 And we will discuss this important topic with the following panel members. Professor Mark Brown from Dublin City University, who is also Eden Executive Quality Member. Michael Gabel from European University Association. Michael is not here today with us, but sent us his video record with the presentation. Dr. Yasmin Djibarjan, Horschul Forum Digitalisierung, and from Stieferwerband together with Martin Rademacher from the same organization Horschul Forum Digitalisierung, but also German Rectors Conference. Please join us in the video to mask Yasmin and Martin. Elena Calderola from University of Paria, Italy, also Eden Executive Quality Member. Giuseppe Tullo, I hope he is with us. Professor Giuseppe Tullo, Deputy Director of Third Mission Outreach University of Baric. Sandra Kucina-Sopsic, Eden President from Stiefer University of Zagreb, Croatia. Andrew Schultz from Eden, Eden Secretary General from Hungary. And Professor Margarete Tere-Savicene from Evidovac Magnus University, who is also Eden Fellow. So thank you very much for joining with your camera. And in this panel of today, we will also broadcast the panel to Lidia Network Lithuania in Distance and Sea Learning Association Network, who is a partner of this webinar and also organizes European Distance Learning Week events in Lithuania. And I announced the panel members, and you can also see the brief descriptions of the honorary panel members at European Distance Learning Week website, also briefly here in my slide. And we will focus today on the questions that we will discuss to see how digital learning opens new ways for society members to start early careers on global scale, to seek for the possibilities to re-enter higher education at different stages of life, to seek for equalification in a variety of forms available today. Digital and Network Society is the new target group for higher education institutions, and therefore they learn in new timeless and wordless spaces. Such society members are always connected and online sharing and co-creating knowledge, developing and co-authoring innovations themselves. They may serve as the biggest driving force for higher education today, but also for quite a challenge to deal with. So we will discuss today what is the offer of digital learning for higher education curriculum in Europe, how is digitalization positioned in terms of higher education innovations in Europe, how far did higher education advance with the uptake of digitalization in Europe and how higher education institutions need to be supported in this way. We have today good practice example introduced by Germany in Italy. We will discuss how digital curriculum in higher education developed through the years and what is the added value of digital learning and teaching today, and which are the key trends in digital learning for research and discussion now that higher education cannot avoid and how they may affect university of tomorrow. And finally, we will see how digital learning may support higher education curriculum transformation in meeting the digital and network society of today. By this, I open the panel and invite the first panel speaker, Professor Mark Brown from WCPD, to address the first question. Well, thank you very much, Irina. Hopefully I'm coming through nice and clear for you. This is an interesting question for us to engage with initially, following closely on the heels last week in Dublin of the World Conference on online learning. I think a question like what is the offer of digital learning for HE or higher education curriculum in Europe or to rephrase why is digital learning relevant for curriculum transformation in higher education really digs a number of actually sub questions. Each of the terms actually need us to give a little bit more consideration. So in this brief opening few comments to set the stage, I want to just ask some further questions of that main question. What do we mean, for example, by the term curriculum? What do we mean by transformation? And also, what do we mean by digital learning? So I address each of those questions. I don't have necessarily absolutely abundantly clear answers, but sometimes the question is the answer. Firstly, what do we mean by curriculum? I think it's very important in the way that you're viewing the screen at the moment. The term curriculum in English is written with a small C. Sometimes it's written with a capital C and that makes quite a difference in its meaning. It's subtle, but very different. So typically curriculum when written with a small C refers to everything that we do within the education system. And in that sense curriculum is never neutral. It evokes what I often refer to as the three P's of education or three P's of the curriculum, politics, policy and pedagogy. All of those need to be considered when we're talking about the questions that we have for the panel today. You see, educators are more than just factory workers who deliver a curriculum. We actually have a role to play in shaping that curriculum and sometimes reshaping it and potentially to quote Neil Postman from I think 1977 teaching in a subversive way or teaching as a subversive activity. And so I think if we move to the term transformation, in this sense transformation is not a political exercise. Transformation for what? To what? Education in change or education for some type of transformative change? The concept of back casting might be very useful here. Where do we want to be and how do we get there? What is the transformational advantage that digital learning offers? So I'm again giving you lots of questions, not many answers at this point in setting the scene. Maybe transformation is not the right word. Other terms we could be talking about is curriculum renewal, curriculum redesign, curriculum reform. What's the difference between these? And then if we are talking about transformation, then I think for me I work in simple terms, usually in keep things into threes. Ah, John Daniels iron triangle for what was originally distance education, but I believe applies to all forms of education comes to mind. The iron triangle is made up of opening up access to education. There's no doubt that new digital technologies have tremendous potential to open up access to education. The second pillar of the triangle is reduce cost or cost more generally. You might even think of this as efficiency. Often a term we don't use, but there's again no doubt if we take the MOOC experience that new digital technologies do have the potential for mass pedagogy to potentially reduce costs. And then finally in the triangle Daniels talked about quality or effectiveness. When used well there seems to be very conclusive evidence that digital technologies can enrich and enable a curriculum that is much more effective, that is better if you like. But the term digital learning itself does require us to give it some consideration. There have been a number of terms over the years, e-learning, technology enhanced learning, computer assistive instruction if we go back, are these all the same? What do we really mean? In some respects currently