Educational multimedia joint call - results of pre-proposal evaluation
The European Commission has published results of the pre-proposal evaluation for the educational multimedia joint call for proposals, launched on 17 December 1996 (OJ No S 244 of 17.12.1996 p. 40). The call for proposals involved six programmes, Telematics Applications, ESPRIT, TEN-Telecom, TSER, SOCRATES and LEONARDO DA VINCI, with a combined budget of ECU 30 million. It aimed to follow up the work of the Commission's task force on educational multimedia, by launching research projects to address the priorities identified by the task force. Proposals were subject to a two stage selection procedure, with outline pre-proposals due to be submitted by 14 March, and selected full proposals to be submitted by 16 June. In total, 837 pre-proposals were submitted, requesting funding of over ECU 1 billion. Following evaluation by external experts in April, 107 consortia have been invited to submit full proposals by 16 June 1997. The 107 selected pre-proposals requested a total of ECU 140 million, more than four times the funding available. The high numbers of pre-proposals submitted give a good indication of the market tendencies in the short to medium term, and the research fields on which European industry and researchers are focusing. A total of 870 companies and organizations are involved in the selected pre-proposals. These represent a broad range of users, universities, content providers, telecoms operators, hardware providers and service providers. The selected pre-proposals address a range of user groups, such as children, SMEs, disabled people, teachers, doctors, the unemployed and inhabitants of rural areas. Research activities to be undertaken cover both technological research and educational and socio-economic research, as well as dissemination activities. The full proposals, to be submitted by 16 June 1997, will be evaluated by external experts before the end of June. Following approval by the programme committees concerned, the Commission should adopt a Decision on the projects to be funded in July 1997. Contract negotiations with the successful applicants will be carried out in the autumn, with projects expected to start in late 1997 or early 1998.