E-XCELLENCE NEXT Report Local seminar Portugal

Wagemans, L. J. J. M., & Boon, M. J. J. P. M. (2012). E-XCELLENCE NEXT Report Local seminar Portugal. Heerlen: EADTU.E-learning has become mainstream provision in European higher education and is essential in supporting lifelong learning and internationalisation. By becoming integral part of higher education, e-learning should also be integral part of the QA systems, internal and external, with related innovative and appropriate criteria. In the E-xcellence project (EADTU) an instrument is developed under the e-learning programme that creates an opportunity for the existing channels in QA to adopt new quality guidelines for increased quality, accessibility and attractiveness. As the E-xcellence instrument supplements existing QA systems with e-learning specific issues and addresses directly the higher education and adult education sector, it can be integrated within the existing QA frameworks. In the past 2 stages in which E-xcellence was developed and promoted by and within open and blended universities and QA agencies, it has proven to be a valuable and valued open source tool. In a third step EADTU wants to serve universities Europe wide with an open and updated “quality assurance in e-learning” instrument. One of the institutions where the E-xcellence instrument is introduced, is the Portugese Universidade Aberta (UAb). The report describes the introduction of the E-xcellence instrument in a Local seminar of two days with presentations given by representatives of the different programs, discussions and feedback of the Review team

A European research agenda for lifelong learning

It is a generally accepted truth that without a proper educational system no country will prosper, nor will its inhabitants. With the arrival of the post-industrial society, in Europe and elsewhere, it has become increasingly clear that people should continue learning over their entire life-spans lest they or their society suffer the dire consequences. But what does this future lifelong learning society exactly look like? And how then should education prepare for it? What should people learn and how should they do so? How can we afford to pay for all this, what are the socio-economic constraints of the move towards a lifelong-learning society? And, of course, what role can and should the educational establishment of schools and universities play? This are questions that demand serious research efforts, which is what this paper argues for

All by myself. Research into employees' informal learning experiences

Van der Klink, M., Boon, J., & Schlusmans, K. (2012). All by myself. Research into employees' informal learning experiences. International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, 12(1/2), 77-91.This article reports the findings of 24 interviews with academic employees on their informal learning at work. The article concludes with some critical remarks on the value of informal learning from the perspective of lifelong learnin

Viewbrics: Formative Assessment of Complex Skills with Video-Enhanced Rubrics (VER) in Dutch Secondary Education

To learn complex skills, like collaboration, learners need to acquire a concrete and consistent mental model of what it means to master this skill. If learners know their current mastery level and know their targeted mastery level, they can better determine their subsequent learning activities. Rubrics support learners in judging their skill performance as they provide textual descriptions of skills’ mastery levels with performance indicators for all constituent subskills. However, text-based rubrics have a limited capacity to support the formation of mental models with contextualized, time-related and observable behavioral aspects of a complex skill. This paper outlines the design of a study that intends to investigate the effect of rubrics with video modelling examples compared to text-based rubrics on skills acquisition and feedback provisioning. The hypothesis is that video-enhanced rubrics, compared to text based rubrics, will improve mental model formation of a complex skill and improve the feedback quality a learner receives (from e.g. teachers, peers) while practicing a skill, hence positively effecting final mastery of a skill.We would like to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Viewbrics-project (www.viewbrics.nl), a three year research and development project that is funded by the practice-oriented research programme of the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), part of The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)