the term digital learning is a bit like that air freshener that you spray around. It smells good, but what is it and what's left when the smell dissipates? There are some that argue, Charm Bain for example, but many others now that we're actually entering the post-digital era. That we need to be thinking of digital learning as if it is the mainstream. It is the new normal. Do we really need to put the word digital there? Are we just talking about new ways of learning? It's certainly something that George Siemens and his final keynote at the World Conference made a case, not for digital, but for much more nuanced understandings of learning. Coming to the end in these opening remarks, I think the term relevant also needs to be considered in the key question, why is digital learning relevant for curriculum transformation in higher education? Is it relevant? Well, I think I would say it's actually absolutely essential now. One cannot design a curriculum without considering digital learning in whatever form it might mean. You see for me the purpose, the fundamental core purpose of education, which learning is part of, but what we do is about education is preparing critical thinkers, critical consumers and critical citizens. And so the digital learning, but the digital more generally is absolutely crucial to each of those three components of being an educated person, particularly now to be an active and contributing member of society. One must have the kinds of digital fluency, literacy, competencies, whichever term you use in order to help shape and reshape societies that can co-construct with others better sorts of communities and societies for the future. I'll stop on that note. Thank you very much, Mark, for your very reflective and relevant reflection on this question. I see some echo. I'm sorry for the microphones, maybe somewhere still switched on. I think what you mentioned and Sandra also reflected in her comment in the chat. There is a very important question pending. I don't see all the questions still from the community here in this webinar, so please post your questions in the chat and we will have some time for this discussion. But these issues that you Mark address about curriculum transformation, digitalization and relevance, and then how we do with the concept. I think what we have is a very nice link that I would like already to make this bridge to the second reflection from Michael Gabel from University, European University Association, whom he makes with the initiatives from this link with those universities that are advanced in digitalization and those who still take themselves in position as traditional universities but might be already well advanced in the digital pathway as well. So maybe a survey is important for universities on the concept level, which concepts they use, how they think this transformation is going on and how we can position ourselves today in Europe and how we move on with the term that also Sandra points under here correctly in the chat, how we still discuss digitalization in this context. So kindly ask the director now to proceed with the Michael Gabel's reflection on these items as well in the video that we have from him. I would like to introduce you to a new project initiative which EUA is involved together with partners from university partners from Finland, from Ireland, from Latvia and from Germany, and we are supported by Eden and Eurasia, the college organization and also the Irish University Association. The project is about building higher education capacity for digitalization. We realized some time ago that there are a number of instruments for other education sectors, such as for example the selfie, which helps in higher education institutions to do a self-assessment on where they actually stand and how they could strategically develop. So we thought we would use the example of the selfie and try to transfer that to higher education. We also took some inspiration at the HE Innovate, which you probably all familiar, which also has since a year a page on our section on digitalization. What we try to do with this is to constantly date and the knowledge and get the data about digitalization at European higher education institutions and then on that basis to develop this tool for a strategic self-assessment, which will encompass all aspects of digitalization, namely learning and teaching, which will be the focus, but we will also try to include research, internationalization, outreach and also to some extent management and governance. And the last aspect is then that we hope not to do that alone, but to involve all or many of you and to use this as a stepping stone for community building through exchange of experiences and good practices. The project will start in January next year and will go up to December 2023. It's funded under the Erasmus Plus KG3. The first tasks in the project will be desk research on existing tools. We know already that some are existing, but the existing tools usually do not allow you to be used without external support. So I think that will be special about our tool. For the data collection, we will relaunch a survey that we did already in 2014 in which so far, as far as I know, remains one of the few sources, comparative sources on higher education digital developments. And we will then use this knowledge base to develop a tool, the DG High Education Tool, which we will test with university partners. And then also in the last year of the project, run focus groups with institutions to practice to use the tool, but also to further enhance it. The goals that we hope to reach through that, we hope to strengthen the development of strategic approaches for digitalization at higher education institutions. We know from data that a lot of is already going on there. There's hardly any higher education institution, which does not have digital initiatives in Europe. But we can also see that many institutions are currently starting to or try to develop more systematic and strategic approaches. So it would help them, the institutional leadership to explore perceptions and perspectives of different members, staff members across the institution. Those who are familiar with the AG Innovate or with the Self, we will know that feature already. And beyond that, we hope that it will help to enhance and facilitate intra-institutional strategic dialogue and collaboration and build a community of practice and offer higher education institutions than also to work with each other at their own pace through inter-institutional cooperation and benchmarking, which can be built on the tool. So that's it for the moment. You will read more from us in January, February next year. Thanks so much for your attention. Thank you very much, Michael. The questions that are right now in the chat, starting with Alistair's message a little bit higher about the need to identify how we develop autodagogy to enable active learning. Also by Ilya Hazano about the risk of digitalization and education, the impact on physical, emotional, cognitive processes. And for the questions addressed, these are the