News & Events

Even online students need to feel part of a group

By | Completion rate, Sin categoría | No Comments

ECO has set high standards when it comes to pass rates for students on their MOOCs. One of the challenges we face in online learning is the high drop-out rate. In this phase of our own internet evolution, users are becoming more and more conscious of how they can scan the internet, scout, sign up, but also opt-out. To truly engage online is quite a task that keeps the minds occupied of many commercially orientated internet players, like retailers. Some succeed, some are less productive, however it is not always necessary to have 100% engaged users. With only 10% of potential customers retaining their attention on just 1 product, will probably satisfy the needs of the busines model.

In online education it is hardly imaginable that superficially engaged users or temporarily engaged users will result in sustainable learning. So how do you create a motivation that lasts for at least several weeks the students spends online? Will it be money he or she spends? No, because the MOOCs that we offer within the project´s 3 year time frame will be freely accessible by anyone within the European Union. Will it be quality? Although we believe that we will offer the highest possible quality, we understand that that in itself does not create a prerequisite for engagement.

In our consortium´s Document of Work (DOW) the words ´social channels´ and ´social inclusion´ appear a number of times, the latter referring to including to including social groups into the student group who otherwise would not have access to these teachings in a physical classroom. Students who are in a hospital for instance or students that live in remote areas or cannot leave their home.

In their article ´Even in a MOOC, Students Want to Belong´* by Lisa Thomas and James Herbert published on September 4 on the Australian website and thought leadership platform Social Science Space, the authors comment on social inclusion as an motivational component in online learning. The researched what matters to students in an online context to keep them focused and engaged in their learning process and ” found that “sense of belonging” was one aspect deemed to be important.” The authors go on to investigate what elements the course in itself should contain ranging from debate options, to embedding collaborative asigments part of the course and assessment. Additionally the teacher has a possibility to create a certain outreach directly to students by means of “electronic office hours and `[…], creating announcements”.

The authors recap their research by stating that online courses must not necesarrily force the social cohesion strategy upon students who prefer just to stick to the course content. This part of the potential student population may in fact not be in need of the sense of belonging to stick to the course and gear up the course completion rate. Or possibly they are in part the ones who will drop out eventually.

Whatever the reason, at ECO we need to provide answers and counter measures for all potential scenarios and not forget the teacher for that matter either.

*Source: http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2014/09/even-in-a-mooc-students-want-to-belong

ECO reporting from India

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Between 15 to July 19, 2014 took place in Hyderabad (India) the International Congress IAMCR2014, the worldwide professional organization for excellence in the field of communication research.

ECO Consortium members Dra. Sara Osuna (UNED), professor Alfonso Gutierrez (University of Valladolid) and the consultant responsible for marketing and international comercialization Vicente Montiel (Tabarca Consulting) attended the Congress on behalf of our European consortium for the worldwiede presentation of ECO project.

SaraOsuna_ECO_IAMCR2014 SaraOsuna2_ECO_IAMCR2014 ECO_representation_IAMCR2014
Dra. Sara Osuna, professor Alfonso Gutiérrez and consultant Vicente Montiel at the entrance of the Congress

ECO consortium coordinator, Dra. Sara Osuna and the consultant responsible for marketing Vicente Montiel, made ​​the presentation of ECO on Thursday afternoon with a large representation of entities and education professionals coming from all over the world.Sara Osuna_VicenteMontiel_ECOLearning
ECO coordinator, Dra. Sara Osuna (UNED) and the consultant and marketing responsible, Vicente Montiel (Tabarca Consulting), after the presentation in IAMCR2014

The presentation was received with great interest by the participants in the Congress. We presented the objectives, commitments and methodology that the members of ECO consortium are developing to make this project the reference in European MOOCs .

At the end of the presentation, and after a roundtable discussion with those attending it, synergies of collaboration with different institutions and universities very interested in our project were established.

From the Coordination of the project, we highly value the participation in the event and after the great received assessment we will continue our work with more enthusiasm if possible to reach the objectives.

Why do ECO sMOOC rely on learner interactions?

