Happy New Year 2014

Soon 2013 is coming to its end and soon we will write 2014!
What will 2014 bring to us, and what kind of questions will we deal with  concerning learning and educuation in 2014.

 With the wisdom of hindsight we all know that  2012 was the year of MOOCs. Many of us in the edcuational sector also learned that during 2013, something happened with the general awareness of the consequences of incraesed digitalization and learning online. Suddenly it wasn that suspicious to talk about e-elearning, flipped classroom, Open Edcuational Resources (OER), creative commons, MOOCs etc. Almost every international and, in some countries, also national, conference with self-respect had MOOCs and OER in their conference themes. Even many Universities in the world, so even in Sweden started to at least investigate the possibilities to offer MOOCs. In  Europe already376 are offered, and the European MOOCs Scoreboard was launched. Euroepe offer now almost half of the MOOCs offers from the states. Many promising blog posts, research, initiatives was also launched during  2013. Ine very good summary of teh MOOC development is the BIC Research Paper 130 The Maturing of MOOC. 

The European Commission launched also the intitiative on Opening up Education' to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities.
First it was of interest that they really emphasizes OPENNESS, with stating that "Opening up education means bringing the digital revolution into education. Digital technologies allow all individuals to learn, anywhere, anytime, through any device, with the support of anyone" Furthermore they stated some recommendations:

review their organisational strategies

exploit the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

stimulate innovative learning practices such as blended learning

equip teachers with high digital competences

equip learners with digital skills

think about how to validate and recognise learner’s achievements in online education

make high quality Open Education Resources  (OER) visible and accessible

During the year OpenupEd by EADTU was launched, a uality label for MOOCs  and the promising MOOC quality project by EFQUEL was carried out.

Learning Analytics have also been very much discussed during the year.

Even other abbreviatiosn as MOOC has been seen on the horizon , like just to mention some:

MOOCC, MOOPS, MOORC, mOOC, SOOC, BOOC, ROOC, DOOC. Although one of the hottest and latest is SPOCs

The 24 September 2013 Harward Univdersity launched their SPOCs

"Keep up, keep up. If you've only just caught on to the concept of online university courses called Moocs, then you're in danger of falling behind again.

Harvard, one of the world's most influential universities, is moving on to Spocs - which stands for small private online courses. Nothing to do with Star Trek and sombre Vulcans, but plenty to do with ambitions "to boldly go"."

So for 2014 I will like to see how we can learn from the hypes in 2012 and 2013 and really focus on RETHINKING education and its somewhat unfashion pedagagy, infrastructure, linear learning offers and to really keep up with all possibilities the digital evolution has brought to us. Society is today rather far ahead, thanks to teh digital agenda. Let us bring the digital agenda into education as well. Let us discuss and think learning instead of technology and tools. Let us try to bring a more rhizomatic perspective and  approach to learning

Let us for 2014 work on  the consistencies of all those open initiatives!
All of us can do something to make a difference for 2014!
At least this will be mine promise for the new year to come
What is yours?

REFLECTIONS ON THE ANNUAL EFQUEL INNOVATION FORUM 2013, BARCELONA 25-27 SEPTEMER 2013

The  EFQUEL Innovation Forum 2013 was held this year at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona 26-27 September 2013. The conference theme Refocusing Quality of e-learning attracted more participants than ever and from many continents. The conference was a great success and being in the programme committe it was a nice and busy time both in the planning process and during the conference. I was also happy to be elected to the board of EFQUEL and I am  looking forward to be even more involved. I also did some disseminatiion on social media during the conference.

Just during the conference, on the 25th September EC launched  Opening up education to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities. It was pretty good timing as the aim of the conference  was  refocusing quality, not jsut for e-learning, as the e in e-learning is more and more fading out, but instead to focus on quality issues on open education as such, and what openenness really mean, such as open educatinoal practice and culture (OEP)  and MOOCs.

Refocusing Quality of E-Learning

Refocusing Quality of E-Learning attracted more participants than ever. The theme of the conference

Some impressions:

• The major European higher education organisations, like ENQA, EUA, EURASHE and ESU were all strong contributors and emphasized the importance of openness in education, and thus new  quality approaches are needed, likewise new business models not at least for higher education are required. They also stressed the fact that how open is open and what does it really mean to be open and to offer open education for all. Furthermore they emphasized that  it is not just a question to develop technology and pedagogy. Now it is time to develop organisaions at all levels and likewise not just focus on academics but rather on mid and senior management level and rectors level. Now when there are new actors in the market, who gives new influences for education, as MOOC, quality, collaboration and competiton gives new roles and doesn´t fit into old business models. It waas also agreed that the e in e-learning more and more is faded out and we need to look at learning as such and qualitative learning environments and to look at quality more prospective and internatlly, with peer to pee, self-evalutaion, benchmarking etc than to look for quality assurance mechanism and retrospective quality.

• Ranking, an issue  which is very important for higher education both regarding education and research. As students today can apply to which university they want around the globe, ranking is important to recruit students, more over ranking play an important role for university collaborataton and competion as such. Now more comprenhensive ranking systems has been highlighted such as the U-Multirank. Multirank is a new university ranking for higher education institutions of all types, from all parts of Europe and the world. It is user-driven, and examines instituions´ performance across a wide range of higher education missions. First results from over 500 institutions will be published in 2014. U-Multrank compares not only research perfomance but also teaching, knowledge transfer, international orientation and regional development, and will now also look at  "openness" in a wider meaning. 

• MOOCs was widely discussed during the conference, not at least as MOOCs are seen as driver for changes, not just for all on-line  learning, but also in so called traditional educational arenas. During the last 6 months me and my board colleagues Ulf Ehlers, (President EFQUEL), and Alastair Creelman (Linneus Univeristy, SE) run the MOOQ Quality project. 12 interntational experts where asked to write  a blog post on 1500 words with theire views on MOOC and quality. The blogpsots where published each week during 12 weeks. During the Conference we run a three session MOOCathon.  The first session was a briefing about the MOOC Quality project, followed by a learning cafe with 5 selected projects and where participants were asked to write keylearnings, The second session was on the recommendations from the blogposts. The third session was a presentation by Yves Puin, IPTS  and on EC Opening up edcuation. Most people where at the MOOCathon for the entire time, some opt in and out as in a MOOC:) There will be follow ups from this session, first a final blogpost from us and hopefully an article as well.
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•  Another intersting presenation was on the POERUP project. POERUP (Policy OER Uptake) aims to study the end-user–producer communities behind OER initiatives. By comparing in-depth European case-studies to selected non-European ones we will refine and elaborate recommendations to formulate a set of action points that can be applied to ensuring the realisation of successful, lively and sustainable OER communities.

There is a ScoopIt site from EIF2013where many of the presentations can be found.