questions that have been tackled by EDEN, European Distance and e-learning natural practitioners. But when the European University Association started digital higher education projects and invited them to the associate partner in here, and you see how Michael presented the link in the project about solving universities, higher education institutions and identifying such practices. Actually, this is the call, good practice examples about the evidence, how academic community stands for quality teaching and learning and assessment, how we all need good practice examples. Continuous professional development can be the tool to solve these issues and it is constantly in need for revision. And we need also recognition, new forms of recognition of the academic community members who bring higher education forward. For this reason today, I'm so pleased that we have good practice examples from two outstanding countries. The first comes Germany. Germany and higher education institutions established higher education community platform to support their champions and innovative higher education teachers. So I would like now to invite Yasmin and Martin, I don't know which is the order of appearance, but please decide yourself and now please the floor is yours. You can use the navigation buttons of the slides below and I would like to ask you to share your experience. Yeah, Irina. Martin and I are very happy to introduce you to the HFD community certificate today. A tool we have developed in the HOSHO Forum digitalization to allow those who are committed to innovative and digital higher education teaching to make that effort in the field and their qualifications visible. So what is HFD cert exactly? It's an online platform that depicts and documents its users activities and individual commitments in their online portfolio by means of a peer review approach and gamification elements such as the earning of e-points and badges. The main objective is to make individual commitment and qualifications visible, especially those developed in non-formal informal settings. Besides HFD cert is also intended as an instrument to allow users to sharpen their qualifications or their individual qualification and competence profiles, so there's no prescribed curriculum. Users can basically submit any activities to the platform and that set their focus or set their own focus. Also, as all profiles are by default open but can be set to private, HFD cert is also enabling an exchange between peers, so users can browse, profile and identify users who have similar interests as themselves. And then I come to the next question. So who exactly is HFD cert designed for? The answer is simple. It's basically for everyone that's committed to innovative digitally supported high education teaching. So teachers support staff, students, especially student teachers. After closed data phase in December, starting in December 2018, we have launched or rather moved to a public data phase in February 2019 and have right now approximately 520 registered users who have drafted or submitted a total of almost 1500 activities. Besides, we work with high education institutions who can join HFD cert as partners with their own admin login. We currently have two partnerships, one with Aachen University and one with Friedrich Schiller University in Vienna and then also several other institutions that are interested and whom we are in the coordination process with. After these few introductory remarks, I would hand over to Martin who will tell you more about how HFD cert works exactly. Can you hear me now? Okay. All right. Sorry about that. So how exactly does HFD cert work? It's a very simple platform basically. After you registered, of course, you can submit any activity that you've done. Say you've written a block article about digital learning or you've recorded a podcast or you've restructured your teaching in order to include digital methods or digital tools. And while you submit that activity on HFD cert by just describing it, reflecting on what you've actually done and then you put in an amount of hours that it took you to actually do this. Say you've done some research for your block article and it took you one and a half hours to write it. And altogether you say, yeah, it took me eight hours also. So you put in eight hours and then you submit that activity to HFD cert where it is then placed in a pool of unreviewed activities from where other HFD cert users can then rate this activity by just verifying it. Say you are an HFD cert user who has been active on the platform for quite a while and already collected a lot of e-points, then you are eligible to just pick one of those pool activities and say, okay, for me, this looks valid. Once an activity gets verified, the user who submitted the activity then gets his amount of hours as e-points on his account. So once this block article that took me eight hours to write gets verified, I have then eight additional e-points on my account. After the peer review process, I get my online portfolio together with this new activity. So on my online portfolio, I can actually see all those verified activities which then makes it interesting for other persons to see what kind of activities I've actually completed. At every time, I can produce a verifiable PDF document from my online portfolio. So I just click download and this PDF is then generated as an activity list that can be verified by anyone who sees the PDF by a verification code. So it's actually a very simple process. Yeah, so I hope I made it understandable how HFD search works and look forward to your question. Yes, thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, Martin and Yasmin. I think it would be a good idea to post a link to the portal in the general chat. I'm sure people would see the impression of it. It's very impressive and a very important step towards the preparation of incompetence, this learning and micro-presensualization and recognition of national practices and champions in higher education. Thank you very much. Now we also, so I guess you probably missed one more slide which comes from your presentation. At least now it's on my window and we can see HFD set the community certificate as well. So the second country we invited to participate is Italy and now I would like to invite Elena Calderola with the Giuseppe Perlo to elaborate on institutional collaboration. Thank you very much, Irina. Can you hear me? The audio is good. That's perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you for this invitation to this seminar and the idea is that we had a ticket, Giuseppe and I, since in the previous year, we had an interesting experience in order to take a picture at the national situation about education and training in Italy through higher education system and looking also at public institutions. Sorry, there is some noise. Okay, a higher education institution but not only public institution and enterprises, companies and so on. The idea was to publish a book called Education and Training in the Smart Cities Year, Experiences and Perspectives and we were able