 Good afternoon everyone. I hope you can hear me okay. Yes, good afternoon again. I apologize for this slight complication with the technical setup. No, I hope you can hear me well. Thank you for the feedbacks in the chat. Please warn me if something would go technically wrong. My name is András Szücs. I serve as Secretary General of Eden, the European Distance and D-Learning Network. One of the reasons of the slight delay was also that just in the last hour before starting this webinar, we had a very important and useful phone conference with the ICDE, the World Organization for Open and Distance Education about the involvement of the Continental Regional Associations like Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, etc. Just to share you the pleasure of having a very constructive and good meeting which will help the cooperation and synergies between the large organizations in different continents. I was invited to speak about an initiative about a project which is supported by the European Commission. The aim of this project is in the higher education sector to support the strategy development, the work of the high level decision makers in introducing the latest forms of digital and online instruction at the universities and to help to develop comprehensively the strategies for the institutional realization. The name of the project is the Transform. It is quite usual to have such an acronym for these European Union initiatives, but it says that digital resources are a new strategic factor for innovation and modernization in higher education. You always have to be pretty creative in inventing such acronyms because it may contribute to receiving the support from the Commission if it is attractive and positive enough. The European Commission has different support schemes in the field of education. In these years, this is what is called Erasmus Plus. This is one of several educational and learning innovation and modernization action lines. Here at the first few slides we summarize what is this project for. The target group are leaders of the European universities, really the high level senior management, if you wish. The aim is to understand better the role of but it is called E-education for developing the strategies and the modernization and transformation of the institutions using the latest generation of digital resources, including open educational resources and massive online courses. Shortly, about technical detail like the composition of this partnership, we have a very strong coordinating institution in France, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, the University of Laurent, a company from the UK Zero Consulting, which has been pretty successful in providing contribution and impact at the European Union. Programs, one of the leading online European universities, Universitat Uberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, then the Polytechnic of Milano, all organizations and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. We have an international advisory board which consists of presages, scholarly people and supports by healing meetings, supervising the progress of the project to the achievements. What does the project do in the last, in the first two years, sort of research about the business models in this open education and digital education field collecting case studies and university strategy supporting recommendations. It is quite a challenge to organize, but we call leadership schools for university governance. The first one will take place next week in Barcelona and then next year in Paris. Among the project tasks and aims is also the development of an own de-transform MOOC, which should be here is a short description about the leadership school for which very intensive preparations already take place. Next week again at the Universitat de Uberta de Catalunya in Barcelona. As I mentioned the target audience identification for this leadership school is pretty ambitious, targeting rectors, vice rectors, deans and institutional director level people. It is particularly ambitious because this leadership school will last five days next week and this is really exceptional to be able to attract these kind of people and several or many of them. We have already a few dozens registered to this event to be far from their universities and offices, but maybe also because Barcelona in the middle of November is not a very bad place. Anyway, so we look forward as I see the progress of preparations and well populated leadership school with rich program. We were able to attract really high level speakers, probably one of the reasons of the success of recruitment of the university leaders and of course this several days spent together in a conference hotel in Barcelona gives opportunity for networking sharing experience to have a better understanding about the policies but also for the actual work of the university seniors to receive some new knowledge and new skills in strategy and the actually more and more important business model issues. This is a list of key topics extracted from the conference or leadership school workshop, how should we call it, program understanding the new generation of learners, the role of digital libraries, then something which is definitely very much worse of discussing without interruption. How can the the higher education institutions adapt a positive approach towards learning innovation, online solutions and the respective institutional organizational and operational changes. One of the issues high on the agenda is in these years is the online assessment and with the increasing capacity and performance of the digital devices this online assessment solutions in particular the authentication part is actually what I have seen really impressively developing and presenting such solutions of appropriate credibility to the university leaders can help a lot to convince the decision makers to rely to a larger extent on the digital solutions in higher education. Then again there is a lot of information, communication, news, gossip and whatever about MOOCs but they may mean is this a kind of hype, something fashionable or something substantially really contributing to the higher education institutions operations. Well then lessons to be learned, a lot of case studies and then how to apply and introduce in the own institution this potential development, the change management techniques. A few words about the MOOC which the project consortium is expected to develop, support the previously mentioned strategic and conceptual ideas. Still we cannot stop pushing the awareness raising about the online and digital potentials, what they are good for, what they are how they can and even on larger scale on the educational systems and all this on executive senior level at the universities. In the meantime compulsory I can say networking element. Well I have more or less explained in the previous slides but the slides but the expected outcomes should be. I would say to get closer to a critical mess on the university senior leadership level to the better understanding and willingness to rely more and introduce and apply the latest and more credible and consolidated solutions of the online learning. At the part of the project activities has been sort of well research, a survey including Spain, France, Italy and the UK as examples including the context of the national developments to the EU policies. A few words about the EU policies in this field. Well as the title of this slide also says it is often justifiable to use a critical voice regarding how the EU policies are developed, how relevant and what is the grade of success in their promoting change. Let's identify three phases of this digital learning EU support. The Lisbon strategy according this is a quotation from the wording of the respective part of this EU strategic document. The key words have been principally quality access and cooperation. As next phase in the meantime of the Lisbon strategy implementation we further integration of the ICT enhanced solutions was on the agenda and some adjustments to the sectorial programs as written here was implemented in the EU 2020 program from 2010 to 2020. The educational