New Global Challenges for Quality Development in Open Online Learning
Although the MOOC-mania seems to be over and several world conferences have debated the potential of Open education and open educational resources, it still seems that after all discussions, debates and meetings, we (have to) come back to the one important question: How can digital media, learning technology, digital learning materials help us to transform educational experiences and institutions in a way that we can provide more suitable learning scenarios to our future graduates in order to prepare them for an uncertain future. This is in the heart of the (global) quality debate. While we have discussed theses issue already at length in European contexts and communities we can now more and more see that the issue is globally important to all nations. So – it is time to allow for a moment of reflection and to see what is going on. To take stock of the big challenges, the big global quality challenges.
In his presentation, Ulf – Daniel Ehlers will try to take into account the last 10 years of quality debate and see where we still have open issues and map out the points which from my point of view are relevant to a current and future discussion agenda. He firmly believes that in the difficult economic and political climate we are currently in, it is more important than ever to promote learning, human and social capital development, thus developing the knowledge society, and strive for innovation. Digitalisation within the entire education sector is seen as a catalyst to foster the capacity to promote, support and drive educational professionals’, learners’ and organizations’ abilities to develop the competences they need for an ever changing and potentially uncertain future with growing risks. However, open, online and e-learning in Europe and globally, as well as the concept of digitalisation in education are still not perceived with the same credibility as traditional modes of learning. Although a lot of progress has been made to bring digital technologies into the educational context in all European countries, a renewed debate about quality on open, online and e-learning, sharing of good practices and trust into innovation and transformation through the use of digital technologies in education is needed today. It will help to understand how the educational experience can truly be enhanced, how educational organizations’ capacity to do so can be developed and how policies around digital transformation can be shaped on individual, institutional as well as national and European level.
Ebba Ossiannilson’s presentation can be viewed here and Ulf-Daniel Ehlers’ presentation is available here.
Moderated by Josep M. Duart, EDEN Executive Committee Member
Facilitators:
- Josep M. Duart
- Ebba Ossiannilsson
- Ulf – Daniel Ehlers