e-learning
Electronic Journal of e-Learning (EJEL) Volume 11 Issue 2 - June 2013
The Electronic Journal of e-Learning (EJEL) provides perspectives on topics relevant to the study, implementation and management of e-learning initiatives. Volume 11 Issue 2, published in June 2013, includes a selection of papers which demonstrate the widening range of possibilities for e-learning.
Technologies continue to develop and change, and issues of adoption and innovation persist. Like any other technologies, e-learning hardware and software is best used when it is introduced to solve a real problem which has been carefully thought through. The articles in this EJEL issue edited by Roy Williams show that there is tremendous promise and opportunity, but there are no quick fixes, and no one-size-fits all solutions.
EJEL has published regular issues since 2003 and averages between 3 and 4 issues a year.
IRRODL - Open Educational Resources: Opening Access to Knowledge Vol 14, No 2 (2013)
The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) has published a special issue dedicated to Open Educational Resources (OER).
The Vol 14, No 2 issue is made up of contributions to the OER Knowledge Cloud by authors working in three of the world’s leading open universities, namely the Open University (UK), Athabasca University (Canada) and the Open Universiteit (Netherlands), as well as other researchers working in the field.
The articles begin with a case study of an OER implementation followed by a rationale for using OER on mobile learning and a description of developing content for use on mobile devices. Other articles explore the long-term sustainability of OER and their disruptive influence on traditional institutions, as well as the need for national policies and their use in other languages. In the final article, the author looks at visualisation and mapping of OER and their use.
ODS Opening Day Conference
The workshop seminar “Open Digital Resources in Education & School Innovation”, hosted by the Open Discovery Space (ODS) European initiative, will take place in Ellinogermaniki Agogi (Greece), on 20 June 2013.
Teachers of all subjects and levels, educational professionals, policy makers and repository contributors are invited to attend this ODS Opening Day event.
The use of online content and the relevant innovative teaching techniques are reshaping the modern school. Though extremely exciting, acquiring knowledge of such tools is not an easy task. The ODS workshop seminar aims at building the necessary structures and networks that will facilitate the introduction and embracing of e-learning by the teaching community.
Talks on a range of relevant issues, such as European e-learning policies, the role of e-learning in the Opening up Education agenda, the development of multilingual educational social media and what ODS can offer to a school, will be followed by presentations of innovative teaching practices, involving e-learning sources, as well as a two-hour workshop on how to use the available resources on ODS, how to create a school e-library on ODS and how to build an ODS community of teachers and schools.
EDEN 2013
The EDEN 2013 Conference, which will take place in Oslo (Norway) on 12-15 June under the title “The Joy of Learning”, will present the latest best practice in online and distance learning, share progressive concepts, inventive solutions, and promote joint-thinking and collaboration.
E-learning, open and distance education have been increasingly important fields of intellectual excitement and innovative development. The challenges posed by the new technologies are permanent, and students constantly keep teachers under pressure to develop. How can we do our best to make learning a thrilling experience for learners, including providing a sense of joy in the virtual classroom?
The question is an exciting one and discussion and debate in EDEN 2013 will provide a range of innovative theories and approaches. The conference programme includes plenaries, parallel sessions with paper presentations, workshops, moderated poster and demo sessions.
Among the keynote speakers: Kristin Halvorsen, Norwegian Minister of Education and Research, and Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University (UK) and winner of the TED Prize 2013.
The event will start on Wednesday afternoon on 12 June, with Pre-Conference Workshops and Registration, followed by the Welcome Cocktail, and will end with a Farewell Coffee on 15 June.
HoTEL open call for e-learning innovators
The HoTEL (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning) project has launched an open call for e-learning innovators, aiming to spot “innovations” dealing with the use of ICT for education at large.
The objective of the call is to transform bright new ideas and research results into mainstream practices and to disseminate them throughout Europe.
The selected participants will be able to test their “innovation” in real world settings within three virtual laboratories (Exploratoriums) in the fields of higher education, corporate learning and informal learning that the HoTEL project has set up with the support of the EC’s FP7 programme.
The call is open from the 1st of June to the end of July 2013, but the project activities will go until summer of 2014.