to write down, to note down which is the situation going on in Italy. So the idea is that in Italy digitalization is going on, digitalization in higher education system and in public institutions and in companies are going on with different speeds, it depends, and the main goals achieved or the idea to proceed in this direction is in order to achieve soft skills, more soft skills for employability goals, is to prepare a path for students with more flexibility and personalization. Another point was just to prepare from some university student center and learning approach for the student and other two main points coming from this survey was that university are undertaking this kind of experiences in order to find out more intercultural approaches and above all internationalization of curriculum in order to find a way to exchange courses or experiences between Italians and abroad universities. This is the main picture about why higher education institution in Italy are using digital education to foster this kind of topics. Some Italian universities like Padova, Palermo and other from Coimbra group were, unfortunately not Pavia, were able to win the application for European universities alliances and the idea for them was in order to start project to exchange virtual courses and to have the possibilities from one side to exchange students physically, from the other side to exchange experiences in digital learning approaches, methodologies and disciplines. Other points was in Italy there is quite a strong experience in order of releasing of digital credential and to, how can I say, valorize this digital credential in the diploma supplement of the students and through the Cineca and the Bestra experience we were able to register some degrees in a block cert to an idea coming from the MIT project in order to recognize in some way, not in credits anyway with open badge, formal and informal learning. At this point many universities from Italy like Bicocca, Bocconi, Padova, Torino, Milano were able to recognize for their students a particular pathways with open badges or certified credential, digital credential, sorry. So the idea is that the European panorama, the Italian scenario is quite active from this point of view because and this is the final news just and then just I leave the floor to Giuseppe. We have two main providers in Italy for MOOCs, from one side EDWOPEN supported by 25 Italian universities and from the other side the University of Naples Federica. Through them we have a lot of MOOCs released for Italian digital universities and they are quite perfect initiatives in order to allow students to have some online digital experiences and have the possibility to attend the courses in other universities and ask to be recognized in digital credentialing. So the idea is this is the panorama from the point of view of higher education institution, from what is the institutional relationship between universities and other ministerial or private or association initiatives, I leave the floor to Giuseppe Pirlo, vice rector at the University of Bari. Please, Giuseppe, the floor is yours. Hi, everyone. Hello from the University of Bari. First of all, I want to thank you very much for your invitation to this very nice, interesting webinar and yes, of course, from the book we realized with Elena on the education in the age of Smart City, we found some aspects that have been now focused also at the regional and the country level, at the national level in Italy and some of these aspects that have been used in order to define some agreement between, for instance, the crew that is the conference of Rectors of Italian University and the agit that is the agency, the Italian agencies for Italia Digitale. And in this agreement, we try to move together and to move the country toward a common strategy for education in the digital domain in this case. Of course, this is at the level of individuals of citizens and also public administration. And of course, through the analysis of this picture that we have tried to realize through the book, we imagine that we need a common framework. Of course, this is also true at the European level with a unique academic strategy, first of all, to support the definition of a path that we have to do all together. And of course, in order to realize this strategy, there are some critical aspects that we have to face. We have to try how to share information, how to share protocols related to digital educational activities. We need to define a standard approach for self-assessment also for quality measurement. These are open questions. And of course, these are not simple technical aspects, but are aspects that require a complete compression of normatives and laws. And then we have, of course, in order to spread up with these opportunities offered by the use of digital in education to recognize certification at European level, certification based on digital education courses and so on. Of course, these are some very critical aspects. And at the moment, we can also say that in order to face with these aspects, we can also use more advanced technologies and approach in the computer scientists. And so in my domain, I know that if we have data large enough to implement an advanced algorithm, we can really provide a very advanced form of digital based education. When I say about the algorithm, I refer to algorithms, for instance, based on artificial intelligence for the personalization of the educational content, but also for adapting them in the best way. So the best approach for visualization and for domain specific realization of digital materials for free learning. So we are moving now in this domain, and we are engaging several experimental tests on some advanced technique for a much more effective and high quality educational system. So thank you very much. Please, Elena, the floor is yours together with Giuseppe. Yes, I can hear you well. Thank you very much, Giuseppe. I think the questions that you raised are very interesting. I see people who are listening with high attention, without a lot of chatting. But these two examples are specific for emergent questions. I think they link our different numbers in the end. And I'm happy that you raised that here at European Distance Policy. So now I suggest that we immediately move to something that is related to that, because some is here to give some ideas on how it continues to support the development in this area for more than three decades. So maybe some good links to what can be explored here. In Dublin City University, we were last week, we had Eden's fellow session, and now I see that the questions that come from practitioners are also on the level of recticon. Yeah, Irina, thank you. Can you hear me all? Okay. Well, I'm very happy that I can say something about Eden activities that we raised into this topic. As you can see, Eden is quite busy and very active. As we already have the fourth European Distance Learning Week this week, starting today with this webinar. What I find to just share with those of you who are maybe new to Eden is a few slides about Eden itself. So