Promoting international cultural and academic collaborative communication through technologies of open course ware

In the diverse cultures of an increasingly transnational world where\ud academic literacy in English or Englishes is required for advancement in\ud universities, communication technologies play critical roles. This paper integrates\ud scholars from diverse cultures through online technology which allows for\ud participants from several universities to develop their awareness of diverse\ud cultures and academic English across disciplines. This research addresses the issue\ud of how online collaboration among scholars can develop their technological,\ud cultural and academic literacies which are essential to their academic progress. By\ud creating electronic discussion forums that include scholars from universities\ud worldwide it is possible to engage in transcultural dialogue regarding how diverse\ud cultures view technology as a means to advance academic and cultural literacy.\ud Through combining the wealth of academic Open Course Ware (OCW) through\ud the consortium and linkages with international universities it is possible to create\ud credit courses for students in each of their home universities thereby overcoming\ud the major limitation of OCW by providing access to credit for OCW courses

Metaversia: a mooc model for higher education

Globalization and economic interdependency of a post-modern society point toward an internationalization mission for the university. However, on a global scale, social, economic, and cultural circumstances have significant effects upon an individual’s ability to show the merit required in higher education. The growing open access movement reveals the early emergence of a meta-university that bring cost-efficiencies to institutions through the shared development of educational materials, which is particularly important to the developing world. But despite the huge success in the dissemination and democratization of knowledge provided by the open access movement, it has attached a severe financial downside, and configures a hamper in educational innovation due to its failure in harnessing Web 2.0 collaborative technologies. In order to find a model that better suits the needs of collaborative teaching and learning in a networked information economy, two approaches are followed in this dissertation. The first consists in the analysis and comparison of the open education ecosystem. On the other approach, based on the previous results, we propose a MOOC model, Metaversia, for a collaborative network that harness the capital exchange potential, and knowledge-building opportunities that rests on the connections between people, enabling citizen's full participation in the actual networked information economy.A globalização e interdependência económica de uma sociedade pós-moderna impelem a universidade para uma missão de internacionalização. Mas à escala global, circunstâncias sociais, económicas e culturais têm implicações significativas sobre a capacidade dos indivíduos em mostrar o mérito exigido no ensino superior. O movimento de acesso livre revela o surgimento precoce de uma meta universidade que traz mais valias do ponto de vista financeiro para as universidades através do desenvolvimento partilhado de materiais educativos. Mas, apesar do enorme sucesso na disseminação e democratização do conhecimento proporcionado pelo movimento de acesso livre, este possui severas desvantagens financeiras e configura um grande passo atrás na inovação pedagógica devido a sua falha no devido aproveitamento das tecnologias colaborativas da Web 2.0. A fim de encontrar um modelo que melhor se adeque às necessidades de ensino e aprendizagem colaborativa numa economia da informação em rede, duas abordagens são seguidas nesta tese. A primeira consiste na análise e comparação do ecossistema educação aberta. Na outra abordagem, com base nos resultados anteriores, propomos um modelo para um MOOC, Metaversia, para uma rede de colaboração que aproveita o potencial de troca de capital, e de construção de conhecimento que existe no relacionamento interpessoal, permitindo uma plena participação dos cidadãos numa economia da informação em rede

Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Colleges and universities should embrace the concept of increased openness in the use and sharing of information to improve higher education. That is the core recommendation of this report. The report was produced by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of information technology experts that advises CED's business leaders on cutting-edge technologies

What status for "open"? An examination of the licensing policies of open educational organizations and projects

What makes an educational resource "open"? Is it enough that resources are available on the World Wide Web free of charge, or does openness require something more?" These questions have become more urgent as the open education movement has gained momentum and as potential users of open educational resources (OERs) increasingly face uncertainty about whether permission is required when they translate, reuse, adapt, or simply republish the resources they find. With the support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, ccLearn surveyed the copyright licensing policies of several hundred educational projects or organizations on the Internet to assess whether these legal conditions limit the usefulness of self-designated open resources from the user's perspective.The study reveals three principal findings:The copyright licenses or terms of use associated with some OERs are difficult to find or to understand;The majority of OER projects or organizations have adopted a standardized license created by an independent license provider, and of these, the large majority have adopted one or more of the six Creative Commons copyright licenses ("CC licenses") to define the terms of openness. But, a sizable minority of OER providers have chosen to craft their own license -- often borrowing terms from one of the standardized licenses. Thus, as a group, OER providers have adopted a diverse, and often customized, set of license conditions that in some cases require significant work by users to understand;The usefulness of OERs as a group is limited by incompatible license conditions that functionally prohibit combination or adaptation of OERs provided by different sources. This report concludes with a recommendation that creators of open educational resources consider using CC licenses to provide users with readily found, standardized terms of use. It recommends further that OER creators consider adopting the most open of CC licenses, the Attribution-only License (CC BY), to nourish the creativity of educators and learners alike by allowing the adaptation, combination, and republication of OERs from multiple sources

Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge

Given the abundance of open education initiatives that aim to make educational assets freely available online, the time seems ripe to explore the potential of open education to transform the economics and ecology of education. Despite the diversity of tools and resources already available -- from well-packaged course materials to simple games, for students, self-learners, faculty, and educational institutions -- we have yet to take full advantage of shared knowledge about how these are being used, what local innovations are emerging, and how to learn from and build on the experiences of others. Opening Up Education argues that we must develop not only the technical capability but also the intellectual capacity for transforming tacit pedagogical knowledge into commonly usable and visible knowledge: by providing incentives for faculty to use (and contribute to) open education goods, and by looking beyond institutional boundaries to connect a variety of settings and open source entrepreneurs.These essays by leaders in open education describe successes, challenges, and opportunities they have found in a range of open education initiatives. They approach -- from both macro and micro perspectives -- the central question of how open education tools, resources, and knowledge can improve the quality of education. The contributors (from leading foundations, academic institutions, associations, and projects) discuss the strategic underpinnings of their efforts first in terms of technology, then content, and finally knowledge. They also address the impact of their projects, and how close they come to achieving a vision of sustainable, transformative educational opportunities that amounts to much more than pervasive technology.Contributors:Richard Baraniuk, Randy Bass, Trent Batson, Dan Bernstein, John Seely Brown, Barbara Cambridge, Tom Carey, Catherine Casserly, James Dalziel, Bernadine Chuck Fong, Richard Gale, Gerard Hanley, Diane Harley, Mary Huber, Pat Hutchings, Toru Iiyoshi, David Kahle, M. S. Vijay Kumar, Andy Lane, Diana Laurillard, Stuart Lee, Steve Lerman, Marilyn Lombardi, Phil Long, Clifford Lynch, Christopher Mackie, Anne Margulies, Owen McGrath, Flora McMartin, Shigeru Miyagawa, Diana Oblinger, Neeru Paharia, Cheryl Richardson, Marshall Smith, Candace Thille, Edward Walker, and David WileyAbout the Editors:Toru Iiyoshi is Senior Scholar and Director of the Knowledge Media Lab at the Carnegie Foundation.M. S. Vijay Kumar is Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT

New ICT Literacies and Holistic Approaches for the Effective Learning of Languages in Tertiary Education

Abstract: This paper summarizes the evolution of different subjects of English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic and Professional Purposes. The aim here is to show a continuum of changes that have not started and nished in one subject alone but affect the whole curriculum. After the discussion section where advantages and drawbacks of the changes introduced are analyzed, we arrive at some conclusions regarding this ve year period of development in the approach to the teaching and learning of the specific or academic English language in the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica de Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Resumen: Este trabajo resume la evolución que han experimentado distintas asignaturas de Inglés para Fines Especí cos e Inglés para Fines Académicos y Profesionales. El objetivo principal es mostrar cómo el esfuerzo por mejorar las asignaturas afecta al currículo como un todo y no sólo a cada una de las asignaturas. Tras el análisis de algunas de las ventajas e inconvenientes de los cambios introducidos, se alcanzan algunas conclusiones sobre la evolución que han sufrido este tipo de asignaturas durante los últimos cinco años en la Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica de Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

The Potential of Open Educational Resources (OERS) in Higher Education Curriculum and Course Materials Development

Open education resource (OER) is defined by UNESCO as “technology-enabled” open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for noncommercial purposes.’ These resources are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees. With the explosion of knowledge and increasing sophistication of technology, higher education programmes need to be frequently reviewed and developed to keep pace with the needs of society and the learners. Taking into consideration the currently situation (increasing number of diverse learners) in higher education institutions, where the core activities are teaching, research, and consultancy; the curriculum development activity has become a more tedious work and require assistance from other existing source of materials and technology. OER has a big potential in assisting educators and curriculum developer to adapt and customize the resources to fit the institution needs and save more time in teaching, research and consultancy.Key words: Open Educational Resources (OER), Higher Education Institutions (HEI), Open Courseware, Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Curriculum, National Research and Education Network (NREN)

The UNIVERSIA/UPM OPEN COURSEWARE iniciative to share the knowledge

This paper shows the most innovative aspects of the Universia/UPM OpenCourseWare (OCW) project referred to globalization of higher education in a Latin-American environment and the sharing of knowledge. The MIT idea of offering, through Internet, the available educational resources in an open way has been spread all over the world and many Universities and Institutions have joint this initiative. Universia, Institution which gathers one of the biggest world universities net, has launched an OCW site, with the technical collaboration of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) who is working as the main university project promoter. The OCW-Universia site has one of the greatest growth rates at present and is facing new challenges and developments which will allow its expansion as a reference within an international context

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching