How Digital Learning Differs in Europe By Jane Massey It's a different world over in the EU--right down to the terminology. A look at Europe's unique take on e-learning--and advice for Yankees seeking business there. Is Europe different in the way technology is supporting learning and, if so, how? Let me start by answering the question. Yes, it's different, probably more so than many Americans might expect, but not as different as many Europeans would like to think. My intention is to suggest what needs to be considered when looking at the European training market. I'll try not to spend too long explaining the origins and context of the differences; putting things in context is a European habit that's described by my American friends and collaborators as an excuse not to get to the point. But you're going to have to get used to that if you want to do business in Europe. Providing the context allows better consideration to be given to why and how any change might take place. So, the importance of explaining the differences lies in whether there is something to learn from those differences. I think there is. Technology-supported learning is learning supported in some way by technology, including electronic tools for designing, delivering, and managing learning, as well as content in the form of resources and courses. Two terms--ICTs (information and communication technologies) and TSL (technology-supported learning)--are considered in Europe to be the least contentious and most likely to have shared meaning in every language. Terminology is hugely important in Europe, not least because there are 11 major languages in the European Union, with several more on the way as new Eastern European countries join. With different languages and new terms comes the challenge of finding shared meaning. The solution is not, at least in the short to medium run, to have one dominant language (most likely English) and expect everyone to accept imposed terminology. That's the quickest way to encounter resistance. Language and meaning are complex cultural identifiers. Though English increases in importance, especially with Internet growth, the solution for Europe lies in working towards harmonious understanding of different identifiers with shared meaning. So, when the French and other Europeans talk about telematics and distance learning, it's important to understand what they mean by those terms and not expect them to use Anglo American terminology, such as computer-based training, Web-based training, and instructional design. Such terms tend to be perceived negatively in Europe, largely because of their association with old forms of instruction which, let's face it, were pretty awful. Two words that do have important meaning and shared resonance across languages in Europe are learning and pedagogy. The differences There are several main differences in technology-supported learning between Europe and the United States. Fundamental and contextual. There are different patterns of education and training in Europe--not only different from the United States and Canada, but also widely different within the European Union. Economic. The take up of ICTs in general in Europe has been at a slower pace and pattern than in North America, although parts of Europe are now catching up rapidly both in terms of installed IT base and Internet access. Attitudes and expectations. These differences are directly related to training professionals and planners. Attitudes and expectations of the potential of ICTs in education and training vary hugely across Europe. The great divide is not along country lines but more along sector lines: ICT industries embrace and generate TSL; other industries do not. Resistance is highest in the traditional sectors and in the education and training community, especially where the public sector has the strongest role. Limited range of expertise. The level of TSL skills among education and training practitioners in Europe is low, and there's an absence of significant attempts within the education and training community to identify and prepare appropriate education and training programs in TSL to drive the development of new applications and large-scale usage. The systems I'll try to keep the contextual explanation short, but it is important to understand that there are and will remain significant differences in education and training systems across the Member States of the EU. The twin area of education and training is one that the Member States hold dear. Early hopes of standardization and harmonization have largely been recognized as futile, and have been abandoned in favor of seeking cooperation and mutual recognition. Not only does each country have its own system, but also the education and training establishment is, in general, extremely conservative. There has also been--as a result of economic, political and demographic change--enormous pressure on education and training systems to provide more training within tighter budgets and, in real terms, decrease public expenditure. The result has been resistance to any change, aversion to any risk and innovation, and behavior that's typical of an industry in decline. Only in the past months have governments and education and training systems awakened to the fact that education and training are, in fact, industries in growth. They're (mostly by law) two of the most highly regulated industries in Europe, typified by two examples: France and Germany. In France, as in a number of other European countries, education and initial vocational and professional training are the responsibility of the state, and there's little or no involvement of enterprises