THE E-LEARNING IN THE PORTUGUESE HIGHER

EDUCATION: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Paula Peres
PAOL Unidade de Inovao em Educao
Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administrao do Porto / Instituto Politcnico do
Porto, ISCAP-IPP
Porto, Portugal
pperes@iscap.ipp.pt

Lus Borges Gouveia
Universidade Fernando Pessoa Porto
Praa 9 de Abril, 349, Porto, Portugal
lmbg@ufp.edu.pt

Abstract
This paper describes an European case study in the e-educational world, in the context of the
Portuguese higher education system.
The experience described shows the level of the traditional cultural influence in the adoption of the
Web technologies. We attested differences even within each institution. We realized that some teachers
are fixed to the cultural traditions and do not trust in innovations or even open to change their teaching
activity. In this paper we showed how we coped with it in order to get all teachers involved in the e-
learning project a background to foster the skills and adopt e-learning facilities and take advantage of
digital opportunities.
This paper starts by presenting the Portuguese education systemorganization, in a global picture. It
enhances todays context, dimension and higher education mission. After that, this paper describes the
evolution of the integration of e-learning practices in the higher Institute of Accounting and
Administration of Porto. The timeline for the adoption of the innovation, proposed by Roger was used to
guide this study, helping to organize evidence and put into perspective the identification of the e-learning
culture features.

Keywords: Higher Education, Learning Management Systems, blended learning, innovation
adoption, open distance.

Portuguese Higher Education Structure
In Portugal, under control of Ministry of Education (ME) and Ministry of Science, Technology and
Higher Education (MCTE) there is a public and a private network of education institutions that are
organized according to the following structure (Figure1.gif). the Ministry of Education is responsible for
the education frompre-primary education until upper secondary education. The Ministry of Science,
Technology and Higher Education is responsabble for hugher education degrees and the regulation of
higher education institutions as well for the Research and Development state funding:

Figure 1: Portuguese Education Structure (Gabinete de Estatistica e Planeamento da Educao, 2006)

In Portugal, the higher education system includes public, private and cooperative institutions.
Nowadays, there are 14 public University institutions and 15 public Polytechnic institutions. There are
also 13 private and cooperative Universities and 2 private Polytechnic institutions. Moreover, there are
116 private or cooperative schools of higher education, polytechnic or mixed, as showed below
(Table1.gif):

Table 1: Number of Portuguese Higher Education Institutions (OCDE, 2006)

The number of students enrolled in public and private institutions has been growing according to the
following timeline (Figure2.gif):

Figure 2: Number of students enrolled in the Portuguese Higher Education (GPEARI-MCTES,
2008)

