Vilnius (LT), August 2008 - Following scrutiny of diverse systems, Lithuania has selected Blackboard ePortfolio for an important educational task. The decision was made by LieDM, the national eLearning initiative, which is a part of the new Lithuanian Virtual University funding program.
Tomas Lionikas, LieDM's CTO, notes: "A benefit of the platform is that it is served using current scalable Blackboard Vista infrastructure (hardware, software, and skills). This year a few pilot projects will start using ePortfolio and will establish best practices. In the next few years, those best practices will be scaled and deployed across all academic institutions in Lithuania."
The Lithuania Virtual University is a continuation of a long-standing commitment to education funding and advancement in Lithuania. It started in the nineties with the establishment of the National Association of Distance Education (NDMA). Afterwards, a multitude of eLearning projects was consolidated into the LieDM initiative, and the technical infrastructure was laid down in the country by the academic Litnet network initiative.
In 2001, the Ministry of Education approved sixteen million euros of national funding for the ITMiS project (IT for science and studies, 2001-2006). The ITMiS program consolidated diverse national initiatives, namely LABT (e-libraries), LieDM (eLearning), and LieMSIS (e-administration).
In 2006, the Lithuania Virtual University project was approved by the Ministry of Education. Combining national and EU resources, the project consolidates 32 million euros and aims at fostering education, expanding into a vast lifelong-learning domain inside of Lithuania as well as expanding into worldwide eLearning.
Germany's Lerneffekt, with offices in Lithuania and the Netherlands, is the consulting partner of the LieDM consortium and provides support with technology and practical implementation in Lithuania.
