policy recommendations
Tools for Monitoring Urban Integration: UNITE Project
The UniteEurope project provides Social Media tools and makes software available to policymakers working on integaration of third-country nationals. Users of the UniteEurope tool can save, monitor and track specific integration cases to measure impact and to predict the effect of future decisions.
UniteEurope takes citizen generated content, mass data related to integration issues, and existing platforms, but then acts as an intelligent filter. Its aggregation architecture delivers relevant information for policy makers to support sustainable social integration.
Its grid model with multi-layer logic patterns is used for consistent categorisation of relevant integration areas (e.g. education, business, culture) in cities. Coherent layers with multilingual semantic tags, significant sources and parameters form the basis of this tool, and are supported with information on web-based dashboards and intuitive visualisations.
Additionally, identified target groups and policy makers at a European level are provided with aggregated data and key figures to monitor urban integration in Europe and identify good practices for specific areas of integration. UniteEurope supports operational integration measures and strategic policy development at regional and pan-European level.
The UniteEurope team consists of system architects, software developers, E-Government, Social Media and integration experts from leading universities, competence centres, companies and three European cities considering integration an agenda priority.
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.
UNESCO Policy Guidelines for Mobile Learning
The “Policy guidelines for mobile learning” developed by UNESCO seek to help policy-makers better understand what mobile learning is and how its unique benefits can be leveraged to advance progress towards Education for All.
UNESCO believes that mobile technologies can expand and enrich educational opportunities for learners in diverse settings. Yet most ICT in education policies were articulated in a pre-mobile era and they do not seek to maximize the learning potentials of mobile technology. The rare policies that do reference mobile devices tend to treat them tangentially or ban their use in schools.
Today, a growing body of evidence suggests that ubiquitous mobile devices – especially mobile phones and, more recently, tablet computers – are being used by learners and educators around the world to access information, streamline administration and facilitate learning in new and innovative ways.
Developed in consultation with experts in over 20 countries, UNESCO’s “Policy guidelines for mobile learning” have broad application and can accommodate a wide range of institutions, including K–12 schools, universities, community centres, and technical and vocational schools.
Policy-makers are encouraged to adopt UNESCO’s policy recommendations, tailoring them as necessary to reflect the unique needs and on-the-ground realities of local contexts.
The document was presented during the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2013, held from 18 to 22 February in Paris.
Policy Frameworks for New Assessments
The ultimate goal of the project is to move from small marginal pilot projects to implementing new forms of assessment within a coherent teaching and learning system. This paper focuses on the reform needed in school and government systems to achieve this shift.
The OERTEST Project: Creating Political Conditions for Effective Exchange of OER in Higher Education
This article was originally published by Luca Ferrari and Ivan Traina on the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, volume 9, issue 1.
This paper refers to the OERTest project and Open Educational Resources (OER) as support education materials that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone. In this paper we will try to answer the following question: how can the political conditions be created to foster an effective exchange of OERs between Higher Education institutions? The article presents several policy recommendations (intended as lessons learnt from the project) to ensure an effective recognition and exchange of OER between Higher Education Institutions.
Results from the VISCED webinar on outputs of the VISCED Project
On 10 December 2012 the VISCED Partnership organised a 60 minute webinar on the main outputs of the VISCED Project. This webinar was well attended with 44 participants from 17 different countries, including some representatives of the virtual schools that have been researched as case studies by the VISCED partners. Participants could interact with one another and ask questions to the speakers via the live chat.
The programme, as well as the webinar recording and speakers' presentations are available in the VISCED project site.
Programme for the webinar 'Virtual Schools and Colleges in Europe – outputs of the VISCED Project'
| 15.00 | Welcome and introduction to the agenda - Sally Reynolds, ATiT, Belgium (WP7) |
| 15.05 | Introduction to VISCED - project background, rational, partnerships and main activities - Prof. Paul Bacsich, Sero Consulting, UK and Project Coordinator (WP1) |
| 15.15 | Prevalence of Virtual Schools throughout the world and a summary of case examples from different parts of Europe - Giles Pepler, Sero Consulting, UK (WP2) |
| 15.25 | Critical success factors for the success of Virtual Schools - Anthony F. Camilleri, EFQUEL, Belgium (WP4) |
| 15.35 | Main recommendations for policy-makers - Prof. Paul Bacsich, Sero Consulting, UK and Project Coordinator (WP3/WP8) |
| 15.45 | Open discussion, question and answer opportunity - moderated by Sally Reynolds, ATiT, Belgium |
European Conference on Quality in VET Practices and lessons learnt from successful EQAVET implementation at national level
In 2010, the EACEA issued a call for proposals “to support national projects for the development of a national approach to improve the quality assurance of vocational education and training systems by promoting and developing the use of the European quality assurance reference framework in vocational education and training (EACEA/09/2010). ”Five pilot projects were selected. These projects tested EQAVET as an instrument to promote a shared culture of quality assurance.
For their testing, the projects chose to target different systemic levels:. The projects mostly focused on national contexts of initial VET and continuous professional development. The projects were expected to develop original approaches to Quality Assurance by adopting the EQAVET framework. Consequently, they had to do stocktaking and description of existing practices and current initiatives, design, develop and implement Quality Assurance at the chosen level, use, implement and maintain of tools and methodologies, design a broad and specific communication campaign and establish lasting stakeholders relations.
Making an inventory of results and outcomes
The projects approached EQAVET from a wide perspective. They have prepared stocktaking and inventory reports, manuals for quality assurance, curricula and certification process for quality managers, communication strategy for involving stakeholders in Quality assurance and Guidelines. These documents contribute to a growing of the amount of needed information, innovative examples and guidelines on the implementation of EQAVET at different systemic levels (institutional, VET providers and schools).
The projects also tested their approach and tools towards developments and combinations of the existing quality cultures . The work of the pilot projects was a crucial opportunity to get stakeholders on board on quality issues at a larger scale.
Aims of the conference
The conference will host 150 persons bringing together representatives of the national ministries, stakeholders (social partners, VET providers, sectoral representatives, industries VET learners and chambers) and multipliers (Lifelong learning programme National Agencies).
The main aims of the conference are to
- Offer an overview of the results of the work of the EQAVET projects;
- Share methods and tools elaborated by the projects;
- Take stock of the common challenges;
- Reflect on the needs for further development of EQAVET.
The outcomes of the conference will be presented in detail in the next issue of the EQAVET projects Newsletter in February 2013
Mind the Gap - Education Inequality across EU Regions
This report shows major geographic disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes, across and within EU Member States.
The report gives a thorough account of intra-national regional inequalities in educational opportunities and outcomes in the EU. The report intends to support policy makers in their efforts to design effective measures to redress disparities. It contains over 100 maps that help visualise inequalities. It identifies the top 10 and bottom 10 EU regions for each of the indicators it examines.