A decade after, what is left from Kaleidoscope?

Ten years ago, on March 2004 the 9th, we held the kick-off meeting of Kaleidoscope, a FP6 network of excellence, in the Castle of Sassenage, near Grenoble. A great day for a great ambition. The network initially gathered 76 research teams in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), what meant about 850 researchers and PhD students ; by the end of the EC contract we were about an hundred research teams associated in some way, and more than a thousands researchers and PdD students.

The aim of Kaleidoscope was to foster integration of different research disciplines relevant to TEL, bridging educational, cognitive and social sciences, and emerging technologies. To bring this ambition to reality, in a very fragmented European TEL research area, we chosen to involve a large number of contributors of which only a small number were already collaborating, and a large range of different research themes. Hence a very high level challenge. A set of instruments (focussed joint projects, virtual doctoral school, common platform, etc.) was planned to support the integration process at both the content and the infrastructure level (cf. the technical annex of the project [here], and the slides of the general presentation at the kick-off meeting [there]).

In my opinion, situated at equal distance from success and failure, Kaleidoscope was both a human and a scientific venture. Writing a report on the lessons learned with Sten Ludvigsen, scientific director of the network during the last period of the contract, we noted that "the history of these four years is that of the construction of the network in interaction with a process for understanding what to be a Network of Excellence means, and what integration means in the TEL research area. It is also the history of the interactions between the consortium and the reviewers team and the project officers."

Interestingly, this difference in the views about Kaleidoscope may be illustrated with a certain sense of humour by this picture. Above the head of Jens Christensen, our founding project officer, the portrait of Gaspar Baron de Sassenage, above myself the image of a character taking off supported by angels in a blue sky... Ten years after the character has landed. He is back with ideas still ambitious but probably better shaped by experience and a certain sense of pragmatism which he learned in particular in an other TEL network of excellence from the FP7, STELLAR. Some outcomes of this joint academic venture are still there, as the TeLearn Open archive, the TEL dictionary, and the largely disseminated book synthesizing the Kaleidoscope scientific legacy. TELEARC, the association which has taken the challenge of keeping alive and building on Kaleidoscope legacy has organised a new Alpine Rendez-vous conference in collaboration with STELLAR, and may organize an other one. But all this does not really account for what the Kaleidoscope network has changed in the TEL research area, to understand this change the best data we could have is that from your own view and experience, hence the question:

As a participant in the Kaleidoscope network of excellence, either contractor or associated, what in your opinion can be considered as a legacy? What is left or what you miss when looking back to what we did?

You can respond by leaving a commentary on this post. If there are enough comments, I will make a synthesis of your views and publish it on this blog (let's say in a month or two) and possibly find a way to share it with the project officers and the reviewers who have looked after us during these years.

Continuity, a political condition for sustainability

  Retrieved from the TEL opinion blog, June the 30th, 2006

 

Continuity! I think that the main challenge for the ECs technology-enhanced learning (TEL) research policybut it might not only be the case of TELis ensuring a continuity of its policy that will be directly in line with the sustainability challenge that the Commission offered to the new FP6 instruments. It is clear that if the policy doesnt have a long-lasting vision of the development of the field, researchers - because of their need for financial support - will just try to surf the wave of the always-changing priorities. As I suggested somewhere else, it will stimulate the development of the Acadustry, a chimera of industry and academia that will indeed be sterile. On the contrary, a policy informed by a long-lasting vision of what I deem necessary for the development of the European research area will be a strong and productive support to research. Ahead of that, academic research and R&D have the responsibility for developing a research domain that is both scientifically robust and productive.

Among the priorities I see for us, is the responsibility to organise the fight against reinventing the wheel and developing technologies that are all-but-forgotten soon after their development by PhD students or projects. A stable EC policy would be a real incentive to make this effort. In particular, the challenge will be less a question of seeing the future twenty years ahead, but rather one of understanding what we know, where the current problems and barriers are, and in which areas we can make real breakthroughs. I would like to suggest that if we engage this direction, we will be more efficient in supporting the development of SMEs in the field, offering real solutions to them, and methods to issues they have to face now, in todays market.

Kaleidoscope has already shaped elements to support the EU efforts to set a productive TEL research area; a good example of this is the Kaleidoscope virtual doctoral school. Soon the Kaleidoscope open archive initiative will demonstrate the capacity of researchers to share and document their production properly and at an international level. However there are difficulties that come from the fragmentation of TEL on a regional basis. The obstacle raised by this fragmentation is quite difficult to overcome because the research needs are not expressed in the same way by all the European nations and the needs are not shared; learning is not yet a global market. This has an impact on the relations with users and SMEs, whose markets are in general quite local and specific. However by setting up European research teams on concrete and precise topics, Kaleidoscope has initiated a movement to build a European research force with a sustainable scientific agenda. Moreover, while building the network, a fragmentation of the research field itself appeared. We are now reducing it, though, with initiatives like the convergence workshop to be held next December to bridge research on collaborative, mobile, and inquiry learning.
 

Beate had some more questions, our discussion continues on elearningeuropa.info