MOOCs – Page 4 – Digital Learning Dispatches

We recently hosted Professor Martin Weller from the UK Open University. Martin holds a UNESCO Chair in Open Education and is Director of the Open Educational Resource Research Hub. He is author of a seminal open access book on the Digital Scholar and is well known for his EdTechie blog, which is one of the most widely read in the field. Martin is also a valued member of the NIDL International Advisory Board.

After spending time talking about areas of mutual interest with members of our Digital Learning Research Network, Martin gave a Visiting Scholar Presentation, which was open to DCU and Linked College staff, and anyone else in the Education sector who wished to attend. Martin drew on the content of his recent book on the Battle for Open and discussed how Open approaches in education have started to move into the mainstream. However, he demonstrated how the term has strong commercial interests and went on to explore some of the issues Openness now faces.

The NIDL is currently playing a lead role in three European funded projects which focus on leadership and maturing our institutional understanding of the potential benefits of Open Education. The HOME Project aims to strengthen an open network for cooperation on open education in general and MOOCs in particular. HOME stands for ‘Higher Education Online: MOOCs the European’ way. The Project is anchored in the philosophy of Open Education and amongst other things seeks to explore the potential of MOOCs when based on values like openness, equity, quality and diversity. The Porto Declaration on European MOOCs reflects this philosophy and was an outcome of a high-level meeting of institutional partners after an Open Education conference late last year.

The SCORE2020 Project focuses on building regional and institutional capacity, and maturing the level of knowledge in the area of Open Education, including the use of MOOCs. The Project supports the European funded OpenupEd MOOCs platform as a means of opening up higher education following principles of cultural and linguistic diversity. The NIDL is leading two of the major work packages and will host a National MOOC Symposium in April or May with support from SCORE2020. Also two journal articles have recently been submitted to a special European issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning on MOOC initiatives as part of this project.

SCORE2020 The third European funded project is known as EMPOWER and in December last year around 40 institutional leaders met in Brussels to start this initiative. At the core of EMPOWER is the modernisation agenda for European universities as the project supports policy reform with regard adopting new flexible modes of teaching and learning for both campus-based and off-campus learners. A number of expert communities of practice will be supported by EMPOWER and the NIDL is playing a lead role in the specialist area of policy development. The Project has funding for three years and benefits from the administrative support of the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU).