Merit pay for teachers - rambling thoughts on the issues

One answer to the issue of bad performing schools/students in the US has been the idea of merit pay for teachers. The Economist  reported on the topic recently using the case of New Jersey state, which, according to the article, has a real problem in its hands already since more than 15 years. Ugh..that's a long time, a whole childhood, if you wish..

Although they have been under the supervision of New Jersey’s state government since 1995, there has been little improvement since then. Only 40% of students read to the standard prescribed for their age, and in the 15 worst-performing schools the figure is less than 25%. More than 30% of pupils do not graduate. Few of those who do are ready for higher education. Of those who entered one local establishment, Essex County College, in 2009, a whopping 98% needed remedial maths and 87% had to take remedial English. As a result, fed-up parents are taking their children out of Newark’s public high schools and placing them in independent charter schools. Many public-school buildings now stand half-empty. The best teachers often leave in despair.

Merit pay for teachers Bonus time
A new contract for teachers is shaking up New Jersey’s largest city

It's impossible to understand the whole magnitude of the problem, but for now, I'm only wondering how such merit pay system works in an educational establishment? What is it based on? What does it really evaluate? Does it take into account how the students' perform, say, during the last academic year? Or how did they perform with other teachers for that matter? Or does it only concentrate on the teacher? What is the baseline for the evaluation? How well did you teach last year? How many hours you taught for a give group of kids? How well the kids that you teach perform in a standardised test over a period of time (which period;)? Is your "merit" based on your average performance with different group of kids if you for example teach math to several groups of kids?

Creating metrics for teacher performance has gotta have been a hec of a job, they probably spent lots of resources trying to figure that out. And then, I would also like to see how does it plays out in the school itself. Is the performance of all the teachers fitted on the normal curve to give the "grades"/merit pay? What if all the teachers' started teaching better, does it mean that non of them get any extra money?

I pay lots of attention to the TALIS study (OECD, 2009) where teachers' appraisal and feedback mechanisms as well as the feeling of self-efficacy are studied and discussed. The whole issue isn't only about the "quality" of teachers'  performance that is delivered to the kids, but the Professional Development and teacher cooperation opportunities in general play an important role too. Placing more emphasis on those factors might be a more helpful way forward..

Pedagogical Innovation and Connected Minds: two interesting reports

Teacher Network - Today's and tomorrow's challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession

We have just finalised a new book, the title is "Teacher networks - Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession". It's now at the printer and the launch event will take place later this month (Nov 14) at the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels.

I'm pretty exited about this, it's one of the major outcomes of my last project (www.tellnet.eun.org) that I've run for three years :)

Teacher networks - Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession from European Schoolnet

FP7 priorities for Creativity and Learning

Over the summer holidays, EU's new FP7 priorities for 2013 funding were communicated. Challenge 8. is related to learning, namely called "ICT for Creativity and Learning"

...Europe must also support national efforts to help students to learn better, teachers to teach better, and school systems to become more effective. This goal can be greatly advanced by learning systems that can adapt to effective use in a wide variety of diverse contexts.

Under 8.2 (technology enhanced  learning), they also mention Learning Analytics:

b) Learning analytics, educational data mining: tools and processes for collecting, storing, exploring and reasoning on large-scale educational data to better understand learners' knowledge, assess their progress and evaluate environments in which they learn. These tools and processes should aim at improving learning and teaching (including 21st century skills) for students and instructors.  

Learning analytics has now become such a hot topic. So, like all the others, I'm also studying the topic. Here is a link to my recent paper on learning analytics. I presented it this summer at “Open and Social Technologies for Networked Learning” in Tallinn.

Use of personas in communication (Professional Development Workshop)

"Personas" are used in marketing and product design to represents a group of customers so that the company can better focus its efforts. In companies such as Ford Motor Company, Microsoft and Reuters, personas are used to help better understanding of customers . A persona has a name, face, motivations, and goals - yet it is fictitious.

