isn’t a problem, that teaching staff accepts signing off on the copyrights.

An important aspect of transferability is dissemination and a successful strategy for dissemination has been publication of papers and articles in different languages and different types of publications in addition to project brochures and booklets, in print and available on websites. It is stressed that producing texts in many languages is important. It has been the case that external developers of the software have taken responsibility for the translations.

Another feature that has been developed with apparent success is a best practice community website with a media library where teachers explain what kind of projects they have done with the software. This dissemination should take place at the policy level, the school management level, and the teachers’ level.

The problem of quality is, also, a transferability problem--deciding what content is equal to what at a different institution. Transferability needs a partnership of equals and this doesn’t presently exist. So, all in all, there are lots of obstacles and barriers that will have to be worked out, though there would appear to be some successes involving many universities working together on networked e-learning.

Concerning sustainability, one strategy has been to create a non-profit organisation that provides hosting administration and technical administration of the portal, which can be used for other things, with hope that it can sustain itself after a period of time. Continuing development has been possible through the use of open source software and making free source code available. This model has been spreading in Europe with strong commitment from partners who are expected to grow in number. Everyone has agreed that flexibility is a key factor.

For some innovations, sustainability has been accomplished and the innovation is continuing on its own through a critical mass of committed developers and users. Consulting and training services for teachers, policy makers, and management are necessary for keeping the innovation alive. A way must be found to link the pedagogical models with the information strategies of schools. Another model to implement is small business initiatives for offering services to schools related to the innovation.

The point was made that there is not enough attention paid to the target population, the actual people one wants to adopt an innovation, the potential users who may not want to be users. Not enough thought is given to problems of learning something new or resistant attitudes. Adequate attention must be given to pedagogy and curriculum, to giving space for realistic preparation and training, to finding out what potential users want and think they need. This is a seriously neglected area.

Another neglected area is the very complex need for new economic modelling. Sustainability requires some kind payment by partners. Perhaps the easiest type of payment would be a work commitment--there is a lot of work to be done. But also there is a need for money for hosting the web server, technical administration, etc. It is important to keep in mind that there are differences within Europe toward getting income and that this is an important issue to address.

An interesting point regarding sustainability is that success could sometimes be due more to the individuals who are running a project than to the merits of the project itself. Also, sustainability is context related; what works well in one context may not work in another. Business, university, and compulsory education contexts are very different. In education, for example, an innovation needs to be somehow connected to the existing curriculum content and organisation of the school.

As for the third area, scalability, an important trend going on within e-learning and online education in Europe today is the move from small scale experiments to large scale use. A problem being worked on is that collaborative learning doesn't scale well. Collaborative learning might be a model better suited to small scale projects than to large online education. This is a challenge to be worked on. A problem with scalability may be that mass production, a kind of industrialisation, is not popular in a university with a pedagogical environment. Spending a lot of money per student on a small scale project may be feasible, but it isn't feasible on the large scale. Ways to be cost effective must be found.

On the subject of dealing with large numbers of people, there is the idea that a flexible process of working can be scalable--different frameworks can be adapted to suit different courses. An encouraging idea is that, after the first implementation of a course, the cost goes down because you are reusing some material or methods. Some researchers think there is no problem with scales because there are different models for different groups; for example, a large number of students are divided into small groups but a pool of lecturers is one large group.

It is important to see that we are in the midst of a process of evolution, a gradually changing process--there's not one single blueprint. These projects can succeed with real collaboration among educators, researchers, industry, engineers, etc. There are many practical problems that have to be solved, such as copyrights, language problems, quality control and credit transfer. These may be relatively easy to solve. The more difficult ones are attitudinal problems--of students, teachers, and staff members--such as reluctance to change because of fear of losing autonomy and decision making power in curriculum development. It is necessary to built on the successful training modules that have been developed for training teachers in networked e-learning that are continuing to be used.

There is a movement toward linking e-learning networks, so transferability and scalability look promising; sustainability will take more time. There is the issue of standardisation of tools and applications. Not everyone will be happy with standardisation, but in that case, a teacher can still use his or her own tools and applications and have the responsibility to provide support for the students. There had been a perceived need for one pedagogical concept for the whole university to make it clear to students that whatever they are doing fits into one general framework. Even if there is a perception that students want such a standard, many teachers don't want such a top-down approach, so it is essential that the pedagogical framework be very broad. The solution to the organisational problems has been a support team of mixed background to solve all technological problems in pedagogical terms. These ideas are scalable and sustainable with the right tools, pedagogical concept, and support team that are flexible and expandable.

It is important to bear in mind the institutional issues in primary and secondary education. The main problem is that schools tend to be very traditional, not flexible or open to change and innovation. Schools should be the open institution of society, but they are not--there is little interaction between school and society. So this problem has to be addressed, along with making teachers more familiar with technology and making educational technology more attractive to students. These ideas have to get into the schools and everyone needs to understand that they belong, not only to a country, but to Europe, and that they have to understand, appreciate, communicate with and collaborate with others. There has been some progress in collaboration between primary and secondary education and university education with common learning management systems. And when the number of systems decreases, it will be easier as well. The goal is to collaborate from primary school through secondary school to university level creating a system in all people have something in common.