elearning_label_higher_education
Observing the 80s
Observing the 1980s offers a unique and inspiring insight into the lives and opinions of British people from all social classes and regions during the 1980s decade. A lot of the material comprises the personal memories of people who lived through the Thatcher era, making this resource seem all the more resonant now.
The Observing the 1980s project brings together ‘voices’ from the Mass Observation Project and the British Library’s Oral history collections, alongside 1980s documents and ephemera such as public information leaflets, pamphlets, posters and tickets from the University of Sussex Library’s archives.
The value of digitising these collections and disseminating them as open educational resources is that currently no established historiography of the 1980s exists. The decade is largely represented as polarised and the work that does exist is similarly divided into oppositional camps.
By bringing together these resources, students and academics will be able to make and illustrate connections across and between these polarised approaches. Additionally, a key benefit for educators at all levels is in the raw nature of the information and its potential use across subject areas such as politics, sociology, oral history, cultural and media studies, linguistics, gender studies, narrative and memory studies, migration studies, folklore studies, anthropology and contemporary history.
The material is also embedded into the University of Sussex Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) using open Moodle software. A variety of open education resources have been created, including one titled “Thatcher's Britain: Observing the 1980s”, with videos, images and slides that can be accessed by anyone through a guest login with no need sign up. There are also several infographics covering the Falklands Conflict, unemployment, the miners’ strike and sexuality in Thatcher’s Britain.
The Observing the 1980s material will also be available through HumBox and JORUM as well as via other educational resource sites such as the British Library.
eLearning Africa 2013 - Pre-conference Events
Join the eLearning Africa 2013 pre-conference workshops and participate in the seminar on 29 May 2013 in order to improve practical knowledge, learn from international experts, and network with other professionals. Space is limited — register as soon as possible to secure your spot!
Pre-conference events will take place 29 May 2013, and include the following: workshops, application development, seminars, and meetings. Learn more here.
EDULEARN 2013 - DEADLINE extended until 11 April 2013
EDULEARN13, the 5th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies will be held in Barcelona (Spain), on 1-3 of July 2013.
EDULEARN13 is an International Forum for those who wish to present their projects and discuss the latest innovations and results in the field of New Technologies in Education, E-learning and methodologies applied to Education and Research.
Contributions to EDULEARN13 (in person or virtually) are welcome, as a way of sharing results and experiences in Education, Research and learning/teaching technology. The deadline for abstracts submission has been extended to 11 April 2013.
Two ISBN publications will be produced with all the accepted abstracts and papers that will be included in the digital library database of innovation projects in Education and New Learning Technologies.
This conference will be held at international level, and more than 700 delegates from 75 different countries are expected to attend.
Global Open Education: A Roadmap for Internationalization
The main goal of this paper is to stimulate the discussion on future issues on Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) in a mid- and long-term perspective.
The main issue discussed is how OER are utilized on an international level. Internationalization and global collaboration are crucial to Open Education:
- How can OER be utilized across borders?
- How can OER contribute towards better education for less developed countries?
- How can Open Education contribute towards better collaboration in Europe and globally?
These are just some questions to be explored and solved in the next years. As a starting point, I would recommend two key visions:
1. Creating a European Open Education community towards collaboration, mutual support and participation.
2. Creating global outreach of European Open Education towards European leadership in both, the educational market and development cooperation.
This paper identifies key issues and potential solutions for international aspects regarding open education. Using a roadmapping methodology, I propose steps and recommendations for advancing Open Education.
Paris OER Declaration: Launch of Project
The project to implement the Paris Open Educational Resources (OER) Declaration brought together OER experts, UNESCO specialists, and representatives from Bahrain, Indonesia, Kenya, and Oman at the end of March.
The Paris OER Declaration was initially adopted at the 2012 World OER Congress, and included 10 points to work toward developing national-level OER policies, and implementing the UNESCO ICT Competency Frameowrk for Teachers. The meeting held a few weeks ago at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris was intended to review the project objectives, share ideas and practices about OER policies and determine the best way to implement the project in each country.
