All e-Learning courses have been developed by the eight partners. In general, the quality of course concept and teaching materials were appreciated. Due to different semester schedules, the courses were performed and exchanged in a wide range of time, before, after, or within the foreseen time framework. One course (U Uppsala) has started in Feb 2007, but due to organizational problems and an expedition of the teacher to the Artic, it will be terminated in Oct 2007.
The most important and positive result was that the business model worked. We were able to develop and teach eight e-Learning courses with very limited resources. The overall project budget of the project eduGI is ~ 250.000 € and resulted the development of 8 e-Learning courses, two received by each partner. In this amount it must be considered that the project budget will not be used completely, and it contains additional, EC project-specific management tasks and costs, e.g. reporting, budgeting, and organizing dissemination workshops, not being required in non-funded projects. Excluding this, we estimate costs for development and one-time performance of ~ 22.000 € per course.
Further positive experiences were:
Each partner developed a course where he/she is an expert in. So the development time was rather short, and the content was up-to-date. The students’ motivation was high. First, they appreciated the opportunity of taking classes in new topics, which the own institution does not provide. Second, and not to be underestimated, it was a new and “adventurous” experience to sit in Germany, being taught from Portugal and learn with other students from Portugal and Greece. Most of the partners will be able to re-use the e-Learning courses and materials within their own institution.
Some issues caused problems and some require improvements:
Technology and didactics of e-Learning were new to most of the partners. Therefore, it took some effort to get accustomed with it and improvements will be necessary, but this can be managed. Students’ evaluations of the e-Learning courses were mostly positive but quite heterogeneous, depending on the varying performance of the provided courses and the different acceptance of handling a new way of learning. Motivation factors were the international context and the option to access new learning topics. The teaching materials very mostly evaluated as good. Negative factors in some cases were technical problems (access to and usage of the e-Learning platform), organizational issues (e.g., provision of sufficient course information) and missing (or unfamiliar?) interaction with teachers and other students. Simple but crucial problems were different semester schedules in different partner countries. It was hard to find common start and end dates for the courses as well as dates for common online sessions during the courses. In the project eduGI it took a period of eight months to perform all eight e-Learning courses. Another improvement is required by a better integration of the external courses into the own study program. Most of the e-Learning courses were optional, not a mandatory part of the students’ programs. Therefore, the number of attending students was lower than expected. All courses were planned for up to 30 students, but some courses were only attended by 5-10 students. There is also a gap between students registered for the courses and students attending and successfully completing the courses. Most of the students attending also completed the course – those who did not were participating out of interest, not requiring a grade and to pass final exam. To some extent, the high drop-out rate before starting the course is normal, also happening in regular classroom courses – students change their plans due to time constraints and other interests. However, a solution will be long-term agreements for the exchange, so the external courses can be scheduled far in advance and be better integrated into the study programs.
The most important result is the validation of the business model and sustainability of partner network and its exchange of e-Learning courses. Seven of eight partners (except U Uppsala) agreed on going on with the provision and exchange of courses for a minimum of three years – without further funding.
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