Online Learning – Page 5 – Digital Learning Dispatches

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).

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Last year, Colum Foley from the NIDL was awarded a scholarship by the Shanghai Open University to visit as part of an international delegation. He took up this scholarship just before Christmas in joining ten other people from a variety of online/distance learning institutions around the world on a study tour. The aim was to spend two weeks at the Shanghai Open University discussing various aspects of online/distance learning. Other scholarship recipients making up the delegation included:

• Humaira Jamshed from the Virtual Institute of Pakistan

• Muhammad Ajmal Chaudhry from Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan

• Lina Gurung from Kathmandu University, Nepal

• Saumya Pandey from Indira Gandhi National Open University, India

• Aniban Ghosh from Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, India

• Imre Mátyás from University of Miskolc, Hungary

• Zlatko Kovacic from the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, New Zealand

• Yasir Riady from Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia

• Irsanti Widuri Asih from Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia

The delegation had the opportunity to hear how the Shanghai Open University supported a very large number of online/distance students and then shared their own country experiences. As Colum wrote in his report on the experience, “The participants were a lively, witty, challenging and entertaining group of individuals, all with an interesting story to tell with a wide and varied experience of distance learning. At the end I think we have far more in common than what separates us”. We would like to particularly thank the Shanghai Open University for supporting this invaluable experience and look forward to further visits in future years.