The European Union and e-learning: an examination of rhetoric, theory and practice

The paper examines the impact that new technology has had upon the rhetoric, theory and practice of trans-national educational collaboration within Europe. The paper first looks very generally at the way e-learning has become a strong part of the educational rhetoric of the EU. Some of the different models found in the literature for describing online courses and teaching and learning approaches used within distance education are then described. These models, however, for the most part apply to courses that are offered by single generally specialist distance education providers. In contrast, the ODL/Minerva projects supported by the European Commission’s Socrates programme are relatively unusual in that they have as a starting point a consortium of trans-national partners engaged in a common educational venture. Consequently, the second part of the looks at some of the models generated within the ODL action. This is followed by descriptions of the work of three ODL projects, each of which differ in orientation and approach. It is argued that the dimensions on which the three projects most significantly differ are not so much according to the models already described in the first part of the paper but is more related to their assumptions about how comparative knowledge is viewed and the kind of discourse from which knowledge and learning is generated and the dialogical practices used to support this.