Invitation to MOOCs and OERs in the OpenVM Learning Hub

In the last three years I have been coordinating the Open Virtual Mobility project (abbreviated: OpenVM) which is a three year (2017-2020) strategic partnership for innovation and the exchange of good practices funded by the European Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.

One of the key outcomes of the Open Virtual Mobility project is the OpenVM Learning Hub, an online learning environment for the development, assessment and recognition of virtual mobility skills in higher education.

The OpenVM Learning Hub hosts a set of eight mini-MOOCs, in each of the eight competency areas. Each mini-MOOC is dedicated to a specific competency cluster needed for successful engagement in virtual mobility. In each mini-MOOC the learner can study at one of three levels: Foundations, Intermediate and Advanced.

Learners in OpenVM MOOCs receive shareable digital proof of the skills developed in mini-MOOCs in the form of digital credentials. OpenVM Credentials are based on the Open Badges standard (version 2.0). All available badges are listed on our partner Bestr website: https://bestr.it/organization/show/99

The OpenVM Learning Hub also includes a repository of Open Educational Resources (OERs), which is also available at the project website. Additionally, the OpenVM Learning Hub offers a marketplace in which students and teachers can share information about their own offers with others and look for available virtual mobilities, as well as open virtual mobility activities and programs.

Our partnership invites higher education teachers and students to use OpenVM MOOCs and OERs in the OpenVM Learning Hub to support existing or new curricula and/or to recommend OpenVM MOOCs and OERs to students for self-learning.

OpenVM MOOCs have been developed to support virtual mobility, especially in context of open education, but can be also used in other educational contexts, since the skills they support are applicable in many different areas.

Learners (teachers and students in higher education) can develop competencies in the following eight areas / MOOCs:

1. Media and digital literacy 
2. Active self-regulated learning skills 
3. Autonomy-driven learning 
4. Networked learning 
5. Intercultural skills and attitude 
6. Interactive and collaborative learning in an authentic international environment 
7. Open-mindedness 
8. Open virtual mobility knowledge

You can find out more about our project and our offer in the OpenVM Learning Hub in our brochure:

Click to access OpenVM-Erasmus-brochure.pdf

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Designing a Collaborative Learning Hub for Virtual Mobility Skills

I have been coordinating a new European project called Open Virtual Mobility (Erasmus+ strategic partnership, 2017-2020) and presented about the design of the collaborative learning hub for virtual mobility skills which we have been developing in the project at the Human Computer Interaction International Conference, 15-20 July 2018 in Las Vegas, USA.

Our paper was published in the Conference Proceedings published by Springer. Here is the abstract:

“Higher education faces high requirements and challenges in today’s global world, including internationalisation as a response to globalisation. Virtual Mobility (VM) has a great potential to contribute to the internationalisation, innovation and inclusion in higher education. While it is feasible to encourage outward and inward student and faculty mobility, the main limitations include high costs of travelling and living in a foreign country, diverse socio-economic, health-related and even political issues. These barriers can be reduced by adding virtual components to mobility programs and actions (e.g. virtual seminars, virtual labs, virtual internships). This paper presents an approach for designing a collaborative learning hub for promoting VM Skills of educators and students in the European Higher Education Area. The VM Learning Hub assists to enhance the Virtual Mobility readiness of higher education institutions, educators and students through achievement, assessment and recognition of VM skills. This paper introduces the concept and the architecture of VM Learning Hub – a Collaborative and Personal Learning Environment with embedded technologies for innovative forms of skill attainment (open education, gamification), skill assessment (test-based and evidence-based e-assessment), skill recognition (open credentials, linked data) and collaboration (based on algorithm-based matching of learning groups).”

You can read our paper titled Designing a Collaborative Learning Hub for Virtual Mobility Skills. Insights from the European Project Open Virtual Mobility. (Authors: Ilona Buchem, Johannes Konert, Chiara Carlino, Gerard Casanova,
Kamakshi Rajagopal, Olga Firssova, Diana Andone) by following this Springer link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91743-6_27

And you can view the presentation slides on SlideShare:

Skills without borders

The first European Open Badges Summit took place last on 1st December 2017 in London and was dedicated to:

Modern Employment and Digital Credentials

The conference was organised by IMS Global Learning Consortium and Digitalme in partnership with Open University and JISC. I was glad to support the event and the preparation of the summit program.

We have had a great line up of speakers starting with Matthew Taylor (Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, RSA) who wrote about digital badges in his report commissioned by the UK Prime Minister, titled “Modern Working Practices” (Download here).

Mark Leuba, IMS Vice President, set out a global vision for an Open Badges Ecosystem, exploring how Open Badges v2.0 can empower us to communicate our verified knowledge, skills, and achievements to employers, educators, and our peers and how new features allow institutions to scale their programs and deliver on the promise of digital credentials.

David Leaser, Senior Program Executive, IBM Support Transformation, Skills and Globalization presented the employer’s view on Open Badges and the impressive developments in the IBM Open Badge Program.

Chris Jones, CEO of City & Guilds together with Jonathan Finkelstein, founder & CEO of Credly talked about the evolution of recognition of skills.

Patrina Law from Open University UK (see badged courses at OpenLearn) talked about employability skills for Higher Education and how digital credentials can support learners transition from HE to employment.

My own presentation was titled “Skills without borders” and discussed Open Badges as boundary objects which can act as bridges connecting contexts of learning, experience and work. I presented three of my projects in which Open Badges have been applied to enable recognising and sharing skills across borders: BeuthBonus program for migrant academics, Open Badges Network for sharing good practice and bringing European stakeholders together and the new Erasmus+  project Open Virtual Mobility dedicated to recognising skills in Virtual Mobility programs.  You can find my slides on SlideShare:

To find out more about the Open Badge Summit, follow the Twitter stream using the hashtag #ModernEmployment.