European ICT in education competency framework

for teachers, students and instructional designers in higher education

When you’re teaching or learning with the help of ICT, what is more important – the pedagogy or the technology?

The eLene competency framework takes pedagogy as the starting point. Teaching and learning with ICT in higher education is defined as involving three main roles: pedagogical, social and design or planning. The technology is considered part of the environment and is thus considered a ‘domain’ rather than a specific role. The same is true of the management domain, which concerns the organisational environment in which teaching and learning take place.

This competency framework is a result of work carried out in two of the eLene group’s Virtual Campus projects supported by the European Commission’s eLearning programme eLene-TT (2005-2006) and eLene-TLC (2007-2008). This framework, and the competencies for higher education teachers associated with it, were validated on a European level by a dual process of focus groups of teachers and teacher trainers in each of the participating countries and an online Delphi method involving 78 experts from 34 universities in 10 European countries.

The framework has been developed for three main target groups in higher education: teachers, students and instructional designers or educational technologists. You can consult the competencies associated with each of the roles and domains by clicking on your chosen player.