Format: Short presentations followed by panel discussion

Description:

The pandemic caused by COVID19 brought about an acceleration in the already existing transition from traditional face-to-face classrooms to online and distance education. The initial switch to “emergency remote teaching”, in fire-fighting mode, gave way gradually to finer-grained and more sophisticated e-learning scenarios, mixing synchronous and asynchronous practices with multimodal resources. While educationalists have quite rightly been very visible during this period, supporting the different pedagogical aspects, it is without a doubt the underlying technology, robust and scalable, that has made this transition possible. The management of this process has been a challenge to the technologists working in this area. In today’s webinar we will hear from experts in the field of edtech on how they responded to the demands of teaching staff during the pandemic and how they see the online educational future from here outwards.
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Moderator

Alastair Creelman
specialist in the field of online and distance education, Section for higher education development
Linnaeus University, Sweden.
Alastair Creelman is a specialist in the field of online and distance education based in the section for higher education development. Monitors developments in the field and is active in several national and international projects in areas such as distance/online learning, quality questions, open educational resources (OER), MOOCs, social media in education and virtual exchange/mobility. He is very active in social media, primarily through two blogs on educational technology – a reflective blog in English, Corridor of Uncertainty, and a news blog in Swedish, Flexspan. Active on Twitter as @alacre. He is also a course leader on an open course for university teachers, Open Networked Learning, in collaboration with colleagues from Lund University, Linköping University, Karlstad University and 10 other partner universities from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa and Singapore.
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Speakers

Andrei Ternauciuc
Title: The road to openness: the IT admin story

Andrei Ternauciuc obtained his doctorate in 2011 for research in the field of educational web platforms, eLearning technologies being among his central professional interests, along with modern internet technologies. He has participated as a member of research and development teams in a series of national and international projects, with partners from academia and industry. He is currently head of the administration and development team of the Virtual Campus of UPT, the e-Learning platform used by the Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania. He is also a lecturer within the Communications Department of the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technologies. He conducts hands-on activities with students in a variety of fields, including instructional and information technology, online platforms and others.

Jesús Boticario
Title: Digital Resources, Methodologies and AI technologies to face the challenges beyond 2020
Dr. Jesús Boticario has held several positions at UNED related to using IT in education. He is currently a Full Professor with the Computer Science School. He is the Head of the aDeNu Research Group, a Scientific Coordinator in European and national projects, the Chair of the CORE conferences, and an Organizer of the Workshop Series on User Modeling and Accessibility. He is also an Expert Counsellor at the UNED’s Centre for Supporting Students with Disabilities and at the Corporate Social Responsibility Chair, UNED, and the Scientific Chairman of the Red ALTER-NATIVA. He has authored over 200 research articles and participated in 26 research and development funded projects.

Lisa Marie Blaschke
Title: Creating environments for learner-centered learning: Paving the way for hyflex
Dr. Lisa Marie Blaschke is program lead of the online Home Hub at Learnlife in Barcelona, Spain (www.learnlife.com), a K12 ed tech startup that promotes self determined learning through passion projects and entrepreneurship. More recent, Lisa was program director of the Management of Technology Enhanced Learning (MTEL) master program at the Center for Lifelong Learning at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, as well as a senior researcher at the Duale Hochschule Baden Wuerttemberg (DHBW) in Heilbronn, Germany. She is a former executive committee member of the European Distance Education and ELearning Network (EDEN) and is a Senior EDEN Fellow and Chair of the Board of the EDEN Fellows Council. She is also a former adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland University College, where she received the Stanley J. Drazek Award for Teaching Excellence in 2016. Lisa has a BS in Technical Communication, and two master’s degrees (MDE, MBA), and a PhD. She serves on the advisory board of the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (ETHE), and the editorial boards of the European Journal of Open, Distance, and ELearning (EURODL) and the Asian Journal of Distance Education. Prior to academia, Lisa worked for SAP for over a decade in Walldorf, Germany, leading and implementing enterprise wide knowledge management and training processes and solutions. Lisa’s research interests are in the areas of self determined learning (heutagogy), online collaborative learning, pedagogical application of web 2.0 technology and social media, and user interface design. Website: http://lisamarieblaschke.pbworks.com/

Annabell Busch
Title: Digital Leadership in Transformative Times
Annabell Busch joined Blackboard at the beginning of 2013 as a Solutions Engineer since the beginning of 2013 and brings almost 20 years of experience in the implementation of IT infrastructures and e-learning solutions. In this role, she supports institutions in the Blackboard solutions and helps them with pedagogical and strategic challenges. Based in Vienna, she works with higher education institutions in France, in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and parts of Africa. She combines functional knowledge of the Blackboard portfolio with pedagogical expertise gained over years in the field. She has supported numerous clients in Europe in their digital transformation. Previously, she was responsible for the e-learning infrastructure at the University of Vienna. She holds a Master’s degree in Humanities and Media Studies from the University of Vienna and a Master of Arts from the Sorbonne Paris 4.

Nicolas Albouze
Title: Digital Leadership in Transformative Times
Nicolas Albouze started in 2004 as a System Integrator Account Executive at Oracle HQ in Dublin, after graduating in International Business from IFFA Paris. He moved to an EMEA Channel Manager role for Oracle Iberia where he sourced and managed 10 European education partners to build a large Oracle University education network, training more than 8 000 IT professionals on a yearly basis.
In late 2013 he joined Blackboard Corp., first to lead the French territory and support +15 Universities developing their online and blended strategy, then as a Regional Vice-president for the German speaking region, Italy, Greece/Cyprus and the whole of Africa.