or the private sector. At the heart of the French philosophy is the idea that education and training should be for developing citizens with political, social, cultural, and economic knowledge and skills. The title of the most recent Education and Training White Paper, Towards a Europe of Knowledge, produced by the European Commission, is strongly influenced by French thinking. In addition, adopting ICTs in education and training has been slow, partly because the agenda was seen to be set by the industries and not by the wider needs of society. And partly because most of the industries driving change were perceived to be American or Anglo in origin and not appropriate to French learning needs and methods. The other example of the European context is Germany, where years of social partnerships and close involvement of employers in the education and training systems have led to the model of the Dual System, of which Germany is justifiably proud. Germany has been slow to adopt ICTs, to some extent because it believes that the existing system is best for meeting its needs. The challenge for both of those philosophies is how to adapt to the rapid changes that have taken place. There's little doubt that the structures of the education and training systems in both countries are powerful and well established, but slow to change. The point is that if the education and training systems are unable to plan and implement TSL, then the supply of good quality human and digital resources for learning is going to be low. That's now changing, and some of the credit must go to the European Commission and the huge number of funded programs and projects that have over the past decade or so attempted to bring together players from research, education, training, and industry to develop and pilot TSL across the Member States. Regarding use of ICTs in general and the Internet in particular, it's well known that companies, public sector organizations, and consumers in European countries generally have been slow to recognize the potential of the Internet for business, education, and consumer usage. Unlike in the United States, European political and business leaders have really only in the last 12 months started to realize and articulate visions and policies to capture the potential of learning technologies. Nicholas Negroponte, speaking at the Confederation of British Industry conference in November 1999, commented that after all his years of presenting at conferences, he felt it had only been in the previous six months that Europe's industry leaders had started to demonstrate that they believed what he was saying about ICTs was for real and not in some vague future. Five years ago, I was commissioned by a Danish organization to research the question of sustainability in technology-supported learning in full-time education. At that stage, not one single European government had articulated a policy or plans to prepare their young citizens for the information age. That has changed, and most European countries now have policies and large public spending programs to bring ICTs into the education, public administration, and business communities. There have also been huge changes in the telecomms sector with deregulation accelerating in the past decade, resulting in more competition, much lower prices, and expanded services. The biggest impact has been in mobile telephony. Some European countries, especially in Scandinavia, have a greater penetration than in the United States. In terrestrial services, there are still de facto monopolies and excessive local charges for consumers and small businesses in particular. Even those companies that have decoupled charges on Internet use from other services still impose local charges on a time basis. The effect is discouraging continuous online usage. That picture differs widely across European countries and even within countries. In 1999, the UK saw a massive increase in Internet signups with the huge success of Freeserve, the first major ISP to provide Internet access without signup fees or annual charges--demonstrating that removing the cost barrier increases massive use. It's only a matter of time before the telecomms industry in Europe learns the same lesson about call charges. That will probably be the case by the time you read this, at least in the UK. Slower acceptance At a recent conference in the UK, Gary Hamel said that no company board member should be allowed to keep his or her position without having direct personal experience using the Internet and also, preferably, e-commerce. On that basis, most European companies would retain only a few of their current board members. That also applies to senior management in all types of European companies, few of whom have direct knowledge or experience using the Internet and are unlikely to. This conservatism and lack of direct engagement with technology at senior levels means that investment is slow and difficult to achieve in knowledge and resources to integrate technologies into formal corporate learning and training systems. Even more worrying is the lack of expertise and knowledge, and the resistance, among teachers and corporate trainers. The seats of learning--colleges, universities, and training institutions--have, except in rare cases, been some of the most vociferous opponents of TSL. When asked why technology isn't being integrated into education and training, Europeans educators will argue ad nauseum about low-quality pedagogy, linear mechanistic and boring learning materials, and technology never replacing teachers--all quite reasonable and acceptable arguments about traditional CBT. Sadly, it must be admitted