Partner und Internationale Organisationen
(Englisch)
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Bureau for International Research and Technology Co-operation (A), Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (A), Institut National des Télécommunications (F), University of Lancaster (UK), NCSR Demokritos (EL), Hellenic Open University (EL), Iceland Telecom (IS), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (E), Hautes Etudes Commerciales (F), Helsinki University of Technology (FIN), Warsaw University of Technology (PL), Infonova (A), Aachen University of Technology (D), Université Libre de Bruxelles (B), T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft mgH (D), Institut Jozef Stefan (SI)
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Abstract
(Englisch)
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The UNIVERSAL project unites the effort and expertise of prestigious European business and engineering schools, research centres and high-tech companies with the vision of creating a pan-European open exchange or brokerage of online educational contents. Funded by the European Commission through the Information Societies Technology (IST) Fifth Framework Programme, the project involves 15 countries across three continents. The key innovation will be the creation of an open market for learning resources of diversified nature (including live, person-to-person and packaged, person-to-machine) and domains. A brokerage implies a market with providers and customers transacting within a legal and contractual environment. The technology system that enables effective brokerage service is called UNIVERSAL Brokerage Platform (UBP). The architecture of the platform is a logically centralised brokerage system linked to distributed repositories of actual educational materials. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of adapting a variety of existing delivery systems to interoperate with the UBP. The main goal of the project is that UNIVERSAL becomes the reference platform throughout Europe, attracting the best educational contents from the best institutions. UNIVERSAL is primarily considered as a business-to-business service. It is targeting at higher education institutions, which intend to participate in an exchange of learning resources, but lack the tools of defining and effecting exchange relationships. However, UNIVERSAL is not restricted to a specific type of business model. Hence, the type of exchange relationships might range from free learning resource exchange (among selected members) to complex, commercial contracts. From the educational perspective, the most significant benefits of the open exchange are: to enable a much wider and richer choice of educational material through the use of remotely sourced course units, to facilitate collaborative research through rapid diffusion of ideas, and to bolster the appreciation of different pedagogical and philosophical approaches of various cultures.
UNIVERSAL comprises 17 partners and seven work packages (WP), with each of them being responsible for a specific function. ETH Zurich leads WP7 - Project Evaluation, which consists of altogether three partners. This particular WP is set to attain three major objectives: (i) to ensure effective, ongoing self-assessment of the project against its declared objectives; (ii) to publish an independent, objective evaluation of the project's trials; (iii) to ensure that all evaluations cover first the pedagogical aspects and second the technical aspects of UNIVERSAL. ETH's active participation in the core project activities facilitates the attainment of these objectives. The peer review system for ensuring the high quality of the project deliverables is a useful evaluation tool launched by ETH. WP7 is required to publish regularly an interim evaluation report on the project progress on a half-yearly basis and two yearly evaluation reports on the respective brokerage and delivery trials in Year 1 (2001/2) and Year 2 (2002/3). Results of these formative evaluations are used for enhancing the project development.
Besides being a project evaluator, ETH also contributes to the project by participating in different activities of WP1 (service definition), WP2 (service trials), WP3 (platform implementation), and WP4 (content acquisition and management). Specifically, we have been engaging ourselves in revising the specifications of the delivery management engine, implementing a delivery system for static contents, implementing delivery trials, acquiring web-based learning resources, and developing best practice guidelines. Note that WP7 has close collaboration with WP6 (Project Management) in monitoring the project progress.
The work of ETH Zurich in UNIVERSAL is carried out by the Communication Systems Group of Institute TIK (Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory). The rationales for ETH's participation in this project are twofold: First, to fulfill ETH Zurich's mission for cultivating an international standing and for strongly supporting international co-operation in all fields of research and education. Second, to exploit TIK's expertise and experience in teleteaching and multimedia systems.
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