Ten Years - European Telecoaching Institute
Freiburg (GER), February 2007 - The European Telecoaching Institute (ETI) celebrated the tenth anniversary of its foundation with a symposium. The term "telecoaching" was coined by ETI in 1996 to describe what was a completely new field of activity at the time: the remote professional design and support of learning processes using the Internet.
In an era when no reliable experience in the field of "learning with new media" existed, "telecoaching" also stood for a didactic concept that put the person in the focus of interest instead of media and technology.
The symposium, named "Telecoaching Blicklichter 2007", took place in Freiburg in Breisgau, ETI's hometown, and online in a virtual classroom by live broadcast. Guests from China and El Salvador took part simultaneously with participants from Germany and Kosovo, as far as the time shift allowed. Lectures from various points of view threw light on social, pedagogical, philosophical, political, and technical aspects of the situation of learning and teaching via the Web against the background of great differences in the pace of development in the areas of the Internet, educational politics, learning psychology, job markets, and the promotion of research.
The non-profit association currently has forty members, both individuals and institutions, all of whom have a special relation to tele-learning. For the past ten years, ETI has provided a non-commercial frame of action for the interdisciplinary collaboration of adult education teachers, providers of know-how and technology, knowledge managers, employees in the field of media, personnel developers, and elearners.
In the first five years, under the presidency of Dr. Theo Pindl, a philosopher and the group's mastermind, the priorities lay in conceptual and prototypic work, which was done in the context of several educational conferences organized by the group, the evaluation of EU projects and pilot studies, and active interaction with in bodies of experts.
In the following years, the founding vision of the association increasingly took shape. With "blended learning" and the "renaissance of didactics", the remote learning coaches succeeded in bringing ETI's achievements and key concepts into public view. With the "European Net-Trainer", ETI members like the tele-akademie Furtwangen introduced quality aspects of the education of teachers and a European dimension in the discussion of the experts.
After five years as the second ETI president, Peter Miez-Mangold, chairman of the firm "21-Learning AG", turned over the leadership of the association to Michael Krings: In the general meeting after the symposium, Krings, who is manager of the Innovation Campus - Xtended Learning Solutions GmbH, was elected unanimously as Miez-Mangold's successor.
Also, Dr. Konrad Berger, Virtuelle Akademie Brandenburg and head of the department "Qualification of Employees" at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK, took over from the psychologist and mediator Alexander Hölsch in the managing committee.
Vice-president Carlos Zárate Espinoza, treasurer Hans-Jürgen Weisser, and Dipl. Phys. Meinrad Rombach remain members of the managing committee.