Representatives from Bahrain, Indonesia, Oman, and Kenya shared their particular national educational context, highlighting the status of ICT in Education and OER, before working with UNESCO specialists to come up with a road map that accomodates their country's specific needs. Indonesia, for example, decided to focus on teacher training using OER.
OER experts and potential partner organizations also contributed, including Creative Commons, Intel, Commonwealth of Learning, Organisation International de la Francophonie (OIF), and UNESCO Category 2 Regional Center for ICT, Bahrain.
The end result of this meeting was workplans and outlines for each country. The next step will be organizing national workshops in June 2013.
Join the first LinkedUp Challenge: Veni
The first of three LinkedUp Challenges is now open! 'Come' participate in the Veni competition, which promotes the innovative use of linked and open data in an educational context.
Researchers, students, developers and businesses...and anyone interested is invited to the first installment of the LinkedUp Challenge: 'Veni'. Participants must build prototypes, demos and innovative tools that exploit, use, integrate or analyse large scale web data for educational use.
Polytechnic University of Madrid's OpenCourseWare
The Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) is a partner and sponsor of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) international consortium since 2009.
Committed to share knowledge and to promote the teaching materials of its faculty members, the UPM offers teachers, students and professionals anywhere in the world free and open access to highly educational resources through its OCW online platform.
The UPM OCW website offers a wide array of formal course materials published under a Creative Commons license, encompassing hundreds of valuable educational documents for students, teachers and lifelong learners of all ages.
MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education
This white paper published in March 2013 sets out to help decision makers in higher education institutions gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), trends towards greater openness in higher education and the implications for their institutions.
Authors Li Yuan and Stephen Powell describe the phenomena of the MOOCs, placing them in the wider context of open education, online learning and the changes that are currently taking place in higher education at a time of globalisation of education and constrained budgets.
The “MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education” report is written from a UK higher education perspective, but is largely informed by the developments in MOOCs from the USA and Canada.
A literature review was undertaken focussing on the extensive reporting of MOOCs through blogs, press releases as well as openly available reports. This identified current debates about new course provision, the impact of changes in funding and the implications for greater openness in higher education. The theory of disruptive innovation is used to help form the questions of policy and strategy that higher education institutions need to address.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board Members
The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) has published a white paper analysing the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other forms of online education.
Authored by Brian Voss, vice president and CIO at the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park, “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and College Board Members” is an effort to give board chairs, presidents and others some context to help guide discussions on their own campuses.
The paper is based upon a presentation given to the board of directors of AGB and includes several appendices, including a set of key online terms and concepts and a selection of useful articles.
LAK 2013: Third Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge
This third conference on learning analytics will be designed to bring the many voices involved in leveraging the availability of data about learning with powerful computational, representational and visualization techniques into dialogue in a “middle space” under the overarching theme of “Dialectics in Learning Analytics”.
The first two conferences have established the range of issues and approaches of concern in leveraging the availability of data about learning with powerful computational, representational and visualization techniques. This third conference will be designed to consolidate the field by bringing these many voices into dialogue in a “middle space” under the overarching theme of “Dialectics in Learning Analytics,” which has these facets:
The Middle Space: The conference will explore the “middle space” within which Learning and Analytics intersect, and seeks proposals for papers and events that explicitly connect analytic tools to theoretical and practical aspects of understanding and managing learning.
Productive Multivocality: Learning analytics is multidisciplinary, drawing on theories and methods from diverse research traditions. Our community includes educators, learning scientists, computer scientists, administrators, and policy makers, among others. The middle space serves as a topical “boundary object”, enabling productive discourse between these many voices.
The Old and the New: We are facing a centuries old problem: to improve learning, but we are trying to solve it using a new set of tools, not available before. We address these problems in the city of Leuven: centuries old, lively new.