Improving Inclusive Education through Universal Design for Learning

This open access international scientific study provides an analysis of how the educational strategy of Universal Design for Learning can stimulate the process of inclusive education in different educational-cultural contexts and different areas of the educational system. The findings of the research deepen the conception of inclusive education and present an analysis of factors that are significant for developing the educational system as well as providing evidence-based recommendations for educational practice. The research for this work was done in four European countries with various historical-cultural contexts: Lithuania and Poland underwent a transformation of the educational systems at the turning point in their political system, shifting from a strictly centralized Soviet policy to a liberal and democratic education system; Austria has experienced changes in social stratification and a need for cultural harmonisation arising from active national migration processes, whereas Finland has been gradually developing a socio-democratic model of national welfare. The analysis of the educational processes in the four countries has been performed using a qualitative action research method. The researchers, in cooperation with the teachers from the selected schools in their country, have implemented the strategy of Universal Design for Learning and assessed its transformation indicators in terms of the quality of inclusive education components

Self-study guide to developing English linguistic competences for students of Computer Sciences

Методичні вказівки призначені для самостійної роботи студентів ІТ спеціальностей над опануванням фахової термінології та мають на меті допомогти студентам І та ІІ курсів самостійно працювати над розширенням словникового запасу, розвитком вмінь здобування інформації з англомовних текстових джерел

Self-study guide to developing English linguistic competences for students of Computer Sciences

Методичні вказівки призначені для самостійної роботи студентів ІТ спеціальностей над опануванням фахової термінології та мають на меті допомогти студентам І та ІІ курсів самостійно працювати над розширенням словникового запасу, розвитком вмінь здобування інформації з англомовних текстових джерел

Handbook for Moving towards Multiprofessional Work

This handbook was supposed to be a choral artwork and the result is a very choral and artistic patchwork. In the process of building up the project ‘MOMU – Moving towards Multiprofessional Work’, we sewed, we combined patterns to define new ones. We knew our shapes were different as were our fabrics but we learned to measure and cut in order to create a larger design. The results of this is what you can see in this handbook. We hope you’ll agree that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It has not been easy to piece this together. These types of processes bring with them discussions, arguments, discoveries, hopes, despair and bureaucratic requirements; all inevitable parts of such a complex process. However, it is honest to say that the process has been exciting and paves the way for future and productive collaborations. Along the way some of the participants left us: Carola Boehm and Esther Mercado; some others joined us: Pedro de la Paz. Some changes took place in our universities, new roles were assumed. This is also part of the richness of the tapestry. We are very thankful to all of them for their contribution. We thank the European Union for funding this project. For all of us it was the first time we had developed an Erasmus+ KA2 project and we had to apply the ‘learning by doing formula’, but we managed. We are very thankful to teachers who volunteered to participate in the training sessions, to practitioners who gave us important input and feedback and showed us how to improve and make our teaching more practical. Thanks also to our national steering groups for their clarity and recommendations. Importantly, our gratitude extends to our students: social work and art students, who were open to new perspectives and ways of exploring their place in the world and the job market. Youth unemployment in Europe continues to be an issue, but projects like MOMU aim to address this challenge in creative ways. However, we are at the very starting point and further steps are needed to make the new competence framework we have created a reality. This handbook intends to suggest and inspire instead of guiding the reader. It offers training packages to be adapted depending on contexts, whilst highlighting our successes and failures. We suggest it is read, considered and adapted. In other words, each person willing to put it into practice will have to assume that they will have to make their own patchwork

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs