The challenge of virtual mobility: using information technologies in European Studies

The challenge of virtual mobility: using information technologies in European Studies:

BY WOLFGANG PETZOLD

(Desk Officer for EU Structural Policy at the Regional Ministry for Economics, SME, Technology and European Affairs and Assistant Lecturer at the University for Applied Sciences in Bremen)

Introduction

Searching for European Studies teaching material on the Internet or the multimedia market produces a variety of results: one might find extended syllabi, including lists of literature which could be used at undergraduate or graduate level, link-collections of EU-related web sites, databases about current research in European integration, on-line papers offering the opportunity to comment, introductory fact sheets about the various EU policies combined with links to original EU documents, complete on-line courses on EU law and policies or simulation textbooks for complex students' games on recent EU topics. This article seeks to help those searching for such material to get an idea of what they might find where, and to give an overview about current projects aimed at developing web sites for teaching European Studies.

The starting point is that the Internet is an indispensable teaching tool - not exclusively, but especially - in European Studies, because:

• European decision-making increasingly appears 'on-line': the development of European law and policies can be studied with access to up-to-date material such as Commission's proposals, ECJ's decisions, reports and surveys of the Commission or the various EU agencies which are offered on the Internet, especially the Europa server (http://europa.eu.int) and its various sub-sites, launched in 1995 and which had fifty million visits per month at the beginning of 1999.
• Electronic publishing is becoming more popular: Recent research is increasingly presented on the web, sometimes in a full text version.
• Students widely use the web: students become more and more familiar with the Internet which they use as their first choice, quickly accessible 'library', even though they sometimes seem not to have the necessary critical distance ('It must be true, I've found it on the Internet !')
• EU and national programmes foster the use of Internet/multimedia in the academic world. It is likely, that the results of on-going projects will influence teaching and course-design patterns in all faculties, not least by providing easily learned software for authors, who can produce material directly suitable for the Internet.
• The use of the Internet is becoming an important factor for people working on EU affairs at regional, national and EU level. In this respect, the efficient retrieval of EU information from the web is itself a qualification which is needed for jobs and has to be introduced more widely into the syllabi of European Studies.

Besides these general trends some facts especially related to European Studies also seem important:

• The European Documentation Centres (EDC) play an active role in cataloguing and delivering EU documents to lecturers and students; EDC librarians were the first to be confronted with the masses of electronically published EU material, and they were and still are the main actors to pave the way through the jungle, mainly by useful collections of links.¹
• There is a certain impact by EU programmes and actions, namely the Socrates and the Telematics programme or the Jean Monnet Action, to foster the development of multimedia materials and Internet databases for European Studies.²
• Some lecturers began to put material for their courses in EU law or politics together with other useful material like slides, links, etc. on the Internet and offer it to other teachers and students.³
• A recent trend has seen electronic publishing offering (young) scientists of European integration an opportunity to present new articles and findings faster than is possible in the world of printed media.⁴

To sum up: together with the 'original' resources of the European Institutions and agencies, the 'related' EU documents of national governments and lobbyists plus the 'real' teaching resources for European Studies - from research papers to on-line courses - a lot of sites are usable for teaching purposes. However, in particular the on-line courses vary because of their contextual background and still seem to be dominated by development needs in a more organisational and technological perspective. Nonetheless, the transparency with which web-published concepts and materials for European Studies 'discuss' classroom realities can be predicted to add a certain value.

Some Examples

As regards the use of the Internet in European Studies the following examples might allow an overview of existing approaches in current research and development.

Example 1: Transatlantic Classroom Simulations on EU Policy

The use of the Internet for students' simulations has been used by a number of US universities since 1992. One of the leading institutions is the State University of New York at Brockport where 250 students from the USA and Europe took part in a virtual and face-to-face simulation on 'EU Justice and Home Affairs' in 1999. In this case the related web site is used to prepare and connect the different 'delegations' of students before they share a role play lasting several days at the host university and consisting of sessions of EU committees which they have to arrange. The description of the roles of the delegations, the presentation of interesting links, mail lists, chat rooms and video conferences with experts in Brussels shape the supporting function of the web. The address is:
http://www.fredonia.edu/department/polisci/alteregos99.htm

Example 2: The European Legislative Virtual Library (ELVIL)

The scope of the ELVIL project is three-fold: ELVIL is intended to facilitate access of citizens to European and parliamentary databases, it provides on-line courses on EU law and policy for students and it tries to connect various national parliaments to foster communication in EU affairs. ELVIL was created as a multi-national EU project and is co-ordinated by the Stockholm University Library. It gets financial support under the 'Telematics for Libraries' EU programme and was launched in 1996. As regards teaching and learning facilities, ELVIL offers a 'Learning Centre' where students (or anybody else) can learn from cases and tasks about EU law and EU policies. In this case the web is used as a non-specific - i.e. not related to certain university courses - information tool more or less dedicated to the academic public. The address is:
http://www.sub.su.se/elvil.htm

Example 3: Eurotext - European Union Texts for Student Modules

The Eurotext project was carried out by three UK universities - Hull, Ulster and Lincolnshire - between 1995 and 1998, specifically for the UK higher education community. It has been recently announced that there will be a charge for access to the full service from July 1999. Eurotext is an electronic resource bank which provides introductory texts and materials for lecturers and students about the relevant subjects of EU policy. The emphasis is on those key texts which are not otherwise available in electronic form. A search function has been developed especially for students' purposes. Eurotext can be classified as an electronic library created to support academics by a systematic, subject-oriented approach to EU policies. The address is:
http://eurotext.ulst.ac.uk

Example 4: CEFES - A Virtual Seminar in European Studies

CEFES ('Creating a European Forum in European Studies') is a multi-national project funded by the Socrates programme since 1997. The CEFES consortium consists of universities and adults' education organisations, e.g. the UK Open University, and is co-ordinated by the German Institute for Research in Distance Education in Tübingen. Based on the textbook 'What is Europe ?' CEFES developed a virtual seminar in which students may enrol at the participating universities. Texts, tasks, mailing lists and on-line tutoring is provided and tutors as well as students are involved in a European discussion during the course. The address is:
http://www.diff.uni-tuebingen.de/cefes

Conclusions

On the face of it the use of information technologies, especially the Internet, in European Studies looks like a patchwork of projects, which have been launched recently. In general, there is only scant information concerning the evaluation of on-line courses in European Studies. It seems, that the following items need further investigation:

• The process of production of multimedia and Internet material for teaching still seems to be too complicated for the authors. Design and software problems as well as a lack of skills may hinder publication of materials. A problem added to this point is the 'sustainability' of European Studies material which needs constant and labour-intensive updating.
• The structure of the products is still more or less 'literature-based' which means that learning with an on-line course could need more time compared to the use of a textbook. The interactivity and adaptability of educational material delivered by the Internet seems to need further development.
• The 'economic dynamics' of Internet-based learning and teaching materials seem to be quite low and concentrated on public sector interactions. Because of the tradition in which academic literature as the main 'teaching tool' is produced and distributed, especially in EU countries, the Internet is not yet as widely used as it is in the USA. Beyond a limited number of project-based examples publishers seem not to have defined possibilities for alliances with the academic world in order to foster the use of information technologies.

Contact

Wolfgang Petzold
Ministry for Economics, SME, Technology and European Affairs of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen
Zweite Schlachtpforte 3
D-28195 Bremen
Germany
Tel:. +49 421 361 2574
Fax: +49 421 361 8810
E-Mail: wpetzold@wirtschaft.bremen.de

Notes

^1. See, for example, the article of Andrea Sevetson et al. 'European Union Sources on the Web' from the 1997 ECSA Conference [http://www.eurunion.org/infores/teaching/web.htm] or Peter Jan Boon's module about searching EU documents at: http://cwis.kub.nl/~dbi/english/instruct/eu/1ecmembe.htm

^2. See the European Commission's site: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg10/university/index_en.html

^3. In general, see: http://ecsa.org/teach.html; for EU law, see: Joseph H.H. Weiler's site at http://www.harvard.edu.Programs/JeanMonnet/course99w/Units/index.html; for EU policies see: Wolfgang Schumann's (German) site: http://www.politik-international.de

^4. See Michael Nentwich's database, the 'European Research Papers Online', at: http://olymp.wu-wien.ac.at/erpa/