/ Best practices in ICT and e-Learning

Best practices in ICT and e-Learning

Jozef Stefan Institute

 
VideoLectures.Net
is an award-winning free and open access educational video lectures repository. The lectures are given by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science. The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge sharing by providing high quality didactic contents not only to the scientific community but also to the general public. All lectures, accompanying documents, information and links are systematically selected and classified through the editorial process taking into account also users’ comments.
More info @ VideoLectures.Net website
 
Translectures
An European project (EC FP7 ICT project #287755) to develop innovative, cost-effective solutions for the automatic transcription and translation of online educational videos.Automatic transcription tools will provide verbatim subtitles of the talks recorded on video, thereby allowing the hard-of-hearing to access this content. Language learners and other non-native speakers will also benefit from these monolingual subtitles. Meanwhile, machine translation tools will make these subtitles available in languages other than that in which the video was recorded. Specifically, we will be developing tools for use on VideoLectures.NET, a collection of videos recorded at various academic events set up by JSI’s Centre for Knowledge Transfer, and for poliMedia, a lecture capture system designed and implemented at the UPVLC. Our tools will also be fully compatible with Matterhorn, a free, open-source platform for the management of educational audio and video content
More info @ TransLectures website
More info @ demo
 
Mediamixer
An EU-funded project to to set up and sustain a community of video producers, hosters, and re- distributors who will be supported in the adoption of semantic multimedia technology in their systems and workflows to build a market for media fragment re-purposing, re-selling re-using and re-mixing. Media repositories happen to expose their individual media resources as atomic (complete) items. while consumers are often interested only in salient parts which address their content need. Media mixing is the process by which self-contained parts of media (fragments) are identified and exposed via media repository interfaces, so that consumers can access and re-use only the parts they are interested in.
More info @ MediaMixer website
More info @ demo
 
Xlike
An EU-funded project to develop technology to monitor and aggregate knowledge that is currently spread across mainstream and social media, and to enable cross-lingual services for publishers, media monitoring and business intelligence. The aim is to combine scientific insights from several scientific areas to contribute in the area of cross-lingual text understanding. By combining modern computational linguistics, machine learning, text mining and semantic technologies we plan to deal with the following two key open research problems 1)  to extract and integrate formal knowledge from multilingual texts with cross-lingual knowledge bases, and 2) to adapt linguistic techniques and crowdsourcing to deal with irregularities in informal language used primarily in social media. The developed technology will be language-agnostic, while within the project we will specifically address English, German, Spanish, Chinese and Hindi as major world languages and Catalan and Slovenian as minority languages.
More info @ Xlike website
 

University Nova Gorica

IJEPEG-UMKI / ePlatform — Internal and public e-platform and e-learning materials for study programmes in the fields of arts and creative industries
The project produced model (integrated) internal and public e-platforms and e-learning materials for courses in the arts and creative industries through the introduction of an integrated combined (strongly web supported) to conduct the Digital Arts and Practices study program. Its key advantage over similar programs is the development of innovative and active use of e-content and e-services for the production, distribution and discussion of artistic and creative processes, products and services. The project has contributed significantly to the implementation of e-content and e-services in art pedagogy and the wider artistic and academic circles especially in terms of teaching and research use of ICT. Graduates of the programme using the platform(s) are active stakeholders of the information society in the cultural and artistic sphere sovereignty overflow in the ( creative ) industry, use their skills and in-depth understanding of modern digital technologies is realized in various roles within interdisciplinary creative teams. The project was supported by European Regional Development Fund.
More info @ VSU ePlatform
More info @ e-learning materials
More info @ VSU vimeo
 
Scientific evenings at University of Nova Gorica
University of Nova Gorica organizes a series of lectures of well-known established scientists (including Nobel prize winners) as well as young, promissing researchers and other outstanding professionals. The aim of the lectures is to present high quality achievements from different disciplines to the wider audience. From 2005 till now, there were 50 lectures recorded with abstracts in English. The talks can be viewed also on YouTube.
 