In the 2006/07 school year there were nearly 366 000 students enrolled on higher education courses,
in which 75% attended public institutions and 25% private institutions (GPEARI-MCTES, 2008).
Concerning the higher education institution mission, the University institutions should provide a
sustainable scientific preparation and a technical training to allow students to develop professional and
cultural activities. It should also promote the development of conception, innovation and critical thinking
skills.
The Polytechnic institutions should provide a sustainable cultural and technical preparation. They
should also promote the development of innovation and critical thinking skills. The teaching-learning
process should lead to the practical knowledge in order to give students the necessary preparation to the
work market (Gabinete de Estatistica e Planeamento da Educao, 2006).
A global vision of Portuguese e-Learning practices
Nowadays, the social and technological evolution is reflected on educational systems and justifies
the growth of the Internet presence of higher education institutions. The level of Web technology adopted
by an institution may influence the prestige, quality and number of students enrolled (Sauter, 2003).
On todays society, learning is a natural act. It is a continuous process during the entire life. Its
scope is more than the traditional formal learning added by update trainings (Sauter, 2003). Current socio-
cultural pressures enhance the importance of promoting learning strategies that allow students to learn, to
be, to criticize and to produce knowledge taking into account the reality of the society.
This scenario has conducted higher education institutions to explore the information communication
technologies in order to find new flexible and sustainable paths leading to the adoption of the long life
learning perspective. The acquaintance of students with Web technologies may be explored in order to
promote learning. Todays education systems should accomplish the changing processes and give
response to the emergent demands that are increasable digital based and more technology mediated.
The e-Learning on the Portuguese higher education has been promoted by a large number of
specialists. However, the culture and system problems such as the national standards and regulations, the
teachers and students habits, the lack of infrastructures and the accreditation mechanisms, among other
factors, have been blocking the systematization of this specific type of learning environment (Carvalho,
2006).
Students, parents and society are also used to the traditional school model and even when they
criticize it, they do not have other reference or enough experience in a different school system and
consequently they still prefer to defend the old model (Moran, 2005).
Usually, the higher education institutions management decisions conduct to the use of the Internet as
a complementary way to promote the communication between students and teachers (Isla, 2004). In
general, observations and studies on Portuguese schools reveal a weak use of the numerous didactical-
pedagogical possibilities offered by the cyberspace (Silva, 2005).
The majority of the Universities are using the b-learning model. Nevertheless, according to the Nova
Alves (Nova & Alves, 2003) position, the majority of the Web technology integration processes are using
the same methodologies as used in a face-to-face environment. In these context, the quality of the training
offers is questioned and the potential creativity of the Internet applied to the knowledge construction is
limited and, in many cases, not fully explored. Due to the lack of knowledge or due to the passivity, we
realize that there is a resistance fromteachers regarding the use of e-learning systems. Those continue to
promote the expositive sessions where students have a passive attitude, receiving information (European
ODL Liaison Committee, 2004). We also need to take into consideration that also students need to change
from a traditional rule passive for a more active one
In the classroom, learning practices are oriented to improve teacher presentations. In this context, e-
learning tools contribute only to a new expression of old procedures and not to the expected and needed
innovation of digital education (Nova & Alves, 2003).
We are attending a focus on information and on the transmission process. This suggests a strength
concerning on contents, on its organization and on the way it is presented, not taking into account the
interaction process that e-learning environments may support (Dias, 2004). Almeida (Almeida, 2003)
enhances this idea of the need of changing, stating that changing the environment where the education
takes place means changing the education itself. It is important to reflect on the type of training we want
and what practices we should use to achieve it and provide a clear path to promote them.
A global analysis of todays e-learning practices in the public higher education, shows a growing
