NEW RULES AND NEW TOOLS: TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT OF LIFELONG HIGHER EDUCATION LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The information, communication and knowledge technologies supporting the digital media have created excellent conditions for profoundly enhancing the learning, training, teaching and design environments. New modes of teaching in higher education subjects and in particular design subjects can enhance one’s ability to proactively constructing his or her personal learning universe. These developments have contributed to distant learning becoming widely available and accessible. In this regard the idea of lifelong learning has started to pave its way towards the knowledge driven society of the future.
In March 2004, the Task Force Sector Plan presented their final report to the State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science. In this report, the three universities of technology in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente (3TU) proposed how they aim to create a single federation of Dutch universities of technology by combining their education and research programmes in order to enhance knowledge valorisation. In addition, five shared Master of Science (MSc) programmes - not yet offered in The Netherlands but considered to be essential for the Dutch knowledge economy - were proposed, including the MSc Construction Management and Engineering (CME) programme. This paper discusses the overall programme of MSc CME programme and the development process of the MSc CME specialization in Delft, with a special emphasis on the IT education and utilization of eLearning within the programme.
Also this paper identifies and evaluates issues relevant to the emerging eLearning paradigm. These observations are based on an ongoing experiment on effects of such environments. The goal is to discuss the widely perceived scope provided by these technology-based learning environments for increased pedagogical opportunities in order to enhance student learning, institutional objectives for growth in the face of intensified competition in the higher education sector and the expansion of mass education throughout the world. Effects of digital environments are specifically significant regarding teaching and learning of the design activity in design, architecture and engineering disciplines.