February 2009 - May 2012
European Union
STELLAR, an European Network of Excellence, was a research network within the Seventh Framework Programme (FP 7), in which the European leading institutes with a research focus on Technology-Enhanced Learning had joined forces to unify this diverse research field and to advance its research capacity. Building on the strengths of the two previous research networks Kaleidoscope and Prolearn, it combined the pedagogical and scientific excellence of Kaleidoscope and the technological and professional excellence of Prolearn. STELLAR went beyond the previous networks by devising an agenda for the research on Technology-Enhanced Learning in the future. The basis for this was a broad-scale delphi study, a systematical multi-stage survey method for appraisal of future trends provided by experts' opinions. The conception and performance of this study was in joint responsibility of the University of Freiburg and the Knowledge Media Research Center.
Furthermore, a series of supplementary integration instruments were used to pool the research capacities in Europe. So it was a further central goal of the research network to incorporate important stakeholders and policy makers from business and politics by strategic communication instruments. For example, there was an annual "Meeting of Minds".
The research network highlighted the challenges and transitions people are faced with in today's knowledge society. Frequent organizational changes are on everybody's agenda, and institutional learning more and more is supplemented by informal learning contexts. This calls for the ability of self-regulated lifelong learning.
The work package on evaluation took up the challenge to develop a robust set of measurements that will allow to uncover the fragmentation of the research field. Thereby, a first picture of the recent state of the research community on Technology-Enhanced Learning emerged. The evaluation of the network's achievement ,to remove the fragmentation, was headed by the Centre for Social Innovation, AT, and was conducted in cooperation with the Knowledge Media Research Center and the Open University, UK.
The STELLAR project contributed significantly to integrate the TEL community of Europe and beyond as the results of the evaluation show. The delphi study revealed the crucial topics and an initial road map to tackle these challenges in the TEL field over the next years. This could be achieved by establishing various online platforms such as TEL-Europe, Open Archive, TEL Dictionary and TEL Thesaurus. Moreover the community was highly active in organizing of conferences such as the Meeting of The Young Minds, the Alpine Rendez-Vous and the JTEL Summer and Winter Schools. These doctoral and stakeholder events successfully integrated young and mid-career researchers as well as stakeholders and policymakers and increased the interdisciplinarity of the TEL community.
