Deliverable 7 : Final seminar report

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Abstract

This document is the report on the final seminar of the e-Quality project. As indicated in the official proposal, a final seminar was to be organised to disseminate the projects' approach and results and more generally to address Quality in ODL. It was also decided to set it in Poland, in order to attract a large amount of professionals from eastern Europe, and to invite some key speakers from the international normalisation bodies. The seminar was held in Szczecin, Poland, September 21-22, 2006.

Participants came from 8 European countries (Belgium, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain and Switzerland) and one North-African (Tunisia). They represented broad range of institutions, mostly universities. They took this opportunity to be aware of the main results of the e-Quality project and also to share experience and vision on the implementation of Quality in ODL in Higher Education.

The discussion between Brian Holmes and the participants raised the interest for a continuation of this kind of international work, based on the cultural and organisational context. Indeed, norms and standards become to participate in the development of the European Higher Education, within the framework of the Bologna Process and the ENQA guidelines recognition by the Ministries of Education.

ODL, as a modality of learning and teaching, is directly impacted by this emerging phenomenon. The result of the e-Quality project, as shown during the final seminar, proves that most of the academic and professional staff in Higher Education is not ready for quality implementation. They need a strong support from their institution, including information, training, methods and tools to design, produce and deliver ODL embedding a quality step. The outputs of the final seminar can contribute to such support.

The main way of dissemination of the final seminar outcomes is this project website. All necessary information, e.g. plenary sessions presentations, workshops programmes etc., can be found here. Moreover, the project consortium is publishing a DVD containing video recordings of all invited speakers, plus seminar proceedings, information on project, all public project deliverables and published papers.