Jan M. Pawlowski

Handbook on Information Technologies for Education and Training

The handbooks goal is to enable the reader to gain a deep understanding of past, current and future research and applications in the field of educational technology. The reader will gain an in-depth understanding of complex theories, strategies, concepts, and methods relating to the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of educational technologies. Because it combines both the present experience in the field and the vision of its emerging directions, the handbook will be a comprehensive guide for researchers and practitioners working with educational technologies. All the chapters of the second edition are newly written, the handbook therefore presents the latest developments in the field.

User-Oriented Quality for OER: Understanding Teachers' Views on Re-Use, Quality, and Trust

We analysed how teachers as users of open educational resources (OER) repositories act in the re-use process and how they perceive quality. Based on a quantitative empirical study, we also surveyed which quality requirements users have and how they would contribute to the quality process. Trust in resources, organizations, and technologies seem to be of particular importance when looking at quality. In our findings, we derive recommendations for learning object repositories and OER user-oriented quality assurance.

Social Knowledge Environments

Knowledge management represents a key issue for both information systems’ academics and practitioners, including those who have become disillusioned by actual results that fail to deliver on exaggerated promises and idealistic visions. Social software, a tremendous global success story, has prompted similarly high expectations regarding the ways in which organizations can improve their knowledge handling. But can these expectations be met, whether in academic research or the real world? This article seeks to identify current research trends and gaps, with a focus on social knowledge environments. The proposed research agenda features four focal challenges: semi-permeable organizations, social software in professional work settings, crowd knowledge, and cross-border knowledge management. Three solutions emerge as likely methods to address these challenges: design-oriented solutions, analytical solutions, and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Global social knowledge management - Understanding barriers for global workers utilizing social software

Utilizing social software as a part of a global knowledge management strategy has raised increasing interest in enterprises as well as in the educational domain. Rather than being proactive, organizations tend to face barriers related to knowledge management after the problems occur. When dealing with social technologies in a distributed setting, organizations and individuals face a variety of barriers currently unrecognized in knowledge management literature. Within the study, we analyze knowledge management literature extending the body of knowledge with barrier analysis regarding global challenges as well as social software. Our focus is especially on knowledge exchange and globally distributed collaboration activities in organizations. We argue for contextualized understanding of the barriers, recognizing the challenges studied in similar activities. The paper concludes with a synthesis of these interrelated components, proposing a Global Social Knowledge Management-barrier framework that demonstrates the wide spectrum of possible challenges in globally distributed, social software supported knowledge management activities.

A Data Model for Describing and Exchanging Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes PALO

Employers seek people that match particular qualifications and graduates seek jobs that match their qualifications. This market is currently managed primarily using paper certificates and heterogeneous university management systems that capture achieved learning outcomes as well as corporate information systems that capture required qualifications. In light of trends toward increased student mobility, employability and lifelong learning, this situation is less than satisfactory. Therefore, in this paper, the authors propose a schema that facilitates interoperable storage and management of Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes PALO based on a common data model. This paper presents use case scenarios and implementations addressing these challenges and demonstrating the added value of using such a common model.

The European Quality Observatory (EQO): structuring quality approaches for e-learning

The quality of e-learning is not a well defined measure. Various proprietary national, regional, local approaches, limited to a certain domain/user group/context, are being used. There is no general framework for quality management, quality assurance, or quality assessment in the field of e-learning. Therefore, even certified products and services cannot be compared. In order to provide a framework for a common European and global market for educational products and services, a comparable, adaptable quality framework has to be defined by the relevant actors - these actors will be participants of the proposed community - the repository will be the information and knowledge base to provide reference information for users and researchers, leading to the development of a common quality framework. Additionally, we provide recommendations and support functions to facilitate the implementation of quality approaches in organizations and enterprises.

State of the Art Review of Quality Issues related to Open Educational Resources (OER)

The need for quality assurance mechanisms to support the development and sustainable use of Open Educational Resources (OER) are being raised in the literature and in European and national policy documents as a major challenge and opportunity. There is however, only little experience and consensus in research and practice on how to define and approach quality for OER, in contrast with quality assurance related to eLearning for instance. The notion of openness is posing additional challenges. The aim of this report is to provide an overview of Quality approaches and concepts for OER and to some extent, Open Education, with the aim to identify policy options for action at EU and Member State level to further promote the development and use of OER in Europe. The focus for the overview is on Higher Education in the context of Open Education as announced in the Commission Communication on “Rethinking education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes” (EC, 2013). This report introduces quality concepts and approaches related to OER. It provides an overview of definitions of quality for OER and suggests a conceptual mapping as well as an overview of major issues related to quality for OER. Where appropriate, it gives examples of relevant existing practices and initiatives to illustrate the conceptual mapping. It also provides insights on the role of different actors and institutions involved in quality and OER. Finally, the report provides recommendations for policymakers at European and Member States level on quality assurance and OER with the aim to support the further development and use of OER in Europe.

Skill-based scouting of open management content

Already existing open educational resources in management have a high potential for enterprises to address the increasing training needs of their employees. However, access barriers still prevent the full exploitation of this potential. Users have to search a number of repositories with heterogeneous interfaces in order to retrieve the desired content. In addition, the use of search criteria related to skills, such as learning objectives and skill-levels is in most cases not supported. The demonstrator presented in this paper addresses these shortcomings by federating multiple repositories, integrating and enriching their metadata, and employing skill-based search for management related content.

A Barrier Framework for open E-Learning in public administrations

A comprehensive literature review on E-Learning and OER in public administrations.A contextualized Barrier Framework about core barriers in the public sector.Lessons learned to improve implementation and adoption processes of open E-Learning.The relevance of organizational, social and technical barriers in the public sector. E-Learning and openness in education are receiving ever increasing attention in businesses as well as in academia. However, these practices have only to small extent been introduced in public administrations. The study addresses this gap by presenting a literature review on Open Educational Resources OER and E-Learning in the public sector. The main goal of the article is to identify challenges to open E-Learning in public administrations. Experiences will be conceptualized as barriers which need to be considered when introducing open E-Learning systems and programs in administrations. The main outcome is a systematic review of lessons learned, presented as a contextualized Barrier Framework which is suitable to analyze requirements when introducing E-Learning and OER in public administrations.

A novel approach towards skill-based search and services of Open Educational Resources

Ha, K.-H., Niemann, K., Schwertel, U., Holtkamp, P., Pirkkalainen, H., Borner, D. et al (2011). A novel approach towards skill-based search and services of Open Educational Resources. In E. Garcia-Barriocanal, A. Ozturk, & M. C. Okur (Eds.), Metadata and Semantics Research: 5th International Conference MTSR 2011 (pp. 312-323), Izmir, Turkey, October 12-14, 2011. Springer.