Launched in 2012, the HoTEL Support Action aims to contribute to more effective, holistic and faster innovation cycles in European TEL, by increasing quality at the level of the cycle itself and of the different phases foreseen, that can be replicated in the future.
Fachforum Didaktische Entwurfsmuster für Blended Learning
Die Kombination von Präsenzlehre und Online-Elementen ist in vielen Lehrveranstaltungen gewinnbringend. Für Lehrende, die bewährte Konzepte von Kollegen/-innen aufgreifen möchten, steht eine große Zahl von Best-Practice-Beispielen zur Verfügung. Doch gute Beispiele in der Lehre lassen sich nicht einfach kopieren, sondern es ist jeweils ein Transfer auf die eigenen Bedingungen vorzunehmen. Didaktische Entwurfsmuster sind ein Werkzeug, diesen Transfer zu unterstützen. In ihnen werden die zentralen Gestaltungselemente mehrfach bewährter Praxis verdichtet und als veranstaltungsunabhängiges Muster für den Transfer auf andere Lehrveranstaltungen verfügbar gemacht.
Im Fachforum tauschen sich Erfahrungsträger/-innen mit bewährten Beispielen und interessierte Lehrende auf experimentelle Weise aus. Sie sprechen über die Beispiele und identifizieren und beschreiben gemeinsam veranstaltungsübergreifende didaktische Gestaltungselemente - die didaktischen Entwurfsmuster. Der Clou in diesem Verständigungsprozess: Die Erfahrungsträger bringen ein, was ihnen wichtig erscheint, die interessierten Lehrenden, was sie für den Transfer brauchen.
Pebblegogy
Bridging the gap between technology and learning, “Pebblegogy” is a book aiming to help tutors and learning designers who use the PebblePad online platform to create meaningful activities that will support their curricula.
“Pebblegogy” is addressed to those new to PebblePad who want practical guidance in making best use of this personal learning space. For those who are already experts, the book offers a rich source of inspiration for designing engaging and motivating learning experiences with PebblePad.
PebblePad has now been used for over eight years by over 100 organisations, and the second half of the book presents a rich collection of learning designs resulting from the contributions and collaborations of more than 40 practitioners from the UK and Australia.
A companion website provides a wealth of further information such as activities and presentations. Each of the activities described is accompanied by guidelines usage covering, for example, tutor complexity, student’s ability to use PebblePad, and recommended number of students participating.
Temporal issues in e-learning research: A literature review
The time factor in e-learning research has, for the most part, been neglected even though time is one of the most commonly heard requirements of and complaints about teaching and learning in general and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) is often touted as a solution to the problems voiced.
The article “Temporal issues in e-learning research: A literature review” presents empirical data on the presence, nature and content of variables related with temporal factors that researchers take into account in their studies on educational technology.
Authors Elena Barbera, Begoña Gros and Paul Kirschner conclude that time should be taken into account not only in micro-level research, but also in meso-level (ie, curricular) and macro-level (ie, organisational).
Published in the British Journal of Educational Technology in 2012, the article can be downloaded here (via UOC's Institutional Repository).
Time in e-Learning Research: A Qualitative Review of the Empirical Consideration of Time in Research into e-Learning
Time has been argued by several influential approaches as essential for understanding learning and teaching processes. In elearning, however, the traditional time limits of such processes are modified, which implies challenges and possibilities for elearning research.
Published in January 2012 by the ISRN Education Journal, the paper “Time in e-Learning Research: A Qualitative Review of the Empirical Consideration of Time in Research into e-Learning” aims to understand how time is included in empirical e-learning research literature. With this in mind, the paper presents a qualitative review of 24 e-learning papers.
Five issues are analysed: the conception of time, its inclusion in an explicative model, its inclusion in the research process, the analytical units, and the data used in the study of time. Based on our analysis, authors Elena Barbera and Marc Clarà discuss some implications and potentialities for e-learning research on the relations between time and learning.
Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2013)
The Ireland International Conference on Education is dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practices in education.
IICE gives academicians and professionals from various educational fields with cross-disciplinary interests the opportunity to bridge the knowledge gap, promote research esteem and the evolution of pedagogy. The IICE 2013 invites research papers that encompass conceptual analysis, design implementation and performance evaluation. All the accepted papers will appear in the proceedings and modified version of selected papers will be published in special issues peer reviewed journals.