Advancing Digitally Renewed Interactions in Art Teaching (ADRIART)
The project (2011-2014) developed an international postgraduate study programme in contemporary arts and applied practices called “Master of Media Arts and Practices”. It is aiming at the areas of audio-visual arts (film, animation, photography), inter-media arts  (spatial, new-media, trans-media) as well as (historical, theoretical, critical) arts discourses. The complete two-year implementation cycle with short location-specific module runs, strongly supported by digital media stimulates not only regional student mobility but also promotes participation of best mentors and students from around the world. Among four countries and in five languages the programme discusses site-specific (demographical, social, cultural, ecological, migratory etc.) topics in interdisciplinary ways, while stimulating multi-cultural academic exchange and graduates’ development towards self-sustainability by focusing on real-life innovation and project-management practices across the arts. The project is based on a partnership of four different countries, Croatia, Austria, Italy and Slovenia, and supported by the European Union through the Lifelong Learning Programme, Erasmus Multilateral projects.
See www.adriart.net for student and mentor blogs, photo galleries etc.
 
Tandem (video)lecture on Thinking and Designing Interactive Stage Enviromnents
A novel example of a tandem lecture given on December 20, 2014 by a professor and a student (with alternating turns) in a specific professionally-relevant environment, including over 20 video-based examples of interactive-media used in the context of dance. Presented within “Zametki”, a programme produced by EN-KNAP Productions, representing a multidisciplinary platform aiming the art-productton venue Španski Borci (Ljubljana, Slovenia) to join forces with art-oriented faculties and academies, and create an environment which would facilitate young artists and creators who have just finished their education or are about to, to enter the real-life production environment. The tandem lecture was the central event of Zametki 2013, delivered by Dr. Peter Purg and Blaž Bertoncelj (School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica) as the first public lecture in a series aimed at both professional and lay public to be delivered within the platform. The lecture was followed by a moderated tour of all four multimedia installations produced by students from the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica, and from A.V.A. – Academy of Visual Arts, Ljubljana.
More info @ https://vimeo.com/82550167
 
Progressive format of multimedia-enhanced performance-lecture and related course design
The lecture was recorded with 4 cameras (two on performers body, one being handed-over among audience, one central-back), and a specific video-digest shall be produced later on. It was done by pETER Purg (University of Nova Gorica, School of Arts) and delivered under the title “Scanning Rainbows” at Graz University of Technology (Faculty of Architecture, Institute for Contemporary Art), Austria, on March 10, 2014 as a part of the course on “Artistic Design 1” entitled “BUILDING RAINBOWS – or notations for experiments on natural phenomena”. It was executed within ADRIART.CE CEEPUS network and based on the www.adriart.net methodology developments.

See lecture materials based on social-web and tasks articluated in collaborative “pad” enviromnet at: www.pinterest.com/scanrain/

International mobilities facebook profile
Good practice example of using mainstream social media for dissemination and exploitation purposes in international academic projects and networks; to enhance teaching and learning experience, build and/or support trans-institutional academic communities and (publically) archive documentary materials. These materials are richly assembled by the collaboration of over 100 students and mentors from all participating institutions of www.adriat.net, and further external stakeholders, and are being further exploited in several main-stream social media contexts such as vimeo, pinterest, twitter, google-groups etc.
The profile is linked also to a dedicated video album within:https://vimeo.com/album/2542331, and the fb profile can be liked at https://www.facebook.com/adriart.net.
 
School-wide vimeo channel (Famul/UNG)
With over 220 high-quality video entries, most of which are produced by students, this is a positive example of a (digital production) school’s online presence. Some of these videos document important school events or are used as online video (lecturing) materials, practical example cases in courses etc. The video content is ordered in albums, corresponding to the school’s main activities, and has a central editorial board. The channel is connected to the previous stage of the school’s development, the “Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts”.
 

University of Maribor

Enhancing the capacity of e-learning for educational institutions
The project aims to strengthen the capacity of education institutions in Montenegro in order to implement e-learning. The project focuses on research and development in the field of e-learning and lifelong learning. On the basis of research, there will be defined new forms of literacy and basic skills that are needed by teachers to be able to develop e-learning material.
 
