EDEN Research Workshop “Towards Personalized Guidance and Support for Learning” was held on 24-26 October 2018 in Barcelona, Spain at the Open University of Catalonia. The topic of the workshop was changing roles of teachers in supporting student learning in the digital world. The change suggests the creation of enabling conditions that encourage learning personalization, learner agency and self-direction. Experiences of learner empowerment resulting from balanced “guide on the side” teaching, timely teaching interventions, consistent feedback and feedforward, explicit teaching of learning-to-learn strategies, assessment for learning, and technology-based adaptive teaching provided a substantive background for reflection and discussion. Over 130 registered participants from 20 countries attended the Research Workshop and a pre-conference PhD Symposium was held with 30 scholars presenting their works to academic expert panels advising.
The Research Workshop was focused on the following main topics:
- Personalized learning: accompanying learners while addressing distinct learning needs, situations or preferences.
- Teachers’ and learners’ roles: rethinking teaching facilitation strategies using the potential of digital technologies.
- Open education: making the most of openness to ensure student success.
- Adaptive teaching: enhancing teacher decisions through course analytics and course awareness methodologies.
- Formative assessment: assessment for learning and the implementation of complementary ipsative approaches.
- Feedback: reinforcing teacher-learner dialogue through different channels in networked environments.
The Research Workshop programme included keynote speeches, parallel thematic and poster sessions and round table discussions. Keynote speeches were delivered by:
- Sanna Järvelä, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Oulu, Finland – Socially Shared Regulation in Learning – Progress for Learning Success in 21st century
- Neil Selwyn, Monash University, Australia – Personalised Guidance and Support for Learning… What Could Possibly be the Problem?
Within the Research Workshop Ms. Svetlana Knyazeva shared the preliminary results of the ongoing IITE project aimed at surveying OER potential and impact in 15 UNESCO Member States.
She also attended the EDEN Fellow meeting on October 24. Fellows in attendance voted in support of the core group proposal to establish the Council of EDEN Fellows, which will include all Fellows and Senior Fellows of EDEN and serve in an advisory role to the EDEN EC, as a think tank for future visioning, and as ambassadors of EDEN. Upon establishment of the Council of EDEN Fellows and its Board, the Fellows took part in a workshop whose major themes included: current and future open education trends within socio-political contexts; the roles, responsibilities, and values of the members of the EDEN community; and strategic development of EDEN (2030).
More information about the Research Workshop is available at the event website.
The next EDEN conference will be held on June 16-19, 2019 in Bruges, Belgium.