Assembly Meeting

Educational Technology WG (ETWG)

September 25th 2009, 12:15 - 14:30, SWITCH, Zürch (location)

Agenda

1. Information
   • Info about eduhub days (Montreux held on 27-28 January 2010)
   • CRUS 2010 report about the state and future of eLearning
2. Special Interest Groups
   • state of the SIGs. Special Interest Groups present a short account of their activities during the past 6 month.
   • creation of new SIGs. Interested SIG leaders, please contact us beforehand so that we can plan the meeting.
3. Switch and the Community
   • feedback about the community portal and activities (news feeds, calendar, eduhub events, etc.)
   • SWITCH services: CCSPs as priviledged contact points
4. Various topics

Meeting Minutes

(Presentation Slides)

Information

• Eduhub Days (Montreux, held on 27-28 January 2010): The preparations for the eduhub days are progressing. The program committee will finalize the program in its next meeting on Sept 30th.
• CRUS 2010 report about the state and future of eLearning: CRUS has mandated Prof. Fischer of UZH to write a report on the current and future situation of new learning technologies at swiss higher education institutions. It will also contain a collection of key success factors for innovative teaching in the future. The report is planned to be finished in the 2nd half of 2010, and will be presented to the swiss HE rectors. Prof. Fischer and CRUS have not yet decided about the structure and the content details of the report, and they are open for suggestions from the ETWG. Aude Pacton of CRUS will talk back in January (before the next ETWG meeting) to the ETWG and make a proposition about how it can contribute to the report. It was suggested to use the outcome of the eduhub days as a basis for contributions to the report.
• Sharing results from eLearning surveys: Matthias Rohs (UZH) plans to collect existing survey results that were recently conducted at swiss HE institutions and relate to the usage of new learning technologies. The results are merged and a scientific report will be written.
• Medida Prix: The Medida Prix will not be granted in 2010. The cancellation will be used as an opportunity to rethink the Medida Prix and possibly relaunch it with a different profile. One reason for the break is the missing financial contributions from switzerland in 2008 and 2009. The main reasons for that were: 1) high costs of the Medida Prix organization and administration, 2) the Medida Prix is not equally accessible by all swiss language regions, 3) the universities should issue the award and define the criteria.

Special Interest Groups

state of the SIGs

• Games and Learning SIG:
  The SIG has about 20 active members who regularly exchange their findings (by email) collect resources (in the wiki) and meet online (using SWITCHpoint Adobe Connect). The next online meeting will take place on Oct 9th about teaching business mathematics using a gaming approach. It is also planned to establish a showcase for videogames.
• Open Educational Resouces (OER) SIG:
  The SIG consists of a workgroup of 7 active persons. At its last meeting the workgroup decided to write a white paper covering the topics: why do we need OER? Why do we need a OER infrastructure? Why do we need an administrative framework (award, organization etc.)? The next meeting takes place on Oct 14th, and the participation particularly of the french and italian speaking regions would be highly appreciated.
• Funding e-learning reseach SIG:
  The aim of this SIG is to develop a proposal for a national research programme on e-learning. The SIG consists of about 7 active participants including representatives from the universities and the universities of applied science. It is planned to include also the universities for teacher education. As a fist, preparatory step, the group will launch a survey about the current state of e-learning research and and related domains.

creation of new SIGs:

Currently, no new requests for a SIG were submitted.

SWITCH and the Community

• feedback about the community portal and activities (news feeds, calendar, eduhub events, etc.).
  SWITCH invests considerable resources into the activities of the swiss e-learning community (the eduhub). In order to optimally benefit from these investments it is important to get feedback from the community. What activities are useful, and what is to be criticised/improved? SWITCH will make an online survey to identify potential improvements of the service portfolio.
• SWITCH services - CCSPs as privileged contact points:
  SWITCH has traditionnally well established contacts with the top-level management of universities and with the IT service departments. The experience has shown, that e-learning and didactical support centers are important players for SWITCH and the SWITCH community as well, and that communication has not always been optimal in the past. For this reason, SWITCH tries to improve the relation with the e-learning and didactical support centers. Concretely this is done by supporting the eduhub, and by talking and listening to the ETWG.

Varia

• Patrick Jermann has received a research grant starting on January 2010, but he will continue his activities in the ETWG.
• Per Bergamin invites to the SFEM 2009 conference on the topic Lernen mit 'Web-Medien', http://www.educationalmedia.ch/
   

Participants

Matthias Scheidl, ETHZ
Per Bergamin, Fernuni
Pierre-Yves Burgi, UniGE
Aude Pacton, CRUS
Nadia Spang-Bovey, UniL
Hansjörg Lauener, UniBE
Andy Zbinden, SWITCH
Gudrun Bachmann, UniBas
Isabella Rega, USI/SUPSI
Koni Osterwalder, ETHZ
Andreas Röllinghoff, SWITCH
Petra Kauer-Ott, SWITCH
Patrick Jermann, EPFL
Rolf Brugger, SWITCH

Excused:

Nicolas Kramar, UniL
Eva Seiler, UZH
Hervé Platteaux, UniFR
Andrea Helbach, ZFH
Andreas König, ZHAW
Stefano Tardini, USI/SUPSI
Luca Botturi, USI/SUPSI
Kalli Benetos, UniGE
Brigitte Schmucki, ETHZ