computer-based educational tools
OCW Universidad de Alicante
The OpenCourseWare programme of the University of Alicante (Spain) offers more than 350 free and open courses, making it one of the top contributors in Spanish to the international OpenCourseWare Consortium.
Hundreds of teachers have already participated in the OCW-UA project since its creation in 2007 as one of the major initiatives from the University to allow the promotion of open knowledge, improve the quality of teaching materials and increase their distribution.
In 2011 the University of Alicante was awarded with the Landmark Site for OpenCourseWare Excellence for its materials and innovations, including integration with institutional repositories, export-to-wiki functionality and search and discoverability tools.
Teaching 4.0 - Graphic Expression in Construction OCW
The concept Teaching 4.0 is the result of uniting the use of participatory networks, online tools and digital content available in the Internet, and adding educational material generated by teachers in traditional media (offline) and using ICTs (online).
The Universitat de les Illes Balears (Spain) is a pioneer in the implementation of this 4.0 concept, where professor Antonio Fernández-Coca combines face-to-face teaching, following the traditional parameters, with the external support of relationship marketing and ICT tools (such as online videos and social networks) to produce specific content aiming to support teaching in an open and shareable way.
The Teaching 4.0 website developed by professor Fernández-Coca shares the learning and teaching materials produced under a Creative Commons licence for the subject Graphic Expression in Construction, part of the UIB’s Construction Engineering degree curriculum.
Teaching 4.0 is the winner of the Universia Open Course Ware 2012 contest, organised by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and Universia.
Click here to see a video where professor Fernández-Coca explains his Teaching 4.0 concept (in Spanish).
Project Maths resources on Probability and Statistics
A series of high-end complementary maths teaching resources directly aligned with the Irish Department of Education’s “Project Maths” syllabus and the Irish Leaving Certificate Exam are being offered by Alison (Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online).
These resources were created in collaboration with two Galway-based, Project Maths trained, secondary school teachers in partnership with the Galway Education Centre and the Athenry Maths Academy.
Currently available is Strand One of the curriculum: Probability and Statistics (Ordinary Level and Higher Level), an area found to be of traditional difficulty among students, and an area of increasing importance in the growing knowledge economy.
These are a complementary resource, not a replacement to in-classroom teaching of maths, and are made up of video lectures as well as interactive lessons from teachers and tutors from all over the world.
A Certificate of Completion is awarded to students who complete the full course.
MOOCs sind sozialer als Sie denken
Wir berichten über zwei noch laufende Studien, die das individualistische Modell des MOOC-basierten Lernens herausfordern. Die Nutzung von MOOC ist in den Kontext von Studiengruppen eingebettet, die in einer gemeinsamen Umgebung arbeiten.
Durch die Möglichkeit, einen Vortrag zu unterbrechen und seine Inhalte mit Gleichgesinnten zu diskutieren, entstehen Lerngelegenheiten. Lernen durch Erklären hat sich in vielen empirischen Studien als effektiv erwiesen. Wir forschen nach der besten Methode, die Studiengruppen mit verschiedenen Werkzeugen zu konfigurieren.
OpenStax College
OpenStax College is a non-profit organisation providing students with professional-quality textbooks that are free online and low-cost in print.
Launched in February 2012 with a philanthropic model, the platform ultimately plans to offer free textbooks for 25 of the most-attended college courses in the United States. The first five titles are already available and have been adopted in one year by more than 150 colleges, universities and high schools.
The books offered are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of the courses.
OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University.
ICELW
ICELW works to improve online learning so that it makes a measurable difference in workplace performance and morale. Anyone with an interest or background in workplace eLearning is invited to attend and participate in the conference, which will take place in New York City from the 12-14 of June 2013.
The ICELW program cover a variety of topics relating to e-learning in the workplace and the use of technology to improve job performance, in the form of demonstrations, mini-seminars, case studies, interviews, debates, presentations, and panel discussions.
University of Cambridge OCW language learning resources
The Language Centre of the University of Cambridge offers a range of Open Courseware (OCW) learning resources under the Creative Commons Licence.
Most of the OCW resources offered by the Language Centre were initially developed for the courses run as part of the Cambridge University Language Programme (CULP). The materials were designed for use in a blended learning environment combining ICT-based learning with face-to-face learning in the classroom.
The resources can be used for self-study, but for their most effective use they will benefit from a learning environment with some face-to-face contact.
Basic and intermediate Chinese, basic German and Russian essentials are currently available in the OCW language platform.