Until now established LMS are rather a database for files like Power Point, PDF or Word than used in a sophisticated way. The consortium reviewed multiple studies which are dealing with this issue and the reasons why lecturer at the Universities use Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) only very basically. The main barriers the consortium could identify in these surveys are the following: (1) time, (2) motivation (more examples and evidence that technology is at least not having a negative impact), (3) institutional and cultural factors e.g. strategy for the development of technology enhanced learning department or concepts for support (financial, technological, pedagogical) and (4) self-efficacy/ self-confidence. Since all partners of the consortium face the same defiance, the consortium wants to provide the lecturer with the relevant information on how to use TEL in the daily teaching in an advanced way based on these barriers. The consortium consists of partners from Finland (HUMAK), Germany (LUE), Hungary (KF), Italy (Pixel), Netherlands (OUNL), Portugal (IPB), and Spain (UCM). The partners were chosen based on their experiences, competencies and existing networks. All partners will be involved in the development of all the products and support the responsible partner in order to accomplish the goals and will profit from the knowledge of other partners. Based on the diverse backgrounds and different fields of work the partners complement each other with their experiences. LUE has experience in coordinating projects and expertise in methods for TEL. IPB has substantial knowledge in TEL technologies and the use of tools while KF has strong experience in teaching in Higher Education and in the use of teaching methods from the perspective of a lecturer. UCM has a tradition and experience in analyzing actual strategies and creating new ones to improve old methodologies working with ICT. HUMAK, OUNL and Pixel are new partners with very strong skills related to TEL, research, quality management, dissemination and exploitation.In order to create this information pool AduLeT will implement a support system as a community of practice (CoP). AduLeT will develop different intellectual outputs as OER in the CoP to overcome the mentioned barriers. The outputs will be teaching methods, guidelines for the effective use of TEL tools, research paper and case studies. The description of the teaching methods and the guidelines are based on two different templates which already exist. Nevertheless these templates will be improved and the consortium will describe multiple teaching methods and guidelines for the effective use of TEL by means of the templates. All these descriptions will be published on the CoP. The existing surveys mentioned above will be enriched by modern research technologies, tailored to the partners’ needs and performed at each partner university. The results and additionally a guideline of how to enrich, tailor and perform such surveys will also be published on the CoP and as research paper. Finally a collection of already existing strategies, support concepts and facts about TEL like the effect of TEL on the learning outcomes will be summarized and linked on the CoP to provide the lecturer with further information. The European Union claims that there should be more OER and digital content accessible especially in higher education. But most of the lecturer in the context of higher education have either not the skills or time to provide the teaching materials also as digital content or OER. Therefore AduLeT will provide a CoP for lecturer with suitable teaching methods for TEL. The lecturer can also find in the CoP guidelines for the effective use of TEL tools and the tools itselfs. The CoP will also provide the possibility to get into contact with other lecturers and to share experiences about teaching with TEL tools.
The starting point of the AduLeT (Advanced Use of Learning Technologies in Higher Education) project was the fact that higher education lecturers often use learning technologies, such as Learning Management Systems, in a rather simple way. Mostly they upload files like Power Point, PDF or Word instead of using the pedagogical potentials. Before the project, the consortium reviewed and analyzed multiple studies that were dealing with this issue and summarized the barriers and know reasons for them. Since all partners of the consortium face the same defiance, AduLeT aims to provide the lecturer with relevant information on how to use TEL in the daily teaching in an advanced way based on these barriers. Therefore, the main objective was to set up teaching methods for TEL, guidelines for the effective use of TEL tools to be used in these teaching methods, case studies, as well as tailor and perform a study to find out the barriers at the participating universities. Finally, the aim was to gather all information in a platform by implementing and establishing a community of practice. The nine project partners (Ludwigsburg University of Education (LUE), Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Humak University of Applied Sciences (Humak), John von Neumann University (JNU), Open University of the Netherlands (OU NL), Pixel, University of Stuttgart Uni-S). All participating universities have a leading expertise in the area of TEL and/or higher education teaching. Coming from diverse backgrounds and home departments their experiences complement each other in unique ways: developing and evaluating new ICTs and teaching/learning methods (Humak, LUE, OU NL, TU Delft), developing digital strategies (Humak, Uni-S), developing internet platforms (IPB, Uni-S), conceptualization of teacher training (JNU, LUE, UCM), expertise in conceptualization of research studies as well as data analysis (OU NL), as well as expertise in project management (LUE, Pixel), dissemination (Pixel, Humak) and exploitation (Pixel). Main activities of the project were: -to develop templates for describing TEL teaching methods and tools, to create collections of TEL teaching methods and tools; - to provide Case studies provided by lecturers describing their experiences in the use of tools in their teaching as well as recommendations and strategies for the use of TEL in higher education, - to perform a study in order to find out the barriers for the advanced use of technologies at the participation universities and to publish research papers with the results - to implement and establish a community of practice (Cop) The main target group of the AduLeT-project were lecturers from higher education institutions. An important aspect of AduLeT was the early involvement of the primary target group into the results of AduLeT through so called “build the community workshops” to test and evaluate the results, but also at the end of the project through the multiplier events held in each participating country. The main result of the project was the implantation and establishment of the AduLeT Community of Practice (CoP), which gathers all the produced content of the project. All results as well as the complete CoP is available in English, German, Hungarian, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. The CoP can be found under the URL https://cop.adulet.eu/. Our workshops and multiplier events reached hundreds of lecturers in higher education. Through the 11 associated partners the AduLeT project is supported and spread in further European countries as such Lithuania and Romina, but also in Mexico. Based on the evaluation and the received feedback, the attained impact on the lecturers of the participating universities and lecturers at other higher educational institution was very high, since they could improve their skills and knowledge concerning the use of tools and TEL teaching methods. Moreover, the CoP was considered very helpful for this purpose. Overall, the project has received a lot of attention from lecturers, practitioners and researchers in the scientific community. All AduLeT partners are committed to jointly continue to promote AduLeT, disseminate our results and to establish the AduLeT Community of Practice (CoP) further.