concern from the institutions that belong to this system (PAOL, 2007). Around 78% of Universities and
93% of Polytechnic institutes make an e-learning platform available to be used both by teachers and
students (PAOL, 2007). Beyond that, many institutions are creating specialized groups in order to ensure
sustainable web technology integration, for example, the university of Oporto (GATIUP, 2008), the
CEMED - Multimedia and e-learning center (CEMED, 2008) and the PAOL Unit of innovation in
education (PAOL, 2007), among others.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
Since the development of Web technology, the provision of the Internet has been changing from
Web 1.0, to the much talked Web 3.0. Web 1.0 was the first generation of commercial Internet and the
most notable asset was the amount of information available. Despite the existence of hyperlinks, their
content was not very interactive and it was solely a new way of reading documents in which users took
the passive role of knowledge consumer.
Web 2.0 is moving the Internet to a platformwhere the priority is to provide a Web environment in
order to create sharing spaces that profit fromthe number of users and use collective intelligence
(O'Reilly, 2005).
In essence they attempt to enhance the role of users beyond merely receiving information to
interacting, creating content, creating communities and collaborating in a network system. In blogs,
Wikis, forums, podcasts and many Internet services many users contributions are incorporated, ranging
from simple position statements, short essays and other points of view to sharing their perspectives of the
world. The power of sharing and giving opinions is not only a journalistic or editorial issue it is a major
addition to the publishing habits usual in higher education institutions contexts.
OReilly (O'Reilly, 2005) describes Web 2.0 as a new generation of applications featuring Web tools
such as Flickr, Delic.io.us, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Blogger, among many others
available, most of the times free. Web 2.0 application changed the way we use Internet. It enables the
easy publication of concepts and ideas by all users. The number of Web 2.0 tools available has increased
dramatically.
e-learning 2.0
Although all these tools share the same ease of use, they have not been explored sufficiently in terms
of education (Downes, 2005). Stephen Downes introduced the terme-learning 2.0 and related it to the
use of Wikis, Weblogs and podcasts in an educational context. Since then, many researchers have been
undertaking projects in this area, wuth these and other tools. This kind of environment is led by self-user
production. Social media, social networks and social communities represent a new method of
collaboration and communication. In a short period of time, the World Wide Web turned froma static
information medium into a great communication platform. Ajjan and Hartshorne (Ajjan & Hartshorne,
2008) argue that Web 2.0 tools are the trend of Internet technologies and have many features that may
support the teaching/learning process. They underline the importance of exploring the ease of use and
students familiarity with Internet tools. Increasingly, we have documents reporting different uses of Web
2.0 tools in education. In recent years, many reports describing the use of Web 2.0 in educational contexts
have emerged. One of the most recent reports was written by Ebner et al. (Ebner, Lienhardt, Rohs, &
Meyer, 2010) who describe the use of Twitter in higher education. Twitter was the first microblog
platformthat became established in 2007 as a new way of blogging and it is also the most well-known. It
allows Web communication using brief messages up to 140 characters. Ebner et al. (Ebner et al., 2010)
leading a study of the importance of using twitter for educational purposes concluded that the use of a
Microblog in a course aids informal learning and process-oriented learning as a new way to communicate.
It is not only a way of sending information, nor just a status message tool, but also an opportunity to be
part of something by reading, commenting, discussing or simply underlining an idea.
Another study describes the use of Facebook in an educational context. Assuming that most of the
students have a Facebook account and that their acquaintance with it could be explored in order to obtain
better learning results, English and Ducan-Howell (English & Duncan-Howell, 2008) presented a case
study about its use in the context of a degree course. Over 4 weeks students worked using a private
Facebook group. Previously, students had worked in a face-to-face classroombefore joining the Web
group. The authors observed that students felt comfortable when sharing messages of a different nature
such as solution messages, jokes, problems and excitement amongst others. The main difference between
using Facebook and another web platform was the students proximity.

