"The aim is to have educational material that is of high quality, pedagocially sound, and serves different user groups on a broad base. Educational material that is produced with public funding should be openly accessible", stressed Kylämä. This is the principle that the Ministry of Education adheres to also in giving out the eLearning Quality Awards this year. The projects to which the award is granted must be freely available.

The action lines and recommendations of the new Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004-2006 consist of three sub-fields: knowledge, contents and operating environment.

Competencies to be developed by training teaching and research personnel
In terms of competencies, the programme recommends the extensive use of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning at all educational levels. The aim is to improve the training of teaching personnel so that by the year 2007, at least 75 per cent of the teachers would have the necessary skills to use information and communication technologies in their work.

The programme also directs attention to the information technology skills of researchers. Researcher training and the professional development of researchers will, in the future, include the enhancement of basic information and communication technology skills, and especially, the improvement of researchers' competencies in the skills related to their own fields of research.

FVU operations will be established on a continual basis by the end of 2006
As for the Finnish Virtual University, the programme has come to an important resolution: "The operations of the FVU as a developer of university network activities and as a service provider will be established on a continual basis by the end of 2006." The programme also promises to intensify the co-operation between the development units of the FVU and the Virtual Polytechnic, and their co-operation with the Ministry of Education.

During the year 2004, the development units of the FVU and the Virtual Polytechnic are expected to develop quality criteria for the online course material published on their portals. The work on e-learning quality development has, in fact, already been started in the VOLPA project, which is a joint effort of the universities of Helsinki and Kuopio, and the Lappeenranta University of Technology.

The National Programme on Education and Research in the Information Society 2004-2006 is available on the website of the Ministry of Education (Publications 2004: 12, pdf in Finnish).

Download the Finnish Information Society Programme in English

Download the Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004-2006 in English