Budapest (HU), February 2011 - When the HEXTLEARN project ended in 2010, the project partners decided to continue maintaining the community for the future. The final research results are now online on the HEXTLEARN community: The Good Practice Collection, the Virtual Peer Review Report, and the Living Toolkit are fully accessible for free. Community members may further request a Virtual Peer Review process from now on based on the fully tested methodology.
The Good Practice Report summarizes the outcome of extended research. Various techniques were used to collect possible good practices of ICT use in the European higher educational arena. The cases were categorized in nine territories. Upon agreed definition, projects were selected where at least two criteria of excellence could be observed.
Based on the good practices, detailed data was gathered about the selected practices with different techniques, most commonly by updating or holding interviews with the representatives of the institution. Finally, more than 35 detailed cases were quantitatively analyzed by a common grid of thirty questions in nine areas - from management to communication. The analysis shows the most frequently cited common elements in respective areas that lead to good practice, as well as some territory-specific outcomes where some aspects were cited only in one or two territory cases.
The Peer Review Report summarizes the outcome of a long and intensive exercise. It consisted of designing the approach, tools, embedding into the online platform, and final implementation and reporting of nine peer review exercises in eight EU countries. These were carried out in the frame of the Hextlearn project.
The virtual peer reviews have been adapted to the needs of the HEIs involved and have also been present in the main project seminars and workshops via virtual exchanges and group discussions. The nine peer reviews were carried out in two steps. The report shows the high potential that a web 2.0 platform has in gathering HEI representatives across Europe to exchange, learn, and improve their ICT approaches for teaching and learning.
The purpose of the Living Toolkit is:
