The International UNESCO Conference IITE-2014 in Moscow addressed “New Challenges for Pedagogy and Quality Education” with a special focus on MOOCs, Clouds and Mobiles. In his keynote Dr Christian M. Stracke, ICORE Founder and Managing Director of the TELIT Research Institute, discussed “Quality Education through Innovation and ICT: Opportunities or Contradiction”, examining the need and future of quality in education that can be facilitated but also challenged through the introduction of innovations and new technologies. The guiding question was how one can address and improve learning quality through innovation and e-Learning in order to modernize lifelong learning and thereby improve the impact of education and training in society.
Today educational change through refined pedagogies which include the fun factor has become extremely important to achieve the highest learning quality possible. For this purpose, the new concept of open learninghas been introduced to address quality education. Efforts towards opening up education through innovations like online cooperation, MOOCs and technology-enhanced learning have achieved broad awareness and global consensus. New policies on open learning at the international level such as the OER Declaration by UNESCO have supported this trend.
ICORE, the International Community for Open Research and Open Education (www.ICORE-online.org) was established with this objective in 2013 and launched at the international LINQ Conference in Rome in order to promote open education and its connections with open research. ICORE is collaborating with leading European and international organizations motivated by a common vision, joining efforts for future strategies and activities which facilitate innovative learning in schools, universities, societies and at work.
The Open Discovery Space (ODS: www.opendiscoveryspace.eu) supports this objective. ODS is introducing e-Learning in 28 countries and over 2,000 schools throughout Europe and is helping more than 10,000 teachers open up and modernize school education. It is supported by the initiative Inspiring Science Education (ISE: www.inspiring-
More information on the International UNESCO Conference IITE-2014 including the conference programme is available online.