We in eTwinning also use personas to help our 27 National Support Services (NSS) better segment their "market" and focus their efforts. This time (June  27, NSS PDW) we worked on communication strategies. First all the six eTwinning personas were introduced (see the slides below). Then we set up groupwork to think of strategies; first of all,  how the NSS can identify eTwinners who belong to different personas?  and then, what are the strategies to communicate with them?

Identifying an active eTwinner like Maria or Peter (slides, page 8 and 10) can be rather straight forward for the NSS. They can use the "NSS desktop tools" that allow monitoring eTwinners' activities in their own country. Especially Marias are someone that the NSS staff already knows rather well and is most likely already in continuous communication with (they are often times also "eTwinning Ambassadors").

However, the most interesting and "potential" eTwinners for NSS are Marcus, Lucia, Shaun and Nina (slides, pages 12, 14, 16, 18) . They already are aware of eTwinning and have most likely established an account, but for a reason or another, are inactive or dormant users. In the workshop, we brainstormed better and more efficient communication strategies for these personas.

eTwinning personas

View more PowerPoint from European Schoolnet

Social Analytics for eTwinning

For the eTwinning report in 2011, I worked on creating a conceptual framework for eTwinning Analytics with a little "proof of concept"-study. The report itself is only for internal use, but we re-worked it into a research paper. The paper contributes to the field of Learning Analytics, which is pretty hot right now (see LAK12). This combines my personal research interests as well as my work (e.g. the Tellnet project, monitoring eTwinning).

An interesting thing about the framework is that we build it around the OECD‘s indices for teachers’ co-operation. This was one of the outcomes of the TALIS study which is one of my favourites. The TALIS study takes a wide look into teaching as a profession in a number of OECD countries. 

The definition of eTwinning Analytics follows the one from G.Siemens (2010) on Learning Analytics in general:

eTwinning Analytics focuses on the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about eTwinners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising their co-operation and the environment in which it occurs. The goal of eTwinning Analytics, therefore, is to offer eTwinning stakeholders better tools to monitor the action through emerging trends and patterns upon which they can better base their decisions.

The paper can be downloaded here!

Social Learning Analytics to study Teachers’ Large-scale Professional Networks  
{Riina.Vuorikari, Santi.Scimeca}@eun.org  

Abstract. A growing interest in research focuses on teachers’ large-scale socio- technical networks. Social learning approaches such as social constructivist theory is well established, however, the current challenges lie in creating reliable methods to gather evidence of how and under which conditions social learning takes place in such socio-technical networks and how does it support teachers’ lifelong learning goals. The field of Learning Analytics (LA) addresses the issue of individual learners, whereas Social Learning Analytics (SLA) addresses that of groups’ processes in knowledge construction. 

 The eTwinning action is used as a case study for applying the concepts of Social Learning Analytics. Our interest is on teachers’ co-operation behaviour and patterns within a socio-technical network and how that can support teachers’ continuous professional development. The eTwinning platform currently hosts more than 160000 European teachers. We first introduce the underlying pedagogical and lifelong learning related assumptions regarding teachers’ co- operation. To better understand the type of activities that teachers undertake in eTwinning, they are classified according to the OECD‘s indices for teachers’ co-operation. This creates the core of the eTwinning Analytics framework, which operationalises activities and allows them to be better measured and monitored. A snapshot of data from the platform is used as a proof of concept.

A set of case studies focusing on "school teams"

As part of my assignments for 2012, I'm running a set of case studies on eTwinning school teams. The full set of case studies will be published on the eTwinning website and a sub-set will become a printed publication. They will come out at the end of 2012. The objective of these case studies is: to better understand eTwinning teams in schools; to analyse existing models of school team in eTwinning, andto understand what makes them work (enablers) and what not (inhibitors).