PLE/LMS
The decentralization of learning that focuses on an ecology centered on the student has been called a
PLE (Personal Learning Environment). The notion of a PLE represents the implementation of Web 2.0,
the power and autonomy of users, the openness and sharing, continuous lifelong learning, the importance
of informal learning and the potential of web space for socialization and knowledge sharing. The e-
Learning systems that are confined to a LMS (Learning Management System) and to a closed learning
objective connect to the traditional views of teaching-learning. Therefore, they may not meet the needs of
todays students, who require the integration of institutional environments with lifelong learning focused
on personal interests. In this context it is important to find bridges between formal and informal learning
in order to reach the cognitive learning objectives, allowing users to integrate their experiences in a
variety of contexts, in a social construction of knowledge.
In Portugal, Moodles usage has been increasing rapidly, perhaps due to its interesting
characteristics, as it is an LMS (Learning Management System) that offers a set of activities adaptable to
multiple subjects. It is possible to insert texts and the necessary documentation for the subjects, to suggest
assignments, promote discussion forums and to create term glossaries in a cooperative form. The
assessment and self-evaluation of knowledge is done through the pages of lessons and questionnaires. In
2003, to help implementation of Moodle at ISCAP (The School of Accounting and Administration of
Oporto Portugal http://www.iscap.ipp.pt) a unit named PAOL was created (Unit for Innovation in
Education: http://www.iscap.ipp.pt/paol). The main goals of PAOL are to provide the implementation of
computer assisted education at ISCAP in a blended learning model and to assist teachers and students in
their adjustment to educational technologies, by developing training opportunities and resources, offering
technical facilities and the sharing of good practice.
The integration of Moodle went through several stages over the years of its existence, particularly
due to the target audience of the project: teachers and students. Those teachers that were more willing to
embrace innovation in their teaching-learning practice allowed for the first establishment of Moodle as
the primary means of educational support in the school. Later, student pressure and demand led to an
increase in the number of courses with online support, particularly amongst the more resistant teachers.
By the academic year 2006/2007 blended-learning strategies, supported by Moodle, were firmly
established at ISCAP, generating new teaching and learning habits among teachers and students. Such
was also possible due to the policy adopted by the institution, which supported PAOL in all its actions.
If we analyze the use of Moodle in the last three years, it is possible to verify that the integration of
technology in teachers practices has led to a comfort zone, where Moodle is used to safely reproduce
the traditional classroom teaching methodologies. If we were to design an adoption curve, we would
verify that the adoption of Moodle has reached a peak and stagnated with the adoption of a certain
number of current practices associated with content distribution. Sensing the need to take a step further
and study the potential of other digital technologies available on the World Wide Web, PAOL proposed
the use of many other Web tools in order to surpass obstacles and meet both student and teacher
expectations. It is our belief that learners should be active participants in their learning. Achieving this
means providing opportunities for interaction. Such pedagogies aim to encourage students to become
autonomous lifelong learners, capable of problem solving and critical thinking, and to move them from
being passive recipients of information and knowledge to being active, enthusiastic learners and
knowledge creators.
In this sense, PAOL has been developing many activities in order to demonstrate these features and
sharing examples of its use and good-practice through institutional events in order to captivate reluctant
teachers by showing them concrete examples. However, we believe that LMSs are moving away from the
digital world that is being used by students. Nevertheless, whenever we want to use this kind of
environment in an educational context some institutional problems arise such as the management of
decentralized information. Also, giving learners total control is questionable. The embedded code that
some Web 2.0 make available may be of use. Otherwise, important pieces of information and print
screens should be stored. It is our opinion that, in this sense, LMSs may be used as an aggregator and
guide for formalizing informal learning. Furthermore, as Moodle has the capacity to aggregate other tools,
focus has also been placed on the integration of widgets within Moodle, as a link between formal,
institutional learning and a more social, informal environment. The importance that continues to be given
to the use of LMS at ISCAP is explained by the necessity to centralize, formalize and clarify the learning
and evaluation process.
Nevertheless, institutions cannot distance themselves from the lives and changing habits of students,
who use web 2.0 technologies in their routines and may not wish to see school as an unfamiliar and
unattractive place. The challenge for using Web 2.0 or PLE technologies in a formal classroom setting
lies in balancing the freedom to create content and customize the learning environment while still
structuring the learning environment to achieve planned objectives (McLoughlin & Lee, 2008).
Recognizing the difficulty in managing decentralized information and the learning process is important in
order to combine and integrate web 2.0 tools in the learning process without the demand for formal
evaluation (Dias et al., 2010). Hybrid learning environments occur in the institution of the future where
the development of social environments is promoted.
As a result of this, assistance is provided for students with an increasing number of technological
skills such as creating digital identities and preparing for lifelong learning. Nowadays, the breaking of
institutional barriers is a reality, evaluations are set beyond cognitive skills and many of them are not
provided with any LMS support. The importance of developing soft skills, namely social and digital
competences is a goal that may be achieved using PLE. In this context, the teacher assumes an important
role in order to assist students creating their own PLE combining personal objectives, ethics, technical
and social abilities. To promote the aforementioned interconnection between LMS and PLE, PAOL
assists teachers in the process of acquiring knowledge and exploration of the main Web 2.0 tools
available that can be used in educational systems. Each digital tool has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Appropriated integration of each tool presents students with rich, varied learning, and minimizes the
weaknesses. Finding new and exciting teaching and learning strategies via Web 2.0 applications is a
constant challenge.
The ISCAP is a higher education Polytechnic institute which belongs to the IPP university
(Polytechnic Institute of Oporto) (ISCAP, 2007) (IPP, 2007). In order to promote the use of Web
technologies in the learning-teaching process, in the beginning of 2003, the ISCAP launched a project
named PAOL (PAOL, 2007). This project started by using the Webct platform but in 2005 it was replaced
by the open source platformnamed Moodle. This platform is being used up to now.
On the European context, higher education institutions need to fit its procedures to the Bologna
process, namely by constructing paths to promote new pedagogical methodologies using the Information
and Communication Technologies (Parlamento Europeu, 2002). In this context, PAOL comes up as a
support to this process. The PAOL is developing the following main activities:
To promote different trainings in order to improve the use of the Moodle platform;
To develop tutorials to support trainings;
To give technical support to build resources and make them available online;
To involve all the ISCAP community on the fostering of the e-learning project;
To promote and announce e/b-learning events;
To develop and to cooperate with research teams in b-learning projects;
Among other activities.