sub program so to say was the opening up education scheme which already included the open educational resources and MOOCs issues. Actually in particular after the halftime of the EU 2020 strategy when we have more and more clearly witnessed an economic crisis in Europe certainly and therefore the policy aims of the European Commission. So actually I would say the vocabulary of the Commission regarding how the world of learning the education and training priorities and conceptual approaches should be shaped. This became quite how should I say pragmatic. So the catch words or the key words also in the Commission programs became employability, economic growth and the respective contribution of the educational institutions to these changes and developments. This opening up education scheme the timing was not quite ideal. You see it was in 2013 practically before the European Parliament elections and the new European Commission set up which is as always accompanied by quite some changes in the senior leadership of the directories, generals, the concepts of implementation etc. So this is not a very strong document and another initiative earlier this year the new skills agenda again this is about skills supporting employability and economic growth is the next step. So I wouldn't say that there is a strong policy background no for learning innovation, digital learning development. And yes this is some quotation about critical voices regarding the European Commission programs implementation which again is suggesting a pragmatic I should say more downwards and focusing on networking access issues less than about the methodology, digital learning, digital pedagogy issues and well I think with good reasons there are some implementation and management problems those who raised. Yes well I just would like to show this slide about the keywords of the EU 2020 program main outlines I guess this is not very new for most of you. Just I am recalling what has earlier been mentioned about the necessity of developing educational of their competencies coming from the economy the strong voice of the corporate stakeholders in the meantime criticizing the performance and efficiency of the university education the dropout rate and trying to trying to push the higher education to play let's say more useful role in the European agenda. Just a few words about the findings in this case studies in the countries investigated in digital policies well perhaps it is not very surprising to see that in France the overwhelming power of the state and government the centralized movements and actions are dominant in the meantime my impression has been that there is a correct resourcing mostly for the implementation of digital policies in the institutions not mainly at the universities but in many cases there is a sort of either regional or structural cooperation among the development agencies educational institutions research and including corporations yes the Italians per nature are often enjoying a relative autonomy in Spain probably also due to the the well not very strong shape of the economy and the lack of governmental resources this what was described as a non-state actors these three mega companies is characterizing the scene in the UK I find this as a very appropriate wording it is not my wording that the discontinuity in the public policies I would add that in the meantime quite a pragmatic and down to earth approach is characterizing the the actions we should add in the meantime that the role of the open distance digital online learning solutions has well a really pretty high professional and implementation culture in the UK quite higher than in many other parts of Europe let's say the only region where this very professional culture for open and innovative learning is higher is this Scandinavian region of course so in in few words justice justice introduction you will remember this initiatives the UK University and University for Industry which were announced and large impact expected but but finally closer to failure than success in the introduction of this webinar we have we have offered also some insight in the business models of the open education models uh professor Beksic who is no senior researcher at the serial consulting one of the project partners has assembled mostly the following sites so I am using this as a quotation from him as a sort of project deliverable um the open educational resources are present in all the countries of the European Union and are to some extent followed up or acknowledged by the government as well central financing is an exception with France or Slovenia in the meantime it is uh it has to be uh acknowledged that uh vice the open educational resources play an important role in the uh informal non-formal learning sectors but in higher education they represent only a small part of the student uh portfolio uh at least as it is uh put in the curriculum um well for MOOCs again uh understandable that uh it is present everywhere however with a relatively uh low level of of activity well of course the scenario is changing every month or semester only in France we can report about sort of national policy for the MOOCs and the picture is quite diverse when we have a look at um the impact of MOOCs on the university strategies and in particular on their practical uh implementation um I am quoting again Professor Beksic listing here the MOOC business models uh one which we can call as freemium this is uh then which is based on the free access then this indirect financing uh sort of implementation called loss uh leader where the invested efforts are recovered either by a measurable impact on the popularity or recruitment power of the institution or as in the civic role uh model uh when uh not institutions economic results but through their social mission is this MOOC activity uh enoliged uh and um finally this hovering model uh is again a sort of indirect approach of course to the investment recovery um uh what about this uh link the dimensions of the MOOCs developments uh the um research dimension is evident the MOOCs have contributed substantially to the um enoliged contribution and presence of the digital solutions in the higher education sector and this was quite a sort of breakthrough for the uh learning innovation solutions uh at the universities and it is opening quite some opportunities to research in areas with the presence of a large scale measurable researchable uh activity uh in the institutions um the improving and um rapidly developing of uh capacities and the performance uh of the lead generation digital devices and the speed and the capacity of the networking helps uh also in what is here called the third party uh model this is clearly a business issue through the online presence and the step by step and practically byte by byte measurable activities of the students in the digital systems of the institutions is offering the opportunity to be sophisticated uh learning analytics solutions which may of course have a business dimension regarding their behaviors and uh and student data and uh as long the MOOC models are not only focusing on the higher education part but uh extended to the vocational and professional training professional further um uh education and uh retraining then of course the business uh feasibilities further increasing um thank you so much uh this is the end of our presentation and um I I am not sure if I was properly instructed regarding whether it is expected to have some uh questions or comments uh to the presentation I may need some advice from my colleagues but in any case we have a few more minutes for an eventual eventual um such communication yes I am advised to invite questions I think the what the technology allows is principally to do it in the chat box um if there is any I will try to do my best to respond okay if this is not the case then I thank you very much for your for your attention and I would like to close then this uh webinar no uh let me mention that this is one of the activities of Eden for learning innovation ICT enhanced learning development I invite you to contact the secretariat or myself you can easily find the possibilities on the Eden web thank you very much indeed