that the opponents to TSL have a certain weight to their case, as much of what passes as technology-supported learning is exactly as they describe. The problem is that the naysayers haven't noticed that significant change has taken place and that new TSL is varied, dynamic, and actually driving the development of new pedagogy. The most conservative voices are found in traditional sectors, where occupational profiles are the most developed and haven't changed a great deal. The most active industries in terms of embracing technology tend to be those in which fixed occupational profiles are either new or nonexistent. The difficulty is that in countries with highly regulated training systems and employment, companies without qualifications that are certified by formal systems players (vocational and academic authorities) find themselves without official recognition. A great irony, not lost on many Europeans, is that a new dual system is emerging that recognizes two types of certifying authorities: the traditional national and professional authorities and the major global industries such as Oracle, Microsoft, and Cisco. It has been difficult, if not impossible, at both national and European levels to find accommodation for accreditation and recognition between countries. Now, there emerges a forceful third player--the global company--and no one seems sure how to deal with it. What that means for TSL is that integrating new technologies and new approaches in powerful education and training systems is slow because change of any kind is difficult to achieve. Coupled with that is people's fear of being made redundant through technology, which is a complete misunderstanding of the potential and impact of technologies in learning. What's more, the tendency of technology advocates to use a cost-savings argument reinforces people's fears, which is also a misunderstanding and seriously underestimates the investment required. The "forces of conservatism" that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair describes in the education sector are still alive and well across all Member States. The picture, however, isn't all gloomy. A huge amount of public funds at European and national levels has been going into researching and piloting new TSL tools, methods, and content in the past few years. The level of knowledge and awareness of the potential for TSL is growing, mainly in full-time education at secondary and primary levels and then feeding through into higher education and vocational and professional training. One of the challenges Europe now faces is how to provide the tools, services, and content that burgeoning users are demanding. Failure by the education and training systems to recognize and anticipate the need for skilled designers, authors, developers, mediators, and assemblers of TSL has meant that there are almost no trained professionals. Most who have TSL expertise gained it through experience, often achieved at great expense through publicly funded projects that have produced only a few usable results. There are barely a handful of European universities teaching masters degree programs or supporting Ph.D. students in instructional design, and those precious few graduates are snapped up quickly by large, mainly ICT industries and consulting firms. That means that the trained professionals are not going back into the education and training systems of organizations that are attempting to design and develop new TSL programs and content, albeit inexpertly and inefficiently. To compound matters, the term "instructional design" is perceived by most teachers and trainers in Europe in a negative light. I often advise U.S. organizations wanting to market TSL in Europe to find other terms to describe the functions of instructional design. The European attitude towards instructional designers can be ascribed to the performance and quality of CBT from the 1980s and early 1990s, some of which is still in evidence in linear, purely expositive, and noninteractive presentations. In short, the instructional designer is seen to be the devil behind low-quality learning material. A few years ago, the European Commission agreed to a call for project proposals that would establish skill profiles and training programs in the whole field of technology-supported learning design and development--from initial training and undergraduate programs to post-graduate and doctoral courses. At the launch in Brussels, one rather hostile university representative asked me whether I seriously thought universities should have instructional designers in teams that develop TSL, a sentiment that was applauded by others in the audience. Not surprisingly, the attempt to elicit proposals for funding was a failure; the subject simply didn't seem to interest education and training organizations. In the current huge upsurge in demand, European universities may now rue their lack of foresight. Europe desperately needs highly skilled people with multidisciplinary skills and knowledge in technology, graphics, semiotics, education, sociology, psychology, business development, and project management for designing and developing technology supported-learning. Pedagogy and the importance of culture Before looking at what is being done in TSL in European companies and training institutions, I'd like to return to the issue of pedagogy, as it sometimes puzzles my U.S. colleagues. Why the concern about pedagogical values? Don't we all share the same concerns? Yes, but the concerns of Europeans are heightened by their view that there are particular pedagogical approaches that have a more natural fit with certain European cultures. Perhaps