Open Education – Page 6 – Digital Learning Dispatches

By Dr Lorraine Delaney

Many people step out of the labour market at some point in their lives. Subsequently the desire or necessity to return to work can arise.

Hired Returning to work can be challenging. Skills or qualifications may be out of date, or perhaps you have no third level qualification.

It is important to prepare for a future return to employment by ensuring as far as possible that your skills and CV are relevant to the labour market.

For many homemakers the cost of upskilling, while still at home, is prohibitive. Not only are there course fees to consider; there may be the additional costs of childcare, transport etc. This is why the current Springboard+ courses at DCU Connected are such good news for homemakers.

You can read the full version of this brief think piece and find out more about fully funded online courses for Irish homemakers and caregivers on Dr Lorraine Delaney’s Linkedin website.

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).