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Erratum to: T.J. van Weert and R.K. Munro (Eds.) Informatics and the Digital Society DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35663-1

The introduction of ICTs is causing considerable tension between systems like those of education, health and democracy and what is happening outside those systems. This tension has to be resolved. Therefore educational goals need to be redefined. In redefining the goals of education changes need to be directly related to competencies and how the acquisition of these competencies can be integrated into the curriculum and the evaluation system. This project aims are: creation of new pedagogical strategies; creation of international communities around these new strategies in higher education and upper secondary education; creation of new principles and methods; creation of knowledge building and exchange processes. more...

Higher Education operates in the real-life context of a Knowledge Society driven by innovation. Students are preparing to become knowledge workers in that society where ICT, innovation and knowledge work are closely interwoven. Three elements are essential in knowledge work: creation of innovative solutions, knowledge creation about these solutions (and how to get such solutions) and personal development. For without innovative solutions there are no satisfied customers, without new knowledge there will be no future customers and without personal development there will be no future job. Higher education students need real-life learning environments in which they can learn to deal with processes of real-life knowledge work. Real-life learning implies solving of key innovation problems in academic or professional practice, in accepted and acceptable ways. Real-life learning implies implicit and explicit learning while solving these problems. And real-life learning implies development of knowledge. Validation and critical reflection form the key to quality assurance of the problem solving process, to explicit learning and to knowledge development. Key characteristics of real-life learning environments that stimulate validation and critical reflection are presented. more...

A Knowledge Society is developing in which Information and Communication Technology is both a catalyst and a necessity. Knowledge is an invaluable asset in this ICT-integrated society, both tacit knowledge in the heads and hands of the workers and explicit knowledge. Human capital is becoming more and more important. Innovation is driving force in knowledge intensive economies. Therefore application and creation of new knowledge are normal part of the work of modern professionals: lifelong working implies lifelong learning. Students are the professionals of tomorrow and need to develop the competences of the knowledge worker. This implies a change in educational paradigm and educational transformation to new education. For developing countries and transition economies this offers threats and opportunities. more...

Economical, societal and cultural developments in industrialized countries push for educational innovation with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as an important enabling factor. Moving from industrial to knowledge intensive economies there is a need for modern professionals, knowledge workers with new qualifications. For the modern professional, lifelong working is identical with lifelong learning; the modern professional is a learning professional. Innovation is the driving force in a knowledge intensive economy and for innovation new knowledge is needed. The modern professional therefore is a knowledge creating professional. Also businesses and organisations need new strategic business-knowledge to be able cope with demands from a rapidly changing environment. Modern organisations are therefore learning organisations. Higher Education, as a breeding place of modern professionals, needs to redefine its role. The more so, because a new generation of students is in the making: the media generation. A new educational paradigm of the learning organisation may serve both initial phase, and lifelong learning students. Situation based learning environments may be the materialisation of this new paradigm. more...

Why are particular communities performing economically better in knowledge economies? Under conditions of intense global competition and complexity it seems that better performing communities enable their members to cultivate human talent: they enable their members to learn. This allows these learning communities to shift resources out of low-wage activities into higher value addinga ctivities, thus providing continued prosperity. The basis of this seems to be a capacity to develop a competitive edge through the application of advanced technology, knowledge and service. From an employment perspective, there is a dangerous mismatch between what the knowledge economy needs of higher education and the “competences” the latter delivers. Lifelong learning provides a paradigm shift to “learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence, within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective”. It provides higher education with the imagination to perceive its future anew, with an engagement to redefine itself in alignment with agile learning communities. It enables learning communities, of which higher education is an integral part, to perform economically better. more...

Various approaches can be identified to the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Higher Education. These approaches are related to the situation in a particular institution with respect to the growth of ICT. These approaches are: Emerging, applying, integrating and transforming. A Higher Education institution may induce progress in various areas where the ICT-approach will have an impact. These areas are: Vision, Philosophy of learning and pedagogy, Development plans and policies, Facilities and resources, Understanding the curriculum, Professional development of institution staff, Community involvement, Assessment. For each approach a picture is sketched of the impact on the various areas. Separate attention is given to the professional development of teaching staff in each approach. more...

Three main research questions are identified for higher education to effectively address Lifelong Learning. Lifelong Learning is an educational issue, because it is pulled by the political agenda, by economical, social, civic, cultural, personal and also Information and Communication Technology (ICT) developments. From an employment related perspective ‘students’ in Lifelong Learning are knowledge workers (knowledge creators) and skills workers (knowledge appliers), basically learning at the workplace. From the social and civic perspective ‘students’ are people learning in ‘learning communities’. From a personal perspective students are persons following initial education to be effective in the workplace (employment related) and in society (community related). The role of ICT is one of empowerment, enhancement of creativity and support. Lifelong Learning is demand driven, flexible learning that will force educational institutions to change. In this special attention should be given to the relevance of Lifelong Learning for countries with emerging knowledge intensive economies. more...

These are the nine edited reports prepared by the different Professional Working Groups at the SECIII conference. Each represents many hours of discussion — both during designated conference discussion time and at more informal sessions. All of these reports were delivered at the final session of the conference more...

Modem curriculum development should fulfil specific requirements that reflect developments in society. A proposed set of requirements is compared against two recent curriculum development initiatives in the area of informatics (computing science). The two initiatives are the IEEE-CS/ACM Computing Curriculum 2001 (Joint Taskforce 2001) and the IFIP/UNESCO Informatics Curriculum Framework 2000 (ICF-2000) (Mulder and van Weert 2001). Detailed comparison showed that the principles used in these two initiatives cover the proposed requirements, although not one-to-one and with different emphasis. A difference in approach between the two curriculum initiatives, concerning the linking of societal needs and student competence development, is illustrated by explaining ICF-2000 Professional Categories and Graduate Profiles. more...

The workplace is becoming a learning organisation empowered by the use of information technology. And education is becoming “the” learning organisation, sharing many characteristics with this new workplace. Added value in new forms of education lies in more interactivity and feedback loops, in reorientation of the “process” of learning and in the use of meta-structures. New computer-based media contribute to this added value by providing dynamic simulation environments or virtual worlds. more...

Countries currently beginning to use Informatics and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in any major way should be able to benefit from the newest technological developments. Fundamental concepts and results of Informatics are independent of any computer platform or software environment. A cadre of professionals with a sound informatics background must be developed and supported. Advantage can be gained by capacity building through intemational cooperation, by using the similarity in the diversity of earlier experiences elsewhere and by concentrating on stable concepts. The UNESCO/IFIP secondary informatics curriculum — adaptable to specific cultural, educational and technological environments — can be implemented by countries and communities for the education of both computer literate and Informatics professionals at the secondary education level. But also elementary school materials, as well as materials for pre-service and in-service training of teachers, and for the preparation of teacher trainers can be based on the curriculum. more...

New competencies are required for academic informatics professionals. Content and organization of informatics education will have to change. The University of Nijmegen offers application oriented informatics Master programmes aiming at these new competencies. In these programmes a professionally run student software house plays an important role. This software house has real customers for whom real-life problems are solved by professionally applying software engineering techniques. The software house is a knowledge intensive student oriented learning network supported by information technology. Learning results in this network are excellent. more...