Registration for LEARN Intensive Programme 2006 is closed.

The EUDORA European Summer School was a part of the SOCRATES programme “Joint European Doctorate in Teaching and Teacher Education” aiming at the development of a top and European wide recognised programme for persons who intend to work in the higher education sector in general and teacher education in particular.

Participation of Estonian PhD students and university staff in LEARN IP summer school 2006 was supported by European Social Fund and National Development Plan (RAK) of Estonia

While the entire “Joint European Doctorate Programme in Teaching and Teacher Education” will call for the successful completion of 240 ECTS including the submission of a PhD Thesis, ERASMUS Intensive Programmes (IP) such as LEARN offered within the framework of the EUDORA Summer School fully recognised academic components / modules at each of the participating institutions. Other courses on offer are “Educational policy analysis in a comparative perspective”, “Researching social inclusion and exclusion”, “Active learning methodologies in higher education”, “Mother tongue education in a comparative perspective” or “Researching math education”. Modules for “Educational research methodologies” or “Research in/on teacher education” find themselves in a process of development.

The Intensive Programme LEARN will bring together professors and students from 12 European Universities aiming at discussing most recent developments in the field of @ - learning at a “state of the art – level” in order to improve learning cultures in higher education.

ELHE will take place in Viljandi / Estonia at the Viljandi Culture Academy. It has been indicatively scheduled from 3rd till 13th July 2005. This very well equipped centre in a wonderful Estonian landscape should provide

• an enriching “powerful learning environment” for challenging collaborative work of students and staff
• on the highest relevance issue “E - learning in Higher Education”.

E - learning has become a powerful tool in improving and restructuring higher education in general and teacher education in particular. Prospective educationists and teacher educators are expected to have both high level competence and critical understanding of E - learning with its many different aspects.

All over Europe, there is an intensive not to say hectic search for appropriate solutions. This search may be characterised by (productive) uncertainties as well as rapid developments. However, the integration of E - learning into higher education and its cultures of learning means substantial change and a far-reaching innovation. High quality staff seems to be indispensable to make change necessary possible.

Against this background, it seems to be necessary to develop more adequate solutions by sharing ideas and most modern concepts in a European learning environment.

Therefore, LEARN will provide a learning culture based on principles of active learning and collaborative problem solving. All participants should find ample opportunity for active and shared knowledge building processes. Against this, the design and learning culture may be described as follows:

• Staff will give some key-note lectures and workshops dealing with most recent developments in the field of e - learning at a “state of the art – level”.
• Papers will be made available in advance in a Content Management System in order to allow vivid and in-depth discussion.
• Students will get opportunity to present their recent research work in workshops. They are encouraged to address specific questions concerning their research and development work. Workshops may be conceived as learning situations (and not as lectures). Therefore, active work and collaboration in a non-competitive learning environment should be addressed.
• Students and staff will form “Special Interest Groups” in order to discuss particular “hot issues” of E - learning.
• Participants will get opportunity to establish a “Community of practice”. The publication of their research papers in the “Future College Electronic Publications Series” (a refereed journal) may be seen as one important issue in this development.
• Staff will be available to give special supervision to students for particular problems of their research work.
• The programme will be structured into thematic units chaired by “chairs of the day” with high level competence in the respective field.

Students as well as staff are expected to submit abstracts and drafts of the research paper in advance and to post it into the LEARN portal. Students are then expected to study these contributions carefully prior to the Intensive Programme so that substantial discussion will become a reality. In addition, we have provided some suggested readings for personal preparation.