This project involves human resources that are organized in the following parts: direction board,
coordination and support unit and physical resources composed by software (the open source learning
management system Moodle and other free applications) and the need hardware infrastructure.
The first PAOL concern was to make available a learning management system that could help
teachers in the digital support of their lectures mainly in the technical and administration/management
dimension, in the Pimenta e Baptista (Pimenta & Baptista, 2004) e Koponen (Koponen, 2006) definition.
In the technology process adoption, the acceptance or rejection by students and teachers is
determined, in a great scale, by the utility and easiness offered. People tend to use the technologies that
they consider useful to improve the efficiency of their work (Davis, 1989). If potential users believe that
technology is efficient they must also believe that it is easy to use in order to be a compensating process.
The analysis of the self-evaluation PAOL questionnaires confirms this statement: 79% of teachers
state that they do not have difficulty in learning the Moodle tools, 19% state that they have some
difficulties and only 2% consider the Moodle platformdifficult to use (Ribeiro & Peres, 2007). Regarding
the benefit of the Web platform, we realize that there is a high level of usage that is reflected on the
lectures practices. Although teachers underline the importance of the technical support, 66% of teachers
consider the existence of the Moodle fundamental, as shown in the graph below (Figure 4.gif):


Figure 4 : Platform Utility (Ribeiro & Peres, 2007)

The theory of the diffusion of innovation proposed by Rogers (Rogers, 1995), identifies five
categories of consumers according to the time needed to adopt a new product, as shown in the figure
below (Figure 5. Gif):

Figure 5: Rogers categories for innovation adoption (Rogers, 1995)

