Year: 2017

New President in EADTU

2017

During the EADTU 2017 General Assembly, Alejandro Tiana Ferrer, Rector of UNED, Spain was elected for the next term as President of the Association. Airina Volungeviciene, EDEN President congratulated Professor Ferrer, emphasizing in her welcome message:

“EDEN has an active policy of co-operation and partnerships with fellow associations in the field. This has also been the case of EADTU with which we have had excellent relations on Presidential and Board levels in the past years and have been discussing a number of significant initiatives. I am confident that the good atmosphere and openness that characterised these discussions will allow us to reach more important results.”

European Commission’s Corner – December 2017

2017

European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators published

European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) has just been published to guide educators at all levels of education with a model that would allow them to assess and develop their digital competences in teaching.

Blockchain in Education

This report introduces the fundamental principles of the Blockchain focusing on its potential for the education sector. It explains how this technology may both disrupt institutional norms and empower learners, and proposes eight scenarios for the application of the Blockchain in an education context, based on the current state of technology development and deployment.

European Economic and Social Committee Opinion on digital skills and new forms of work

“Digitalisation will change our working life dramatically. We have to act now to ensure that the appropriate skills are available for the future”, the EESC said in the opinion “Provision and development of skills, including digital skills, in the context of new forms of work: new policies and changing roles and responsibilities”. Download the document here.

Digital Skills Gap Peer Learning Activity resources

2017

The EU Education and Training 2020 Working Group on Digital Skills and Competences organised on 7-8 December 2017 a very productive Digital Skills Gap PLA (Peer Learning Activity) hosted by the E-Learning Center of the University of Zagreb (SRCE) in Croatia.

EDEN had a strong presence and was well-positioned at the PLA with presentations from Mark Brown – a keynote on supporting educators for innovative, open, and digital education, Lisa Marie Blaschke – OER strategies of EDEN institutional members, Sandra Kucina Softic – Role of Open Badges in open non-formal learning, and Wim Van Petegem – summary of the Peer Learning Activity.

A number of important announcements were made, including the publication of the JRC Science for Policy Report: European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators. Further presentations from the event are available at EDEN’s SlideShare page.

Videos of presentations are on the SRCE website. You can also follow the Twitter feed using the hashtag #wgdigital:


Wrapping up 2017 in EDEN

2017

The Values and Flexibility for Recognition of Innovative, Open and Digital Education in Europe

September came with a promise of an Autumn rush for EDEN, but none of us could anticipate the richness of blended virtual and physical events that EDEN community enjoyed through the semester. October’s Open Classroom Conference in Athens and EDEN’s presence at the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning „Teaching in a Digital Age – Re-thinking Teaching & Learning”, hosted by EDEN’s long standing prestigious partner: Contact North in Toronto were sound introductions to EDEN’s November events.

The European Distance Learning Week (EDLW)  took place between the 6-10th of  November, 2017, for the second time in Europe, also continuing a successful collaboration with the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) in synergy with the US Distance Learning Week.

This year EDLW was also organized in a blended mode, having the international conference “Open Professional Collaboration for Open Classroom “ organized by EDEN – UNESCO IITE – MES – VMU, as part of the EDEN Open Classroom conferences, the physical event in Kaunas broadcast online.

Outstanding discussions and panels led online and face to face addressed the divide in values which may bring us backwards instead of driving forward. The divide is in the understanding of the mission of open and digital education and how it should support the development of the society, how to bring best immediate impact for the brightest minds and sharing, for development of professional community and new institutional business models to address new and transparent qualification models and recognition of innovative and digital education.

