Research

The summer school aims to encourage participants to adopt a critical stance in thinking about the role of technologies in providing opportunities for learners and the potential of these opportunities in terms of learning.

The summer school provides a learning environment where participants get opportunities to: develop their research skills; increase their knowledge base; collaborate with others in their own and complementary research areas; engage in debate; have access to experts in the field; and discuss their own work.  

The programme will include lectures from a broad range of domains which contribute to advancing the field of Technology Enhanced Learning. TEL research projects are encouraged to provide students with a perspective of the state-of-the-art research under study in their working groups. The programme will also include practical and methodological workshops and opportunities for doctoral candidates to develop their personal research. Students will have opportunities to present and discuss their doctoral work.

Applications should be submitted online before Thursday, March 1st, 2012: Application Form.

Applicants will be required to submit:

- a CV outlining their educational background and work experience (maximum one page);

- a letter of motivation, explaining why they want to participate in the Summer School (maximum one page);

- a letter of support from their PhD advisor, which should include a statement of the level of support the institution is able to supply.

Applicants requiring financial support for participation should explicitly mention it in their motivation letter, briefly explaining their circumstances. It is expected that applicants working on research projects which are able to fund them will not apply for financial support. To ensure a high ratio between tutors and students the school will be limited to 60 PhD students.

In order to increase social contacts among the summer school participants, the programme includes several social events. A variety of sport activities will also be offered to the summer school participants. A cultural excursion is organised on the Sunday preceding the summer school.

The worldwide emergence of ePortfolios is an indicator of the need to review our approach to education and lifelong learning, at the same time demonstrating that it is possible to make learning and assessment more authentic and integrated. ePortfolios are at the source of a new generation of tools dedicated to valuing and celebrating the achievements of the individual, from nursery school to lifelong and life-wide learning. It is also a technology reinforcing the link between individual, organisational and community learning.

Compared with the average of all 31 nations, Spanish men rank 17th and Spanish women rank 19th. This puts Spain under the average in Europe for information and communication technologies (ICT) use. With respect to the level of gender equality in the digital world, Spain fares even worse by ranking 20th.

'Spanish men and women score lower than the European average on ICT use,' explains Juan Martín Fernandez from the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain and one of the authors of the study. 'For women, internet use frequency is lower than that of men and the gender gap is wider than the European average.'

The countries that report the highest levels of ICT use along with the smallest gender gap are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, followed by France and Slovenia, with the Netherlands just behind. With respect to Germany, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, users in these countries score low in gender equality despite reporting high ICT activity.

Hungary, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia rank somewhere in the middle of the road, with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania just behind. Belgium and Poland post high levels of gender equality in Internet use but not when it comes to society at large. Joining Spain in lower Internet use and gender equality are Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Women in Spain rank just above the average in Internet use when it is linked with specific areas, namely: public administration, leisure, employment, health and education.

'Women in Spain come in lower than average of internet use and frequency on far more occasions,' says Dr Fernandez, 'so much so that this far outweighs the few occasions in which they come in higher than the European average.'

He goes on to say that equality, frequency and integration of ICT uses come hand in hand. 'Sometimes it is thought that with the extension of infrastructures and the passing of time, the gap will be bridged. Our results show that this is not the case. Active and encouraging policy is required in order to overcome this inequality,' Dr Fernandez concludes.

Earlier this year, Internet World Stats reported that the EU had more than 338 million Internet users, with a penetration population of 67.3%. This figure is much higher than the rest of the world, which had a penetration population of 27.3%.

For more information, please visit:

Complutense University of Madrid:

http://portal.ucm.es/en/web/en-ucm

Reis:

http://www.reis.cis.es/REIS/html/index.html

Castaño, C., et al. (2011). 'La brecha digital de género en España y Europa: medición con indicadores compuestos', Reis, 136,127-140.