By | Technology in education | No Comments

The ECO project has described an innovative pedagogical framework that should benefit in particular the learners enrolling in sMOOCs. What are sMOOCs? sMOOCs are social in that the learner learns from and with others by interacting with other participants, by not only exchanging and sharing knowledge, information, but also creating new knowledge through interaction and discussion. sMOOCs are seamless because they transgress borders found in traditional education: they integrate with learners’ real life experiences, and are accessible from a multiple platforms.

ECO sMOOCs are seen as part of the Open Education movement. Therefore, they are intended to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning and provide participants with a reasonable chance of success in education. This implies ‘openness’ in the sense not only of no financial cost, but also open accessibility, open licensing policy, freedom of place, pace and time of study, open entry, and open pedagogy.

ECO sMOOCs rely on a flexible pedagogical framework with a focus on networked and ubiquitous learning as the only means to deal with the number of students enrolling and to deal with the personalised learning objectives of these learners and to allow MOOC designers to design their courses flexibly in a variety of ways to meet pedagogical requirements. The learner is put central and enters the sMOOC to meet his personal learning objectives. Leaners learn by interacting with others, by being active in situated, authentic tasks. The teacher is there to facilitate the process, not to act as knowledge provider in a one-way knowledge transfer mode.

Radio Interview “Sin Distancias” #ecoproject

By | Interview, Technology in education | No Comments

ECO Project, led by UNED, the National Distance Education University in Spain, is a project financed by the CIP, Competitiveness and Innovation Programme by the European Commission, in which 24 partners, institutions, universities and companies from different countries participate.

Sara Osuna, Senior Lecturer at UNED Faculty of Education is European ECO Project Coordinator.
ECO, acronym for E-learning, Communication and Open Data: Massive Mobile, Ubiquitous and Open Learning is a proposal from UNED coordinated by UNED and run with other European institutions for the European Commission CIP call. ECO believes in a massive educational model, which was granted and approved by the European Commission, after successfully going through all its tests.

INTERVIEWER: Sara, which institutions participate in this European project ECO?
Sara Osuna: We are very lucky to have key European institutions, among them Sorbonne Nouvelle University, in France, the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, Universidad Aberta in Portugal, Manchester University and Politecnico di Milano, in Italy. There are also universities in Spain, which participate in the project, such as Universidad de Oviedo, Universidad de Cantabria, Universidad de Valladolid, Universidad de Zaragoza, Universidad Loyola, in Andalusia, and UNED. Companies working on social media are going to participate too, along with these 11 universities. These companies are: Tabarca Consulting, Riverthia, ReimerIT, Eichler, Humance, Fedrave, EADTU, Editrain and Telefónica. Finally, guaranteeing all the work carried out by these universities and small, medium-sized and big companies, there are two non-European institutions, Universidad Manuela Beltrán, in Colombia and Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, in Argentina, which in some way are disseminating all this European Project in America.

INTERVIEWER: And, as Sara previously mentioned, UNED is coordinating this project. There are a lot of UNED teachers involved and they are under Sara Osuna’s coordination. Sara, what is the main aim of this project? ECO is an acronym that comprises essential distance and digital education concepts, Sara…

Sara Osuna: Indeed. The main aim of this project is the implementation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in different languages. Partners will be in charge of a new kind of massive, online, open and free educational model. Every partner will design their courses in their own languages and English is the vehicular language in the project. That’s why our training is in Spanish, English, German, Italian, Portuguese and French. It is actually an important proposal to involve every current social communication process, every social media strategy, and every mobile-learning technology with the actual idea of mobile and ubiquitous learning. These are extremely important concepts nowadays and they will be for the future in Europe. That’s how the European Commission has interpreted it anyway, when they approved the project. In short, ECO project puts forward new and innovative ways of building knowledge for educators and trainers of trainers, that is, everyone in charge of educating today and tomorrow’s European citizens will be able to be trained with us in the project.

INTERVIEWER: Some final goals have just been pointed out, but I would like to know more on the duration of the project. This is a medium-term project of three years, which is the duration scheduled for, at least, this first stage. That is a lot of work ahead, Sara…

SARA OSUNA: Yes, three years of intense work. At first, we must analyse and assess the situation of MOOCs in Europe and internationally. Then we will have to design a technological architecture coherent with the connectivist learning approach we have proposed for the different MOOCs in ECO. Our commitment is training more than 50,000 European teachers.