The case study framework includes the following aspects:

• Different models of school teams (i.e. whole school approach lead by a school head vs. teacher-led innovation) and the proportion of teachers in the school who are part of the school team 
• What kind of roles exist in teams within school and outside of school (involvement of internal and external actors in the school team)
• School organisational climate (e.g. vision on ICT integration, international collaboration, cross-curricular work, the whole school approach, history of innovation), 
• Organisation of learning (layout of the learning units; allocation of students into learning groups) both in school and out of school. 
• Infrastructure and resources (not only technical, but also physical, like libraries, etc) used within eTwinning teams both in school and out of school. 
• Other conditions: Teachers PD, peer-learning opportunities within the school, national and local policies enabling/ encouraging the teamwork 

To conceive the framework, I went through a bunch of papers and studies, out of which I was most inspired by this set of studies:

Forkosh-Baruch, A., Nachmias, R., & Mioduser, D. (2008). Innovative pedagogical practices using technology: Cross-case analysis of the SITESm2 data. Presented at the 3rd IEA International Research Conference, Taipei, Chinese Taipei. Retrieved from http://www.iea.nl/irc-2008.html#c2050

Forkosh-Baruch, A., Nachmias, R., Mioduser, D., & Tubin, D. (2005). “Islands of Innovation”and “School-Wide Implementations”: Two Patterns of ICT-based Pedagogical Innovations in Schools. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 1(2), 202–215.

Nachmias, R., Mioduser, D., Cohen, A., Tubin, D., & Forkosh-Baruch, A. (2004). Factors Involved in the Implementation of Pedagogical Innovations Using Technology. Education and Information Technologies, 9(3), 291–308. doi:10.1023/B:EAIT.0000042045.12692.49

I also have been following up the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research project for inspiration. 

Opening the teachers' professional development workshop on eTwinning

Last week about 80 teachers from various European countries gathered in Lithuania for a 3-day teachers' professional development workshop. I had the honor to give the opening speech in the event which focused on the eTwinning school collaboration in the field of STEM. eTwinning is "the community for schools in Europe", currently more than 160000 teachers have signed up. STEM fields stand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

In my presentation, I highlighted what are the good ingredients of an eTwinning school project. For this purpose, I "demystified" one of the awarded eTwinning projects in math (ATOM - a taste of math) using this video as an example.

I also talked about the importance of teachers' collaboration, both across schools and within the school. The main campaign in eTwinning this year is about school teams. By the end of the year, we will have a set of case studies from about 20 European countries on how eTwinning school teams work - a great way to highlight good practices but also to analyse different models.

Enjoy the slides of the opening speech below!Twinning PDW on STEM

View more presentations from European Schoolnet.

Country monographs on synergies between teachers’ professional development and eTwinning

The eTwinning report Teachers’ professional development – An overview of current practice was published by European Schoolnet in December 2010, it aims at understanding how eTwinning and national and local teachers’ professional development schemes interact. The report focused on three case studies, namely on Estonia, Poland and Spain.

The report, called "Teachers’ Professional Development: an overview of current practice" can be downloaded in different languages as a pdf file here:  DE, EN, ES, FR, IT

Here is the reference in APA style: 
Vuorikari, R. (2010). eTwinning Report 2010: Teachers’ professional development: an overview of current practice. European Schoolnet. 

Contributing to the Polish Presidency on Mobility

The Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union organised a conference on "Mobility as a tool to acquire and develop competences from childhood to seniority” in October 2011. I participated  in two workshops as an expert on virtual mobility for teachers. The proceedings of the conference include my short paper called Virtual mobility and teachers’ collaboration networks.

Do netbooks require a different type of pedagogy?

In the beginning of the Educational Netbook Pilot, I was often asked whether netbooks really require a different type of pedagogy. I was rather convinced that they do, especially under the circumstances that our pilot was implementing them: 8000 netbooks were distributed in more than 200 classes in 6 European countries. This was a rather disruptive change.