Online Presence for Learning
The main objective of this project was to provide support for advanced, context-aware Learning Process Management within Personal Learning Environments as the increasingly important new paradigm in online education. Being rooted in modern pedagogical theories, system follow learner-centric approach and grant learners with the ownership and full control over their learning processes. They also foster learners’ active involvement in the learning process. In the framework of the project a Moodle learning environment has been adapted to use Facebook, to give online presence information of tutor and students and to give recommendations for teaching references.
More info @ http://op4l.fon.bg.ac.rs/
 
DEAFVOC 2 − Transfer of Curricula for Vocational Language Education of the Deaf in Europe
The main objectives of the project DEAFVOC 2 have been: 1) adaptation of the model curricula “Sign Language as a Mother Tongue” and “Written Language as a Second Language for the Deaf”, 2) facilitation of innovative new teaching materials and methods by drawing materials together, and by gathering didactically relevant information on teaching of sign language and written language for the Deaf in the project countries. For this purposes in Slovenia a new e-learning material »How to get a job« was developed.
More info @ http://edu.uni-mb.si/
 
MARE – Joint European Master Study Program “Remote Engineering”
The general objective of the curriculum was to mediate fundamentals, applications and experiences in the field of remote engineering by an interdisciplinary approach in combination with »learning by doing« phases. In this way we create in Europe unique possibility to study »Remote Engineering«. In the framework of this project a new complete e-learning material for the course Human-Computer Interaction has been developed.
More info @ http://www.hipulab.uni-mb.si/matjaz
 
EQUAL Study
The project had three main goals 1) to establish better conditions in education for disabled and through those better conditions for entering the labour market, 2) to raise educational level of young disabled population and 3) to lower the level of unemployment of disabled population. In the framework of this project an automatic video recording system has been developed.
 
DISNET – E-Learning Network For Unemployed Persons With Special Needs
The main project goal was realisation of an educational network for unemployed persons with special needs in Slovenia and establishment of Special Interest Group for information, presentation and education purposes. In particular, it was intended to the least educated group of persons with special needs in order to enable them effective inclusion in working environments where computer skills are needed. Educational institutions for persons with special needs in Slovenia were by this project improved and qualified for implementation of tutor based e-learning.
 
E-Internationalisation for Collaborative Learning (EICL)
Tempus project to improve e-learning in Ukraine (universities in Kharkov, Ivano-Frankovsk and Simpferopol) and Russia (St. Petersburg,  Petrozavodsk) by joint-courses with EU universities (Villach, Thüringen, Thessaloniki, Maribor).
More info @ http://www.eicl.kharkiv.edu/
 
Competition for best multimedia didactical products Comenius-EduMedia-Awards
The competition is recognised as one of the few competitions that is not infuenced by the industry or a governement. It takes place annualy (in June) in Berlin. Applications are due end of March. The website contains database of awarded products and quality criteria by which products are evaluated.
 
Študentski projekti iz in za industrijo
Being aware of the problems that students do not have enough experience and knowledge about their future professional environment and willing to do something about it we started the Student Projects for and from Industrial Practice with the cooperation of Cluster of information technologies eAliansa in the summer semester of the year 2003/2004. The main idea was to involve companies with their ideas in a part of an educational process and give some additional flavour to the project students were doing as a part of their regular assignments. The projects had three internal levels (teching assistant was the supervisor, 4th year student was team leader and 3-5 3rd year students were the implementation team) and ‘outside client’ from the company. Completing the assignments now also included working in teams, communicating with ‘outside clients’, presenting their work in a competitive manner. The majority of the communication with clients was done on remote basis (teleconferences, emails).
More info @ http://lsd.uni-mb.si/
 
METOD – MetaTool for Educational Platform Design
The specific aims of the projects were:
  • To design a general computer supported educational platform development paradigm.
  • To develop a framework for integrating machine learning and machine intelligence in the educational platforms, enabling self adaptation according to special educators and trainees needs and characteristics.
  • To design a metatool enabling all kind of educators (including parents or senior family members) to develop, adapt and maintain their own educational platforms without great effort.
The long-term aims were to improve the skills and competences of people by the integration of new computer-supported educational platforms specially designed for specific environments and requirements into the training and educational process.
 
The use of Virtual Patients in Medical Education
Virtual patients are learning modules comprising interactive multimedia learning content. Virtual patients are used for simulation of the real patients in the clinical environment. We are using the MedU system.
More info @ MedU
More info @ http://www.mf.uni-mb.si/index.php/sl/informacijskatehnologija
 
Blend.FL – blended learning FL UM
Study process in the form of blended learning, i.e. a combination of e-learning and traditional face-to-face learning  at the Faculty of Logistics UM Basic data (22.1.2014):
  • 195 courses
  • 41 lecturers and assistants
  • 820 students
More info @ http://ecampus13.fl.uni-mb.si , http://ecampus12.fl.uni-mb.si
 
