The Industry Research Task Force on Educational Software and Multimedia, set up in March 1995 on the initiative of European Commissioners Edith Cresson and Martin Bangemann, has now produced its final report. This report will significantly influence in the direction that current and future initiatives will go. The field covered by the Task Force concerned the whole of "Educational Multimedia", that is, educational and cultural products and services which can be accessed via television sets or computers, whether or not connected to telematics networks, used in the home, in educational and training institutions or at work, and offering a high level of interactivity.
The Task Force is currently looking into all the Community programmes which could help to strengthen the European Union’s position in the educational multimedia domain. These include the Research and Development programmes (Telematics Applications, Information Technology, Targeted Socio-economic Research, International Cooperation, Training and Mobility of Researchers), the education and professional training programmes (SOCRATES and LEONARDO DA VINCI) and the programmes which support the development of multimedia content (MEDIA II and INFO 2000 in particular).
Earlier editions of this newsletter have reported on the interim and intermediate versions of the report. Below is reproduced what is hoped to be the final statements and recommendations for a Community Action Plan which will be the subject of a joint call on 15 December 1996.
Stimulated by the steady fall in multimedia equipment prices, the mass market for educational multimedia - both products recorded on optical disks (CD-ROM and CD-i) and services which can be accessed by the telematics networks - cannot fail to grow rapidly in the mid 1990s.
The availability of broadband networks at affordable prices towards the end of the century will promote the growth of new top-end educational multimedia services, provided European industry ensures the availability of user-friendly and affordable telematics applications to individual learners in the home environment.
European suppliers of educational multimedia are made up of a few large industrial groups and a myriad of small enterprises. Despite its strength, the European educational multimedia industry, apart from a few exceptional cases, is not succeeding in imposing itself inside or outside Europe. Production which addresses itself both to the school and the home markets, destined for the European and indeed international markets, and close cooperation between European enterprises and actors are both perceived as a necessity. From this perspective, the Community programmes which are designed to bring together different actors and to stimulate trans-European projects, have an essential role to play.
Numerous experiments have shown the educational value of multimedia. However, there are several obstacles to the widespread use of educational multimedia in schools:
the lack of user-friendly multimedia equipment and software for teachers and pupils
insufficient quantity of equipment, which is often technically obsolete, sometimes insufficiently used, and rarely connected to telecommunications networks
insufficient quantity and quality of educational software adapted to the needs of users
the difficulty of integrating educational multimedia into teachers’ educational practice
the lack of teacher training and information.
As a general rule, universities produce internally, and for non-commercial purposes, multimedia educational products for high-level training. They are increasingly turning towards the use of broadband telecommunications networks for the distribution of courses and joint research. However, in the mid 1990’s, the costs of equipment and multimedia services and associated high telecommunications tariffs still impede the spread of educational multimedia in universities.
Multimedia has demonstrated its pedagogic efficacy in numerous pilot experiments. Its use in day to day teaching practice can only be achieved if innovative teaching processes receive a better reception both by educational institutions and by society at large. This is how multimedia will find its place in the context of the evolution of the systems of education.
Many large companies resort to educational multimedia, usually "customised", for training supervisory personnel, engineers and technicians. On the other hand, the use of the technologies is still not very widespread for training other categories of personnel or for training in SMEs - this is mainly due to reasons of high costs and the lack of usability of educational multimedia. The initial and continuing vocational training bodies are insufficiently equipped with hardware and appropriate multimedia resources.
Given what is at stake, Europeans should mobilise at all levels of action - local, regional, national and Community - to ensure that, by the year 2000:
every teacher can incorporate multimedia materials in his/her teaching practice; be entitled to easy access to the available networks; and benefit from good terms and conditions of use and especially from pre-training
every pupil has access to quality multimedia learning resources at school, a particular effort being made in favour of disabled children. This means that every primary and secondary school must have at least one multimedia microcomputer per class, connected to a local area network ,which is itself connected to a national and trans-European telematics network, allowing links to be established between pupils and teachers or access to on-line learning services to be offered
every adult has access to quality multimedia resources for his/her personal and professional development
every university has access to the very high-speed networks needed for exchanging and using multimedia educational materials with high-quality images
every public library or public arts/cultural centre offers, free of charge, opportunities for access to multimedia resources, so that all citizens can benefit from information services, arts and cultural activities, and education and training facilities
every company, no matter what its size, has access to a centre for quality multimedia educational resources, thereby creating a virtual "open university for industry".
All the partners concerned, at all levels of action, should contribute to the awareness campaign needed to achieve a consensus on these mobilising objectives, for example:
by applying the multimedia educational software resolution adopted by the Council of Education Ministers, 6 May 1996
by expanding the debate around the White Paper on "Teaching and Learning - towards the Cognitive Society" (December 1995)
by seizing the numerous opportunities offered by the European Year of Life-Long Education and Training (1996)
by promoting the use of the tools of the information society in all learning situations, in particular in the framework of the initiative "Learning in the information society", launched in April 1996 by Commissioners Cresson and Bangemann, and supported in June 1996 by the European Council in Florence.
