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eLearning Africa 2013 - Pre-conference Events
Join the eLearning Africa 2013 pre-conference workshops and participate in the seminar on 29 May 2013 in order to improve practical knowledge, learn from international experts, and network with other professionals. Space is limited — register as soon as possible to secure your spot!
Pre-conference events will take place 29 May 2013, and include the following: workshops, application development, seminars, and meetings. Learn more here.
Global Open Education: A Roadmap for Internationalization
The main goal of this paper is to stimulate the discussion on future issues on Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) in a mid- and long-term perspective.
The main issue discussed is how OER are utilized on an international level. Internationalization and global collaboration are crucial to Open Education:
- How can OER be utilized across borders?
- How can OER contribute towards better education for less developed countries?
- How can Open Education contribute towards better collaboration in Europe and globally?
These are just some questions to be explored and solved in the next years. As a starting point, I would recommend two key visions:
1. Creating a European Open Education community towards collaboration, mutual support and participation.
2. Creating global outreach of European Open Education towards European leadership in both, the educational market and development cooperation.
This paper identifies key issues and potential solutions for international aspects regarding open education. Using a roadmapping methodology, I propose steps and recommendations for advancing Open Education.
Paris OER Declaration: Launch of Project
The project to implement the Paris Open Educational Resources (OER) Declaration brought together OER experts, UNESCO specialists, and representatives from Bahrain, Indonesia, Kenya, and Oman at the end of March.
The Paris OER Declaration was initially adopted at the 2012 World OER Congress, and included 10 points to work toward developing national-level OER policies, and implementing the UNESCO ICT Competency Frameowrk for Teachers. The meeting held a few weeks ago at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris was intended to review the project objectives, share ideas and practices about OER policies and determine the best way to implement the project in each country.
Representatives from Bahrain, Indonesia, Oman, and Kenya shared their particular national educational context, highlighting the status of ICT in Education and OER, before working with UNESCO specialists to come up with a road map that accomodates their country's specific needs. Indonesia, for example, decided to focus on teacher training using OER.
OER experts and potential partner organizations also contributed, including Creative Commons, Intel, Commonwealth of Learning, Organisation International de la Francophonie (OIF), and UNESCO Category 2 Regional Center for ICT, Bahrain.
The end result of this meeting was workplans and outlines for each country. The next step will be organizing national workshops in June 2013.
Cyber Security & Privacy EU Forum 2013
The Cyber Security and Privacy EU Forum will take place 18-19 April 2013 in Brussels, Belgium. This European conference is organized by SECCORD, in conjunction with H4 of DG Connect.
This year, Cyber Security & Privacy (CSP) will host this conference in collaboration with the European Association for e-Identity and Security (EEMA) and Trust in Digital Life (TDL). The forum intends to bring together experts, practicioners, standards developers, and policy makers from the fields of Industry, Government and Academic research. It also serves as a venue for learning about state-of-the-art in security and privacy research, giving delegates the opportunity to network with experts in the field.
Join the first LinkedUp Challenge: Veni
The first of three LinkedUp Challenges is now open! 'Come' participate in the Veni competition, which promotes the innovative use of linked and open data in an educational context.
Researchers, students, developers and businesses...and anyone interested is invited to the first installment of the LinkedUp Challenge: 'Veni'. Participants must build prototypes, demos and innovative tools that exploit, use, integrate or analyse large scale web data for educational use.
MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education
This white paper published in March 2013 sets out to help decision makers in higher education institutions gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), trends towards greater openness in higher education and the implications for their institutions.
Authors Li Yuan and Stephen Powell describe the phenomena of the MOOCs, placing them in the wider context of open education, online learning and the changes that are currently taking place in higher education at a time of globalisation of education and constrained budgets.
The “MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education” report is written from a UK higher education perspective, but is largely informed by the developments in MOOCs from the USA and Canada.
A literature review was undertaken focussing on the extensive reporting of MOOCs through blogs, press releases as well as openly available reports. This identified current debates about new course provision, the impact of changes in funding and the implications for greater openness in higher education. The theory of disruptive innovation is used to help form the questions of policy and strategy that higher education institutions need to address.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board Members
The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) has published a white paper analysing the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other forms of online education.
Authored by Brian Voss, vice president and CIO at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park, “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board Members” is an effort to give board chairs, presidents and others some context to help guide discussions on their own campuses.
The paper is based upon a presentation given to the board of directors of AGB and includes several appendices, including a set of key online terms and concepts and a selection of useful articles.
OpenCourseWare Excellence Winners 2013
The Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence provide annual recognition to outstanding individuals, courseware and OpenCourseWare sites in the OCW Consortium community. This year's winners are Professor Barbara Illowsky, Professor of Mathematics at De Anza Community College in California (USA), and Professor ChiKaung Pai of National Chiao Tung University.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a community of more than 250 universities and associated organizations from around the world committed to advancing open education worldwide. It yearly awards individuals who have helped expand educational opportunity worldwide.
Key to these initiatives are OpenCourseWare, free and open digital publications of high quality university-level educational materials—often including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, and exams—organized as courses. While OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives typically do not provide a degree, credit, or certification, or access to instructors, the materials are made available under open licenses for use and adaptation by educators and learners around the world.
The final candidates for the 2013 awards are Professor Barbara Illowsky, selected for her work in creating an open statistics text book used by more than 20 colleges in the US, Canada and elsewhere, and Professor ChiKaung Pai,chosen for her efforts in establishing NCTU Open CourseWare and leading the Taiwan OpenCourseWare Consortium.
Read on for more information.
LAK 2013: Third Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge
This third conference on learning analytics will be designed to bring the many voices involved in leveraging the availability of data about learning with powerful computational, representational and visualization techniques into dialogue in a “middle space” under the overarching theme of “Dialectics in Learning Analytics”.
The first two conferences have established the range of issues and approaches of concern in leveraging the availability of data about learning with powerful computational, representational and visualization techniques. This third conference will be designed to consolidate the field by bringing these many voices into dialogue in a “middle space” under the overarching theme of “Dialectics in Learning Analytics,” which has these facets:
The Middle Space: The conference will explore the “middle space” within which Learning and Analytics intersect, and seeks proposals for papers and events that explicitly connect analytic tools to theoretical and practical aspects of understanding and managing learning.
Productive Multivocality: Learning analytics is multidisciplinary, drawing on theories and methods from diverse research traditions. Our community includes educators, learning scientists, computer scientists, administrators, and policy makers, among others. The middle space serves as a topical “boundary object”, enabling productive discourse between these many voices.
The Old and the New: We are facing a centuries old problem: to improve learning, but we are trying to solve it using a new set of tools, not available before. We address these problems in the city of Leuven: centuries old, lively new.
eKnowledge Project final report
“eKnowledge Project: Developing and piloting a forum tool to support the collaborative construction of knowledge on the UOC's Virtual Campus” is the final report of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s (UOC) eKnowledge project.
eKnowledge is an online forum tool that offers consultants and students the chance to create spaces for asynchronous communication and collaboration in pursuit of different goals and at different levels of structuring by teachers.
The project (2009-11) followed a user-based design concept and a flexible and collaborative learning model. Its development was based on the open-source phpBB Forums platform.
eKnowledge is an eLearn Center innovation project developed in collaboration with the UOC’s Office of Learning Technologies. The design of the tool has involved faculty from the UOC’s Information and Communication Sciences; IT, Multimedia and Communications; Economics and Business Studies, and Psychology and Education Sciences departments.