Implementation of a module for monitoring students’ progress in individual courses – Moodle
  • presentation of all course activities
  • acquired ECTS points
  • uncompleted/completed/upcoming activities
Implementation of quizzes as flash animations for learning and testing knowledge – Moodle
  • interactive learning with immediate response
  • learning with the help of various steps and tips
  • finding solutions and testing results
Content management system – Joomla
  • Electronic textbooks and workbooks for students, which include flash animations, video and audio podcasts
  • Limited access to the system (assigned roles and rights)
More info @ http://egradiva.fl.uni-mb.si , http://blend.fl.uni-mb.si
 
ITC Euromaster
For almost a decade ITC-Euromaster is one of the most unique Master’s degree programmes offered to civil engineering bachelors by means of e-learning. During that time the ITC-Euromaster has been developing a model of teaching and learning based on specialized courses in a Course Pool, offered by several European universities, which cover wide area of information technology in costruction (ITC). Graduates represent a unique profile of an ITC specialized Civil Engineer which is increasingly recognized and demanded by the AEC sector. The curriculum has been developed in such a way that courses can be offered from several universities as e-learning courses utilized by a learning management system and virtual classrooms.
More info @ http://euromaster.itcedu.net
 
E-Learning and Practical Training of Mechatronics and Alternative Technologies in Industrial Community (E-PRAGMATIC)
E-PRAGMATIC network connects educational institutions, chambers of commerce and small business, enterprises and the associations of enterprises from seven European countries. The main network’s aim is to modernize mechatronics and engineering vocational training of the employed professionals, apprentices and trainees, by enhancing of the existing or establishing new in-company training approaches in the industry. Within the project 21 e-learning modules with remote experiments were developed. The modules were tested within large pilot training with 400 participants form industry from whole EU. Developed learning modules are now used in in-company training in the network’s industrial partners.E-PRAGMATIC international Community of professionals works also toward strengthening the cooperation between the industry and educational institutions. The Community provides a framework for sharing the knowledge, experience, discussing the ideas and establishing the connections at all levels. UM FERI was involved in a project as a project coordinator. E-PRAGMATIC network is part of Archipelago of Thematic networks in the fields of Sciences and Technology within STECET (Science and Technnology – European Cooperation in Education and Training 2012, http://www.sefi.be/technotn/).
More info @ http://www.e-pragmatic.eu/
 
Teaching Energy for Sustainable World (SustEner)
SustEner originates from the recognition of the enormous societal, economic and technological potential of a European sustainable, low-carbon economy, and from the range of scientific and non-technical challenges preventing the realization of this vision. The purpose of SustEner is to modernize Sustainable Energy vocational training by enhancing existing or establishing new training methods in enterprises and education. Up‐to-date knowledge and educational methods developed in previous projects will be brought directly from the educational institutions to industry and VET institutes. Within SustEner 6 European universities developed  learning resources from Sustainable energy for self-education of secondary school teachers and possible usage by them on secondary education level and for lifelong self-education of professionals from electro-mechanical industry. All together 9 e-learning modules with remote experiments and virtual experiments are available, covering following five thematic areas: hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, solar energy, wind energy and energy saving.
More info @ http://sustener.eu/
 
E-learning Distance Interactive Practical Education (EDIPE)
The project goal was to develop a series of virtual and remote experiments from applied electrical engineering for sharing between 13 EU educational institutions.  The outputs from the project are following:
  • Distance and virtual laboratories
  • Layout of the measured system and measurement results obtained via Internet.
  • Teaching material (in electronic form: guidelines, manuals, and documentation in English and other languages).
Developed virtual and remote experiments and other education resources cover these fields:
  • Fundamentals of electrical engineering (2 modules).
  • Power electronics modules (6 modules).
  • Electrical machines (3 modules)
  • Electro-mechanical and motion control systems (6 modules).
More info @ http://www.pemcweblab.com/  
 

University of Primorska

Enhancing the Quality of Distance Learning at Western Balkan Higher Education Institutions (DL@WEB)

