Practical webinars on digital education in universities and technologies used in distance education, within EODLW 2021
Almost two years after the beginning of the pandemic, new theories, practices and pedagogies related to digital education still remain current and more important topics than ever.
On November 3, 2021, the first dedicated event took place European Online and Distance Learning Week 2021 (EODLW). In the opening session of EODLW the webinar took place Internships in digital education for universities in the form of a panel discussion, moderated by Lecturer Dr. Eng. Vlad Mihăescu – President of EDEN NAP SC.
Speakers at the event, Dr. Diana Andone - EDEN Senior Fellow & Director of the eLearning Center of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Romania, Edmundo Tovar - President of the Education Society, IEEE, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain and Alfredo Soeiro - University of Porto, Portugal, they talked about good practices for integrating digital education in higher education institutions and presented tools, applications, methodologies in order to offer the best ideas to the participants present from all over the world, most of them being from Romania.
Dr. Diana Andone presented some of the the latest trends in digital education and future prospects for online and distance education, including practical examples of the University's digital transformation Timișoara Polytechnic, the best practices used and the expertise in online and distance education experienced and used intensively in the last two years in the University.
In his presentation, the director of CeL pointed out how pandemic represented for many universities around the world, a challenge in shaping current and future education and how we can fully realize the potential of new online and distance learning models.
Also in the spirit of digital education and free access to knowledge, Dr. Diana Andone presented projects in which the Polytechnic University of Timișoara is involved through CeL, and with the help of which it was possible to achieve a solid system of digital transformation and creating a online virtual mobility in the University. She also talked about accessibility digital education by the general public, the development of skills and abilities continuous and open digital learning, emphasizing and curriculum modernization by integrating digital and technical skills based on MOOCs.
Some of the recent projects in which the CeL team is strongly involved are also targeted connecting Romania to the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure and the adoption of several online and mixed approaches in education and accelerating digital training of polytechnic higher education institutions in understanding the basic use of the latest open pedagogical tools.
Thus, the participants were able to discover information about:
- Erasmus + Mode-IT international project - Curricular modernization by implementing model MOOCs, which encourages the integration of open online pedagogies into formal educational courses and programs to make them more flexible and attractive to students. Participants were able to learn about the open online training program that aims to enable higher education teachers to develop and deliver MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), as well as to integrate MOOCs into formal curricula.
- The international OpenVM project - Opening Education for Developing, Assessing and Recognizing Virtual Mobility Skills in Higher Education, care promotes and aims to expand VM higher education in Europe by achieving, assessing and recognizing the virtual mobility skills of educators and students in the U.S., in line with the Bologna and Open Education principles.
- ABC to VLE international project: beyond curriculum design, which promotes an open source learning design and a set of teacher development tools, a set that includes location methods, cascade methods and post-design support - downloadable that can be used globally by any institution in the sector, with in order to help teachers implement their ABC designs for educational design within the virtual learning environment (VLE) or management system (LMS).
- AGADIGIA international project, which accelerates the digital training of polytechnic higher education institutions towards the sustainable adoption of several online and mixed approaches. In other words, ACADIGIA encourages the introduction of a solid mentoring system that will enable staff in higher education institutions to become high-tech educators.
- The international EBSI project, a new project aimed at connecting Romania to the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, to support capacity building and training activities for universities, institutions and companies, aiming at a wider adoption of EBSI by public and private services and also to reinvent EU flagships and the vision of digital education.
The main idea of the presentation was the need to prepare students for continuous and independent learning and to teach them to identify, access, learn, analyze and apply good practices acquired in different industries, while encouraging them to constantly improve digital skills for a successful career in the future.
The webinar ended with a series of questions and curiosities initiated by the participants to the presenters, the discussions being moderated by our colleague, Vlad Mihăescu. Participation was FREE and the presentations took place in ENGLISH, issuing certificates of participation to those present.
In recent years, during the pandemic, when education went online and remotely, educators were not the only ones who had to meet the challenge of accelerating the transition to digital.
The second dedicated webinar took place on November 4th European Online and Distance Learning Week 2021 (EODLW) with theme Delivering on duty! How technology has supported online and distance education during and after the pandemic, held in the form of short presentations, followed by free discussions with #edtech experts present.
The speakers at this event were:
- Andrei Ternauciuc - CVUPT manager and our colleague at CeL, Timișoara Polytechnic University
- Jesus Apothecary - National Distance Education University (UNED) Spain
- Lisa Marie Blaschke -Senior EDEN Fellow and Chairman of the Board of Directors of EDEN Fellows Council
- Annabell Busch - international expert with 20 years of experience in implementing IT infrastructures and e-learning solutions
- Nicolas Albouze - leader Blackboard Corp., a company that offers top global solutions in EdTech (educational technology) for universities around the world
Dr. Eng. Andrei Ternauciuc - speaker of the event, spoke about what it meant for the technical team of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara to transfer online the entire tbasic, robust and scalable technology that was currently in place at the University, the challenges encountered in accelerating the transition to digital and how they responded to the demands of teachers during the pandemic.
The presentation began 10 years ago, with Andrei de 's career developer of UPT Virtual Campus.
However, the expansion of urgent requirements caused by the pandemic has brought challenges to both in the existing infrastructure, which had to be adapted to the online, the necessary trainings, both for students and for the teaching staff and the continuous support during the development of the completely online teaching activities.
Andrew spoke to participants about how he sees the future of online education after this period, including clear and practical examples of the University's digital transformation, which has been developed over the past two years by both the technical team and students co-creating OERs and how this development will continue after the pandemic.
The webinars are part of the series of EDEN events within the sixth edition of European Online and Distance Learning Week (EODLW) / European Week of Online and Distance Education 3-10 November 2021.
The event is organized in partnership with Australian Open Distance Learning Association (ODLAA), together with Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand (FLANZ), which launches Asia-Pacific Distance Education Week (APODE) and with United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), which will organize National Distance Learning Week (NDLW). A special contribution to the webinar is also planned andCoE.
Română 
English