INTERVIEWER: European teachers from all universities and institutions participating in the project, right?

SARA OSUNA: Exactly, but we don’t stop at this because there is a further commitment which is that the 4,000 teachers who get the best scores in the courses designed inside the project, will be provided with a technological platform so that they can design their own MOOCs and have their own students. This implies an iterative process that may cater for educational quality for a large population.

PRESENTADORA: We are talking about digital learning, communication and open resources, about mobile, ubiquitous, massive, open… and free courses?

SARA OSUNA: Yes, free. MOOCs are free by definition. In short, we want to raise European citizens and institutions’ awareness of the advantages of these open resources. Our final goals depend on understanding today’s social changes from the analogue to the digital model, from the point of view of the educommunicative model we have been working on for a long time. We want to integrate ICTs into the whole educational process but we also want to integrate social media strategies that identify with people’s needs today. We are going to collaborate in the building of knowledge of European citizens who need to learn throughout their lives. This is quite an ambitious goal and it is definitely our final goal; a goal the European Union approved.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much, Sara Osuna, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education. She is the Project Coordinator of European project ECO and co-director of Social Networks and Digital Learning Master’s Degree by UNED, with Senior Lecturer Roberto Aparici.

Below you may listen to the interview in Spanish.

[audio src="http://mvod.lvlt.rtve.es/resources/TE_SUNE1/mp3/0/3/1398759263130.mp3" /]

Checklist: how do you choose suitable MOOC platform?

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The state of the art review of MOOCs and their platforms conducted by the partners of the ECO project at the Lisbon meeting in June/July, revealed the need for analysing this complex emerging field of online learning by means of a systematic procedure and suitable tools. With this purpose in mind the ECO project developed a checklist designed to capture the features, benefits and any possible deficiencies of MOOCs as well as to compare platforms and assess them on their educational scope and impact.

This checklist provides a set of standard questions to evaluate MOOC platforms and services along dimensions that are relevant from mainly pedagogical aspects and moreover including technological aspects. The checklist is arranged in ten categories:

  1. Introduction to evaluation
  2. General information
  3. Economic structural factors
  4. Technology
  5. Accessibility
  6. Communication and interaction
  7. Goals, content and resources
  8. Assignments
  9. Assessments
  10. Pedagogical principles

This checklist has been used to evaluate both the MOOC platforms that are being used in the ECO project: OpenMOOC, WeMOOC, ARLearn, iMOOC, Open Edx Politecnico, as well as several other MOOC platforms: Coursera, Udacity, MiríadaX, OpenCourseWare-MIT, Futurelearn, Iversity that are beingcommonly used.

The results of the checklist have been verified by actually logging into the ECO MOOC platforms and creating a MOOC to ascertain whether the available features support the ECO pedagogical model of networked learning.

It turned out almost none of the MOOC platforms can accommodate networked learning, although the selected ECO MOOC platforms fit the pedagogical model better than the other MOOC platforms. Most platforms very much adhere to the knowledge transfer model and lack the features to actively engage the learners in social interaction, learning by doing, in situated activities in authentic contexts.

Detailed information about the checklist and results of the evaluation can be found in ‘D 2.1 Analysis of existing MOOC platforms and services’ that is available from the ECO project website, section Deliverables.

What is the MOOC Scoreboard?

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The European MOOCs Scoreboard is a regular monitoring register of MOOCs in Europe. Its aim is “to highlight the huge potential that European institutions have in the world of MOOCs and to help visualize this potential by compiling the existing European-provided MOOCs available on different open websites”.

Several projects as ECO and EMMA are promoting and organising European MOOCs. Everybody could look for other MOOCs in the MOOCs aggregator. If you are interested on future issues, register in ECO newsletter. For any collaboration, contact us.

Partners meet to dicuss development and launch of 16 multidiciplinary MOOCs this fall

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Lisbon, 2nd of July 2014 – After 2 intense days where the ECO MOOC pedagogical model and technological features plus courses outline were presented the overall conclusion is that the ECO platform will offer a set of unique approaches to MOOCs. Both the several innovative developments on the pedagogical methodology as well as the different Massive Open learning modules ´MOOCs´ features were presented and discussed. Moreover all partners joined in to comment on the work ahead as well as that very important launch date in November for the first pilots to be presented to the teachers.