The DL@WEB project has been designed to improve the quality and relevance of distance education (DL) at Western Balkan higher education institutions and to enable easier inclusion of partner country institutions into European Higher Education Area. The main project objective is to improve, develop and implement accreditation standards, guidelines and procedures for quality assurance of DL study programs at national system levels in WB countries. Those standards will assimilate the quality of DL courses offered by higher education institutions in WB countries. Developed standards would be incorporated into existing legal and sublegal acts at the national levels and also at the HE institutional levels, in University regulatory documents. In order to provide solid base for the implementation of newly developed accreditation standards, the DL@WEB project will build the necessary capacities trough establishing a framework for improving eLearning methodology and DL quality assurance at HE institutional level, which will be incorporated in University regulatory documents in Western Balkan beneficiary countries. Furthermore, the DL@WEB project will provide extensive training for all levels of staff involved in accreditation or delivery of DL study programs, from teaching staff, trainers, evaluators, official accreditation reviewers and HE public authorities from each beneficiary PC. Quality Control and Monitoring of project activities and results by invikaternal and external mechanisms will be realized continuously throughout the whole duration of the project and evaluated at several levels. The project is aimed to make a wide impact on the national accreditation systems in WB partner countries, and thus the synergy of Western Balkan higher institutions and national Ministries of Education, National Councils for Higher Education and Commissions for Accreditation from Serbia,Montenegro and FYRM is the best guarantee of the sustainability of project results beyond its life time.
More info @ http://www.dlweb.kg.ac.rs/

 

Information Systems and Multimedia in Education (ISME)

The main objective of the two-year ISME project is development and pilot implementation as well as evaluation and dissemination of a postgraduate study module, covering the topics related to information systems and multimedia as well as subject-related management in education. The module was developed within a joint effort of the project partners (the coordinator – Faculty of Management Koper, University of Primorska; partner Maria Curie-Sklodowska University; and partner Varna University of Economics), and under inclusion of possible employment partners (the National School for Leadership in Education). They first identified its individual elements such as needs, goals, methods etc. Then the module was implemented (piloted) within the coordinating institution’s 2008 Summer School. According to the student feedback and evaluation, final fine tuning of the module will be performed by the project group, along with valorisation as well as further dissemination in the context of employment. The module was not only to be jointly developed but also performed partly within an ICT- and multimedia-based learning environment for cooperative learning.

The project activities include:

  • Individual and joint needs analysis, context and end-user research including the  involvement of employment partners,
  • Joint course and module development, joint development of teaching methods, evaluation processes and quality assurance,
  • Dissemination of module structure, material and implementation methods and
  • Evaluation and dissemination of good practice.

 

Ministry of Education Science and Sport

Teachers in the Digital Age
Following the needs of today’s society and the development and needs of learners, the project E-competent teacher within E-Education defines and describes the digital competencies or e-competencies that represent the basic level of digital literacy. They refer to teachers, pre-school teachers, ICT co-ordinators, school principals and deputy school principals.
More info @ SIO website
 
Edoo: Involving Teachers in the Development of E-learning Material
In this paper we present the Edoo initiative that aims for increased involvement of teachers in the process of e-learning materials creation. Its main goal is to connect two distinct communities – teachers as users of e-learning materials and programmers as creators of e-learning materials – through the online portal and learning site designed for sup port and collaboration. The goal of the initiative is to increase cooperation between the two communities, thus overcoming the domain gap between them. The idea of the initiative was well received among teachers, who are missing appropriate learning materials and lack the ability to adapt existing materials to their speci c teaching needs. We started the initiative in spring 2013, while the rst collaborative projects are being implemented in the winter semester of 2013/2014. The expected result of the initiative is the creation of quality didactic applications that teachers can use in their classes. Besides, we aim at modular and adaptable educational applications with publicly available source code to enable its customization and further development.
More info @ Edoo
 
The change of what is learnt, how is learnt, where is learnt and when is learnt or the Innovative 1:1 Pedagogy in the Light of the 21st Century Competencies project
To succeed in today’s society, rich on information and knowledge, students and teachers must use the modern technology effectively. The education should help students to develop the competencies, necessary for the successful life and work in the 21st century. Key competencies of the future are: critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication and collaboration. To become an innovative school means to start changing the pedagogic paradigm on all the levels of management as well as with the entire teaching staff with the goal that its agents become more innovative. In the article, the project “Innovative Pedagogy in the Light of the 21st Century Competencies” issued by the Ministry of Education is presented. Its dominant goal is to systematically develop the 1:1 pedagogy implementation and all the accompanying e-services, as for instance the e-portfolio, distance learning “Innovative Pedagogy Node”, the development of the implementing curricula with the integration of ICT, didactic trainings for different agents, and the development of the good practice criteria. It is important to be constantly aware that modern information technology itself does not change the way of teaching and learning. The technology must become the constituent part of culture and pedagogy which enables the shift towards student-centered teaching anywhere and anytime.
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