Inés Gil-Jaurena

Aligning Learning Outcomes and Assessment Methods: A Web Tool for E-Learning Courses

A learning outcome approach to teaching and a learning-oriented assessment are increasingly framing higher education. In an attempt to facilitate professors’ teaching activities, the TALOE (Time to Assess Learning Outcomes in E-learning) project has developed a web tool that aims to help trainers decide on the assessment methods to use in their online courses. Based on a conceptual model (ALOA) built upon Bloom’s revised taxonomy of learning objectives of the cognitive domain, the web tool automatically aligns learning outcomes stated by a user with recommended assessment methods. The web tool has been developed with the European Commission support within the Lifelong Learning Programme and it is publicly available. This paper presents the background and description of the tool and the results of the testing, where various stakeholders have provided feedback about the easiness and friendliness of the tool, as well as about the utility and quality of the recommendations it provides. Prospective of the web tool, limitations and strengths are highlighted in the paper.

Mobilizing intercultural education for equity and social justice. Time to react against the intolerable: A proposal from Spain

Abstract Education is suffering from the consequences of strengthening neoliberal policies, which impose an education model that serves the interests of the hegemonic economic system. The market rationale is being implemented in schools, moving the interests from equity to efficiency, from equal opportunities to performance. Starting from setting out a panoramic view of the way in which the intercultural focus in Spain has been used, with an approach to the different educational spheres in which we have carried out our work and research –educational policies, teacher education, school practice and education outside the school – we discuss the paradoxes and ambiguities that remove the transformative capacity of intercultural education and propose the reformulation of interculturality as an ethical and political project to subvert inequality by mobilizing to collectively create and enable images of education that contribute to a sustained way of building an equitable and fair society. Assuming our role as academics, we design a specific collective proposal on who mobilizes, with whom, as well as the attributes of the processes to be generated are discussed as well.

Lifelong Learning Policies and Higher Education in Europe and Spain

This paper describes and analyzes the set of increasing policies related to lifelong learning in Europe and Spain in the last 20 years. Lifelong learning and related concepts ― lifelong education, formal-non formal-informal learning, etc. ― are discussed to clarify and contextualize their use. The contribution of higher education to lifelong learning is specially mentioned. The paper provides an overview of the European strategies and programmes, acknowledging Europe 2020 strategy and its Education and Training 2020 strategy and the Lifelong Learning Programme (2007-2013) and its successor, Erasmus (2014-2020). Spanish policies and conceptions about lifelong learning are pointed out. The case of UNED and its continuing education activities is described. Special mention is devoted to initiatives about open education, framed within lifelong learning actions. Final section remarks some challenges and future steps, such as recognition and accreditation of non-formal, informal and open learning or integration of open education initiatives.