WLS 2021

After Corona: Transforming Higher Education

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Keith Devlin from Stanford University has been with WLS every year since 2013, where he first did a keynote on his experiences with setting up and running a MOOC in mathematics learning. He is featured in a Netflix documentary on that topic. Keith has done several keynotes since. He has hosted almost all of our later workshops in Silicon Valley. Together with Cathy Casserly, Karl Mehta (CEO of the learning platform EdCast) and Oddgeir Tveiten (founder, Future Learning Lab) he hosted the 2015 Future Learning 20/20 conference at Stanford, drawing together several hundred US thought leaders in digital learning innovation.

Keith Devlin is well known to Ed Tech enthusiasts and critics across the Nordic countries, a featured guest at numerous events at the Nordic Innovation House in Palo Alto, California. Keith recently retired as the Executive Director of Stanford’s H-Star Institute, an institution that over the years has hosted a large number of Nordic scholars to Stanford. He is the driving force behind the BrainQuake learning platform, a well known keynoter and a very valuable supporter of the Future Learning Lab, the research center hosting all these World Learning Summit conferences.

In 2020, Keith will open a discussion on how MOOCs figure in the post/Corona global learning eco system. A great speaker, so stay informed on that session.

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Courtesy of the University of Agder and funding for this year’s digital summit, WLS 2020 will be opened by University President Sunniva Whitaker and hosted through the university’s Media Center. The TV studio will be alive with some presenters and also students organizing the break-out sessions, taking interviews and transcribing the conversations as we move through the program. It will be possible to pre-announce questions and for the actively participating audience to use our chatroom services through ZOOM and Mentimeter. More info as we close in on the summit dates.

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WLS includes a session with Aasmund Hermansen, associate professor at Oslo Metropolitan University. Aasmund will present their four/year long and university-wide project A Better Student Experience. Here is what he invites for / please join in on the discussion on October 21st, first day of the summit:

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The first of January 2020 Oslo Metropolitan University launched a four-year program called “A better student experience” which will facilitate and develop measures that contribute to a significant boost in student`s well-being, learning outcomes, and academic performance. Digitization in education is a cornerstone of the program.

The student perspective will be the basis for all projects and measures that are initiated during the program period. The program is organized as four projects, with different sub-projects, addressing different aspects of the student experience at OsloMet. The main goal of project 2 “Quality in teaching and student well-being” is to ensure that students experience high-quality teaching at OsloMet and a high degree of well-being in their everyday life as students at Oslo Metropolitan University. Students must experience OsloMet as a university emphasizing innovation in teaching and varied forms of learning, especially student active learning. An important part of this is to ensure that employees at OsloMet possess the necessary competence to utilize relevant digital tools. Furthermore, a goal for the project is that students will experience OsloMet as an institution open to the sharing of pedagogical knowledge and with staff open to experimenting with new ways of teaching and learning.

Student feedback on courses being taught at the different study programs at OsloMet must be a vital part of the further development of these courses. At present course evaluations are performed in very different formats, thus an important part of project 2 is to support the introduction of a more coherent system for course evaluation at OsloMet. Organized as a sub-project, the introduction of a more coherent system for course evaluation will enable comparisons over time, investigating the possible impact of introducing new ways of teaching, as well as comparisons between different courses using different forms of teaching.

The project will also support sub-projects strengthening the foundation for students at OsloMet students experiencing a better understanding of why their studies are structured in the way they are. Students must experience that they have the necessary insight into comprehensive program plans, which elaborated how different courses build up-on one-another and in sum provides the students with the knowledge and skills they need to perform their professional roles.

Project 2 also consists of sub-projects with the aim of strengthening the student’s experiences of stable relationships in an academic context at OsloMet. These projects include mentoring of first year students` by more senior students, establishing small seminar groups providing a stable and safe learning environment, and other measures which will support increased mastery and strengthen learning outcome.

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Welcome to WLS 2020!

This year’s summit is digital and entirely devoted to the Corona experience we have all lived through in 2020. The summit will span two days, from 2PM to 6PM Central European Time. Considering that it is our 10th anniversary we have elected to bring back keynote speakers from past summits, in order to reflect on 2020 from the perspective of conversations we have had since starting up in 2010. Among these themes are “open education resources”, “open access”, MOOCs, “the global challenge”, Education Technology, “media literacy”, and many other themes. Please sign up to WLS 2020 and we will set you up with access to the webinars, talks, newsletter and update blog. More to come on this blog as we near the summit and continue our dialogs beyond it.