From the end of 2009 until the end of 2011, I was the project manager and chief investigator of the Acer-European Schoolnet Educational Netbook Pilot. I was responsible for implementing the pilot from scratch, meaning establishing links with national points in 6 countries, facilitating finding the schools, organising a network of national pedagogical coordinators,  implementing pedagogical support through a community website, conducting evaluation and finalising the evaluation report. At the end, I was rather convinced that to use netbooks successfully, a netbook pedagogy is needed.

Below a 30-minute video presentation of the final results elaborating also on the concept of the netbook, or any 1:1 pedagogy (e.g. with tablets). Links to the reports can also be found below.



The final report "Introducing netbook pedagogies in schools" is available to download here (pdf, 7Mb).

Reference: Vuorikari, R., Garoia, V., & Balanskat, A. (2011). Introducing Netbook Pedagogies in Schools. Acer - European Schoolnet Educational Netbook Pilot. European Schoolnet.

The country reports are available in respective languages:

• Italy country report in ITALIAN (pdf)
• France country report in FRENCH (pdf)
• Spain country report in SPANISH (pdf)
• Turkey country report TURKISH (pdf)
• Germany country report in GERMAN (pdf)

Different types of "Blended learning"

The term "blended learning" has become a lot used word in educational sciences, and in general in the filed of e-learning and technology enhanced learning (TEL). It's almost a "passe-partout", a term used to mean a little bit of everything.

I came across a paper that had identified 6 models or categories of blended learning. I'll copy them here and I look forward to reading the whole paper!  

Choose Your Blend*
In 2010, more than 4 million K-12 students participated in some sort of online learning (up from 45,000 in 2000). An Innosight Institute survey of schools that have adopted blended learning was able to identify six basic models.

1. Face-to-Face: Most material is taught in the traditional manner. The teacher uses online learning as a supplement or remediation.
2. Flex: This is online learning but in a school setting. Teachers provide support as needed, generally through tutoring, either one-on-one or in small groups.
3. Self-Blend: Students supplement traditional school by taking online classes from home. This model is used mostly to take AP and foreign language courses.
4. Rotation: In this model, used in Rocketship schools, students spend a scheduled portion of their day learning online. Essentially, they rotate from classroom to online computer lab and back.
5. Online Lab: Courses are conducted entirely online, including interaction with the teacher, but students do coursework in school (rather than at home). 
6. Online Driver: Schooling is online: Students take classes and work with teachers remotely.

*Source: Heather Staker et al., The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, Innosight Institute, innosightinstitute.org

Rethinking skills in education and training

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about skills and competences needed for the future. This is the case especially in the field of education and training, which is in a prime spot to influence on how the young citizens "turn out" after their initial basic education, and what kind of attitudes do they have regarding lifelong learning and future skills acquisition in the future.

In the European Commission's Road map for 2012, the on-going work in Education and Culture concentrates on Rethinking skills in the context of Europe 2020.

As part of an assignment, I've collected links to recent publications, studies and programmes in the field of education and training (initial, youth and adults, disadvantaged groups) that deal with skills acquisition, evaluation of skills, etc. Here is a list of interesting publications related to:

• Studies at the European level, 
• Studies, evaluations and programmes in Finland  

Here is also a (not-an-exhaustive) list of some references to relevant studies recently conducted in Finland (mostly in Finnish). I was very positively surprised and impressed with the high quality reports that the Finnish Board of Education and the Ministry of Education and Culture have published!

