Blended Learning, Digital Learning, Learning Design, Learning Futures, Online Learning, Teaching

Three forthcoming ‘Open’ Courses Available on Hybrid, Blended and Online Education

We are pleased to alert you to three forthcoming ‘open’ courses for educators on (i) synchronous hybrid, (ii) blended, and (iii) online education as part of the EU funded DigiTel Pro project.

The DigiTel Pro partnership brings together advanced “schools” in research, innovation, leading edge development and good practice in synchronous hybrid (KU Leuven), blended learning (TU Delft), and online and distance learning (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, The Open Universiteit (OUNL), UNINETTUNO). Each course will also focus on student readiness for hybrid, blended and online learning, drawing on Dublin City University’s experience through the NIDL’s development of a free course, A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner, for learners offered through the FutureLearn platform. 

Over the past year, members of the DigiTel Pro team have developed these online courses based on established models and validated guidelines for the design, development, and delivery for each of these three predominant formats in a post-COVID perspective. All three open courses incorporate the most recent research, theory and innovative practice.

Register to Join the Courses

The courses will start in the middle of March 2022. We invite you to register for one or more courses:

1. Synchronous and Hybrid Education…

This course explores settings that have in common that both on-site or ‘here’ students and remote or ‘there’ students are included simultaneously:

– Learn more about Synchronous and Hybrid Education on the DigiTeL Pro website

2. Blended Education…

This course explores a deliberate mix of synchronous and asynchronous methods: based on a course design with a conscious combination of online and offline learning activities:

3. Online Education…

This course explores course designs where there is a continuous physical separation between teacher and student:

As mentioned above, student readiness for digital education will be addressed in all three courses as well.

Join the Global Conversation

You can also join the global conversation about how institutions, educators and students made education ‘work’ in hybrid, blended or online distance modes during the pandemic and what lessons we can take for the future. From Wednesday 23rd February onwards follow #DigitelPro2022 on Twitter and discuss questions posted on different types of challenges in course design, which will be addressed in more detail in the above-mentioned courses.

Participation in the DigiTel Pro course programme is designed to enable you as an educator to make the transition from emergency remote online teaching during COVID-19 to fully embed new digital technologies as part of your reimagined teaching and learning ecology. 

Please find more information on the courses and the registration on the DigiTeL Pro website.

Events, Learning Futures, Micro-credentials, MOOCs

FutureLearn Academic Network – Call for Papers

The next FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN) meeting will take place online on Thursday 17th February 2022 between 14:00pm and 17:00pm GMT/UTC. It will be hosted by Dublin City University and hosted through Zoom. 

The theme of the meeting will be…

‘Micro-credentials: Moving from the Canvas to the Concrete’.

There is a growing expectancy over the role micro-credentials may play in the future. Recent European Council recommendations have firmly put micro-credentials and lifelong learning on the education and training agenda in Europe. The narrative, however, is largely anecdotal and evidence of the purported benefits and the successful implementation of micro-credentials remains limited. You can view a comprehensive collection of the published literature in this area in the Micro-credential Observatory.

We invite researchers, PhD students, course developers and practitioners to submit proposals for presentations on MOOC-based approaches to micro-credentials, focusing in particular on innovative approaches to implementation and evaluation.

Please send a brief abstract (100 words) to elaine.beirne@dcu.ie by Friday 4th February 2022.

If you have not been involved in FLAN before, the organisation was established in 2013 in order to connect staff and students, based at FutureLearn partner institutions, share research and explore shared research opportunities. These include joint research bids and publications, comparative studies using shared FutureLearn data, course designs, and methods to analyse and evaluate courses.

Attendance at FLAN events is free for those from FutureLearn partner institutions. It is an opportunity to catch up with research into FutureLearn and MOOCs more generally, and to talk informally with colleagues from other FutureLearn partner organisations. FLAN also hosts a closed Facebook Group to exchange ideas and propose themes. Contact rebecca.ferguson@open.ac.uk to join the Facebook group.

If you would like to attend via Zoom, please email flan@futurelearn.com (you can forward this email to others too).  

The event will be recorded, and recordings posted on the FutureLearn Partner Site together with any slides/papers etc for those who cannot make it. We look forward to your participation at FLAN this February.