The subject of educational multimedia is tackled in many different Community programmes, in particular, the RTD&D programmes (Telematics Applications, Information Technologies, Socio-economic Research, Training and Mobility of Researchers and International Co-operation), the education and training programmes (SOCRATES and LEONARDO DA VINCI) and the programmes for content development (INFO2000, MEDIA II, RAPHAEL). These programmes should identify, in the presentation of their work programmes, the aspects relevant to educational multimedia, and improve the structure and coordination of their activities in this domain. To meet to the need for simplification and transparency of the procedures, which has been expressed in particular by the SMEs, the Commission should launch a first common Call for Proposals, 15 December 1996.
a) New applications, which are both easy to use and affordable, would need to be developed to assist teachers and trainers in the use and management of high quality, open educational multimedia, accessible either locally or via network connections (including broadband networks).
b) Technically and pedagogically innovative, advanced educational multimedia applications should be validated in real life situations to meet the needs of teachers, trainers and learners.
The following priorities, whose impact on educational multimedia is direct, should be considered in the context of the "Information Technologies" programme:
a) Technological development of low-cost platforms for education and the public at large, top-end platforms for simulation, software platforms for the production and distribution of advanced development tools
b) Quality control: methods and procedures evaluating the technical quality of the educational software; institutions and infrastructure for checking and certifying quality procedures
c) Infrastructure: recourse to the "Multimedia Support Centres" and to the World Wide Web as advice structure for the production of educational software and to stimulate its dissemination throughout Europe.
The "Targeted socio-economic research" programme should conduct research into the cognitive aspects of new technologies, to enable production of tools well suited to learning, and also research on the socio-economic factors which will influence the deployment of multimedia educational software.
RTD&D projects in the multimedia education and training area, addressing the education and training needs of developing countries, should be launched in the area of "Scientific and Technical Cooperation with Developing Countries".
The programme should pursue, according to its "bottom-up" strategy, the financing of proposals, which meet the programme criteria, in the educational multimedia domain, and also should study possible accompanying measures which exploit telematic and multimedia means for distance training, in particular for the less favoured regions of the European Union.
Over and above the activities pursued within the general framework of SOCRATES, the following additional activities are suggested:
carry out a comparative analysis to extract best practice from pilot experiments with educational multimedia in Europe and around the world, disseminating the results to the Member States
identifying and stimulating services which can be developed at the European level to synergise the results of these experiments so as to reinforce the European dimension of education and diffusion of information (for example by the development of an information network which will give users easy access to a catalogue of producers of educational multimedia software and services available in Europe), and supporting initiatives leading to the exchange of best practice
support for the exploitation of the opportunities educational multimedia offers, particularly in the areas of language teaching, science and technology, Europe’s cultural heritage, and other areas which contribute to the development of European citizenship
develop cooperation centred on existing or developing "multimedia reference centres" at the primary and secondary level so that the impact on student and teacher of improved access to multimedia and use of new teaching methods can be assessed;
support experimental projects to network multimedia support centres and educational establishments in Europe, and for mutual recognition of qualifications acquired outside the conventional educational framework.
The LEONARDO DA VINCI programme could, in particular, undertake specific activities concerning the exchange and dissemination of information relating to multimedia training software and services, and promote association between users, producers and service providers with the objective of improving the quality of the products. It could also encourage support training activities aimed at software creators and trainers to ensure that the various needs are better taken into account and the software is properly integrated into the educational environment. Finally, it could promote the development, evaluation and deployment of innovative software within the contexts of teleworking, teletraining and new types of support to disabled people or people with particular learning difficulties.
The MEDIA II Programme should support training initiatives aimed at creators and publishers of audio-visual materials enabling them to exploit new multimedia technologies and to carry out the cultural adaptation of existing titles. This programme should also support the development of co-productions, which could include multimedia professional, educational and cultural programmes, and the networking of firms presenting common development projects of international importance in the multimedia sector for the European and international markets.
The INFO 2000 programme should support projects aimed at: encouraging production of multimedia content, which will be used to develop educational multimedia software, mobilising users by easing access to multimedia content, optimising the framework for negotiating multimedia IPR, improving use of public information by constructing and connecting directories.
A more significant proportion of the Structural Funds’ resources could be allocated to setting up infrastructures (telecommunications networks, equipment of education and training centres) needed to make use of educational multimedia products, and to training activities making use of educational multimedia products. Similarly, some of the funds dedicated to the Trans-European Telecommunications Networks (TTN) could support the deployment of applications which have proven their teaching effectiveness and economic viability.
A significant proportion of the resources available on the international cooperation budgetary lines could be directed towards actions to make multimedia educational materials available to the populations in question.
The legal protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) should develop in a way that ensures that authors of multimedia titles are not faced with time consuming and expensive procedures in order to protect their work. Owners and publishers of multimedia works should be motivated to construct "one stop shops" to facilitate access to multimedia titles.
The full reports can be downloaded from the EC ECHO WWW site or from the LearnTel WWW server at: http://www.LearnTel.org.