Category: Presentations

Conferences, Digital Learning, Presentations, Quality

Launch of National e-Learning Centre in Jordan

In early May 2017, Professor Mark Brown was the keynote speaker at a conference in Amman, Jordan as part of a European funded Tempus project on enhancing the quality of technology-enhanced learning. Jordan2The event also served to mark the launch of a new National e-Learning Centre at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT). Deputising for HRH Princess Samaya, the PSUT’s President, Mashhoor Al Refai, is reported in a brief story in the Jordan Times as commending the university’s efforts in building the Kingdom’s academic community’s e-learning capacity and the role of new digital technology in raising the quality level of education in Jordan.

Jorden1In his opening keynote address, Mark explores different quality models using an interesting ice-cream metaphor, which happens to be a Syrian delicacy that is popular and widely available in Jordan. Professor Brown will be a member of the International Advisory Board established to support the work of the new National e-Learning Centre.

A copy of Mark’s keynote slide-deck is available below.

 

Associations, Digital Learning, Presentations, Research

Another ESAI Digital Learning Research Symposium

This year we were delighted to continue our strategic partnership with the Education Studies Association of Ireland (EASI) to support another Digital Learning Research Symposium as part of the annual conference in Cork (20-22 April, 2017). The conference theme was “Changing Research: Working the Spaces between Education Policy and Practice”.

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The Research Symposium was designed in accordance with this theme to explore a number of big questions confronting researchers in the area of digital learning. It built on ‘The Next Generation Digital Learning Research Symposium’ jointly hosted by ESAI in November 2016 at Dublin City University (DCU) in partnership with the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) and National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL). The intention of this follow up event was to discuss some of the contemporary issues, opportunities and challenges facing the field with a critical eye on the future. More specifically the Symposium was structured to explore the following questions:

  • What research in the area of Digital Learning is currently being conducted in the Irish context?
  • How is the Openness movement reshaping the nature of formal education?
  • What are the implications of the Unbundling movement for the future of formal education?
  • What are some of the issues and challenges arising from the emergence of analytics and big data in formal education?
  • What is the role and potential of coding in the school curriculum?

In exploring these questions, the aim was to critically reflect on the impact of the digital era on formal education set against the context of wider societal changes—for better and worse. Additionally the above framing questions were designed to help participants identify, discuss and debate some of the current gaps in the literature as digital learning continues to evolve nationally and internationally.

The opening slide-deck setting the background to the symposium appears below along with one of the presentations on the issue of unbundling of higher education.