October 15, 16 & 17, 2020 marked three days of celebration of the Erasmus+ Programme in Europe and beyond. Erasmus Days are a unique opportunity to organise an event, share Erasmus experiences and spread the word about Erasmus projects. For those that want to study or train abroad, Erasmus Days offer three dedicated days to learn about the […]
The 23rd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2020) took place online on September 23-25. This interdisciplinary conference is focused on the exchange of relevant trends and research results, as well as the presentation of practical experiences in Interactive Collaborative Learning and Engineering Pedagogy. The Open University was represented by Audrey Ekuban and Alexander Mikroyannidis. Audrey presented […]
Blockchain technology provides a decentralised peer-to-peer infrastructure, supporting openness, transparency, accountability, identity management and trust. As such, the Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise education in a number of ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and training services online, how we register and pay for them, as well […]
The first virtual Summer Summit of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) took place on August 26-27, 2020. The event was a great success, with over 300 participants joining from 25 countries. The event’s theme was exploring Learning Technology in a time of crisis, care and complexity. Participants explored the themes of crisis, care and […]
On July 13th 2020, the work of the Open Blockchain group was presented to the W3C Credentials Community Group. John Domingue, Allan Third, Alexander Mikroyannidis, Niaz Chowdhury and Mano Ramachandran joined a conference call between all members of the W3C group and presented their latest work on Verifiable Credentials and Blockchains. In particular, John and Allan presented the Open Blockchain […]
The first formal review of the QualiChain project took place on June 18th, 2020. The review was held online and was attended by representatives from all project partners, the Project Officer, two external reviewers, as well as DG CONNECT representatives. The review was a complete success, with the reviewers and the Project Officer commending the […]
The OpenLearn course Discovering Computer Networks has been included in the UK Government Digital Skills Toolkit for furloughed workers. The Digital Skills Toolkit is a collection of training resources, including courses from Google, FutureLearn and the Open University, aiming to help people acquire digital skills for improving their employability. This online training initiative will be […]
The 9th eSTEeM conference took place online on April 29-30, 2020. The conference is organised annually by the Open University, UK. Entitled “Informing Student Success – From Scholarship to Practice”, this year’s programme has been a mix of short orals, workshops and poster presentations, showcasing scholarship work conducted by STEM colleagues. Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open […]
Alexander Mikroyannidis has co-edited the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2020). The eLmL 2020 proceedings include the papers of the QualiChain Special Track on “Decentralised Qualifications on the Blockchain”. Project partners have contributed 6 papers that describe the context and goals of the QualiChain pilots, the key […]
In the UK, there are over 2 million people with sight loss, with 360,000 registered as blind or partially sighted. Approximately 25% of those with partial sight loss are employed, but this decreases to 10% for those who are blind. There is therefore a pressing need to enable blind and visually impaired people to gain […]