EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP)

EDEN Newsflash - November 2010

Dear EDEN Member,

EDEN Annual Conference - 2011, Dublin

INVITATION AND CALL FOR PAPERS

In the 20th Anniversary Year of EDEN, the Annual Conference will take place in Dublin, 19-22 June at the University College of Dublin.

Learning and Sustainability
The New Ecosystem of Innovation and Knowledge

We invite EDEN members to take part in discovering the exciting conference topic from a diversity of points of interest. The First Announcement and Call for Papers is available in .pdf format on the conference web.

The event is organised in co-operaton with IADT - Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design.

The proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference, held in Valencia, Spain "Media Inspirations for Learning - What makes the impact?" are now accessible in electronic format for members of EDEN. If you would like to receive information about how to access the papers, please send a message from your email address as it is registered on the eden-members mailing list, with the subject: 'Proceedings download request' to the EDEN Secretariat.

4. Minutes of the 2010 Annual General Meeting

The draft Minutes of the EDEN Annual General Meeting held on 10 June 2010 in Valencia is now available at the NAP Members' area. According to the Constitution the document is subject of approval by the next AGM to be organised during the 2011 Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland.

• Attitudes of Face-to-Face and e-Learning Instructors toward 'Active Learning'
  David Pundak, Orit Herscovitz, Miri Shacham

Editors: Professor Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen, Aarhus University, Denmark;
Professor Grainne Conole, The Open University, UK

Invited contributions are asked for publication in Summer 2011.

For details about the overall objectives of the special issue, further how to submit papers and learn respective deadlines, please visit the journal's website.

5. News about EU projects with EDEN involvement

EQUNet – Enhancing Equitable Access to Higher Education

The results of the project’s first year were presented at the first EQUNet Conference in Tallin on 15 October 2010, to the ca. 150 delegates from Institutions of Higher Education in Europe. The focus of the event was “The Social Dimension in Higher Education Reform” and the presentations introduced the outcomes of the first report called “Evolving Diversity”.

More information about the project, the events and presentations can be found on the project’s web-site

Teach.us

The teach.us (Learning Community for Web 2.0 teaching) project is setting up a web-based learning community for teachers who are novices in Web 2.0 and to connect them to experts and experienced teachers supporting Web 2.0 projects at schools and motivating teachers to use new technologies in classes.

You are invited to join teach.us community and benefit from the achievements of this European-wide initiative. On the project’s web-site you can try the available tools, upload/download files, share methods, read best practices, join a group on a specific theme. Your feedback is also warmly welcome and can be forwarded to the project consortium through the web-site

SEVAQ+

At the end of its first year's run, the SEVAQ+ project is now evaluating its intermediate achievements: the extended self-evaluation tool (in 5 languages: EN, FR, IT, PL and LT), which has resulted in over 7000 users across Europe, interested in testing the tool and providing feedback on its strengths and weaknesses.

To get involved with the tool testing, follow the progress and contribute to the online discussions, you are invited you subscribe to the SEVAQ+ newsletter and/or join the project's virtual communities on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

6. Highlights from EDEN Members and Partners

e-Learning Excellence Conference in the Middle East - 31 January-3 February 2011

Middle East e-Learning Association is organising its 4th Conference on e-Learning Excellence Middle East under the theme ‘In Search of New Paradigms for re-Engineering Education’.

As part of the collaboration between EDEN and MEeA, EDEN members are entitled to:

• one free admission to the e-Learning Excellence conference in the Middle East
• 50% discount on all delegates (from same organization) to the e-Learning Excellence Conference in the Middle East
• 50% discount on exhibition space during the e-learning excellence Conference in the Middle East.

For details, please contact Narimane Hadj-Hamou, President of MEeA.

ICDE features

ICDE Policy Forum report - barriers and strategies for ODL

Held at the ICDE Standing Conference of Presidents in Pretoria, South Africa in September 2010, the Policy Forum was a first step in ICDE's activities to highlight increasing government actions which restrict the success and impact of open and distance learning.

Threats and opportunities for distance education

Speaking at the IDOL & ICEM 2010 Joint Conference and Media Days in Turkey earlier this month, the President of the Commonwealth of Learning, Sir John Daniel, highlighted the importance of promoting quality, equity of access and sound regulatory systems in the face of a new wave of hostility against the values and methods of distance teaching institutions. Read more

7. Interesting Readings

• Evaluation report on e-Skills for the 21st Century: Fostering Competitiveness, Growth and Jobs.
  
• EFMD Research Report – Partnership in Learning and Development, covers overall observations on partnerships, on learning and development frameworks, on co-construction, on leadership competencies and on business impact. Based on case-studies submitted in 2010.
  
• Eighth Annual Sloan Survey of Online Education - Enrollment in Online Courses Increases at the Highest Rate Ever. There is a strong increase at for-profit institutions - 20-percent over last year - that said online education is critical to their long-term strategies.
  
• A Transnationality Index for Higher Education Institutions - How transnational are our higher education institutions? In response to this question the authors propose a transnationality index, drawing upon a concept from international trade, which is fundamentally about the share of an entity’s operations that are located outside its home country, and which has major ramifications for internationalisation of higher education institutions.
  

 

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EDEN Members are kindly encouraged to send relevant brief news for the next issue of the Newsflash.

Please, be kindly reminded that the archive of previous Newsflash issues can be found at the EDEN NAP Members’area, further you have free electronic access to the latest EDEN conference proceedings at the Downloads page.