José María Díaz Nafría

Building up eParticipatory decision-making from the local to the global scale. Study case at the European Higher Education Area

Democratisation in globalised social systems must go beyond the nation-state model.This problem is addressed in both empirical and theoretical perspective.The empirical work correspond to an eParticipation experiment within the EHEA.Its technical, socio-technical and evaluation frameworks are careful reviewed.eSubsidiarity is proposed as enhanced eParticipation based on positive subsidiarity. The social systems developed in the context of globalisation are further more complex that those arisen within the rule-of-law of the nation-states. The local, national and international relations impose into these social systems different force fields determining the space of possibilities in which they evolve. In this situation, the decision-making is correspondingly further more complex as to drive democratic participation from the root-level of individual members and stakeholders, all the way through until the global system. eParticipation represents a possibility to make it possible determined by the member perceptions of partaking in relevant decisions.A paradigmatic example of these globalised social structures is the European Higher Education System, in which very well defined local and national structures coexist with a normative field of globalised relations. Between 2010 and 2013 an eParticipation system was developed under EU support involving a significant number of universities from Europe and abroad. A flexible approach was used to adapt the system to the different contexts, whereas an analytical framework was set up to evaluate the experience in order to find guidance for future eParticipation developments. The socio-technical and analytical frameworks and the corresponding results are discussed aiming to propose a new architecture for eParticipation. This solution targets the challenges of the 21st century University in which the crossroads of learning analytics, eAdministration and eParticipation are deeply re-structuring the academic environment.

Ecologías de aprendizaje ubicuo para la ciberciudadanía crítica

El objetivo de este trabajo ha sido detectar y analizar los aprendizajes ubicuos adquiridos en entornos educativos expandidos destinados a la «formacion permanente de formadores» y como estos influyen en la construccion de una ciudadania consciente, critica y comprometida. Se han analizado las «soft skills» adquiridas para el desenvolvimiento efectivo en el trabajo o la vida diaria, mediante la exploracion activa del proceso formativo. Se ha tratado asi de detectar el aprendizaje ubicuo que suele resultar invisible para la educacion formal. Con este proposito, el estudio de caso aqui presentado recurre a una triangulacion de analisis cualitativo y cuantitativo de informacion multifuente (cuestionarios, entrevistas, observacion participante, grupos de discusion, diarios individuales y colectivos), que incluye analisis de red semantica de las expresiones de los participantes. Los resultados obtenidos nos indican que las «soft skills» relacionadas con la capacidad de desarrollo autonomo, el uso de medios y recursos transformadores, la potenciacion de la cooperacion social, la resolucion de desafios cognitivos y sociales, la potenciacion del compromiso civico y del aprendizaje funcional, que genera el aprendizaje expandido, se pueden convertir en un instrumento para el empoderamiento de personas, colectivos y movimientos sociales. Pero este aprendizaje expandido, como aprendizaje abierto y colaborativo, democratico y comprometido, requiere un apoyo consciente si se desea que las futuras generaciones no solo sean consumidoras, sino productoras colaborativas en un mundo socialmente compartido

Workshop: Digital Netizens at the Crossroads of Sharing and Privatising

In 1997, a review was published of the development of the Net (“a new social institution, an electronic commons”) pushed by the Netizens, as Michael Hauben baptised them.[...]

Evolutionary Systems. A Manifesto

After roughly 35 years of development in the theories of self-organization and related variants (chaos, self-organized criticality, and so forth), it is somewhat of a surprise that physics proper has not yet sufficiently found its entry into the ongoing quest for a precise concept of information. [...]