that's best illustrated by a French colleague, Bernard Blandin, a senior adviser at CESI in Paris, and a major influence on TSL in France. He sees the model of TSL that has emerged in the Anglo American culture as one that categorizes trainees as a target group that shares the same training needs and is given the same training provision. To him, that explains the large-scale, expository type of TSL provided by U.S. universities in their distance delivery of lectures and course materials, and remote and often automated assessment--heavy on broadcasting activities, low on interaction. That model, with its high-volume, low-cost strategy, provides an economic example for widespread take up of TSL. Blandin argues that the French model is based on an approach to learning that is about developing people's skills and knowledge, based on personal learning paths and individual support and within which constructivism plays a key role. The economic model for that cannot be based on large-scale, high-volume usage. He further suggests that the Internet offers advantages over broadcasting through personalization, interactivity, and shared communication and learning spaces. It lets his model, a French model, be economically viable and demonstrate that a learner-centered approach is more holistically effective than one that is teacher-driven. I empathize strongly with Blandin's view, having run an open-learning business school for some years. At the time, I developed, with some European colleagues, an open-learning program in supervisory management for the retail sector. We ran trials with exactly the same materials in Ireland, the UK, France, and Spain. The most learning-independent group was in the UK, where little interaction with the tutor was sought. The group with the highest dependency on the tutor and heaviest demand for direct one-to-one support was in France. The evaluation of the results suggested that the effectiveness of the training in terms of performance was highest in France, but the cost of the training (same materials cost but higher tutor cost) was significantly higher than elsewhere. France exemplifies a particular approach, but the views expressed by French educators and trainers are shared across many European countries. It is now felt in Europe that the Internet enables more individualized learning paths and a greater focus on individual learning needs. Those can be done at a reasonable cost, with smart use of technology. France has excelled particularly in using technology in learning for disadvantaged groups. The reason may be because it started from a base of giving each person individual help and focus, and the expectation was that the resource requirement would be high if it were to be effective. France has also produced some of the best TSL science and mathematical resources--mainly, tools for simulations and exercises and excellent language training resources. But, in France, you rarely find TSL courses with any preset learning pathway. Germany provides a different example. Students and trainees spend much longer in training and education. The curriculum, teaching, training, and work experience components are highly planned and are the result of many years' refinement by educators and industrialists. Few Germans expect to learn in their own time, and traditional open-learning or correspondence courses have always had a notoriously high attrition rate. In particular, TSL in the form of traditional CBT hasn't proved popular in Germany. However, Germany has some of the most advanced TSL applications available--applications that focus on developing innovative solutions to technical training and that, again, apply constructivist principles. Currently in the pilot stage are applications that aim to use technology to develop skills in physical constructive processes, such as learning how to build electronic equipment or developing surgical skills. These applications also aim to simultaneously improve knowledge through combining real and virtual reality. Where TSL is being applied, the highest usage is for ICT skills, as is the case in the rest of the world. Next come soft skills, communication, people management, and personal development. European directives in health, safety, and environmental protection have stimulated the demand for training in recent years. There has been a strong focus on developing new resources and new learning methods in those subjects, and many of the experts are consultants in the private sector who have developed software for managing processes and extended the applications into training and performance support. Language training is inevitably a significant aspect of the European training industry, and some of the best and most advanced programs and resources have been developed in that field. One of the best-known pioneers in TSL for language learning, Auralog, is producing highly interactive resources and is now marketing successfully in the United States. In Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, there's a strong demand for high-quality TSL to support technical training, and some of the best resources are being developed as simulations for mechanics, electronics, materials science, industrial processing, GIS, and other technical subjects. Sales, marketing, and communication programs (highly popular in the United States) are less favored, and there's strong resistance to U.S. products in those fields. The Internet has shown itself to be an extremely important medium for broader training and education services. In the UK, some of the most advanced applications are in the field of guidance and career development, primarily for young