this is the network we aim to share and improve understanding among professionals and all other interested in distance learning. And our aim is also to promote policy and practice across the whole Europe and beyond. And as Irina already said, we are more than 28 years old organization. So these are our numbers. What I was thinking to talk about today and relation to Eden as the edit value of digital teaching and learning today, I didn't put all, but some of the highlights, which I found based on the last year conference which I attended and the discussions lately. So accessibility to learning materials and information issue of open education, innovativeness which we support and foster in teaching and learning. We already heard today about the credentializing and then one important part in formal education, but also in non-formal education and availability of different ways of learning and personalized learning pathways. So how can we even contribute to some of these topics? Our focus is to enable talking and tackling the most present and important topics, but also bringing even community and all interesting to discuss and to change ideas and know-how. And also providing the ground for collaboration and joining of efforts to foster digital education and digital culture for better life and well-being in today and tomorrow world. So we organize a number of activities and for example in physical events like annual conference, which we have in June every year. You can see the title of the conference for the last three years. Just showing you how wide and how we care about the issues which are at the moment quite present and of interest. Then we have research workshops, we have these symposiums. So we also look at the issues relating to the age education from the research point of view. How can research contribute as well to issues related in education, but also how to foster and engage the young researchers, the doctoral students to communicate, to collaborate and to get the more ideas and more information related to their work. And also we have open classroom conferences. We have a number of virtual events, like this one. We have regularly a webinar, webinars of the network area of academics and professionals. We have a European Open Education Week, which is organized in March every year. So quite a number of activities through which we try to provide the ground for exchange of ideas and know-how and possibilities to tackle the topics and find the new ways and new ideas. How can we ensure that education is better for all of us and in a way that will be satisfying for us? So these are some of the webinars and chats we organized. We did a webinar so you can see topics of really high interest and importance. And this one in the bold is the webinar, which was really the number, a height in the number of participants. Also a very important part that we found that even so we have one from one point the member, the academic and professional, but on the other point a very important group of people is Council of Eden Fellow, established last year. So this is a group of advisor, experts and professionals with the Eden Fellow group. The representatives of leadership, previous or current and the aim is to support the Eden with their proposals and suggestions. And you can see there are three ongoing projects at the moment by Eden Council Fellow. So it's even provisioned about the future of an open education trend within social political context. The Eden community, the role is and responsibility and values of members of Eden community. And in 2030 we are all looking quite up to the 2030 we had before 2020 now 2030 to be prepared to enable the education for everyone in a way which due to the each person in the best way. So also our aim is to collaborate with number of organizations, other organizations. So I think in that way we provide I would say a global place for all those interested in distance and online education to find some information, to collaborate, to share and to participate in ways within any of our cities. The openness of education is a topic which comes out quite often and you can see that we are very active in supporting this. But also what I think is very important in the way to provide this discussion is this additional value to digital teaching and learning is our connectedness with European Commission in a way that we try to follow what's going on to raise awareness about youth policy initiatives. We are all members of European training education and training 2020 working group on digital education, learning, teaching and assessment. Also through our communication channels we are disseminating information about what's going on in European Commission in the related topic. So I think this is also good for others to get more information about the policies and strategies and documents which are prepared by European Commission for the European Union. And I would just give a brief review that digital education action plan brought in 2018 was also something on what even is relating to and trying to follow and contribute. Also even was present at both forum on future of learning in Brussels at the beginning of this year and contributing to discussions as well. And also even was present now recently at the second European Education Summit. So I think that it's very important that if you have such an organization like even to get all information which are relevant and to enable through our dissemination communication channels and activities this information to everyone. So we are in position to do that. And lastly or what Irina already mentioned last week we had the even session at World Conference on online learning which was hosted by WCP University and the session was with even fellows on this picture are just some of even fellows present at the session. The idea was to talk about the topics which we found very important at this moment. And from those four questions I want to share with you the question on the credentialization was definitely the biggest group of people who had interest in this question. The room was full even the additional chairs were asked for. So I think that it is important to even further discuss and contribute to this topic. And also to be a place to be a space as well such like even where you can get and find the relevant information. So my last word will be contribute through this week as well. But for those of you who are interested in joining physically to be able to discuss come to even annual conference in June in Tumishuara. You can support us all here in the Q&A with questions pending. But people come, people go and we discuss new issues and new challenges. And sometimes we start bringing them from Europe to our member states or our national and institutional context. Sometimes vice versa. They come from institutions and go to European platform. We are so proud to have Andres in Eden who continues with Eden activities and member and community work for more than two decades. Therefore one of the most challenging questions we pose today for him. Andres what do you think what are the key trends in