Other topics, including evaluation practices, existing accreditation schemes, learner involvement, policy developments, and research opportunities will also be discussed. EFQUEL welcomes everyone in the field of quality and technology-enhanced learning in Portugal from 14-16 September!

Since its early days, the EFQUEL Innovation Forum has been a highly interactive place for discussing future and innovative practices, research, and policy developments in the various sectors of education. This edition will not be any different. In between our high-level keynotes, the parallel sessions will address each of the levels of education (higher education, VET, schools) and each of the activity levels (practice, research, policy).

Some session highlights


"Getting Real about Games: Separating Meaningful Learning from the Hype", Scot Osterweil (creative director of the Education Arcade @ MIT). There is growing awareness that games represent powerful systems for situated learning. If games-based learning is to be successful, we must clarify what the meaningful benefits of game-based learning look like. In this workshop we will examine models that effectively blend with, and add value to the current educational system.

"The Missing Link - Connecting Formal and Informal Learning". The net offers enormous scope for informal learning, and several interesting initiatives are attempting to provide frameworks for collaborative, student-driven learning. In this session we will discuss how such learning can be assessed and certified, and whether the formal higher-education system can find ways of integrating these alternative structures. Representatives from OER University, Peer 2 Peer University, Open Badges project, and OpenStudy will participate.

"Leading Change in Policy - How to develop Innovation Policies for Education". The profound societal transformations of the 21st century have dramatic implications for the way we think about education and its quality in particular. Inspired by elements drawn from futurist Ross Dawson's recent keynote "Transformation of Government", this lively policy session will introduce the work carried out by the SEVAQ+ project on self-evaluation of quality in TeL.

The EFQUEL Innovation Forum also features the CONCEDE User-Generated Conference on 14 September. Anne-Christin Tannhäuser, partner in the CONCEDE project, explains that when discussing the deployment of wikis, blogs, YouTube, or Twitter for educational purposes, the first question asked by educators is typically "How can we assure good-quality results?" She adds that user-generated content (UGC) poses a number of challenges to the current understanding of education and its institutions, very much due to its success. Working with wikis very much means to rethink the concept of authority. The CONCEDE event will deal with these and related issues.

Right after the CONCEDE User Generated Conference, EFQUEL invites all its members and interested participants of the Forum, to attend its yearly General Assembly for discussing EQUEL's future developments.