E-Learning in the academic world: a survey

Etat de l'art des technologies en e-learning effectué en 2004 sur demande du Rectorat. E-learning refers to the use of Internet technologies to deliver learning experiences. Since 1995, an ever-growing number of universities has chosen the Internet medium for teaching and learning. How these universities launched their ”e-program” and to what purposes? Answers to these two key questions are tentatively addressed in this survey by peering more than 20 universities. While the list of these universities is far from being exhaustive (nearly all universities have now some form of e-learning culture), it represents a sampling of the most ”visible” cases at the time of this writing. This list includes North American, European, Asiatic and Australian universities. Swiss universities are not included in this survey, as the Swiss e-learning landscape has recently been extensively drawn up by the Universit`a della Svizzera italiana (Lepori and Succi 2003). In addition to this peering, two major e-learning initiatives, the MIT open course-ware and the virtual open university of Catalonia, are presented in the details. Furthermore, a section describing the e-learning standards currently used in the learning community is also included so that this survey is as much as possible self-contained.