Special Issues
Initiatives
Best of EDEN 2015 (Click here to see the articles)
An important mission of EDEN has been to support the exchange of academic and professional experience, to promote navigation and information reach on the rapidly evolving scene. The EDEN conferences have become major events in Europe, with increasing attendance from other continents.
Research in open, distance and e-learning is indispensable to provide information for development, decision-making and quality of products and services. Even more this is the case as many changes occur and the pace, as well as the extent of innovation, often seem to be dramatically fast and wide.
There has been growing public interest and high demand worldwide for knowledge and education. Intensive social media movements are experienced both on the provider and user communities’ side, but together with skills deficit. The society would expect to improve efficiency by scaling up innovative solutions to better meet the current requirements.
The EDEN Best Research Paper Award was launched in 2008 and it is granted at EDEN’s Annual Conferences as well as at EDEN’s bi-annual Research Workshops and lately at Open Classroom Conferences. The selection process takes place in collaboration with the Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning.
The extended scholarly works of the finalists of the BRPA competition at the EDEN 2015 Annual Conference in June in Barcelona (Expanded Learning Scenarios), the Open Classroom conferences in September in Athens (Transforming Schools into Innovative Learning Organisations) and in November in Aalborg (Innovations with Digital Learning for Inclusion) have been included in this volume.
As the EDEN conferences in 2015 highlighted: we face complex changes, accelerated transformations. The ever-improving performance of digital devices and networking infrastructure continue to increase the appeal of new powerful instruments. The rapid spread of technologies, reflected in their untameable demand and use, the momentous development of research as well as practices inevitably transform the information society mostly outside of institutional settings and often along unexpected pathways.
Catchphrases of the EDEN events in that memorably successful year included accordingly:
Quest for enhanced digital pedagogy – Opening the classroom, to expand education Learning analytics – Empowering learners by- new generation of methodologies – Digital technology for learning and inclusion – Social contexts, Social media and learning environments for supporting inclusion – Pervasive/ubiquitous and mobile technologies for inclusion – Cloud-based learning/teaching/assessment – New digital educational practices; and environments; innovative educational strategies.
We thank the authors of this volume, representing seven countries in and outside Europe, for their committed and high quality contributions, enhancing further the EDEN tradition to acknowledge scholarly excellence
| Dr Ulrich Bernath Chair, Board of Trustees Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning |
Dr András Szűcs Secretary General, EDEN |
Budapest – Oldenburg, December 2016
EDEN contributes to the EU's civil society cooperation in education and training