EDEN Annual Conference 2013
University of Oslo, 12-15 June 2013

The Joy of Learning

Enhancing Learning Experience
Improving Learning Quality

A memorable 2013 Annual Conference

As the 2013 Annual Conference closed its doors and nearly 400 participants from 45 countries headed towards the airports and their home, the EDEN community experienced an event worth to remember. 94 paper presentations, 24 workshops, 25 poster presentations and 10 demonstrations, inspiring and provocative keynote presentations, a uniqe experience of cross-continent, ICT enhanced dialogue between Sir Ken Robinson and Prof Sugata Mitra, the increasing voice of young scholars and students as well as a series of memorable social events marked this year's conference. "THE JOY OF LEARNING - Enhancing Learning Experience, Improving Learning Quality" was this year's theme with high quality research and practice demonstrated through the presentations.

Links for the main resources

Keynote presentations are displayed here.

Best Research Paper downloadable here.

Pre-conference keynote speakers' interviews and on-site video interviews by Steve Wheeler (incl. Sugata Mitra, Michael G Moore, June Breivik and more) are available here.

Presentations shared with us are being collected on EDEN's Scoop.it

You may read the reflections of participants on the social online conference tools: Conference blog | EDEN NAP Conference Group | Tweet #EDENOslo | Facebook | Content curation on Scoop.it

We thank the Norwegian Association for Distance and Flexible Education (NADE) and the University of Oslo for their collaboration.

Plenary session

Sugata Mitra

Antonio Teixeira and Morten F. Paulsen

FOR YOUR DIARY: EDEN Synergy Workshop - Transnational Learning Forum for Exchanging Practices and Ideas

We invite you to the EDEN Synergy Workshop in Budapest on 19-21 October 2013. If you are interested at not only receiving information about the showcased projects and their outputs but also to promote your own initiatives (targeting the key themes of the workshop), please fill in this form so that we can contact you for further consultation about the means of stronger collaboration.

The event will be organised on the campus of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), so you can also start looking for accommodation - there are many hotels in the city center and the 11th district that are in close proximity of the conference venue. The online registration will open very soon as well, so keep an eye on the EDEN website.

Prof Antonio Teixeira elected as new EDEN President

It's our great pleasure to announce, that the EDEN Annual General Meeting elected former Vice-President, António Teixeira, Professor of Distance Education, Universidade Aberta, Portugal as new President of the Association.

António Teixeira (Lisbon, 1965) is a Professor at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University (Department of Education and Distance Learning) since 1991, and a researcher at the University of Lisbon (Philosophy Center) since 2004. Find out more on Antonio's background and activities on the Executive Committee page.

2013 Fellow Awards

The 2013 Annual conference Welcome Cocktail hosted this year's Fellow Award ceremony. Upon the recommendation of the EDEN Executive Committee, Morten F Paulsen, EDEN President handed over the awards to two Senior Fellows and six Fellows.

2013 Senior Fellows

• Morten F. Paulsen, Nordic online Academy - NooA, Norway;
• Sofoklis Sotiriou, Head of R&D Department, Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Greece.

2013 Fellows

• Ari-Matti Auvinen, Chair, HCI Productions Ltd.; Finland
• Grainne Conole, Professor of Learning Innovation, Director, Beyond Distance Research Alliance University of Leicester, United Kingdom;
• Sonia Hetzner, Innovation in Learning Institute, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany;
• Thomas Kretschmer, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany;
• Bill McNeill, Reader in Distance Education, College of Estate Management, United Kingdom;
• Ilse Op de Beeck, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Teaching and Learning Department, Belgium.

Morten F. Paulsen and

Sofoklis Sotiriou,

Senior Fellows

Sandra Kucina elected as new Executive Committee member

The 22nd EDEN Annual General Meeting elected Sandra Kucina, Head of E-learning Centre, University Computing Centre and E-learning Office, University of Zagreb, Croatia as new Executive Committee member for a 3 years term.

Sandra Kucina is focusing on promotion and implementation of the E-learning at the University of Zagreb, monitoring and providing support and advice to institutions, teachers and students in implementation of new technologies in learning and teaching processes.

We congratulate Sandra and look forward to a fruitful collaboration. Read her bio on the Executive Committee page.

At the AGM, the mandates of the following Executive Committee members have been prolonged for another three years term:

• Deborah Arnold, University of Burgundy, France
• Ene Koitla, Estonian Information Technology Foundation, Estonia
• Costas Tsolakidis, University of the Aegean, Greece
• Airina Volungeviciene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania

András Szűcs elected as EUCIS-LLL Steering Committee member

We are pleased to announce that András Szűcs, EDEN Secretary General has been elected as Steering Committee member and Vice-President of the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning (EUCIS-LLL). EDEN is looking forward to continue the already ongoing and fruitful collaboration with EUCIS-LLL.

HETL-EDEN Cooperation and Reciprocal Membership Agreement

The International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and EDEN signed a strategic partnership agreement in Oslo at the EDEN Annual Conference. This partnership reflects the compatibility of their visions, missions, and values, besides, it aims to improve access for the members and partner organisations to the best international practices and to strenghten networking opportunities.

