ICT and the Project Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark

It is a major trend in today's higher education to make learning and teaching meet the growing demands that are placed by global as well as local developments. Another significant trend is the increasing use of ICT. These two trends, the promise and imperative of ICT and the educational strategies to satisfy individual desires and societal needs in a rapidly changing world, give rise to a big challenge to the present-day learning and pedagogy in university. Roskilde University, Denmark was historically established in the beginning of 1970's as an innovative place for advanced learning to cope with new needs for qualification and reform. With distinctive philosophy and approach in education, studies at Roskilde University are organized as project work characterized by problem orientation, participant direction, exemplarity, interdisciplinarity and collaborative learning. The paper addresses how the increasing application of ICT is changing the educational environments at Roskilde University and, consequently, facilitating and challenging the project studies. The discussion is mainly based on an empirical research in which we observed a group of students and participated in their project work. The data from our interviews and conversations with the students and teachers are also employed to describe the issues that are investigated.