The metaverse has been described as the next evolution of the internet or Web 3.0. It offers an ‘extended reality,’ in which people can socialise, work, and learn. Is it the future for education – a brave, new, digital world where every experience is an immersive learning opportunity and students’ grades are higher than ever before? Or is it a dangerous distraction from the essential discipline and structure of traditional education?
 
Come and join our panel of experts for another high-octane, interactive, parliamentary-style OEB debate on a key issue for the future of education…

This pre-conference workshop consists of two parts:

Part I.  The preliminary Online-Course "EDU21 - 21st Century Education"; Workload: 1h
Part II. The Synchronous Meeting Workload; Workload: 6h

The goal of this two-fold concept is not only to get to know the components of modern digital teaching and learning, but also to experience such scenarios via a preliminary online-course.

Part I: The preliminary Online course

A week before the synchronous workshop, all participants will be assigned to the Online-Course “EDU21 – Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century” on the Virtual Linguistics Campus (https://oer-vlc.de). The course pursues two goals. On the one hand, the participants will be put into the position of student learners and thus experience digital teaching and learning with all their facets; on the other hand, they will acquire the necessary background knowledge before the synchronous workshop by working through up to two topics in EDU21:

a. Topic #1: TL From Past to Present (with E-Assessment)
b. Topic #2: Digital TL (with E-Assessment) All other topics of EDU21 are freely available for self-study.

Note that EDU21 will stay open for all participants for three further months.

Part II: The synchronous workshop

The synchronous workshop is organised along the motto: “No more theory, let’s practice!”. It is a full-day workshop whose main goal is not to present but to develop. It his highly collaborative and consists of three parts:

Part A: Digital Content – Development, Delivery and Use
Part B: Integrating Assessment and Incentives
Part C: New In-Class Scenarios and Activities

Asynchronous teaching and learning require the use of a Learning Management System. In the workshop we will use Moodle, and all participants will be given access to a “Maker Space Area” where they can develop their own content. However, all components and developments will be organised in such a way that they can be transferred to other learning management systems.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify the problems of traditional and “pandemic” teaching and learning scenarios,
• Specify digital solutions and apply them to their disciplines,
• Understand and apply the new options for in-class scenarios,
• Be enabled to estimate the efforts necessary for the digitization of content in their fields, be enabled to develop digital teaching and learning materials.

Speaker

Jürgen Handke

Linguist, Educator, Award-winning Digital Learning and Teaching Pioneer

Jürgen Handke is a German Professor for English Linguistics and Web Technology. He retired from university in April 2020 but still conducts several teaching and learning projects. Together with his team, he runs the Virtual Linguistics Campus, the world's largest learning platform for content in English and general linguistics. His associated YouTube channel "Virtual Linguistics Campus" contains many hundreds of freely accessible self-produced teaching videos and is the largest of its kind.

Handke is the main German proponent of the Inverted Classroom Model, for which he was awarded the Hessian University Prize for Excellence in Teaching 2013 in the Mastery variant. In 2015, he received the Ars Legendi Award, the highest German teaching award for "Digital Teaching and Learning" from the German Donors' Association and the German Rectors' Conference.

In 2016, he won the German Adult Education Innovation Award with his refugee language course #DEU4ARAB, a MOOC with more than 3,100 participants, and his MOOC #FIT4Uni was awarded the national OER Award in the 'Higher Education' category in 2017. Since June 2017, he has been conducting the BMBF project H.E.A.R.T., which tests and evaluates the use of humanoid robots in university teaching. With the RoboPraX project, he was able to acquire another BMBF-funded project in 2019 that tests robots in school use and adapts them to the respective target groups. For this approach, he and his team received the "Science in Dialogue" award in 2019.

In 2020, he was a moderator/subject matter expert for the topic of "Digital Campus" as part of the structural planning for the planned Nuremberg University of Technology. In 2022, he took on the task of advisor for digital teaching at the Louisenlund Foundation.

Join The Innovative Learning Arena: Let's Battle It Out! Following a global 'black swan' event, we all looked for the best possible new learning approaches in a mostly online learning world. Now it’s time to shape the future by making the most valuable choices and thinking about the long run. This is an embodied learning session in which each willing participant is invited to speak out and defend their preferred learning method. You are permitted to lurk, but taking action is always heroic…

Are you willing to stand up and spontaneously share your ideas in this highly spirited Plenary? Or do you prefer to sit back, relax, reflect and show your support for speakers by asking questions or applauding their “pitch”?

