In line with our mission EDEN and its partners initiate and realize European Union funded projects aiming to contribute to the strategic goals of the Union in the field of education, training and employment. Emphasis is placed on promoting innovation in education via using digital technologies and by fostering the development of open, flexible, online learning environments.
As part of this work our projects running in 2017 and the ones recently launched (MicroHE, OEPass, Promoting Online Training Opportunities for the Workforce in Europe) are focusing on topics like:
– modernization of higher education institutions (D-Transform, Armazeg, eLene4work, MicroHE)
– promoting the usage of ICT, mobile learning and self-regulated learning in general education (t-Mail)
– fostering the recognition of non-formal and informal learning by using micro credentials (Open Badge Network, ReOpen, MicroHE, OEPass)
– promoting employability and professional development (eLene4work, Promoting Online Training Opportunities for the Workforce in Europe)
Bellow we provide a concise summary of the mentioned projects. For more information on the specific initiatives you are invited to visit the projects’ websites and to follow the evolution of the work in the recently launched projects in EDEN website.
D-TRANSFORM
The goal of the D-Transform project was to set up a a program on leadership development in e-learning for university senior leaders. MOOC courses and four workshops were organised creating a great opportunity for the participants to share and discuss their experiences and expand their knowledge on digital courses and also offering networking possibilities. Two training programs, so called Leadership Schools were organised for experts and leaders. Resources are available on the project’s website and YouTube channel.
ARMAZEG
The aim of the Tempus project ARMAZEG was to stimulate educational reform in Armenian and Georgian universities in order to answer the challenges posed by globalization. Main results of the project were the establishment of 7 e-learning centres around Armenian and Georgian institutions. During the project successful conferences and training events were organised and online courses were developed in the Georgian universities and in the Armenian institutions.
eLene4work
Soft skills such as communication, teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurship are more and more in demand in today’s labour market and these competencies may prove to be the distinguishing factor between two candidates with equivalent qualifications and experience.
The eLene4work European project was tackling the definition of these soft skills, including digital soft skills, and proposed a series of actions and practical tools to help young talents better understand the expectations of employers, to assess their own level of competency and to further develop these skills through open education initiatives such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and OERs (Open Educational Resources).
t-Mail
The objective of t-MAIL was to help implement classroom practices that stimulate students’ autonomy and self-regulated learning by designing a mobile learning tool for primary school teachers. The projects’ products also support the work of teacher educators in personalizing their training practices related to self-regulated learning and local, national and European decision makers in introducing and automatically monitoring self-regulated learning practices into primary education.
Open Badge Network
Open Badge Network (OBN) is an European strategic partnership which brings together organisations from across Europe to support the development of an Open Badge ecosystem by promoting the use of Open Badges in formal, non-formal and informal learning.
The mission of the project was to establish Open Badge Network as a trusted source of independent information, tools and informed practice, facilitating a badge ecosystem to be developed across Europe. Three MOOC sessions were organised with 4 activities per session, the recordings of the webinars are available at the project’s portal.
http://www.openbadgenetwork.com/
ReOpen
The ReOPEN project aims to create instruments to develop validated open online learning for recognition of prior and non-formal learning.
Main outcomes will be an online learning platform offering training courses on non-formal online learning curriculum design; open badges and recognition of non-formal open learning results in formal curricula; and online courses for continuing professional development in the following subjects: digital skills, wireless network design, language and society, management of european projects, and animation creation as a learning tool.
The courses are piloted within the project in Lithuania, Croatia, Germany Hungary and Spain.
New Projects – launched at the end of 2017
MicroHE
The Erasmus+, KA3 project intends to improve the recognition and transfer of learning between different educational organizations and the world of work while maintaining the European tradition of high quality education and high-levels of student-protection provided through systems of accreditation and quality assurance.
From gathering the state of the art in micro-credentialing in European Higher Education today, through forecasting the impacts and examining the adequacy of European recognition instruments, the project aims to propose a meta-data standard and develop an online clearinghouse to facilitate recognition, transfer, portability of micro-credentials in Europe.
Website of the project is coming soon.
OEPass
The Erasmus+ KA2 project aims to collect the challenges and create solutions to optimise the recognition of individual credits in open education and virtual mobility.
The project aims to attend to and provide solutions for the following shortcomings:
- Little to no guidance exist on how to document virtual mobility experiences for the purposes of credit transfer
- Procedures which do exist do not scale to the massive scale required by digital methodologies such as MOOCs
- There is no European common approach to addressing open education and virtual mobility experiences
Website of the project is coming soon.
Promoting Online Training Opportunities for the workforce in Europe
The named project is carried out as a partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Netherlands, the company contracted by the European Commission to carry out a comprehensive research aiming at analysing the state-of-play in the field of online training opportunities provided within the workplaces in Europe. During the 24-month long project desk research, online survey will be carried out, studies will be published and validated in discussion of experts in workshops. Conclusions will be shared in publications and at a high level final conference to be organized in Brussels in 2020.
For update on the development of the project read EDEN Newsflash and visit back to our website.