The meetings took place on the 30th of JUNE and 1st of July, hosted by the Portuguese open university (Universidade Aberta – UAb) at the Museu das Comunicações (communications museum) in Lisbon. All work package leaders presented their work so far and what they are planning to work on for the coming months.

Sandra Caeiro, Prof. Auxiliar at Universidade Aberta comments: “It was very stimulating to meet all partners face-to-face. In between these consortium meetings we have a communication platform at our disposal where we organise forums and meetings. Nevertheless it is very good to touch base with collaboration partners and align once again our efforts.”

Caeiro comments that during the meetings it became ever so much clearer how diverse and interesting the contents of the different MOOCs wills be. “We were pleasantly surprised. We knew of course from the beginning of the project in February what the content of the MOOCs would be. But to hear in the partners presenting what they plan to launch is quite impressive.”

Variety of course subjects
The content of the MOOCs varies from e-learning methodology, computing and digital skills to creative skills and the classical foundation of our education system such as mathematics. These MOOCs are all content orientated , whereas a Common Course will be developed in which teachers will be offered a training in the basics of MOOC design.

Launch pilots in November
A total of 16 MOOCs will be developed by 12 Universities, not only from Europe but also from North and South America such as Quilmes University an Manuel Beltrán University. The MOOCS serve as examples and best practices for the targeted 4.000 selected teachers. They will be invited to actively participate on the ECO platform and create their own MOOC.

The coming months all consortium partners will input their efforts in finishing the ECO MOOCs and kicking off the promotion campaign to reach out to teachers via the press and relevant associations before meeting again in January 2015 in Manchester.

Press contact details
Marije Nieuwenhuis
communication@eco-learning.eu
Communication officer ECO learning
www.eco-learning.eu

About the ECO consortium
22 partners from 9 different countries work together to create a pan European platform for ubiquitous learning. The overall objective is to improve the quality and cost-efficiency of teaching an learning in Europe. Moreover the term ubiquitous learning in this project has an ideological intent as ECO aims to create an eco system where courses are freely accessible for teachers and students from different levels, backgrounds, age and ability alike. The creators of the platform are focused on creating a digital tool for a target group of 50000 teachers that will expand beyond the horizon of the classroom. The first practical goal is to create an online e-learning course for 4.000 registered teachers. Promotion of the platform and the recruiting of these teachers will commence in the 2 months prior to the launch of the first MOOCs created by the partner. The pilot MOOCs will serve as example for teachers as well as new students.

Consortium partners are:

  1. Editrain S.L.
  2. Fundação para o Estudo e Desenvolvimento da Região de Aveiro (FEDRAVE)
  3. Fundación Universidad Loyola Andalucia
  4. Humance AG
  5. Vicente Montiel Molina
  6. Open Universiteit Nederland
  7. Politecnico di Milano
  8. Prisma Vist Digital SL
  9. Reimer IT Solutions B.V.
  10. Sunne Hanna Eichler
  11. Telefonica Elearning Services TLS
  12. University of Manchester
  13. Universidad de Cantabria
  14. Universidad de Oviedo
  15. Universidad de Valladolid
  16. Universidad de Zaragoza
  17. Universidad Manuela Beltrán Fundación
  18. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED
  19. Universidad Nacional De Quilmes
  20. Universidade Aberta
  21. Universidad Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle
  22.  Vereniging van European Distance Teaching Universities

Press release: Empowering teachers and students beyond the classroom

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for immediate release

Empowering teachers and students beyond the classroom
Pan-European open learning platform introduces MOOC digital learning modules accessible to everyone, anytime everywhere. Even on your mobile.

Madrid, 19th of JUNE 2014 – A truly pan-European project where 9 different countries, 6 leading educational entities and 6 ICT companies collaborate on creating the largest eco-system of open teaching modules in Europe so far. With one goal: to convince the teacher to invest a little bit of time to become an E-teacher, step out of their comfort zone and create their own teaching modules. The modules are structured in such a way that it will allow for teachers (and pupils) to teach, learn, anytime, anywhere.

The project acronym ECO stands for E-learning, communication and Open-data and conveniently illustrates what the project partners set out to do. The goal within the project running time of 3 years is to create a self sustaining beehive of individual MOOCs that will grow as an independent and healthy eco-system. MOOC stands for Massive Mobile Ubiquitous and Open Learning.

