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EDEN Newsflash - November, 2007
EDEN Annual Conference, 11-14 June 2008 - Lisbon
First Announcement and Call for Papers
The EDEN Annual Conference in Lisbon will address the significance and impact of cultural issues in distance and e-learning development in Europe and beyond.
Among the primary factors influencing the development and implementation of e-learning, those that look beyond just the aspects of technology and management are fast gaining importance. Effectiveness of technology may be reduced or improved by the values and learning styles of users. Introducing and embedding learning into every human activity is high on the agenda. The holistic approach in distance and e-learning requires a deep understanding: the ability to compare, understand and integrate. A well-understood intercultural approach is instrumental in re-structuring the educational enterprise and exploring new development scenarios
Cultural
understanding, efficiency and quality go hand in hand
Cultural
understanding in e-learning means gaining knowledge from
other cultures
and learning design solutions. The intercultural
issue will be understood as
the pooling and sharing of experience of the successful design and implementation of learning
in diverse environments, where we can learn
from each other.
Learning is becoming an increasingly personalised experience. We can learn practically everywhere and it is more and more the student who finds the ways to learning. The new generation technology solutions and Web 2.0 tools are necessarily cultural matters. Cultural understanding may help to raise and exploit fully the new eLearning concepts based on social web.
The year 2008 will be the year of intercultural dialogue, offering the opportunity to put the issue of learning cultures as the focus of the EDEN Conference.
We invite European academic and professional practitioners and in particular the EDEN community to contribute and share experience in Lisbon on 11-14 June 2008, when the host Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University will share with us the great pleasure of their 20th Anniversary and the celebrations.
Details and Call for Papers can be found at the conference website.
2. Network of Academics and Professionals - Steering Committee election
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
The term of office of the current NAP Steering Committee will be terminated in March 2008, therefore the Steering Committee is subject of election.
The upcoming election of members to the Committee shall take place by electronic voting, through individualised access on the web to the list of candidates. We are now inviting nominations from the members of the NAP.
Please, consult the detailed information about the election, the procedures to be followed further the timetable at the NAP Members' Area .
3. EDEN welcomes the following new institutional members in the Association:
You can check them at the "Welcoming New Members" link on the EDEN web.
4. New EDEN Fellow awards
At their last meeting, the EDEN Executive Committee resolved to grant awards to the following professionals:
Senior Fellow award - to Peter Floor, former Secretary General of the Leiden University, Member of the Distance Learning Task Force of the Coimbra Group of Universities, long standing member and in 2003 -2007 Chair of the European ODL Liaison Committee, in recognition of his contribution to the development of open, distance and e-learning in Europe and for the valued commitment and support to the evolution and progress of EDEN
Fellow award - to Sofoklis Sotiriou and Stavros Savvas, Ellinogermaniki Agogi (Greece); Henrik Hansson, University of Stockholm (Sweden); Roni Aviram, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel); Jolanta Chec, National Institute of Telecommunications (Poland), as expression of acknowledgement of professional merit and excellence in professional practice in the field of flexible and distance learning.
We congratulate to the new Fellows and wish them much succes in both their professional carreer and personal life.
5. EDEN-Sloan Consortium agreement
Recognising the value of information sharing and co-operation in the global e-learning environment, EDEN and Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) have agreed to work together to improve the effective practice of online learning during a three-year period, beginning January 2008.
The collaboration will include, among others:
EDEN Vice-President, Martine Vidal, upon the invitation of Sloan-C attended their 13th Conference, held in Orlando 7-9 November and gave a presentation in the featured session "International Perspectives on Online Learning".
6. Meeting of the EDEN Executive Committe
The EDEN Executive Committee at their meeting on 18-19 October have received report about the result of the EDEN membership survey, the 2007 Annual Conference held in Naples, the progress of discussions with UNESCO, patron of the next EDEN Research Workshop, to take place 20-22 October 2008 in Paris and European Projects running with EDEN's involvement.
The Committe have discussed the potentials of the EDEN-China Central Radio and Television University collaboration and the new networking initiative launched in Lisbon, "Learnovation". The concept of the 2008 EDEN Annual Conference has also been debated in details and the procedure and deadlines for the upcoming NAP Steering Committee election were approved.
