Education in the 21st century is generally targeted towards enabling people to participate in knowledge-based economies. The significance of higher education in particular is highlighted in the 10 year European Union growth and competitiveness strategy (EU-2020). In order to achieve knowledge-based economies, providing students with digital skills and facilitating education through technology is seen as a top priority (EU Digital Agenda). According to the 2013 EU Communication on ‘Opening up Education’ and the 2014 report “Modernisation of Higher Education”, higher education institutions (HEI) need to invest heavily in modernizing their teaching and learning practices, with the strong support of technology and elearning. This has indeed been happening on the ground, as the 2015 ‘TRENDS in European Higher Education’ report of the European University Association (EUA) attests: more than two thirds of European universities have e-learning and ICT strategies in place and a large majority of the others are in the process of developing them. W
Within this framework, the ERASMUS+ project
Modernizing and Enhancing Indian eLearning Educational Strategies (MIELES)
was designed to provide a collaborative platform to address a relevant issue for the development, reform and modernization of the higher education system in India and to reinforce Indian-EU higher education collaboration. MIELES is supporting a network of Indian HEI to develop and implement institutional strategies for elearning. Many development cooperation interventions are related directly to ICT infrastructure (Digital India, for example) or to the provision of online course content. Few projects have addressed the need to support HEI to utilise ICT infrastructure and online course content, and to enable leadership and staff to do so, in a cross-institutional way (one of the purpose of strategies). Working on this issue in an international consortium of partners, in the context of Erasmus+, will help in shaping quality standards for Indian online course content and elearning approaches, innovate teaching and learning practices/pedagogy via e-learning and build capacity of teachers across partner institutions to use elearning and ICT tools. MIELES is thus designed to provide a collaborative platform to address a relevant issue for the development, reform, democratization and modernization of the higher education system in India and to reinforce Indian-EU higher education collaboration.
While the general objective of MIELES project was to modernise and enhance access to the Indian higher education system by supporting the development of diverse institutional e-learning strategies. The specific objectives were to:
- S01. Support Indian Institutional management to assess their interests and needs with regards to e-learning
- S02. Build the capacity of Indian institutions to develop a clear, realistic, and tailored strategic approaches to e-learning
- S03. Enhance the capacity of Indian institutions to implement their institutional e-learning strategies, both through staff training and collaborative pilot projects
- S04. Enable transfer of knowledge within India regarding e-learning strategy and capacity
- SO5. Enhance Indian-European collaboration in e-learning
The workplan was structured into 6 Workpackages:
- WP1. Mapping and SWOT
- WP2. Strategies
- WP3. Pilots
- WP4. Training
- WP5. Dissemination
- WP6. Quality Assurance
Time Frame: 10/2016 – 10/2019
Project Ref: 573708-EPP-1-2016-1-ES-EPPKA2-SBHE-JP