EdTech blog by Alexander Mikroyannidis

The ALT Annual Conference 2021: Shared Experience, Different Perspectives

By Alexander Mikroyannidis13 September 2021Blockchain, Technology-Enhanced Learning

The ALT Annual Conference took place online on September 7-9, 2021. The conference was organised by the Association for Learning Technology and was attended by nearly 400 participants from 24 countries. This year’s conference offered an opportunity to bring together educators, learners, managers, senior leaders and policy writers, in order to reflect on the shared experience from their different perspectives on the lessons learned from the pandemic.

Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) served on the conference committee and delivered a pre-conference workshop entitled “Decentralising Education Using Blockchain Technology”. The workshop explored the different aspects of education that are affected by decentralisation. Participants had the opportunity to try out and evaluate the online platform offered by the QualiChain project for the Blockchain-based award and verification of education and employment qualifications. The outcomes of this workshop will provide useful feedback for the QualiChain pilot led by Alexander in the area of lifelong learning.

Watch the recording of this workshop:

Professional biography

Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University, UK. He holds a Ph.D. in Informatics from Manchester Business School, an M.Phil. in Computation from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and a B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece.

Research interests

The research expertise of Dr. Mikroyannidis is in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning. He has been investigating the use of novel educational technologies for enhancing personalised learning, self-regulated learning, lifelong learning, as well as open education. He is currently working on the transformative applications of Generative AI and decentralisation blockchain technology in the context of online and distance education. He is the author of over 120 peer-reviewed publications that have received over 1,600 citations (20 h-index). He sits on the editorial boards of several globally renowned scientific journals, such as Open Learning, a leading international journal in the field of open, flexible and distance learning.

Teaching interests

Dr. Mikroyannidis has extensive experience in developing rich interactive learning materials for Open Educational Resources (OERs), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Badged Open Courses (BOCs), and eBooks. Some highlights from this work are the following:

Impact and engagement

The work of Dr. Mikroyannidis has led to strategic partnerships with key technological companies, most notably with Cisco and its global educational network, the Cisco Networking Academy, which has over 1 million students worldwide. Within this partnership, Dr. Mikroyannidis is in charge of the design, development and deployment of PT Anywhere, a novel educational tool for teaching computer networking skills by performing network simulations on any device. PT Anywhere has played a vital role in remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been featured in the UK government’s Digital Skills Toolkit, which is offering essential digital skills to job seekers.

Dr. Mikroyannidis has recently led a successful pilot for facilitating lifelong learning using blockchain technologies, in the context of the European project QualiChain. In particular, he has been in charge of deploying and evaluating decentralised education and employment qualifications with learners and educators within various lifelong learning contexts. As outlined in this journal article, the results of this pilot have provided valuable insights into the different aspects of lifelong learning that require support, as well as into the guidance and training needs of the education community related to the use of decentralisation technologies. More recently, Dr. Mikroyannidis has been investigating the impact of Web 3.0 and Blockchain on open education, aiming to reduce barriers for the open upskilling and reskilling of job seekers. For more info, see this journal editorial co-authored with several other renowned experts in the field of open education.

External collaborations

Dr. Mikroyannidis has been driving significant educational technology initiatives at an international level, by establishing a network of collaborators inside and outside the Open University and acquiring external funding, in order to implement and evaluate novel educational solutions in real-life settings and with real users. He has been awarded and worked on a wide range of European and nationally funded research projects, including SAGE-RAI, QualiChain, DEL4ALL, OpenLang Network, Open Networking Lab, Institute of Coding, SlideWiki, EDSA, HUB4NGI, FORGE, weSPOT, EUCLID, ROLE, OpenScout, CASPAR, and PARMENIDES.

In collaboration with the European partners of the Erasmus+ project OpenLang Network, Dr. Mikroyannidis has led the design, implementation and evaluation of the OpenLang Network platform. This platform provides an open and collaborative online learning environment that brings together language teachers and learners across Europe. This journal article presents the sustainable design of the platform and the tools that the platform is offering for practicing innovative learning methods, such as tandem language learning. The goal of this work is to foster the European multicultural and multilingual vision by building a sustainable online community around open educational resources and practices.