innovation
Stimulating Entrepreneurship through Serious Games
Stimulating innovative and entrepreneurial mindsets of students, in particular, but not exclusively, for the set-up of new micro-companies, is a major concern of the EU educational policies in order to enhance the EU competiveness, above all in the field of new technologies.
he goal of eSG is to develop, deploy and assess experimental pedagogical plans based on appealing and instructive SGs for stimulating entrepreneurship in university students (a short course will be implemented for all the 3 levels: Bachelor, Master, PhD), with an aim to reduce the gaps among education, research and innovation. An online planning tool will also be developed. The project is highly innovative because it brings to the Higher Education (HE) sector (also through teacher training) the results of ongoing research on SGs, in particular through GaLA, which acts as a hub at EU level.
On the other hand, the outcomes from the eSG’s extensive deployment – the first one of this type in EU, to the best of our knowledge – will provide precious experimental information to researchers, that lack real data on using SGs in real HE settings. Moreover, innovation is guaranteed by the focus on new technologies and entrepreneurship, so that students are stimulated and given competences/skills, in order to apply in the real world of business the innovative knowledge they are gaining in university studies.
This is Learning Without Frontiers
6th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education
Let’s build transformative knowledge to drive social change. Be knowledgesiastic!
The GUNi Conference is an international forum for debate on the challenges facing higher education. Each edition of the Conference deals with an emergent issue in higher education, which is the subject also chosen for the Report. Held in Barcelona and attended by renowned experts, researchers, university leaders, academics, policymakers and practitioners from all over the world, the Conference addresses innovative proposals and ideas, as well as the results of the latest research on each subject.
This edition will explore the critical dimensions in our understanding of the roles, and potential roles, of higher education institutions (HEIs) as active player in contributing to the creation of another possible world. Within this context the Conference looks to answer the call of the challenges of our time, while maintaining an eye towards the future regarding the role of knowledge and HEIs.
EMbOdied-perceptive Tutors for Empathy-based learning
Significant work has been devoted to the design of artificial tutors with human capabilities with the aim of helping increase the efficiency achieved with a human instructor. Yet, these systems still lack the personal, empathic and human elements that characterise a traditional teacher and fail to engage and motivate students in the same way a human teacher does. The EMOTE project will design, develop and evaluate a new generation of artificial embodied tutors that have perceptive capabilities to engage in empathic interactions with learners in a shared physical space.
Overall, the EMOTE project aims to:
- Research the role of pedagogical and empathic interventions in the process of engaging the learner and facilitating their learning progress;
- Explore if and how the exchange of socio-emotional cues with an embodied tutor in a shared physical space can create a sense of connection and social bonding and act as a facilitator of the learning experience.
This will be done across different embodiments (both virtual and robotic), allowing for the effect that such embodiment will have on engagement and empathy to be explored.
Further, the project will support the migration of the artificial tutors across different embodiments, to support students' learning in both formal and informal settings.
To ground the research in a concrete classroom scenario, the EMOTE project will develop a showcase in the area of geography, focusing on environmental issues. This will enable tutors to be tested in real world school environments in different European countries.
In order to achieve these objectives, the EMOTE consortium will bring together experts to carry out interdisciplinary research on affect recognition, learner models, adaptive behaviour and embodiment for human-robot interaction in learning environments, grounded in psychological theories of emotion in social interaction and pedagogical models for learning facilitation.
ICMEI 2013:2nd International Conference on Management and Education
ICMEI 2013, aims to bring together researchers, scientists, engineers, and scholar students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects of Management and Education Innovation, and discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted.
2013 2nd International Conference on Management and Education Innovation - ICMEI 2013 is the premier forum for the presentation of new advances and research results in the fields of theoretical, experimental, and applied Management and Education Innovation. The conference will bring together leading researchers, engineers and scientists in the domain of interest from around the world.
Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning
Many studies on the role of ICT as a catalyst to change learning scenarios have failed to grasp relevant developments because they were working on the ground of a given set of technology options and codified learning models. If the areas of implicit, tacit and informal learning are not taken into consideration there is little chance to discover fundamentally new forms of learning through ICT.
