[course] Exploring Open Educational Resources: Unite! course offerings #unite!

We are very happy that we can announce our UNITE! course on Open Educational Resources (OER) for at least all partner universities but also beyond:

Dive into the realm of OER, where educational materials are openly accessible, editable, and shareable. Discover how to utilize OER ethically and effectively, and earn badges and credits for your accomplishments!

[press release @ UNITE!’s homepage]
[MOOC @ imoox.at for free access]

[MOOC] OER in Higher Education #imoox #unite!

Regarding the topic of Open Educational Resources, there will be a new MOOC available on the platform iMooX.at starting from May 6, 2024. The free online course “OER in Higher Education” by the European University Alliance “Unite!” and other cooperating partners will be accessible in several languages, and the learning videos are created with the help of artificial intelligence. The avatars of the course instructors – me and Sandra Schön from TU Graz – will now speak in French, Italian, Indonesian, and other languages in the course videos of the four units.

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Link to the MOOC – join us for free: https://imoox.at/course/OERinHE

[report] Aligning IT infrastructures for digital learning amongst the European university alliance Unite! – The Unite! digital campus framework and requirements #unite

After more than one year of exciting work in our community we are a little bit proud to present our first technical report about “Aligning IT infrastructures for digital learning amongst the European university alliance Unite! – The Unite! digital campus framework and requirements“:

The European university alliance “Unite!” has embarked on a mission to bring together their higher education landscape. As part of this ambitious endeavour, the Erasmus+ Work Package 2, called “Community 2 Digital Campus” or “Cm.2” for short, was established to shape and implement a cutting-edge digital campus framework within the alliance. The purpose of the present requirement analysis is to collect and list all the key technological, organizational, and legal needs and requirements for an up-to-date European digital campus. This analysis is built upon desk research, utilizing additional methods such as an online survey and stakeholder discussions within the entire Unite! alliance. The requirements analysis results are provided against the background of a short introduction (chapter 1), an overview of platforms for learning management in European university alliances (chapter 2), and a description of the analysis’ procedures, which are the development of descriptions of digital learning and teaching infrastructures of all partners, a survey of the status quo concerning European Student Card Initiative, a survey amongst e-learning support teams, an interactive event for stakeholders and literature and projects desk research (chapter 3). Chapter 4 introduces the federated infrastructures of the Unite! alliance, especially the Metacampus as a federated learning management system based on Moodle. Chapter 5 provides detailed descriptions (including visualizations) of all partners’ digital infrastructures for learning and teaching. Chapter 6 then shares the status quo of the European Student Card Initiative implementation by all partners. Chapter 7 presents five core requirements identified through the analysis, which are the requirements of (a) interoperability between the digital infrastructures of partners and with European standards, (b) the implementation of decision-making concerning IT infrastructure for the digital campus: the Technical Commission, (c) the strategic support for the effective utilization of existing IT systems, especially the Metacampus, (d) clarifying future (learning) scenarios, mobility, and other issues relating to development of the IT infrastructure, and (e) budgetary considerations for the development and maintenance of federated systems. Finally, chapter 8 sketches the next steps and the future of Community 2 Digital Campus and its tasks, and presents (a) the work plan and organisational structure for Community 2 Digital Campus, (b) further development of Metacampus support and resources (T2.3), (c) update of Metacampus and organisational development of support requests, (d) ESCI: improvement of service, (e) eduGAIN maintenance and further development (T2.6), (f) piloting of LTI and integration of MOOCs (T2.6), (g) implementation of meta-data standards for course description (T2.5, T2.6), and (h) support of openness and innovation (T2.1).

The report is open licenced available here:
[repository @ TU Graz]
[ResearchGate]

Furthermore find here some few slides acting as a kind of summary:

Reference: Ebner, M., Schön, S., Alcober, J., Bertonasco, R., Bonani, F., Cruz, L., Espadas, C., Filgueira Xavier, V., Franco, M., Gasplmayr, K., Giralt, J., Hoppe, C., Koschutnig-Ebner, M., Langevin, E., Laurent, R., Leitner, P., Martikainen, J., Matias, J., Muchitsch, M., … Würz, A. (2024). Aligning IT infrastructures for digital learning amongst the European university alliance Unite! – The Unite! digital campus framework and requirements (1.0). Unite! Community 2 Digital Campus, Graz University of Technology. https://doi.org/10.3217/36yen-0wy21

[publication] Perspective Chapter: Implementation of MOOCs for Microcredentials and European University Alliances #imoox #mooc #unite!

We are happy that we can announce our newest contribution for our UNITE! alliance titled “Perspective Chapter: Implementation of MOOCs for Microcredentials and European University Alliances“:

Abstract:
MOOCs are seen as an important measure to open up universities to new target groups. In this chapter, two new variants of the usage of MOOCs in European higher education are highlighted: First, openly licensed MOOCs can be used as part of microcredential offers with university accreditation. Second, openly licensed MOOCs can be made available to other universities as an integrated resource and offer within European University alliances. This chapter discusses legal (such as copyright issues), organizational (such as processes), and technical issues (such as LTI, eduGAIN) for these new developments. An important requirement for this is that MOOCs are available as open educational resources (OER): Open licenses that allow the reuse, modification, and republication of educational resources (“open education resources”) are another opportunity to open up and share university offers. This chapter is based on experiences of the national Austrian MOOC platform iMooX.at, the microcredential implementation of Graz University of Technology, as well as first ideas concerning the integration of openly licensed MOOCs within the unite! University alliance of nine European technical universities.

[article @ ResearchGate]
[article @ book’s homepage]

Reference: Ebner, M., Gasplmayr, K., Kreuzer, E., Leitner, P., Schön, S., & Taraghi, B. (2023). Perspective Chapter: Implementation of MOOCs for Microcredentials and European University Alliances. in D. S. Goundar (Hrsg.), Massive Open Online Courses – Current Practice and Future Trends IntechOpen. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1001466