Exploring multilingual requirements of the community of a learning portal: the case of Organic.Edunet

This paper presents an analytical framework for introducing multilingualism into web portals, aiming to facilitate bringing down the language barriers, bridging the current language divide between potentially interested users and the multimedia resources from around the world that are made available through such portals. The general problem addressed is the design affordances that shall allow multilingual web portals to meet different linguistic profiles, needs and user expectations. The paper describes the methodology used for the analysis of user requirements of the existing user community of Organic.Edunet, by focusing to the registered members (totalling around 2,500 at the time of the study, doubled already by today). Organic.Edunet, being a thematic web portal aiming to promote the discovery and best use of the wealth of educational resources on Organic and Sustainable Agriculture in a European and international scale, forms a typical example for understanding the language barriers between people of diverse linguistic profiles, and the affordances needed in such a “Learning portal” that will help bringing down those barriers. The paper concludes with some initial results and discussion of the findings and suggestions for future work.This paper includes research results from work that has been funded with support of the European Commission, and more specifically the project CIP-ICT-PSP-270999 “Organic.Lingua: Demonstrating the potential of a multilingual Web portal for Sustainable Agricultural & Environmental Education” of the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP)

Innovation in the teaching of sustainable development in Europe: the case of ISLE Erasmus Network

Sustainable Development (SD) is one of the most widely used terms during the last years. It is a multidisciplinary concept, which applies mostly to life sciences but is not limited to them. Even though the short survey conducted by the authors revealed that there are only a few cases of Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) around Europe that provide programs dedicated to SD, it is obvious that there is a constant raise in the need for implementing courses related to SD in existing programs. This paper discusses the case study of I.S.L.E., an Erasmus Academic Network, which aims to use the existing knowledge and tools in the context of teaching sustainable development topics in Universities and HEIs around Europe as a basis, and elaborate further by introducing an innovative approach towards the improvement of teaching SD in HEIs, based on the current needs as they are identified by the actions of the Network.The work presented in this paper has been funded with support by the European Commission, and more specifically the Erasmus Academic Network “I.S.L.E network: Innovation in the teaching of Sustainable Development in Life sciences in Europe” (14194177267-LLP-1-2010-1-FR-ERASMUSENWA) of the Erasmus Programme