Are you a researcher with interest in innovation and quality in the field of learning? Or an e-learning practitioners who is inspired by online discussions on quality management in your field? EFQUEL encourages you to openly comment on our discussion papers, which are candidates for the inclusion into the INNOQUAL inaugural journal to be published in April 2013.
- Inspire and support discussion paper authors; and
- Engage in a topic centred-discussion in your field of interest
Please make sure to first read our short guidelines to make the open review a valuable experience for your and the discussion paper authors.
Most recent discussion papers
Please see the current INNOQUAL call for papers to learn about details:
| What is diversity – Attempt at a defintion as a contribution to quality development in teaching | The term of students at German universities currently signifies an increasingly diverse group. The acknowledgement, support and use of this student variety do not only constitute a chance (enrichment by way of variety) for the universities, but also a challenge (handling of variety). The question of how diversity-oriented (media) didactics can be organized immediately raises another question: What is diversity, how can it be defined? It is the objective of this contribution to show the necessity of precisely defining the notion of diversity forming the basis of (media) didactic deliberations in order to answer (media) didactic questions, seeing as this definition entails extensive didactic implications for the quality of teaching and learning arrangements. |  |
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| Evaluating an early childhood educators training in six European countries | The aim of the current study was to evaluate the training provided by the project “Early Change: Promoting the professional development of early educators.” The training was conducted in six European countries between October 2012 and January 2013, and the participants were 122 early educators from six different countries. The aim of the training was to help the participants develop basic research skills by teaching them how to implement an Environment Rating Scale, the ECERS-R. The evaluation design was based on the use of mixed methods as both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. The results supported the successful provision of the training both towards the improvement of the participants’ research skills and the enrichment of their knowledge. Implications for the educational field practice are also discussed. | |
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| Quality Assurance in the Open: An Evaluation of OER Repositories | The World OER declaration 2012 recommends that States join efforts to facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing OER, thereby indicating that OER repository initiatives must play a significant role in the development of Open Educational Practice. This paper is based on the analysis on a set of 80 OER repositories. In order to evaluate the quality of repositories, a set of ten quality indicators was obtained from an analysis of key literature. These ten quality indicators represent good practice in repository design, as they promote openness, sharing, reuse of resources and collaboration amongst academic communities. We discuss the incidence of the quality indicators within the actual repositories of OER, with the aim of providing a set of good practices for the design and implementation of repositories. We found that although the literature remarks on the importance of various features in repository design in order to achieve quality, it seems that the sample of actual initiatives demonstrate quite heterogeneous approaches.To develop successful OER repositories is important to consider the nature of the resources, meaning that these need to be able to be searched, shared, reused and that the users need to collaborate to create new content. Educators must be able to adapt, build upon, re-use, and share resources with other teachers, the only preconditions being citation of the original source and creator, that they be used for non-commercial purposes, and shared under the same license if the material is to be redesigned, re-adapted or translated. |
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| A results-based quality assurance toolkit for open and distance non-formal education | The paper describes the development and application of a results-based QA toolkit for policy-makers, planners, practitioners and auditors to use in assessing open and distance non-formal education | |
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| Training Language Teachers Through Multimodal Classroom Observation: the CLODIS Project | The CLODIS project (Corpus di Lingua Orale dei Docenti di Italiano per Stranieri) refers to a corpus-based research developed within the DITALS Research Centre of the Università per Stranieri di Siena (Italy), a public university specializing in foreign language teaching and intercultural communication. CLODIS aims at creating a network of digital resources based on a corpus of video recordings of classroom interaction in Italian as a foreign language to train student teachers of Italian as a second language. At present 104 video segments of 5 min. each have been transcribed and analyzed using ELAN, a linguistic software annotator that allows the creation, modification and visualization of every useful annotation. Future actions for further development of CLODIS are also described in the paper. | |
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| Learning and Work: How Innovations and Competence Development support the Learning Quality at Workplaces |
This article discusses how to achieve the best appropriate learning quality as the core objective in learning, education and training at work by combining the three dimensions learning history, learning innovations and learning standards. Only their mix can ensure to meet the learners’ needs and to provide the best and appropriate learning opportunities and learning quality fitting to the given situation at the workplace and for a long-term and sustainable improvement across vocational education and training. Main focus is set on the relation between learning and work within enterprises and vocational education training: The paradigm shift towards outcome orientation in learning together with the introduction of competence development are identified as two main facilitators and supporters to improve the learning quality at and for work. Main use cases for competences models are presented and the important roles of technology-enhanced learning and quality standards are highlighted. | You will be able to view the discussion paper soon |
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| A new classification for MOOCs | Up to come | You will be able to view the discussion paper soon |