digital learning for research today and the ones that higher education cannot avoid but address and think. Thank you very much Irene. Let me check if you can hear me. Okay thank you. Thank you. This is one of the most complicated titles in this webinar and it implies a question and a statement which is really exciting and challenging. I try to give my reflections. I apologize for not being able to use my camera. There is some technical issue. Okay. Let me start with quoting two respected scholars, Olaf Zawadz-Kirishter and some Naidu who wrote a very interesting paper in the distance education journal and they have identified several eras or several phases in the open distance learning research starting with the professionalization and institutional consolidation from the 80s then the emergence of professional instructional design and the systematic use of educational technology. I think we all remember well when the top of the age and the has been the quality issues in distance education and then the student support may be considered as the next phase of intensive attention in research. The virtual university was one of the preferred issues also for the European Commission programs and also in the scholarly common speech followed by the collaborative learning patterns and the interactive learning MOOCs open educational resources area is the latest one which is still actually of course on the agenda. Regarding the latest publications which are of course pretty many the trend seems to be that from issues of effectiveness the teaching and learning practices and peer learning sharing information and developing the details of the solutions and good practices should be mentioned and as related teams the adaptive learning micro learning game based learning video personnel development and lately much emerging the social presence and identity in the cyber space as elements supporting online learning. Thematically the statistics which I have seen recently shows that the mostly attended courses have their subject as internet of things artificial intelligence machine learning that data extraction data science business analysis career chain statistics so you can put them more or less in two groups one of them related to the career skill sets so to say and the other one as the technology skills deemed courses the market reports clearly say that preference is strongly increasing for the online courses which are providing credentials and this is an evident link to the presently pretty much discussed and developed issue of the micro learning credentialing and these kind of things. The European Commission in their education and training 2020 actions which are finishing soon have been focusing on job placement learning translated to employment opportunities support of the career guidance the higher appreciation of apprenticeship programs supported by the partnerships between institution educational institutions and the corporate sector and more and more in a wider sense on the relationships between learning living and society so what we could call the trans sectoral and macro level of learning related research. Let me quote a few elements which I think are important and linked to the team of this presentation the study of the European University Association learning and teaching in the European higher education area. I remember very well when a few years ago EU Secretary General Leslie Wilson gave a keynote at the Eden annual conference and then she explained that the next important friend at universities would be that learning and teaching are becoming institutional priority. It sounds well it may be not that evident but both the findings and statements of this study as I trust our own experience is confirming that this is really a rearrangement of strategic priorities at the institution and let's mention two elements here one of the international cooperation and exchange of experience and the other the staff development as core elements of this learning and teaching focused approach. Well this is an observable and time by time confirmed trend that the universities integrate step by step the learning innovation in their strategies this happens in different ways most institutions prefer calling it blended learning for which there is hardly any reliable definition and the use of digital online learning depends so the implementation depends very much understandably on the type of institution and the target groups so the the learner groups which may take part in this learning analytics is also pretty often quoted and mentioned as a tool to improve the digital processes in this study it is said which is probably true that in Europe actually unlike like in the US or Australia or Canada the data are gathered but to a small extent used and followed up. Institutions are under a certain pressure to make their education more flexible and in the meantime however lifelong learning is an ever strong conceptual element in the institutional strategies but even in national strategies however the rapid skills acquisition seems to be more urgent or up-to-date because of the labour market needs and the economic situation also the study says that according to statistics out of 50 higher education systems 38 have a strategy for the use of digital technologies which is anyway an encouraging progress well this figure is not extremely well readable but what we can say that regarding the use of digital learning the trend is that all elements are increasing in their use and as part of practice and institutional strategy well but I was trying to explain was actually few highlights but I can see from the trends a bit ironic or perhaps even a cynical addition on my behalf is that I had the honor to attend the last week in Dublin the World Conference there was a pre-conference session of the ICD member institutions senior representatives and this is why I put this confidential stamp so not widely distributed but I felt a general opinion that open distance e-learning at most universities is still considered being you know kind of isolation and second class and second choice and lower quality judgment about it so this is still present and when we are making or strategic plans to improve the development of digital solutions in higher education then then we should take this into account there was an interesting suggestion that while this is also communication question namely it is not easy to find a good paper written about the explicit advantages of the online solutions so there are many you know questions, doubts, analyses, etc but encouraging and encouraging you know study about that what works clearly better by using online technologies which is you know something between the marketing and the scholarly writing would be useful mentioned there someone and there was quite an agreement we have however a sort of partners and allies in this and I just say that these are the students I use this figure I know this is okay this picture in which I have a deep trust saying that the students are always ahead so the in the higher education processes the consumers final consumers okay