STELLAR European Research Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning

Starting February 1st, 2009, the European Union is supporting a new Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning called STELLAR (Sustaining Technology Enhanced Learning Large-scale multidisciplinary Research). STELLAR represents the effort of the leading European institutions and projects in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) to unify their diverse community. This Network of Excellence is motivated by the need for European research on TEL to build upon, synergize and extend the valuable work we have started by significantly building capacity in TEL research within Europe, which is required to allow the European Union to achieve its goals via the Bologna Agreement and the execution of the Lisbon Agenda. The Network is executed via a series of integration instruments designed to increase the research capacity of European TEL at all levels. STELLAR's instruments act upon the backbone of an interlocking set of three Grand Research Challenge actions, themed as Connecting Learners, Orchestrating Learning, and Contextualizing Environments & Instrumentalizing Contexts. In this paper, we describe the major educational and technological research challenges tackled in the framework of the STELLAR network of Excellence, its accompanying instruments and its potential to impact higher education, and especially engineering education