According to Rogers (1995) classification, each group of consumers presents specific features:
The innovators represent the first adherents, with a great level of education, bigger social mobility
and great external information (Rogers, 1995). Sometimes, they have an obsession for the innovation. To
be innovative demands a few prerequisites, namely, to know how to control the financial resources in
order to avoid an eventual lost using a non-profitable innovation, to understand and to apply more or less
complex technical knowledge and to be able to cope with a high level of uncertainty related to the success
of an innovation. An innovator performs an important role in the new ideas diffusion due to the
importation of the innovations that come from abroad.
The innovation phase of the PAOL project began on the 2003/2004 school year with an initial team
constituted by three elements and supported on the WebCt platform. Rapidly, 6 more teachers adhered to
this project in the first semester and 14 more in the second semester (Silvaet al., 2007).
The early adopters follow new ideas on time and have a great level of instruction (Rogers, 1995).
This category of adopters, more than other, has the biggest number of leaders, in the majority of the
systems. The early adopters listen to the innovators in order to receive their advices and information about
innovations. They are considered by many as the person with whom one confirms before adopting a new
idea (Rogers, 1995). The early adopters are respected by pairs and are aware of the fact that to continue
gaining the esteem fromothers and to maintain their central position in the internal communication
network, they should make judges and take decisions about the innovations. The early adopters stimulate
the decrease of the uncertainty on the use of a new idea by providing subjective evaluation to the nearest
pairs.
Regarding the PAOL project, the enlargement of the team with the inclusion of early adopters, that
change from3 to 7 elements, the use of the open source platform that allows the changing of the source
code in order to adapt the software to the institution needs and the definition of strategies to gain more
teachers to the project, stimulated the sustainable and visible growth on the 2004/05 school year (Silva et
al., 2007). The exemplification of the advantages of the use of the Moodle and the technical user manual
developed by the PAOL team constituted a great strategy but the major feature implemented was the use
of students motivation in order to pressure teachers to use the Moodle platform. This initiative reflected
positively in the results and enhanced the importance of involving students in this project. The training
offered constituted an impulse to new enthusiastic initiatives. However, we verified that without a
continuous support, some teachers give up following the expectations created.
The early majority makes a more reflected purchase and appreciates innovations but prefers that
others adopt them before (Silvaet al., 2007). The early majority is the biggest category and may think for
a while before adopting completely a new idea. The period of their decisions is relatively longer than the
innovators and the early adaptors. Usually, they follow the spirit of the innovation adoption but rarely
lead it.
According to the strategy defined on the 2005/06 School year, PAOL gave continuity to the periodic
beginner Moodle training, provided technical support and helped in the usage of digital resources. This
context resulted in a period of expansion of the project (Silva et al., 2007) with the adhesion of the
majority adopters.
The late majority, little receptive to the innovations, must be convinced by the general opinion to
adhere to new ideas (Rogers, 1995). The adoption may be by economic reasons or by the community
pressures. The motivation from pairs is needed to stimulate the adoption. Uncertainty must be eliminated
to make late adopters more secure.
On the 2006/07 school year, in the ISCAP, the teaching-learning process that uses the b-learning
method became sustainable and used by teachers and students. Nevertheless, the usage is based on
contents and on diffusion of information (Silva et al., 2007). The direction board of ISCAP encourages
the PAOL initiatives in order to motivate the adoption by the late majority.
The laggards are fixed to the tradition and do not trust changes. Many of them are isolated fromthe
social network (Rogers, 1995). The reference point to the laggards is the past. Decisions are made based
on what was done. The resistance to the innovation by laggards may be entirely rational. They demand
certainties of the success of new ideas before adopting them.
On the 2007/08 school year, ISCAP had 230 teachers and 162 adhered to the PAOL project and
were actually using the Moodle platform to support their classes (Silva M. et al., 2009). PAOL has been
working and cooperating with the direction board of the school, promoting more events in which teachers
share their e-learning experiences and reflections about the importance of using the Web technologies
(PAOL, 2007). The main objective is to have all the community involved in this project and turn it the
more inclusive possible.

Final remarks
Nowadays, in Portugal, there are 14 institutions of public higher education, 15 institutions of public
Polytechnic higher education and 15 institutions of private higher education where the main mission is to
promote a solid scientific, cultural and technical preparation, in a specific area of knowledge. These
students are more and more able to use technologies and they also play an important role in pressuring its
use regarding education objectives. In this context, the use of b-leaning environments has been promoted
by a great number of institutions that believe in the utility and easiness of the use of these tools. Some of
them are creating specialized teams to accomplish the integration of the web technologies in the teaching-
learning process, such as the PAOL at ISCAP.
The ISCAP experience on the web technologies adoption reveals a tendency line similar to the
theory of the innovation adoption process proposed by Rogers (cf figure 5). It begans with the enthusiasm
of the innovativer teachers and was collecting new supporters. In the 2007/08 school year, 162 fromthe
230 teachers were using the Moodle platform as a support to the lecture practices. However, we assist to a
special focus on making resources available online and to create a new way to spread information to the
students.
Nowadays, PAOL has been promoting new action in order to implement innovation on the
pedagogical dimension. The results obtained until now also reflect the timeline to the adoption of the
innovation proposed by Rogers.
At a time of self-assessment, it is also our intention to address the less positive aspects an LMS may
have and, once again ponder changes. At a time when Personal Learning Environments are considered
essential for student centered learning approach, can it mean the end to the more traditional LMS?
Where do social networks fit in? Can these be seen as parallel learning environments that complement the
institutional LMS? Or are we, once again before another major shift, one that implies the outdated
chalkboard? How do we glimpse the future? We intend to conclude the chapter by assessing our past and
reflecting on what the future may bring in terms of Learning Environments for HE Institutions such as
ours (ISCAP).

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