there may be a debate but they are always the students and according to their interest they are using the digital technologies in a smarter and more sophisticated way how well often the teachers could develop them and make available for the students probably we are speaking much less about the students interest role involvement and demands them that we could thank you very much for your attention I can hear you very well very much Andres for very insightful topics and comments they will be very helpful for our discussion that we will start soon but before that I would like to invite to bring a link here we already speak about the initiatives ideas that come from professional level and from those who are eager for digitalization digital learning development but we also live in a society in a society that is emerging in our days and it has specific needs for higher education curriculum so Margarita please enlighten me thank you Irene and the whole all of you can hear me I'm really very pleased to participate in this panel and I was very happy to hear the questions of first presenter Mark Brown about the meaning of what does it mean digital learning digital learner what does it mean curriculum and transformation of the curriculum or transformation from higher education actually it is questions what needs to be really discussed many times and in all the presentation it was somehow related to these questions so from the my presentation is from the point of research and I know I am short in time so I tried to just you know talk about the main issues main main findings about the character firstly about the characteristic of digital learner then about the learner's needs and the transformation of the curriculum possible transformation so three ideas so finding shows that actually digital learning is differ from traditional as we as digital learners would like to have information in smaller portions spend less time on analysis and take faster decisions in the faster world so a decision of small pieces of information becomes a characteristic of digital learner so we can all of us we can feel this tendency to focus on short news brief information and to go to that less than to go some deep specific reading but this is not bad white versus deep learning allows us allows adults to develop and demonstrate ability to see multidisciplinary collection that others may have never seen before researching the fine in the research the learner's needs we found that learners prefer different forms of resources videos audios readings in small pieces online courses with us about the teacher they also have special special needs for the virtual learning environment because there is a need for suitable time and peaceful learning there's a need to have special communication and collaboration tools but also they prefer learning environment with the time management feedback clear instructions teacher also is very important in the form for learners so guidance and feedback is one of the most important things so adults society members would like to control their time learn about exciting existing time limitations and choose pace and time for the for their possibilities also social networks are very important events seminar conferences and connection to other people so regarding the universities learners expect online courses and flexible study programs to be able to connect in their own time adjusted to work and family life including mobile devices so how curriculum can be changed to meet learners need there are five important important items we found so it is accessible flexibility content pedagogy collaboration assessment and recognition and shortly every item almost an item so the structure of the curriculum it should be very flexible and allow different scenarios including maybe learning linear learning and individualized learning self-paced even modular study program choices also content it could be preferable multi-lingual rich the variety of digital resources with short exercises short videos short modular modular authors adjustable for flexible learning besides design and self-directed learning so collaboration it should be somehow in the curriculum because it's the key issue of the curriculum as learning and teaching about digital among digital competent teachers and learners should happen in international multi-cultural collaborative setting engaging stakeholders learning communities and interest groups through networking and synchronization with other networks so collaboration is really important of course pedagogy should change and many people discuss about that differentiation and individualization of learning supportive and flexible in terms of technology and content the we can talk about the open educational resources separately but but this is very important for digital learners at this as open educational resources have a potential of making curriculum self-sustaining in terms of time cost and quality and finally assessment and recognition it's among the most changing characteristics and innovations awaited so immediate and instant feedback with this test digital credentialization and certification recognition of prior learning informal education preferred using digital badges and of course this final one is required most efforts still efforts and research research in the nearest future so thank you for your attention for the high education curriculum transformation in meeting the new thank you very much Margarita this is actually the result of what the society needs it's their declarations and then we promised panel we we had questions we also wanted short introductions from different initiatives that that we thought are very important and I thank you all very much for keeping this time limit because we had a lot of insight and now I would like to to reopen short discussion we still have six minutes to complete the session in time but please do post your ideas in the chat but also I would invite each panel number to reflect in the framework of one minute on how do we see curriculum we might change the word curriculum to digital learning if that is easier for us I became observant about Mark and Margarita's remarks about this concept that we use so please do state the statement that is closer to your heart but how do we see curriculum or digital learning in the universities of the future so I invite participants to post their remarks in the chat this session is being recorded and we will have the record available after this session but I will be inviting also one by one now the panel members to give very short statement of the characteristics that that you that you might name so let's start maybe now the other way around then Margarita as you are still connected could you please give me okay thank you so from my from my point of view yeah it should be it should be in the university in the university strategies and I think at universities well at least in Lithuania they have to be more open to society and to you know to take into account the need of the people that actually the situation has changed during the past five years and universities