During the last three decades, European countries have invested large amounts of money in providing schools and higher education institutions with digital technologies. These investments were made hoping that they would enhance digital literacy and e-skills in Europe’s young people. In fact, digital competence was listed as one of the eight key competences for lifelong learning (European Council, 2006). Since the turn of the century, considerable achievements in implementing ICT in educational setting have been made, although large implementation gaps within and between countries remain (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, 2011). The use of digital technologies in formal and non-formal educational contexts has shown some interesting developments, not all of them being favourable, however.

The use of digital technologies in schools has increased over the last ten years. It is to be expected that schools equipped with educational technologies will help their students improve their computer and information literacy. Birgit Eickelmann and her colleagues from the Universities of Paderborn and Freiburg investigate this issue in their presentation “The acquisition of computer and information literacy of students attending the all-day-schooling program in Germany”. As a result of the relatively poor results of German students in the first PISA study, various changes were introduced in the German educational system, one of them being a transition from the traditional half-day school to an all-day school. It was hoped that this would lead to a reduction of inequalities among students and to an improvement of students’ learning outcomes. The authors assume that all-day schools may offer better opportunities for using ICT for individualized and project-based learning, thus  improving computer and information literacy (Eickelmann, Rollett, Weischenberg, & Vennemann, in press). To test this assumption, the compare data from all-day school students with those from half-days school students that were available from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS; cf. Fraillon et al., 2014).

One of the most impressive innovations concerning technology enhanced learning probably occurred in the field of online learning, or more specifically, in learning with Massive Open Online Courses. The body of research on learning with MOOCs is growing (e.g. Karsenti, 2013), although results are not unequivocal (Bartolomé & Steffens, 2015). In particular, there is little evidence on how learning with MOOCs differs from learning with traditional online courses. In their contribution  “A comparative study of Massive Open Online Courses and traditional online courses offered by the National Police Academy of Brazil”, Giovani Lemos de Carvalho Júnior from the Universidade do Policia Federal (Brasil) and his colleagues intend to shed light on this issue. The objective of their proposal is to present partial results of the inquiry of similarities and differences between six MOOCs offered by ANP and their traditional versions, covering aspects such as: socioeconomic profile of the participants, educational results, exploitation of the educational resources by the participants, prior expectations and evaluation of the courses and the platforms by the participants.

Another development in the field of technology enhanced learning is certainly not positive: some students use Internet resources by dragging-and-dropping texts and inserting these into their own works without making reference to the source. Plagiarism is, however, but one form of academic dishonesty (Underwood, 2006), but probably the most prevalent. In their presentation “Plagiarism in using the Internet: who cares?”, Beatriz Páramo-Iglesias and her colleagues from the University of Vigo in Spain discuss this issue based on interviews they conducted with 55 academic managers from about 10 faculties of education in public universities in Spain and on the analysis of 376 university course guides from 36 public institutions in Spain.

Bartolomé, A. & Steffens, K. (2015). ¿Son los MOOC una alternativa de aprendizaje? Are MOOCs Promising Learning Environments? Comunicar, 44 (22), 91-99. European Council (2006). Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:394:0010:0018:en:PDF Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (2011). Key Data on Learning and Innovation through ICT at School in Europe 2011. Brussels: EACEA. Eickelmann, B., Rollett, W., Weischenberg, J., & Vennemann, M. (2016, in press). Der Erwerb von computer- und informationsbezogenen Kompetenzen von Ganztags- und Halbtagsschülerinnen und -schülern. In B. Eickelmann, W. Bos & J. Gerick (Eds.), ICILS 2013 – Vertiefende Analysen zu schulischen Rahmenbedingungen und Prozessen beim Erwerb computer- und informationsbezogener Kompetenzen. Münster: Waxmann. Karsenti, T. (2013). The MOOCs. What the Research Says. International Journal of Technologies in Higher Education, 10(2), 23-37. www.ritpu.org/IMG/pdf/RITPU_v10_n02_23.pd Underwood, J. (2006). Digital technologies and dishonesty in examinations and tests. London: QCA.