Programme

Abstract

Science in the digital age needs to deal with the exponential growth of both research data and publications, as well as new ways for collaboration. Today science is an open enterprise working with transparent methods, reproducible results and their collaborative evaluation. We present GeRDI, a joint infrastructure project bringing together 5 institutions in Germany funded by DFG for the development and deployment of an IT community application as well as storage and computing capacities to deal with these requirements. We show, that the distributed cooperating and interdisciplinary nature of research calls for a federated infrastructure of distributed local resources for research data management.

Abstract

The panel aims to explore the impact of Open Education on the various “actors” involved: teachers, learners, employers and the society.
Today’s education is not about teachers and learners anymore, the ICT technologies interfered and shaped the way in which the learning content is delivered and how, where and when students are learning.
Interactions between the two important players, teachers, and learners, have also changed, communication is driven extensively by new forms of sending and receiving messages.
The role of tertiary education in delivering educational services to society has changed along with these new developments.
Even though Higher Education is perceived as being resistant to change, a major paradigm shift occurred at the strategic level: universities have forced to become more stakeholder and market-oriented and to accept the disruptive technology of e-learning. The consequence was the increasing access to tertiary education for a lot different categories of students. Some voices are criticizing this “massification” of higher education. The challenge of students’ diversity brings new requirements: the new course development should meet the students’ demand; efficiency being of utmost importance.
In this context, the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as full courses offered online and free of charge to any user is incredibly fast and generates considerable speculation and anticipation about how MOOCs development may transform teaching and learning also higher education.
Learning became more and more learners’ responsibility, the learning content providers are quite diverse and for sure the universities are not the only ones. As a learner, to decide what is best for you and your future is not easy at all. So, the quality of open education courses is important not only as learning experience but also to ensure those learning outcomes to be validated by the society. Moreover, the learning process should be monitored and learning performances evaluated. Discussions on how open education graduates will exploit their learning efforts later one in their professional lives are expected and what kind of partnerships will emerge to support it are more than welcome.

• Willem Van Valkenburg – Member of the Board – Open Education Consortium
• Anja Oskamp – Rector Magnificus – Open University – The Netherlands
• António Moreira Teixeira-  University Aberta, Lisabon, Portugal
• Gard Titlestad – Secretary General of International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) – Norway
• Dr. Lidia Borrell-Damián – Director Research and Innovation, European University Association
• Andreia Inamorato dos Santos – Research Fellow at the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) – member of the OpenEdu project
  
• Prof. Manuela Epure, PhD, MCIM – OSPP member and Vice President ACEU (www.aceu-edu.org), moderator

Abstract

In Germany the discussion about Open Educational Resources (OER) started in 2011 with the debate about the so called “School Trojan”. Framed by the strategies of the “Federal Ministry of Education and Research” and the Kultusministerkonferenz (Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of German) we will present some outcomes of a “Feasability Study for OER infrastructures” by the DIPF. Furthermore we will give some insights about OER Info, a national platform for information, transfer and networking for Open Educational Resources.

Abstract

Parallel to developments towards openness in science and research, software development and other sectors, also the education sector is moving towards open sharing of content, learning resources and instructional materials. ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER) have now developed into a well-established reality in many countries, serving schools, teachers and students with high-quality resources that can be freely exchanged, used, re-used and adapted. Licensing arrangements, including Creative Commons licenses, have proven to be invaluable tools to support this development. The benefits for education and learning are obvious: more teachers and learners get access to affordable high-quality resources, barriers for specific groups of learners are pulled down and the education system at large benefits in terms of efficiency and cost. But the case of OER also demonstrates that ‘open’ also means ‘innovative’: through sharing resources for teaching and learning innovative practices are set in motion that go beyond the mere development and use of high-quality resources. For example, OER enable new and collaborative networking among teachers. OER can become a tool for quality enhancement and innovation in education.

Abstract

While open educational practices have often been connected to the use of OER or the openness of the educational design recent developments around the open sharing of data and cross-institutional educational interventions support a new perspective on the concept of open educational practices. Based on the urgent need for more systematic research about educational interventions the recent combination of Massive Open Online Courses and Learning Analytics allows the establishment of a cross-institutional educational lab infrastructure in which interventions are tested across several contexts. Such an approach can lead at the same time to more evidence-driven educational interventions for online-learning.

Abstract

This talk will explore the interface between open education, open data and open science and, using examples from the University of Edinburgh’s GeoScience Outreach and Engagement Course will highlight how student created open educational resources can be used to widen participation and encourage knowledge transfer in science education.

Abstract

Realising open data in educational research is a great challenge. Empirical educational research is characterized by its multidisciplinary nature, its variety of research designs and data types and last but not least a remarkable data output. Up to now, educational research data is not and cannot be open by default, as data needs to fulfill several requirements with regard to legal, ethical or methodological aspects in order to be sharable and reusable. To achieve these requirements, subject-specific data archiving and curation services are needed. Accordingly, the current research data infrastructure for educational studies is highly diversified. But, the advantage of providing specialized services comes with the cost of high complexity. Reducing this complexity and offering user-friendly services is the goal of the BMBF-funded project Verbund Forschungsdaten Bildung (VFDB), a German network for educational research data. The VFDB brings together disparate services from different research data centers and works on harmonization and standardization of the data curation processes within the field. In my talk I will discuss the requirements and challenges of realising data sharing in educational research based on the experiences of the VFDB project.