EDEN Annual Conference 2014
10-13 June 2014, Zagreb, Croatia

From Education to Employment and Meaningful Work with ICTs

E-learning at work and the workplace

Only few days left!

The dates of the EDEN 2014 Annual Conference in Zagreb are approaching. You can consult now the detailed programme on the web! Make sure to book your place in time via the Online Registration Form!

Online Networking for the Conference

Join the discussions and share your resources and thoughts in the Conference Group on the NAP Members Area. You may follow conference updates via Facebook and Twitter (#eden14).

www.eden-online.org/2014_zagreb.html

In collaboration with

Call for Contributions: 8th EDEN Research Workshop
27-28 October 2014, Oxford

Challenges for research into Open & Distance Learning:
Doing Things Better: Doing Better Things

We invite all interested professionals to take part and discover the Workshop Themes by submitting their proposals. The theme and scope reflects the current challenges researchers facing and the intersection of their work with ‘doing better things’ for key stakeholders. For details visit the Call for Contributions and the Submission Guidelines.

The selected best papers will be invited to be published in a joint special issue of the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning (EURODL) and Open Learning.

We are pleased to announce the following keynote speakers:

• Willem van Valkenburg, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Pierre Dillenbourg, CHILI Lab, EPFL Center for Digital Education, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Cristobal Cobo, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
• Philipp Schmidt, MIT Media Lab, USA

For more details, visit the event's website.

In collaboration with the Open University, UK

www.eden-online.org/2014_oxford.html

Interviews with keynote speakers at the EDEN Annual Conference in Zagreb

Olaf Zawacki-Richter (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany) is a multitasking talent at one of the most important German research hubs for open, distance, and flexible learning. Eva Suba reached him for an interview.

Fabrizio Cardinali is one of the world's leading consultants in learning technologies, solutions and standards. Former Chair of ELIG, the European Learning Industry Group, he has often played the role of the facilitator between the industry and educational policy-makers. Andras Szucs, invited him for a conversation in preparation to his keynote speech in Zagreb.

Further interviews with keynote speakers can be read on the Conference Blog.

Olaf Zawacki-Richter

Fabrizio Cardinali

Steve Wheeler elected as Chair of the NAP Steering Committee

The EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP) Steering Committee elected Steve Wheeler (University of Plymouth, UK) as Chair of the Steering Committee. Steve has been a long-standing active EDEN member. He was awarded EDEN Fellow title and elected to the NAP Steering Committee now for his second term.

EDEN Members have access to his position paper related to the NAP Steering Committee elections here.

Steve Wheeler

EDEN Annual General Meeting 2014

The twenty third Annual General Meeting of EDEN will be held at 18.15 p.m. on Wednesday, 11th June 2014 at the venue of the EDEN Annual Conference in Zagreb, Hypo Congress Centre (address: Ulica Josipa Marohnica 3, 10000, Zagreb) Room: "Mljet-Lastovo", on the first floor.

All members are invited to attend. See more details on the NAP Area.

New members

EDEN welcomes the following institutions that have joined the Association since March 2014:

• Tandem Plus Network, France
• Group for European Integration, Romania
• COOSS Marche, Italy
• Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool, Belgium

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

Parliament report on Open Educational Resources

The European Parliament report on New technologies and open educational resources was in plenary session adopted, following the release of the “Opening Up Education” initiative.

The review of Europe 2020 has been launched

Education and training have been playing an increasingly important role under the European Union's Strategy for long-term growth and job creation, Europe 2020. This strategy is now under review.

The Commission launched on 5 May 2014 a public consultation on the future of Europe 2020. This consultation will be open until 31 October 2014. All interested parties are invited to take part and make their views on Europe 2020 and its future development heard.

The policy background and overall context of the Europe 2020 review have been set out in the Commission's Communication of 5 March 2014 on 'Taking stock of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth'.

The public consultation is accessible through Your Voice in Europe or the dedicated page on the Europe 2020 website.

For further details, please consult theis press release.

Mainstreaming ICT enabled Innovation in Education and Training in Europe: Policy actions for sustainability, scalability and impact at system level

The final output of the SCALE CCR project, the JRC Scientific and Policy Report on the policy recommendations for the further development and mainstreaming of ICT-enabled Innovation, is now available online here.

'Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe: Access, Retention and Employability'

The Eurydice report investigates what governments and higher education institutions are doing to widen access to higher education, increase the number of students that complete higher education (retention), and give guidance to students on entering the labour market (employability). More than 30 countries took part in the survey - all EU Member States, with the exception of Luxembourg and the Netherlands, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway and Turkey. Read more...