Read the full post on the Presidency Blog

EDEN NAP webinar – recording available

2017

New Global Challenges for Quality Development in Open Online Learning

Although the MOOC-mania seems to be over and several world conferences have debated the potential of Open education and open educational resources, it still seems that after all discussions, debates and meetings, we (have to) come back to the one important question: How can digital media, learning technology, digital learning materials help us to transform educational experiences and institutions in a way that we can provide more suitable learning scenarios to our future graduates in order to prepare them for an uncertain future. This is in the heart of the (global) quality debate. While we have discussed theses issue already at length in European contexts and communities we can now more and more see that the issue is globally important to all nations. So – it is time to allow for a moment of reflection and to see what is going on. To take stock of the big challenges, the big global quality challenges.

In his presentation, Ulf – Daniel Ehlers will try to take into account the last 10 years of quality debate and see where we still have open issues and map out the points which from my point of view are relevant to a current and future discussion agenda. He firmly believes that in the difficult economic and political climate we are currently in, it is more important than ever to promote learning, human and social capital development, thus developing the knowledge society, and strive for innovation. Digitalisation within the entire education sector is seen as a catalyst to foster the capacity to promote, support and drive educational professionals’, learners’ and organizations’ abilities to develop the competences they need for an ever changing and potentially uncertain future with growing risks. However, open, online and e-learning in Europe and globally, as well as the concept of digitalisation in education are still not perceived with the same credibility as traditional modes of learning. Although a lot of progress has been made to bring digital technologies into the educational context in all European countries, a renewed debate about quality on open, online and e-learning, sharing of good practices and trust into innovation and transformation through the use of digital technologies in education is needed today. It will help to understand how the educational experience can truly be enhanced, how educational organizations’ capacity to do so can be developed and how policies around digital transformation can be shaped on individual, institutional as well as national and European level.

Ebba Ossiannilson’s presentation can be viewed here and  Ulf-Daniel Ehlers’ presentation is available here.

Moderated by Josep M. Duart, EDEN Executive Committee Member

Facilitators: 

  • Josep M. Duart
  • Ebba Ossiannilsson
  • Ulf – Daniel Ehlers

 

Watch the recording

The EDEN interviews: Rosie Jones

2017
Image by Timothy Vollmer on Flickr

Want to know about the future of libraries? Rosie Jones is probably one of the best placed people to tell you exactly how they will evolve over the next few years. Based at the British Open University, Rosie is Director of Library Services, a central component to the success of the distance education institution.

I caught up with her after her keynote speech during the EDEN summer conference in Jonkoping, Sweden and interviewed her on camera. It was a fascinating interview, giving some keen insights into how university libraries might operate in the near future. We covered a lot of ground in a short time, including discussion around learning analytics, designing for digital, visions for the future, including the university in the cloud, and moving learning beyond physical spaces into online environments.

Rosie talked extensively about digital literacies too – and emphasised the importance of digital capabilities for the future of not just the Open University, but for education in general. Developing digital engagement, curation and a vast range of other skills will be vital, she says, if we are to leverage the full potential of technology, both in physical and virtual spaces.

Creative Commons License
The EDEN interviews: Rosie Jones by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

#EDENChat: What are Open Licenses?

2017

#EDENChat continues into its autumn/winter schedule and this week we’d like to discuss Open Licenses. The session will be hosted by Cable Green, Director of Open Education, Creative Commons.  Join us on Wednesday 6 December at 20:00 CET.

Four main questions will be discussed:

  • What is an Open License?
  • Why is it important?
  • What changes do you hope it will bring (for your country/region)?
  • What is the future of Open Licensing?

#EDENChat is an online discussion event on Twitter initiated by the Steering Committee of the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP). It is mediated by members of the NAP community and runs for approximately 1 hour. Anyone can join in and contribute to the discussion which is presented in a Question and Answer format, and focuses on current issues in distance, open and e-learning.

Previous #EDENChats are listed here according to topics.

International conference of the FIED

2017

On its 30th anniversary, FIED (Federation Interuniversitaire de l’ Enseignment a Distance) organizes an international conference on 13 and 14 December 2017 in Paris. Beyond the anniversary, the objective of the conference is to examine the trajectories of the universities in France in order to identify the lines of force that allow clarifying strategies for the future in distance learning. For more information visit the conference website.