Two Decades of E-Learning Policy Evolution at EU Level: motivations, institutions and instruments

This article records and documents the historical development of e-learning policies at EU level by conducting a discourse and content analysis of four key e-learning policy documents drafted and implemented by the European Commission over the past 20 years: Learning in the Information Society: Action Plan for a European Education Initiative (1996), the eLearning Action Plan (2001), the eLearning Programme (2003) and the Lifelong Learning Programme (2006). The themes teased out from the analysis reveal a gradual consolidation of e-learning policy at EU level, indicating the emergence of an increasingly coherent and formal approach to supporting e-learning initiatives for the benefit of actors at Member State level. The forging of a ‘European dimension’ in e-learning projects represents the hallmark of these EU policies, but it remains to be seen whether the EU institutions will continue to devote similar attention to and place particular focus on e-learning as a distinct policy priority in the years to come.