In 2017, the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals organised 5 webinars dealing with relevant topics in the field of education. The virtual events offered presentations and discussions with great experts from all over the world.
The power of silent learners in a group
Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 15:00-16:00 CET
- How do we recognize silent learners?
- What are the needs of silent learners?
- How can we empower silent learners in a group context?
There are silent learners, there are noisy learners, and some are in between. Some learners are very fast and enthusiastic but become very quickly disillusioned, whilst others start slowly, think more without expressing themselves aloud but when they do open their mouths, everyone listens.
We may sometimes believe that silent learners are not interested, difficult to communicate with or maybe even lazy. But maybe we have to delay our judgement. In some countries introverts are considered as “normal” whilst extroverts are the ones with a problem.
What happens when silent learners have to learn in groups? Can we help the group to understand the silent learner? Can we make the silent learner proud and more secure about her/his function in the collaboration process? Could we also encourage solitary learning in the group?
Facilitators:
- Franciska Frenks: Independent expert in webinars and online learning and online collaboration at XWebinar.nl. Online facilitator for PBL-group9 of the Open Networked Learning project.
- Alastair Creelman: E-learning specialist at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. He is involved in several national and international projects and organisations in the field of e-learning, including the Nordplus project on Silent Learners.
- Jan Willem Kemper: “Silent learner”, tax consultant and (online) tax trainer at http://www.jwkemper.nl This webinar is part of a Nordic Nordplus project, Silent learners – Is lurking working?, investigating how silent or peripheral learners can be better understood even in courses where participation is the focus.
Watch the recording HERE.
Open Education for Refugees – Optimizing diversity through MOOCs
Wednesday, April 19, 2017, 15:00-16:00 CET
Moderator: Alastair Creelman: E-learning specialist at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. He is involved in several national and international projects and organisations in the field of e-learning, including the MOONLITE project.
Refugees face legal, linguistic, cultural, institutional and financial barriers to enter higher education. Furthermore, traditional universities can only offer places to a certain number of students, with funded places even rarer, and seldom have the capacity to cope with large numbers of refugees in a short time. The lengthy process of seeking asylum is lost time for most refugees. Utilizing MOOCs to support refugees in entering HE or employment market is a strategy to currently being explored by various initiatives in line with ECs communication 2013 “wider use of new technology and open educational resources can contribute to alleviating costs for educational institutions and for students, especially among disadvantaged groups”
The current Erasmus+ project MOONLITE (Massive Open Online courses eNhancing LInguistic and Transversal skills for social inclusion and Employability) aims to address the question of how open education, in particular MOOCs, can offer viable solutions for refugees and contribute to better integration and improved employment prospects.
Facilitators:
- John Traxler: Research Professor of Digital Learning in the Institute of Education at the University of Wolverhampton UK. He is one of the pioneers of mobile learning and has been associated with mobile learning projects since 2001. He has worked with UNRWA for the Palestinian refugee community and with Palestinian and Jordanian universities.
- Jennifer Contreras: Project Coordinator for Validation of Competency for Asylum Seekers and Refugees at the Department of Computer Science in Linnaeus University. She has been teaching information Technology/Computer Science subjects for 15 years in Asia and North Africa.
- Paula Morais: Distance Education Expert for LASER Project, led by British Council and financed by the EU, aiming to engage Syrian refugees on online accredited courses and MOOCs, in Jordan and Lebanon. She has been working as an international consultant, advisor, lecturer and researcher on openness, distance education and blockchain in Africa, Middle East, Caribbean, for EU, UNDP, World Wide Web Foundation.
Watch the recording HERE.
Language learning apps & MOOCs for refugees
Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 15:00-16:00 CET
Moderator: Alastair Creelman: E-learning specialist at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. He is involved in several national and international projects and organisations in the field of e-learning, including the MOONLITE project.
An important part of social inclusion is having the foreign language skills necessary for day to day life. ICT, including mobile apps and open online courses, forms an important part of the way in which languages are learnt in our modern society. The improvement in communication networks and online tools, accessible from a range of mobile devices and desktop computers, facilitate activities developed to improve the four basic language competences (written and oral comprehension and production). Furthermore, the wide availability of free language learning apps can help to supplement the online learning experience, especially when network access is limited.
The question being considered in this webinar is whether such resources represent an effective learning approach for refugees given their changing geographical, sociocultural and technological circumstances?
Facilitators:
- Agnes Kukulska-Hulme: Professor of Learning Technology and Communication at The Open University, UK, where she leads the Learning Futures research programme. Agnes has led numerous projects investigating innovative and emergent practices with learning technologies, in tertiary education and informal learning. She has been part of the European MOTILL project on mobile technologies in lifelong learning, the MASELTOV project on smart and personalized technologies for social inclusion of immigrants and the British Council project on Mobile Pedagogy for English Language Teaching. She has a long standing research interest in language learning supported by mobile technologies.
- Timothy Read: A senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at UNED, Spain. He has held a range of positions in the university government at UNED and is currently Pro-Vice Chancellor of Methodology and Technology. He is an EDEN Fellow and also the cofounder of the ATLAS research group and and is currently working in European and nationally funded projects in the area of mobile assisted language learning (MALL) and massive open online courses for languages (LMOOCs).
Watch the recording HERE.
Quality in TEL On Micro, Meso and Macro Level, And Who Are the Stakeholders. Why and How do they have an interest?
Tuesday, November 21, 2017, 15:00-16:00 CET
Moderator: Ebba Ossiannilsson, EDEN Executive Committee Member
Quality in TEL, in the digital transformation can be considered, discussed, and even measured from a variety of perspectives and approaches. First, quality has to be considered at different levels, i.e. micro-level, meso-level and macro-level. Second, there are different approaches, as accreditation, certification, benchmarking, and or guidelines or frame of references. Several stakeholders have an interest in quality. Most often the stakeholders are considered as the learners, the academics, the institution, and even on country level or international level. In addition, maturity level has to be taken into consideration, and also if quality is considered as norm based or process based.
Facilitators:
- Ebba Ossiannilsson, EDEN EC, The Swedish Association for Distance Education, Sweden
- Mark Nichols, EDEN EC, Open University, United Kingdom
- Airina Volungeviciene, EDEN President, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
Watch the recording HERE.
New Global Challenges for Quality Development in Open Online Learning
Thursday, December 7, 15:00-16:00 CET
Moderator: Josep M. Duart, EDEN Executive Committee Member
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.
Facilitators:
- Josep M. Duart
- Ebba Ossiannilsson
- Ulf – Daniel Ehlers
Watch the recording HERE.