The themes of the conference:
From the conference scope six leading conference themes are derived: Open Educational Resources, Virtual Mobility, Quality Assurance and Benchmarking, University Strategies and Business Models, Research and Employability
.
Open educational resources in a lifelong learning context
This strand will foremost report on the recent Open Educational Resources (OER)
experiences in Europe and on the developments within the “Multilingual Open
Resources for Independent Learning” (MORIL) Consortium made possible under
consecutive grants of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Reports will be
given on the progress of the different open universities, as well as progress
made by traditional universities. Integral OER cases shall be demonstrated,
designated to: OER institutional strategies, sustainability, technology,
intellectual property, curriculum, academic participation, quality, and
organisational structures. Experience and expectation on three major issues are
addressed: OER strategy implementation (targeting European open universities on
an advanced level), OER strategy development (targeting mainstream universities
and associations of traditional universities, and knowledge transfer with open
universities), and OER capacity building (to set the stage for OER capacity
building on various continents by raising awareness and gathering different
points of view, strategies and priorities).
From Virtual mobility towards Virtual Erasmus
The EU Lifelong Learning Programme includes the essential but also ambitious
objective of having three million individual participants in student mobility by
2012. The statistics and the research do however emphasise the limits of what
can be achieved through the current mechanism. Only by supplementing the current
physical mobility schemes with institutionalised virtual mobility schemes can
the opportunities of achieving the goals set in student mobility be approached.
European wide, several initiatives and programmes are
already running in international course exchange and Virtual Mobility. These
initiatives have shown the added value of Virtual Mobility (VM) next to Physical
Mobility (PM). Virtual Mobility will not only contribute to the original vision
of the Erasmus programme on a truly European scale, it will also deliver a new
flexibility and breadth to the ambition. Next, it will offer more varied modes
of study which can be shorter, time specific and place independent, more
personalised and more specialised opportunities for the student. It can provide
different dimensions of mobility, including the creation of virtual learning
communities, virtual projects, the involvement of many universities
simultaneously in a project or course and the facilitation of international
collaborative learning and teaching.
VM therefore improves accessibility to other university
courses European wide and enables students to individualise and specialise their
study programmes. In this conference strand we want to show examples of student
mobility by VM-programmes and expand existing and build new networks of
bilateral and multilateral cooperation between universities in organising
international exchange of students.
Quality assurance and benchmarking for online and distance learning
Recently, EADTU and 11 European partners created the E-xcellence
instrument. The E-xcellence instrument supplements existing systems of quality
assurance with e-learning specific issues. It offers a European-wide set of
benchmarks, independent of particular institutional or national systems, and
with guidance to educational improvement. It directly addresses the higher and
adult education sector at the European, national and institutional level
including stakeholders as the assessment and accreditation bodies.
E-xcellence+ is a follow up project in which we will now
further introduce E-xcellence on the local level European wide with the support
of ENQA. This exercise involves universities and quality accreditation agencies
working together in supplementing the e-learning specific criteria to their
quality systems.
Further, quality assurance for online and distance
learning will be presented in a global context in cooperation with UNESCO.
Building on both their experiences, UNESCO and EADTU will cooperate in this
field by combining the experiences of EADTU in the Europe Region and UNESCO’s
work with ODL in developing countries.
In this conference strand we will have reports and
workshops from universities and assessment and accreditation bodies that started
working with e-learning specific quality assurance systems and invite
representatives of similar quality assurance projects in higher
education to report.
University strategies and business models for lifelong learning
Lifelong Learning (LLL) is about developing structures for
continuing education that can fit the realities of professional life and help
complete the knowledge that people acquire during their careers and renew or
develop their existing knowledge. It is about "unlocking the knowledge of
universities" and "making university education responsive to the needs
of business”. Although LLL is as a concept broadly supported and strongly
recognised by universities, governments and the EU, it is still in the starting
phase of actually being implemented. LLL is not yet organised sufficiently at
most universities, which can easily be explained when looking at their principle
task and target groups. In general universities are bound to their conventional
business models focussing on research and innovation and educational programming
in the BA/MA structure. This is the right strategy for the target group of
traditional students. Entering the field of the LLL-student means developing new
strategies and business models and, consequently, entering a partly unknown
area. This explains for the bigger part the hesitation of most
universities to take the next step in organising LLL.
On the other hand we clearly see that there are many
European universities that already fulfil conditions for a successful
implementation of these new approaches. Also, they have built comprehensive
learning environments comprising interactive software and features for guided
independent learning.
In this conference strand we want to collect evidence,
experience and practices related to organising LLL and determine successful
university strategies and business models.
Research in lifelong learning
Lifelong learning is a key instrument in policies directed
to assure employability and integration. In policy papers developed by OECD
countries, lifelong learning takes a central position. The learning of adults
during their professional and social life is not only considered to offer a
major contribution in the enhancement of social inclusion, but is also meant to
offer solutions in the context of enhancement of employability of young
employees and especially in the updating of competencies of older workers.
Research on major lifelong learning questions however is quite difficult and
lacks integration due to the complexity of the domain: it requires
multidisciplinary approaches. In this strand different themes will be addressed
accordingly, aiming to make the domain more transparent: What will the European
society and the European workplace look like five years from now? How can
education contribute to the knowledge society? How to articulate viable business
models for lifelong learning (new educational market places)? What role should
competencies, certification and accreditation play? How can we empower learners
in pull-based environments? What should lifelong learning look like?
Employability and online learning
Modernisation of Europe’s universities is a core
condition for success of the