The HOTEL Support Action aims to contribute to more effective, holistic and faster innovation cycles in European TEL, by increasing quality at the level of the cycle itself and of the different phases foreseen, that can be replicated in the future. Taking inspiration from the "Deming Cycle" model (Plan/Do/Check/Act) the HOTEL project focuses on the design, testing and validation of a new innovation working method for TEL (the HOTEL Innovation Cycle).
The most important element of impact of the HOTEL project will be:
- To establish a sustainable and replicable working paradigm (the HOTEL Innovation Cycle) to identify new models of learning through ICT, analyse the specific elements of innovation, assess the potential impact at the micro (technology-learning), meso (organizational-learning) and macro-level (policy); present results of the analysis and assessment to a community of innovators, researchers, decision makers; collect the results of field-test and in-depth contextualized proof-of-concept activities;
- Set up three Learning Exploratorium Labs (one in higher education, one in a corporate setting, one within an international professional network focused on eLearning quality) where the Innovation Cycle can be tested and validated and that will represent a contribution to the European Innovation Partnership for TEL.
The focus of the support action is on adult learners and the ways they use or might use ICT to learn as a structured and fully organized activity, but also as a side effect of work and personal development in many fields.
Open Apps, UOC's knowledge and expertise available for everyone
Led by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the Open Apps project is a virtual repository of all the successful knowledge developed by the University during its nearly 20 years of expertise in distance higher education. Through its website, visitors can find more than 20 "open apps": innovative applications and pedagogical experiences that have been developed and tested within the UOC for providing solutions to pedagogical and management needs. In addition, Open Apps also aims to offer those apps and experiences that can be transferred, used and evolved by other institutions.
An app to learn Japanese writing online, a tool to efficiently manage several networks and IP addresses, and innovative methodologies to enhance mathematics comprehension are a few examples already available at Open Apps. This platform will incorporate more contents as the project grows and evolves.
Depending on the "open app", the site will offer the source code and/or extensive documentation regarding user experiences, technical support, articles, etc. Moreover, the platform also offers the possibility of contacting the developers and creators that brought those "open apps" to life.
In fact, Open Apps also wants to attract potential collaborators to build a network that works onto taking e-distance education to a higher level. Indeed, this project is inspired as an open innovation model and works like other 'open' services, like Open Data and Open Access. For this reason, Open Apps is also looking for collaboration focussed on evolving the apps with new functionalities, and sharing new educational uses and experiences.
How does Open Apps work? Check the website, choose the "open app" that suits your needs, click on the 'I'm interested' button, and discover what the collaboration possibilities are...If available, download the source code, change it, improve it, adapt it to your needs, and then just let UOC know; we will add your enhanced version to the Open Apps repository. Cooperation and networking are deep in the core of the Open Apps philosophy.
Creative Little Scientists
Science and mathematics education is important for Europe. Creativity and innovation are equally recognised as important, and their strengthening in and through education as a vital priority. Importantly, also, creativity holds a strong position in early childhood. The Creative Little Scientists project constitutes a timely contribution to a better understanding, at the European level, of the potential available on the common ground that science and mathematics education in pre-school and early primary school can share with creativity.
The recommendations of important European reports in science and mathematics education urge countries to implement innovative curricula and ways of organising the teaching of science and mathematics that address the issue of low student motivation, and ensure that science and mathematics education engages students before the age of 14.
It is widely acknowledged that empowering today’s students to become tomorrow’s creative citizens should be a priority of education in today’s world. Innovation and creativity are vital for economic and social progress, while qualities of mind such as inventiveness, imagination, intuition, wonderment and curiosity are vital for innovation and creativity.
Interestingly, an inherent link seems to exist between creativity and science and mathematics education. Science intrinsically involves inquiry and invention, which are triggered by curiosity, intuition, imagination, all of them elements closely related to creativity; it is also widely accepted nowadays that effective science and mathematics education is based on inquiry, which leads to wonder, and is fuelled by curiosity. However, traditional science and mathematics education is missing the element of creativity.
Despite universal recognition of the importance of inquiry based methods for science and mathematics education, they have not been implemented on a large scale in many European countries, resulting in less effective science learning. However, even in many contexts in which inquiry based science education has become mainstream in the educational discourse, the link with creativity is not explicitly acknowledged.
It seems therefore that we should explore the potential for science and mathematics education that exists on the common ground that it shares with creativity in pre-school and early primary school. The Creative Little Scientists project is a timely response to these needs.