Carl Holmberg

Dr Holmberg is presently Adviser to the Director-General in the Swedish Agency for Flexible Learning. The agency works under the Ministry for Education and Science as a change agent in the adult education systems with the task to promote the growth of technology enhanced learning. The long term ambition is to make the systems more open and flexible for the students and to improve the local and regional growth through high quality adult education.

Dr carl Holmberg studied behavioural sciences, sociology and statistics at Uppsala University. He majored in Education and in Psychology and has the qualifications of a Psychologist. 1975 he presented his thesis "Metod och medieval" (On the selection of Methods and Media). He has a long career as teacher and researcher mainly at the Linköping University (Sweden) and was for eleven years Head of the Department for Behavioural Sciences. During that time the department developed a research unit within Adult Education, which today is the largest and most influential in Sweden.

He also worked for national and international organisations with evaluations and with projects within Adult Education and Higher Education. He was between 1995 - 1999 working as a senior expert to the Ministry of Education and Science and has had an advisory role to commissions under that ministry. Between 1999 - 2002 he was managing a National research programme - Det livslånga lärandet i informationssamhället - distansutbildningens villkor och möjligheter (Lifelong Learning in the Information Society - Conditions for and possibilities within Distance Education) and was also during that period Senior Adviser at the Swedish Agency for Distance Education. He has initiated and lead a national network of researchers within Distance Education (DUNET), and been serving on the board of national and international organisations. In his different roles he is involved in European Commission financed projects. Interaction, Adults' learning, Distance Education and Education Systems Development have been some of the core concepts in his research.

Together with Nordic colleagues he took the initiative in 2002 to form Nordic Evaluation Forum (NEVA). NEVA most and foremost works as a Nordic roundtable for organisations involved in supporting and/or evaluating the introduction of ICT in education systems, and/or being responsible for evaluations of quality in education systems and/or accrediting education systems. He was involved in the creation of European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) and is presently elected to the Board of Directors for that organisation.

During 2007 he was honoured as a Senior Fellow of EDEN (European Distance and eLearning Network).