Sara Osuna, is Assistant Deputy Head at UNED, university of distance learning in Madrid and head of the South American operation, is coordinator of project ECO: “We are 5 months into the project and the educational concepts as well as the technical groundwork are all set in place. They have to be because in November 2014 the pilot ECO-MOOC modules will be launched.”

These pilot MOOCs will serve as an example for teachers to look at when they will start and create their own MOOC and learn how to do so in 8 weeks. “We want to reach out to 50.000 teachers from all educational levels in 7 target countries” Sara explains. “From this interest group we will then recruit 4.000 teachers who will be offered to complete the accredited course to become a MOOC teacher”.
For those who are Interested: they can already sign up for the mailing list as of today to be informed about the course to become E-savvy teachers.

Press contact details
Marije Nieuwenhuis
communication@eco-learning.eu
Communication officer ECO learning
www.eco-learning.eu

About the ECO consortium
22 partners from 9 different countries work together to create a pan European platform for ubiquitous learning. The overall objective is to improve the quality and cost-efficiency of teaching an learning in Europe. Moreover the term ubiquitous learning in this project has an ideological intent as ECO aims to create an eco system where courses are freely accessible for teachers and students from different levels, backgrounds, age and ability alike. The creators of the platform are focused on creating a digital tool for a target group of 50000 teachers that will expand beyond the horizon of the classroom. The first practical goal is to create an online e-learning course for 4.000 registered teachers. Promotion of the platform and the recruiting of these teachers will commence in the 2 months prior to the launch of the first MOOCs created by the partner. The pilot MOOCs will serve as example for teachers as well as new students.

Consortium partners are:

  1. Editrain S.L.
  2. Fundação para o Estudo e Desenvolvimento da Região de Aveiro (FEDRAVE)
  3. Fundación Universidad Loyola Andalucia
  4. Humance AG
  5. Vicente Montiel Molina
  6. Open Universiteit Nederland
  7. Politecnico di Milano
  8. Prisma Vist Digital SL
  9. Reimer IT Solutions B.V.
  10. Sunne Hanna Eichler
  11. Telefonica Elearning Services TLS
  12. University of Manchester
  13. Universidad de Cantabria
  14. Universidad de Oviedo
  15. Universidad de Valladolid
  16. Universidad de Zaragoza
  17. Universidad Manuela Beltrán Fundación
  18. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED
  19. Universidad Nacional De Quilmes
  20. Universidade Aberta
  21. Universidad Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle
  22.  Vereniging van European Distance Teaching Universities

Do you believe Google glass is fit for the classroom?

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Here at ECO we are unsurprisingly quite eager to learn about new tech developments that have an application in education. The application of Google glass keeps us however in a loop with many question marks. However we think we should not be the nay-sayers so listed a few of the advantages of this head-mounted device for students:

1. It optimises documentation time and there it helps you save time – for the teacher a lot of time is consumed by administration of student data. Report cards, observation memos, team reports writing, student presence, exam statistics, etc. The glass device the possibility to input different types of data in a lot less time than it takes a person to write it all down or even type. The voice recognition tool here is one the key features.
The glass function aids to cross reference documentation as well making it easier and fasster to give the teacher an overview of a student`s progress and cricle back with the parents.

2. It allows the teacher to create rich materials – Video, audio, images text can all be picked up with the glass and linked to a presentation.

3. It allows for post-class reference – The glass can be used to audio-record your class. You can then make this class available to your students by uploading the audio file to the school website.

4. It allows for online teaching – When you connect the device to internet you can connect to on online auditorium.

This is a quick overview of some of the advantages we see. Possibly there are more.
What do you think?

If you want to learn more about the use of a glass device in education we recommend this reading: The Teacher´s Guide to Google glass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video-report kick-off meeting project ECO

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The first consortium meeting of the ECO project took place on February 27th and 28th 2014 at the UNED´s head offices in Spain Madrid.

The below video (ES) is an audiovisual report of the meetings that took place and also includes several interviews with key partners in the project. An excerpt of the video in English will provided at a later stage.

The next planned consortium meeting will take place at the end of JUNE 2014 in Lisbon.