Hybridity as result of holistic thinking Hybridisation has increasingly become the focus of education thanks to Pandemic, even though we have been living and learning in hybrid systems since time immemorial. Hybridity was used in the 19th century to describe the differences between various ethnic groups. Today, an intercultural process in which an individual’s identity undergoes a reorientation is called hybridity. In this respect, there are interesting parallels with hybridity in education today, as the identity of origin and that of a new environment, increasingly common in the globalisation and internationalisation of learning, lead to new, combined identities of the
StraightTalk – OERs Unleashed: Why Now is the Perfect Time for Universities to Mainstream OERs
StraightTalk EDEN Council of Fellows Interview Series Host: Dr. Don Olcott,Jr., FRSA, Council Chair OERs Unleashed: Why Now is the Perfect Time for Universities to Mainstream OERs An Interview with Professor Rory McGreal EDEN Senior Fellow UNESCO/ICDE Chair for OER and Professor Athabasca University CANADA About the Guest Professor Rory McGreal is the UNESCO/International Council for Open and Distance Education Chair in Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. He is co-editor of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), and founder of the OER Knowledge Cloud. He is presently the director of the Technology Enhanced
Co-designing the NextNormal of European Institutions of Higher Education – What do students hope, fear and wish for?
Almost 20 years ago I had my first presence at an EDEN event and presented research which – at that time as a young researcher – was fascinating me enormously: Exploring the students’ views to find out how learning should be. Now, 20 years down the road it appears that this perspective seems to have gained importance again. The Covid 19 shutdown has challenged students, as well as higher education institutions across Europe, to quickly adapt to a new learning and teaching situation at home, one that is characterized by digitization and distance learning. In this process, new teaching and
The year we reimagined education
There was once a Portuguese football player who when asked about his prediction for a game he famously replied: Predictions? Only after the match. The year now ending has proven how prudent this funny remark is. Few could have expected the ‘onrushing train of 2020’, to use Jeffrey Klugger’s expression on Time magazine. It seems the world has turned upside down and nothing is certain anymore. This blog post is a good example of that. Having started to write it well before Christmas, only now a few hours before New Year’s Eve am I able to finally complete it after
Emergency Education
None of us expected it. Many of us were ill-prepared. It took the world completely by surprise. And sadly many have had to pay a high price. I’m referring of course, to the Covid-19 pandemic that we first began to hear about around the start of 2020. From the outset, most of us, let’s be honest, thought little of it. We continued to go about our daily lives. And then the news reports began to get more serious, infections escalated, and the virus started to creep closer to our doors. Within weeks, the world was in turmoil, markets went into
EDEN2030 – supporting the strategic development of EDEN for the next decade
Project members: Deborah Arnold (lead), Albert Sangrà, Antonio Teixeira EDEN2030 is one of the projects adopted at the first EDEN Fellows Council meeting in Genoa, 2018. It aims to engage Fellows and Senior Fellows in the collaborative design of a vision for EDEN in 2030, and the project team works in close synergy with the EDEN Executive Committee. At the EDEN Annual Conference 2020, we ran an online workshop entitled “Opportunity knocks! Have your say in shaping EDEN2030”. The purpose of this workshop was to engage EDEN Fellows and the wider community in discussion around opportunities EDEN should consider taking
Beyond the Digital Abyss: Renewing Our Humanity, Empathy and Judgment
Deference to technology over humanity, empathy, and judgment is its own banality of evil. Don Olcott, Jr. If you haven’t heard the news on the BBC or CNN, civilisation as we know seems to be coming to an end. No, it’s not due to the pandemic Covid-19, it’s not our dependency on World Cup football or our personal quest to find our true selves amidst the uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity of modern society. It is none of these. The latest Ship of Doom is reporting that digital technology and artificial intelligence are covertly taking over the world . . .
Bruges and Bridges – An EDEN Senior Fellow Reflects on the 28th EDEN Annual conference, June 2019
When I was a young boy, I grew up in a very nice town in Belgium, with a great medieval history, called… yes, Bruges, or in Dutch, Brugge. For those speaking my mother tongue, this sounds like ‘brug’ or in plural ‘bruggen’ (in English: bridges). And honestly, when I was that young boy, I never doubted that the name of my city was derived from the bridges across the many water canals in the town. Later I learnt the real etymology, and it is not exactly true, but for sure it has to do with water, harbour and other constructions
News from the EDEN Council of Fellows
Greetings to the EDEN Community! Indeed, keeping our EDEN members informed of developments within EDEN is a key objective of the association. As Chair of the Council of Fellows Board, I would like to take this opportunity to update you on our progress on current initiatives within the EDEN Council of Fellows. As was announced last summer at the EDEN Annual Conference in Genoa, the community of EDEN Fellows and Senior Fellows has been rebranded as the EDEN Council of Fellows. This development stemmed from a growing need within the EDEN organization to leverage the wisdom and expertise of its Fellows