Recognising Excellence: 2013 Best Research Paper Winners

The tradition of awarding the EDEN Conference Best Research Paper continues, in collaboration with the Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Open and Distance Learning. The Award was presented by Albert Sangra, head of this years' Jury at the Conference Dinner on 14 June. Based on the unanimous vote of the Jury, the Best Research Paper Award went to:

Eliciting Students’ Voices through Screencast-assisted ‘Feedback on Feedback’

Maria Fernandez-Toro, Concha Furnborough, The Open University, UK

EURODL: New acting Chef Editor

Prof. Alan Tait, Chief Editor, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, having served eight years leaves the post and will lead the new Journal of Learning for Development launched by the Commonwealth of Learning.

The EDEN Executive Committee granted the title of Chief Editor Emeritus at EURODL to Alan.

The Acting Chief Editor of EURODL for the next 18 months will be Dr Ulrich Bernath Chair of the Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning.

New members

EDEN welcomes the following institutions that have joined the Association as Member since May 2013:

• Institut Mines-Télécom, Télécom Ecole de Management, France
• Mondragon University, Spain
• Università degli studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Italy
• University of Agder, Norway
• The Cyprus Institute of Marketing, Cyprus

You can view their profile at the "New Members" link on the EDEN web

New Working Group on the NAP Members' Area on Student engagement in digital world

As a result of the 'Inspire Session' at the EDEN Annual Conference 2013 in Oslo - that provided a meeting point for young and senior researchers to share ideas - a working group has been established on the EDEN NAP Members Area to continue the inspirational discussion and to give place for sharing results. The group main topic is: Student engagement in digital world. The group is open for all members.

Only EDEN members can edit and post in the group, however most of the contents are visible to the public. Don't forget to arrange 'public access' when loading new content if you wish everybody to see it.

APPI: The greenest department at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics

The Institute of Applied Psychology and Pedagogy - hosting the EDEN Secretariat - was awarded with the title: "The greenest department" at the University". EDEN has been fully supporting the development of the green office.

European Alliance for Apprenticeships

The European Commission is launching a European Alliance for Apprenticeships on 2 July 2013 in Leipzig. The Alliance is one of the key measures the Commission is proposing to tackle the all-time high youth unemployment rates. Its objectives include to improve the quality and supply of apprenticeships in Europe and to change the mind-sets towards apprenticeship-type training. For more information on the Alliance, please visit http://ec.europa.eu/education/apprenticeship/

Learning objects; learning objects repositories; e-learning; open and distance learning; development in education, higher education

Abdullah Almegren, Siti Zuraiyni Yassin

High School Open On-line Courses (HOOC): A Case Study from Italy

Enrique Canessa, Armando Pisani

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) in a Distance Learning Course on Mathematics Applied to Business

José Bidarra, João Araújo

www.eurodl.org

Digital competence development in social care: CARER+ Second Newsletter

When care workers digital competences are supported, our future care systems are being supported. It's not only a social, a health, or learning issue. It's not only e-learning. It's more than a slogan for social inclusion. It's your parent's reality. It's your reality. It's your children reality. CARER+ project is unique: it brings together elderly, carers, trainers and policy makers. The project is now in it's piloting phase, and was presented at the EDEN 2013 Annual Conference. Read it's latest newsletter: http://ow.ly/mk1o1

http://www.carerplusproject.eu/

OBESSU Call for researcher

In the framework of the upcoming campaign on Social Inclusion, OBESSU has opened the call for a researcher to conduct a Europe-wide comparative research on the hidden costs of education.

Deadline for applications is 30th June and a compensation of 1.000 EUR is offered.

All information are in the call for researcher. For any question or doubt you can refer to our Board Member Ida (ida(a)obessu.org).

2014 Anchorage Conference

The International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) invites you to attend the 2014 International HETL Conference, to be held in Anchorage, Alaska, USA, in partnership with the University of Alaska Anchorage, May 31 to June 02, 2014 (Sat-Mon).

Theme: Innovative Learning-Scapes: e-Scapes, play-Scapes & more

Proposal Deadline: July 26, 2013

Personal Learning Environment for Doctoral Students; an example of good practices between Europe and Africa collaboration

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya ( UOC) is leading an international project together with the Kenyatta University (KU) and the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP) to improve doctoral programs through the use of digital technologies, focusing especially on the supervision of doctoral students and visibility of research and researchers. Read more about the PLE-PhD project here.

A Guide to Quality in Online Learning

This newly published guide from Academic Partnerships is edited by former President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning and former ICDE President, Sir John Daniel, together with Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic, until recently of UNESCO. It is available to download for free in both English and Chinese.

EUA’s monitoring of the impact of the economic crisis on public funding for universities in Europe

New EUA Public Funding Observatory report and online tool outline trends in higher education funding in Europe. It offers a contrasted picture of education funding as half of the countries surveyed showed an increase in budget for education as the other half reduced it.

eLearning Africa Report 2013 has been published

More information and publication is available here.

Eurostat on Vocational Training

In the EU27, two thirds (66%) of all enterprises with ten or more employees provided vocational training to their staff in 2010, compared with 60% in 2005, according to the Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS), which is carried out every five years by Eurostat. The News Release presents data from the fourth and latest survey, referring to the year 2010.

Turning Teachers into Tech Entrepreneurs

Leading UK exam board OCR is launching a new initiative to help teachers design and create innovative educational technology for use in the classroom. A series of regional events starting this September, followed by intensive residential technology "pre-incubator" camps will, for the first time, give teachers the chance to develop new educational technology for themselves to help improve teaching and learning and potentially make money for their schools. Read more...