have the strategy if they want to to have more students more more influence on the society so it should be really more open more more based on those criteria that that on those needs that the society express them and that society shows in the university to change a little bit all those you know that are going to apply digital tools and it's a lot okay but yes sure thanks arena for passing the mic to me if you haven't seen it I said that for me the answer to the question really depends on what we understand the purpose of the university is in the 21st century and perhaps we don't all agree on what that purpose might be there was a tension between a traditional curriculum and the role of universities in some respects as the critic and conscience of society as distinct from the factories for the knowledge economy producing new skills for the 21st century I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive but ultimately I do see that universities have a very important role to create help shape and create better futures in what is still a very inequitable world that we live within so the kind of curriculum that I would like to see is one that challenges the status quo challenges some of the uncomfortable truths about the world we live in in the interests of creating a better future for all I know that's not particularly precise or detailed but for me that bigger picture role that universities play and how the digital technologies for better and worse can fit within that agenda with what we should be talking about thanks a lot Mark thank you Irina yeah I would say um for me there are three three pillars I would say um first of all I think future skills if you think about collaboration creativity we've been talking about that that those are key elements of would have to be key elements of future curricula across disciplines also I see a big um yeah um I see networks university networks a division of labor um cross-use networks as uh something that yeah should would benefit students to not only um that it become responsible citizens in a digital world but also to if you think about the employability the the chance that they would have to educate themselves more to develop competence I think this is um would be essential and also I think and I know in the in the chat we've already um touched upon more about students as um as shapers of the digital turn and I think it's important to include all status groups especially students as partners as equal partners and not only as recipients of um education and open the discourse to different groups and have them all because I think education especially in the digital age is it has to be a joint path so um I think it's also important to um yeah to integrate students and support staff uh teachers and make them part of the conversation and uh action what do you think what would your uh yes I think that also as we have already seen in the previous presentation uh in general pedagogic issues are not address suitable in digital based platforms so it's um quite normal that the the perception of the students is not always positive and in many cases also in our university they prefer traditional courses and um of course we need to to work strongly on the advanced teaching strategy for adaptivity and the personalization issue in order I think to improve the interaction between human machine the interaction experience for in in education and I think that university has now plays now a very important role in order to teach students how to learn using digital based educational system and this is a very important aspect because we need that our students will become digital citizen of the future and in order to obtain to this to this goal for instance we can try to include in a mandatory way some learning courses in the curriculum of the university this could be done at European level in order to let our students to become ready for lifelong learning strategies I think that of a paramount importance so at least for my experience in the Italian system is the production of a cpd initiatives in Italy because if from one side Giuseppe says that students who prefer to attend the traditional lessons maybe it is the reason is because teachers and professor were not trained in order to prepare good quality and and creative initiatives online so there is a drop out and the perception of low quality and and this is a general consequence of the fact that there are not efficient and sufficient cpd development in a in a in Italian context for this I I want to say that a lot of a good initiatives scattered all over Italy are raising and growing offering a very good result we needed to be to enter in a mainstream and obtain a standardization maybe and this could be our paramount that people tell importance from some rules coming from the minister and of course from a European commission yes thank you Irina what I am thinking is that the universities will develop under a strengthening pressure of their environments and their stakeholders and the stakeholders voice will be more and more loud and pronounced including the the the employers and including also the also the students so there were so many you know foresight studies in the last couple of decades how education and universities should develop and change and this was not progressing quite like that so this is a slow process but I think we can identify the impacts and the growing impacts slowly growing impacts of the stakeholders and I am also thinking that by the support of the professional and civil communities this pressure should be strengthened yeah I don't have much to add to all these already mentioned issues by former speakers today I think the it's very high pressure on universities today to think again about who are they students actually what kind of education do they provide for whom and also a very important part is training of teachers to be able to provide new ways of teaching and learning and I'm very happy that even it's here kind of platform to enable all these discussions and know how to foster educators to learn more to inform themselves to be better and I'm happy and I'm happy that they find Eden as a good space for collaboration each of you and all of you are very interesting very important discussion today for all of us for all our institutions and for Europe which is digital digital and learning which is matured very collaborative and cooperative but now should maybe revisiting the way we do our everyday things and see that the processes and learning and education needs the needs of all the stakeholders that we discussed thank you all of you for your participation in this panel and thanks to all participants of the webinar I would need the also to add here that all of you who have not registered to the webinar and wished to receive an open badge you can still register and here is the link from Eden's Secretariat and you know that agenda is full of open education of sorry of European distance and field learning webinars this week so please visit Eden website and make your own choices so let's go together thank you very much once again and