7. Learnovation initiative
The LEARNOVATION Stakeholders Round Table idea was launched in Lisbon on the 16th October 2007 in the context of the eLearning Conference organised within the Portuguese Presidency of the EU, and is open to discussion and integrations. Its final version will be presented in the context of the Online Educa Berlin Conference.
LEARNOVATION is a consensus-building operation aiming at refreshing the European lifelong learning agenda by aggregating interest of the major EU and national actors active in education and eLearning (in the form of a Stakeholders Round Table) around a new shared vision of innovation in learning, that embeds ICT for learning as well as lifelong learning in a comprehensive and future-oriented perspective.
The EDEN Executive Committee supported EDEN's joining the Learnovation initiative.
8. EDEN-China contacts
Dr. Ulrich Bernath, Vice-President of EDEN represented EDEN as a speaker at the 2007 International Distance Education Advanced Forum in Beijing 24-26 October.
In addition he followed-up on discussions with the China Central Radio and Television University (CCRTVU) on setting up an EDEN-China Task Force on Quality Assurance in Open and Distance Learning. He also met the President of The China Association for Educational Technology, Professor Yu Yunxiu, who expressed particular interest in the Open Classroom community in Europe.
9. Mobile Learning project
The presentations of Taking Learning Mobile conference (Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin, Ireland on 7 September 2007) are now available online. The speakers and participants discussed the resources, technologies and challenges facing the incorporation of mobile learning into mainstream education and training. The conference was the closing event of Mobile Learning - Incorporating mobile learning into mainstream education and training project.
10. European Foundation for Quality in eLearning
EFQUEL is organising its next Annual Members Meeting in concomitance with the Online Educa Berlin 2007. The meeting will take place on Wednesday the 28 November 2007 10:00 – 13:00 in Hotel Schweizerhof (Budapester Strasse 25, 10787 Berlin).
The Foundation will actively be present in the Online Educa, as well. It is responsible for the organization and program of the official pre-conference workshop "Unique Is What You Seek - Quality Assurance for Higher Education in Europe and Beyond" in the afternoon of Wednesday at 15:00 – 18:00. This is a part of the Online Educa workshops and it is free of charge (you find more information of this workshop at the conference web site).
11. Research results of European Approaches to Inter-Generational Lifelong Learning - EAGLE
EAGLE concentrates on the field of inter-generational as well as later life learning processes within the frameworks of formal and – of specific importance – non-formal, informal and autonomous learning.
The first EAGLE Results are online! Explore the European and National Overviews on Policies,Programmes & Initiatives and the EAGLE Practice Showcase on intergenerational learning.
Discuss with them 'The International and European Future of Intergenerational Activities': please, consult the Discussion Paper and click here for your contributions, feedback and reflections.
What is the potential as well as the limitations of trans-, inter-generational formal and informal learning? Are there any policies, concepts, analyses, frameworks, experiences in place and empirical evidence available in this topic? Where can you find the models of good practice developed in order to formulate policy and practice recommendations? These are the core questions in the project entitled EAGLE or ‘European Approaches to Inter-Generational Lifelong Learning’
12. Interesting debate in the Economist
We would like to draw your attention to the remarkable debate in the Economist Debate Series about if "The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education?", organised with the participation of John Daniel President and Chief Executive Officer of The Commonwealth of Learning and Robert Kozma, Emeritus Director and Principal Scientist at SRI International, moderated by Robert Cottrell, Deputy Editor of Economist.com.
13. European Federation for Management Development
EFMD is organising an Advisory Services Seminar on “The Current State of IT and Management Education”10-11th December 2007 at their premises in Brussels.
For more information, please refer to the EFMD website under upcoming conferences or contact Robin Hartley
14. Economics of eLearning conference
EDEN institutional member Université Nancy 2 - Videoscop, within the frame of eLene consortium, is organising a conference on the economics of e-learning, 12-14 December, in Paris.
The event is designed as a meeting place where decision makers can learn from the lates research in the field on:
Interested researchers and other specialists are invited to visit the eLene-EE website for detailed information.