1	The E-LEN project http://www.tisip.no/E-LEN
2	E-LEN Project objectives E-LEN Project (http://www.tisip.no/E-LEN) is partially funded by the European Union under the Minerva programme We formed a European network of institutions with e-learning expertise E-LEN is working with the e-learning community to construct a knowledge base for educational design. We’re focusing on re-usable design knowledge, and supporting the work of multi-disciplinary e-learning design teams.
3	E-LEN Project consortium University of Cyprus (co-ordinator) The Learning Lab, University of Maastricht (NL) CSALT, University of Lancaster (UK) A Priori Ltd (UK) Ilmenau Technical University (DE) Hypermedia Open Center – Politechnico di Milano (IT) InterMedia, University of Bergen (NO) NITOL (NO) National Technical University of Athens (GR) Open University (NL) University of Lugano
4	E-LEN Project Approach Our approach involves We work on offering guidelines for setting up and running an “e-learning centre” the term “e-learning centre” is used to describe a unit within a larger organisation (such as a university or a company) that has the role of helping the members of the organisation to create e-learning opportunities (courses, resources, learning communities, tools, etc.). the production of design patterns and a pattern language for e-learning
5	E-LEN Project and patterns
6	Patterns are meant to Help us tell a relevant example of a learning activity with a formalism Capture expert practice Communicate expertise to others Present strategies regarding common recurring instructional problems Provide a vocabulary of instructional decisions Collaborate with others in designing learning activities
7	Initiatives around patterns … Repositories of patterns exist for various disciplines and offer the chance to re-use design expertise within their corresponding communities. Examples are in object-oriented software engineering, hypermedia and human–computer interaction. We believe that it is now timely for the CSCL community to engage in a similar initiative. We have formed 4 special interest groups (SIGs) in which experts and motivated interested people collaborate using the Blackboard/Polaris platfrom. Each SIG is being moderated and facilitated by experts. The SIG on collaborative learning is being moderated by prof. P. Goodyear
8	Special Interest groups on patterns We have formed 4 special interest groups (SIGs) in which experts and motivated interested people collaborate using the Blackboard/Polaris platform. The SIGs are: Lifelong learning Collaborative learning Learning Management Systems Adaptive learning Each SIG is being moderated and facilitated by experts.
9	Next steps … Most of our work will be expressed in terms of design patterns for e-learning, which will be placed in the public domain. We are inviting people to participate in critiquing and refining the design patterns. The more views we can incorporate from members of the e-learning community, the richer the repository of e-learning design patterns will be. Please register your interest on the E-LEN website, and we will email you to let you know how you can participate.