After years of effort by industry, government and academia, links between TELDAP and the international community are growing all the time. On September 2, 2009, TELDAP’s E-learning Quality Certification Center signed a cooperation memorandum of understanding with the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL). Through the future establishment of a cooperation mechanism, the two parties will exchange opinions regarding e-learning use in education and industry and policy formulation and share related resources and work experience, jointly promoting the increase of e-learning quality in Taiwan and the EU.

Dr. Ulf Daniel Ehlers, vice chairman of EFQUEL, made a special visit to Taiwan to sign the memorandum and, while in Taiwan, met with e-learning scholars, sharing with them EFQUEL’s e-learning experiences. Because of the size of Europe and differences in language and culture, the countries of the EU each have their own e-learning resources.EFQUEL’s mission is, while retaining the existing ideas, to integrate the numerous resources standards and build an e-learning resource that can be used throughout the EU.

As a result of the efforts of EFQUEL, various EU governments and more than 80 universities, European students now have inter-departmental, inter-university and international mechanisms that allow them to freely choose from all European higher education e-learning courses. E-learning not only promotes international academic and educational exchange and knowledge flow, it also provides a barrier to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. 

When discussing e-learning with experts and scholars during his visit to Taiwan Dr. Ehlers, suggested that, whether for higher education or other level of education, in addition to focusing on establishing infrastructure, nurturing e-learning teachers is also very important. In terms of the development of higher education, a large amount of academic freedom is enjoyed in universities in Europe and professors can choose their teaching method, making e-learning just one teaching method that they can choose from. However, on the compulsory education level, nurturing digital information literacy is an issue that every country has to be faced. If schools have advanced hardware and software but can’t train teachers to use them with ease and to maximum effect, the benefits of e-learning for students will be reduced and the good intentions of the policy will not be realized in full.

This cooperation memorandum meeting/ e-learning quality work discussion meeting, enthusiastically participated in by NTNU professor Song Yao-ting and a number of other e-learning experts and scholars from Taiwan, came to a successful conclusion. This event left both parties even more convinced of the value of future cooperation and Dr. Ehlers was left with a deep impression of the warmth of the people of Taiwan. On such a solid foundation it can be expected that future TELDAP- EFQUEL  cooperation will promote the development of e-learning and bring e-learning benefits to the EU and Taiwan.