Although the subject is serious, this session will be very animated. Each argumentation (3 minutes) will contribute to what will no doubt be a lively exchange, under the expert guidance of its host. The idea is to win over the audience for your case and our host is unlikely to be too strict about the methods you use! However, in the end, your fellow participants will hold the power; they will be able to vote for each learning approach.

The winning method of this "learning battle" will be awarded "the best learning approach" and of course, the person defending it will get a trophy too. This Plenary may challenge you on multiple levels. Do you dare to speak in a group? Are you willing to listen intently to arguments? Are you able critically to analyse learning approaches for their merits?

The session will set the scene for the OEB days to come, in which we hope to enter into dialogue and learn from each other. And it will be fun too, listening to learning approaches and sharing our best (or worst) experiences of the last years. Come along alone, bring your most argumentative colleague, invite a friend… and join this merry bunch of (online, hybrid, classroom) learning experts.

Chairperson

Inge De Waard

Strategic Instructional Designer, Learning Connector & EdTech Dynamo, EIT InnoEnergy and Secret Shakers, Belgium

Inge is a senior learning strategist, longtime researcher, award-winning learning innovator and (e)Learning coordinator. She developed multiple online and hybrid courses, she coaches and co-creates international, blended curricula with engineers and teachers, and explores new, innovative learning formats. Her expertise has been recognized by peers, resulting in additional co-authored papers, invited talks and keynotes in both academic and professional conferences, workshops and seminars. But most of all, she likes to connect, listen, and share stories. Her latest projects are an EU Cross-KIC project looking at AI skills for professionals, matching skill gaps to AI courses (https://aiskills.innoenergy.com/); and an initiative gathering stories of professionals beyond 50, 70, 70 ... who reignited their careers later in life (https://www.secretshakers.com). These two projects fit within the goal of diversity, ensuring a tailored, lifelong learning journey to professionals of all ages.

Links

http://www.innoenergy.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingedewaard/

Twitter

The media landscape and technology are changing incredibly fast. Employees have to rebuild the plane as we fly, and as we are reskilling and upskilling ourselves. Traditionally skilled editorial staff can be challenging to reskill, and numerous media organizations have fired the most experienced journalists, photographers and producers only to hire younger people with digital skills. It does not have to be like this. Not for journalists. And not in any other industry that goes through disruptive changes.

After analysing these megatrends and setting new strategic objectives for the Norwegian broadcasting corporation NRK, many departments got new missions. Old school linear radio and tv professionals suddenly had to deliver world-class digital content for an inpatient audience using mobile phones. New durable and perishable skills had to be learned, and old habits, roles and workflows had to be left behind.

For NRK a structure, some guidelines and a network for reskilling programs became the solution. We designed it with group learning in or close to their workflows, and used agile methods and peer learning for four to twelve weeks with each group of learners. The participants were singled out after competency mapping and most of them were encouraged to apply for the program themselves.

During the program they still had their daily workplace in the newsroom (or pandemic home offices), but their team consisted of other learners and their leader was a coach, coordinator and facilitator for learning. In the applications many of them had pitched projects they would solve. To be able to succeed, they needed to master new workflows and skills, and to do this, talk and cooperate with front-runners in the fields. When the programs ended the participants had published digital content they could be proud of, and had worked their way into new skills and roles.  

In two years we scaled it to 200 employees in 25 different groups/programs without using any classroom training. Everyone got to learn at their own pace as they experienced best practice, created content themselves, and got feedback from each other. Agile rituals such as stand ups, iterations, feedback, retrospects, learning sharing and cross-functional teamwork often helped to create new habits in the newsrooms. Instead of being “lost cases” or passive students, they built on their vast common work experience and sometimes became spearheads and helped develop whole departments.

We would like to tell the story of how we did this, what outcomes the projects had and share some practices that we believe would foster learning culture in any organization.

By attending this talk, you will get concrete examples and experiences that describe how to design and organize learning according to “modern” understanding of how we learn.

Learning Outcomes

• How to map, motivate and organize for peer learning
• How to help foster psychological safety in groups
• How to use simple agile rituals to strengthen learning
• How to use OKRs in learning programs

Speaker

Andreas Bugge Grimsæth

Schibsted, Norway

Andreas Bugge Grimsæth is a journalist with fifteen years of experience in developing digital content and online services, like the weather site YR.no. He has six years of experience from learning and organisational development in the Norwegian broadcasting corporation (NRK), two of them as head of L&D. Education-wise: a serial drop-out with no finished formal training, he is now working at Schibsted with some of the biggest newspapers and strongest brands in Norway and Sweden.