TALOE: Call for e-assessment practices

'Time to Assess Learning Outcomes in E-learning’ - TALOE project is coordinated by the University of Porto. The main goal of the project is to develop a web-based platform to help teachers and trainers decide which e-assessment strategies to use in their online courses.

The project is collecting case studies on e-assessment. If you have any interesting cases, please send them directly to soeiro.alfredo@gmail.com. From this link you can download a template to help you in structuring the information you send. All received case studies will be considered and used to define the criteria and the types of e-assessment that the project is intending to involve in the platform.

taloe.up.pt

5th eLene2learn Newsletter – What do the teachers say?

The eLene2learn project continues to explore and study the ways in which ICT and digital media support the development of learning to learn competencies in lifelong learning transitions. The current (5th) newsletter provides insights into recent results, achievements and upcoming events. In addition to reading this latest newsletter release, you are also invited to join the eLene2learn discussions on Facebook and to explore the revised project portal.

www.elene2learn.eu

From the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya:

Launching the European Multiple MOOC Aggregator (EMMA)

12 leading universities and companies in 8 European countries announced the launch of the new EMMA project which will provide access to MOOCs in different languages and supported by automatic transcription.

Silver medal in the 2014 IMS Learning Impact Awards

SpeakApps, the innovative language learning portal developed by a team of faculty and technologist from the UOC (lead by Dr. Cristine Appel), has won a silver medal at the prestigious international 2014 Learning Impact Awards organized by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, a non-profit organization promoting use of learning technologies in higher education. The main aim of these awards is to recognize the best innovative initiatives in technological applications that contribute to improving education worldwide.

Interested in brushing up your skills in learning design, ICT for teaching and learning and creativity techniques?

In the context of the HANDSON project, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is offering a course for teachers in Higher Education, Vocational Education Training and Secondary Schools. It is a 5-weeks MOOC about Designing Learning with the use of digital tools and creativity techniques. Start date: 19/05/2014, end date: 20/06/2014.

How to join this course: Go to http://riga.uoc.es/moodle/ and register to the Design Studio course. More information on: http://handsonict.eu/

ICDE Quality-Standards Study

The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) invites bids for proposals to undertake a study of existing quality guidelines, benchmarks, and standards. ICDE needs to establish an overview of the global situation with regard to existing relevant standards and guidelines for open, distance, flexible, and online education, including eLearning. The study will provide overview, analysis, and recommendations to ICDE’s future work on quality guidelines, benchmarks, and standards.

Deadline for proposals: 30 June
Draft report: end October 2014
Final report delivered: 12 December 2014

Read more here.

Invitation to 'How to run school validations across Europe' workshop

European Schoolnet is running a free workshop on “How to run school validations across Europe” on 5th June in Brussels. The workshop builds on the expertise gained of running pilots in more than 2000 classrooms across Europe and includes a tour of the Future Classroom Lab. The workshop might be of interest to your organisation and your partners. You can find more details here.

From Open Education Europa:

Special section on MOOCs published in Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

The latest issue of the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) includes a special section on MOOCs, which is now openly available online.

Formalising informal learning: Assessment and accreditation challenges within disaggregated systems

Rory McGreal & Dianne Conrad, Athabasca University (Canada); Angela Murphy, University of Southern Queensland (Australia); Gabi Witthaus, University of Leicester (United Kingdom); Wayne Mackintosh, OER Foundation (New Zealand)

The paper is accessable on the ICDE - Open Praxis website.

Journal of Learning for Development publishes second issue

COL's Journal of Learning for Development (JL4D) has published its second issue. The new open online scholarly journal aims to provide a forum for practitioners and academics working in international development to share knowledge and experience.

eLearning Africa news: Learn with Grandma

by Jonathan Adebayo

At the 2011 eLearning Africa Conference in Tanzania, a Welsh grandmother and a Cameroonian Chief realised that they had the same fear – in the digital age, the past was being left behind. Read more...

From IRRODL Journal:

Mass customization of education by an institution of HE: What can we learn from industry?

Robert Schuwer, Rob Kusters

Investigating MOOCs through blog mining

Yong Chen

A balanced research report on the hopes and realities of MOOCs

Hollands, F. and Tirthali, D. (2014) MOOCs: Expectations and Reality New York: Columbia University Teachers’ College, Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education

Read more on Tony Bate's website.

The role of MOOCs in corporate training programmes

The Towards Maturity New Learning Agenda shows that whilst formal learning programmes in the workplace are certainly not redundant, there is a need to transform the way that they are delivered. Read article and dowload the report here.

TED talk by Andreas Schleicher from the OECD on the PISA Report: Use data to build better schools

PISA measures the critical thinking skills of 15-year olds across 40 countries worldwide. It’s an excellent measure of the future economic and social success of countries. Watch video...