people but also for adults needing to adapt or upgrade skills at a time of change. Performance support systems haven't had the same level of attraction in Europe as in the United States--at least not in the manufacturing sector. But ERPs such as SAP have been extremely successful in Europe, as in the United States. It should be noted that the concept of a performance support system is rarely understood by European training professionals. If systems are in place, they're more likely to have been driven from another department in the firm. The response of training professionals and policy makers Training and business consultants (excluding the heavyweight players) and sector training firms in Europe have tended to be unaware and uninterested in adding TSL to their portfolio of services. When asked why they don't innovate using ICTs, the response tends to be that their clients don't necessarily have direct access to the technology or confidence in using it. My own view is that most European consultants receive little stimulus from their customers to change and don't really understand the potential of the technology. When customers come looking for services that integrate new technologies, these consultants will be out of date and easily displaced. Large public training organizations (very often operating at a national level, such as FAS in Ireland and VDAB in Belgium) have participated in research and pilot projects in TSL but haven't yet embraced the potential of the Internet to revolutionize their industries. TSL is seen as a peripheral activity, and few national training organizations have invested in either the infrastructure or internal skills development needed to take full advantage of the sudden upturn in customer awareness and demand. One of the most innovative and potentially important initiatives in TSL is the UK government's University for Industry. This initiative intends to foster the use of ICTs in learning and is aimed mainly at stimulating the interest of new learners and small-enterprise managers and brokering skill needs and the technology-supported learning supply. The initiative will endorse a high-quality supply, disseminate information about courses and resources, and in some cases directly fund the development of TSL. It shares similar objectives to America's Learning Xchange, although there are important differences in approach. For example, approved suppliers must provide support for learners; unsupported self-learning programs won't be approved. In the first phase, the focus is on learning programs for information and technology skills, basic literacy and numeracy, skills for small and medium-sized businesses and the business sectors automotive components, multimedia, environmental technology and services, and distributive and retail trades. It's hoped to have 1,000 local learning centers by March 2001, to be providing information on learning to 2.5 million users by 2002, and by 2004 to have 1 million courses and packages available. It's anticipated that most of those will be delivered in part or wholly through the Internet. While there's a clear intention to have widespread geographical presence, many of the local learning centers are expected to have a sector--and even company-specific base. Qualified supplier processes have been set up, learning center applications are being processed, and pilots will run throughout the winter and spring until the official launch in autumn 2000. University for Industry, or UFI as it's known, is the single biggest TSL initiative of any European country, and TSL providers and users will watch its development with great interest. The European Commission's role The European Commission has been a major contributor to the development of TSL. Participation in EU pilot and research projects has provided opportunities for valuable learning for almost everyone involved in TSL in Europe. Millions of Euros and hundreds of person years have been expended on projects through programs such as Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates, ADAPT, and the Research and Development Framework programs. Hundreds of prototypes have been developed and piloted, but little commercial success has emerged. Exceptions include the learning platform TopClass, which is widely distributed in the United States and Europe. It received yearly development funds under the R&D Framework program and language resources from Auralog, which received funding under the Leonardo da Vinci program and one of its predecessors, Lingua. So, what are the lessons for TSL providers and training professionals looking at offering TSL in Europe? Watch your language. Terms such as "instructional design" may be perceived negatively. Secondly, remember that the people whom you expect to deliver training may not have the TSL expertise needed to provide the highest quality learner and business support. Use high-quality media and navigation. They will be appreciated, but if the pedagogy is straight down-the-line expository material, most learners will decline. Europeans expect sophisticated pedagogical design, clearly geared towards the target group, keeping in mind the subject matter and the type of support to be provided. Systems are important. In particular, local and national education and training systems are essential. Flexible resources that can be used within a training program for specific job profiles or linked to curricula for particular competencies will have a much better chance than courses that are only partially relevant. You'll need to demonstrate the range and quality of the skills of the people involved in the design and development. Published: March 2000