UNESCO IITE participated in the European Distance Learning Week 2019 (EDLW 2019), which was held on 11 – 15 November 2019. The online event was hosted by the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) in cooperation with the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia and the United States Distance Learning Association.
This year the European Distance Learning Week was aimed to discuss a variety of cutting edge topics in open and online learning. The programme of the event included the following webinars:
- Why is digital learning relevant for curriculum transformation in Higher Education?
- Distance Education: Challenges on the European and the Global Level
- What might the future hold for distance education universities?
- Future perspective in open routes: the quality and assessment dimension
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education
- The journey to social justice and openness in online and distance learning (ODL)
Over 1600 participants from 65 countries, encompassing all continents of the world and demonstrating a strong geographical coverage and a substantial outreach, took part in EDLW 2019. 37 facilitators contributed to the implementation of the event’s programme.
During the European Distance Learning Week 2019, Ms. Svetlana Knyazeva, Chief of the Unit of Digital Pedagogy and Learning Materials at UNESCO IITE, contributed to the webinar “Distance Education: Challenges on the European and the Global Level” by delivering a presentation about the UNESCO Global Initiative “Futures of Education: Learning to Become”. This initiative, launched during a high-level event at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 25 September 2019, is aimed to rethink education and shape the future. It is catalysing a global debate on how knowledge, education and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity.
As a recognition of active participation and contribution, the participants of EDLW 2019 received digital open badges from EDEN.
More information about the European Distance Learning Week 2019, including recordings of the webinars, are available at the EDEN website.