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| The ROLE Learning Ontology and its Application in Recommenders for Self-Regulated Learning | In the field of technology-enhanced learning and self-regulated learning many different approaches were presented to support learners. In this paper we introduce a learning ontology that describes self-regulated learning in responsive open learning environments. This ontology builds on a model of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, tasks and activities and relates them to functionalities provided by learning tools. In this way it bridges self-regulated learning with the usage of tools from a Web-based repository in a learning environment. Based on this ontology, a recommender approach consisting of two recommender tools has been developed that guides learners through their self-regulated learning processes. [Read full abstract] | |
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| How LLP Projects Use Internet and Social Media for Communication Purposes: A Desktop Research | The effective use of Internet social media tools, and their embeddedness in the communication strategies are becoming fundamental to the success of the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) projects in this digital era. This desktop research is aimed at identifying how projects integrate social media to valorise project dissemination and communication activities and what kinds of social media applications are actually used in LLP projects. This research, based on the first analysis emerging from the selection of 150 LLP projects, has provided a first step towards establishment of a state-of-the art regarding practices developed in LLP projects and associated needs for further development of skills and competences. | |
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| Learning Quality in Vocational Education and Training and the Case of TUT: A 3P Model for Leading Integrative Change | The purpose of this paper is to use the International Personnel Management Association’s (IPMA, 2002) people, process, and products (3P) model to analyze and explore the process of learning and giving students tools in education that would lead them to become successful and responsible learners. Consideration will be given to areas and practices of the 3P model in a school system that creates a department-wide commitment to use flexible curricula to engage students. In this paper, an attempt is made to provide a general overview of the 3P model for leading integrative change and show how the seven components of the 3P model can be used as an index to measure the progress of change. The case of the Tainan University of Technology (TUT), Taiwan, is used to gain insight into some of the implications and excitement about teaching issues. The findings demonstrate that a true assessment of success is a sustainable future that is realized by raising the quality of education, research, and development that support the vision of collegial governance and academic freedom. | |
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| Improving Pronunciation of Secondary School Teachers Through Computer Assisted Learning: An Experience | This paper concerned with an experience of using computer assisted learning for improving pronunciation of secondary school teachers with a focus on English language and linguistics oriented training. The 50 subjects were given one month training and before conducting training, a group discussion was managed, and a Pretest of pronunciation (individual sounds, word stress and intonation) was administered. The pretest results showed that subjects were unable to pronounce individual sounds, stress words correctly, and intonate properly, but after training through computer assisted learning the results of the post test showed significant improvement in pronunciation of subjects’ individual sounds; long and short vowel sounds, diphthongs, word stress and intonation in connected speech. | |
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| Joint Digital Library of Open Educational Resources of Russian Universities | The paper provides substantial information on an educational Internet project “Single-Entry Window” aimed at integration of open educational resources of Russian universities and other educational institutions. The main components of the portal are an electronic catalogue of educational Internet resources and an open digital library of learning and methodical materials. The brief history and conceptual aspects of the project, the software functionality, the informational components, the structure of metadata, the questions of content management including the approach for resources collecting and evaluating are described and discussed. | |
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| How to Promote the Usage of Digital Media in Scientific Further Education | Promoting the usage of digital media in academic further education requires to rethink institutions of higher education in three points: the organizational structures, incentive instruments and staff development. Within these fields the project Q2P – as a service unit – takes place. | |
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| Quality assurance of higher education: National trends of development and accreditation in Kazakhstan | The article deals with current trends of development of quality issues in higher education. Due to the introduction of the latest educational strategies in Kazakhstan higher educational institutions have to improve its quality due to new challenges at national and international context and also develop the system of change management in order to build better strategies for current reforms. Accreditation is considered as one of the most effective instruments of measuring quality. Accreditation criteria and requirements can be taken as one of the effective methods for creation a system of internal and external quality assessment. Current educational standards have to be replaced by national quality standards. System of quality control has to be transformed into the system of improvement and development. | |
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| Open Educational Resources: Special Demands on Quality | The very central idea behind Open Educational Resources (OERs) is opening up the access to learning resources for stakeholders who were not the originally targeted users. This concept must be understood as highly innovative, because it describes a general economic and social paradigm shift: Education that formerly was limited to a particular (privileged) group of learners is now understood as a public good. In this context, it already is a remarkable achievement when authors and publishers make their contents available for the public and invite the community to freely reuse the educational resources. However, the usefulness of such resources actually often keeps limited to the originally targeted context because the context itself is not sufficiently described and/or appropriateness of the resources regarding other contexts is unclear. … [Read Full Abstract] | |
Discussion papers currently under revision
Papers currently under author revision after comments by the public and reviewers’ feedback to the INNOQUAL chief editors:
The above papers have been selected as discussions papers amongst submissions to the 2012 EFQUEL Innovation Forum (EIF) and are also part of the EIF proceedings. Evolved versions are considered for INNOQUAL publication 15 May 2013.