Aihekokonaisuuksien tavoitteiden toteutumisen seuranta-arviointi 2010. (2012).Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2012:1. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/aihekokonaisuuksien_tavoitteiden_toteutumisen_seuranta_arviointi_2010

Harjunen, E., Jurvonen, R., Kuusela, J., Silen, B., Sääskilahti, M., & Örnmark, M. (2011). Opetushallitus - Miten peruskoululaiset kirjoittavat? (Raportit ja selvitykset 2011:2). Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2011/miten_peruskoululaiset_kirjoittavat

Havén, H., & Tuononen, M. (2011). Performance indicator for initial vocational education and training in Finland 2011 (Publications 2011:1). The Finnish National Board of Education. Retrieved from http://oph.fi/english/publications/2011/performance_indicator_for_initial_vocational_education_and_training_in_Finland_2011

Hildén, R., & Kantelinen, R. (2012). Language Education - Foreign Languages. In H. Niemi, A. Toom, & A. Kallioniemi (Eds.), Miracle of Education (pp. 161–176). Rotterdam: SensePublishers. Retrieved from http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-6091-811-7_11

Hirvonen, K. (2012). Onko laskutaito laskussa? - Matematiikan oppimistulokset peruskoulun päättövaiheessa 2011 (Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2012:4). Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/onko_laskutaito_laskussa

Jäppinen, A.-K. (2010). Onnistujia opinpolun siirtymissä – Ammatilliseen peruskoulutukseen ohjaavan ja valmistavan koulutuskokeilun (ammattistartti) vaikuttavuus. Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2010/onnistujia_opinpolun_siirtymissa

Kärnä, P., Hakonen, R., & Kuusela, J. (2012). Luonnontieteellinen osaaminen perusopetuksen 9. luokalla 2011 (Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2012:2). Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/luonnontieteellinen_osaaminen_perusopetuksen_9_luokalla_2011

Kilpinen, J., & Salonen, M. (2011). Maahanmuuttajien ammatillisen peruskoulutuksen tila lukuvuonna 2009-2010. Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2011:3. Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2011/maahanmuuttajien_ammatillisen_peruskoulutuksen_tila_lukuvuonna_2009_2010

Lappalainen, P. (2011). Opetushallitus - Sen edestään löytää (Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2011:2). Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2011/sen_edestaan_loytaa

Mäkelä, M., & Salonen, M. (2010). Hyvä startti! – Ammatilliseen peruskoulutukseen ohjaavan ja valmistavan koulutuksen kokeilun loppujulkaisu. Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2010/hyva_startti

Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö. (2012a). OKM - Ammatillisen lisäkoulutuksen työelämän kehittämis- ja palvelutoiminnan kehittämishankkeen loppuraportti. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön työryhmämuistioita ja selvityksiä 2012:3. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Julkaisut/2012/Amm_lisakoulutuksen_tyoelaman_kehittamis_ja_palvelutoiminta.html?lang=fi

Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö. (2012b). Koulutus ja tutkimus vuosina 2011–2016. Kehittämissuunnitelma/ Education and Research 2011–2016 (Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2012:1). Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Julkaisut/2012/Kehittamissuunnitelma.html

Ouakrim-Soivio, N., & Kuusela, J. (2012). Historian ja yhteiskuntaopin oppimistulokset perusopetuksen päättövaiheessa 2011 (Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2012:3). Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/historian_ja_yhteiskuntaopin_oppimistulokset_perusopetuksen_paattovaiheessa_2011

Rajala, S., Salonen, M., Blomerus, S., & Nissilä, L. (2011). Romanioppilaiden perusopetuksen tilannekatsaus 2010-2011 ja toimenpide-ehdotukset (Raportit ja selvitykset 2011:26). Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2011/romanioppilaiden_perusopetuksen_tilannekatsaus_2010_2011_ja_toimenpide_ehdotukset

Rauhanen, T., Kangasharju, A., & Kröger, O. (n.d.). VATT - Talouden rakenteet 2011 (VATT Publications 59). 2011: Government institute for economic research. Retrieved from http://www.vatt.fi/en/publications/latestPublications/publication/Publication_1345_id/905

Sulkunen, S., & Välijärvi, J. (2012). OKM - PISA09. Kestääkö osaamisen pohja? (Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2012:12). Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Julkaisut/2012/PISA09.html?lang=fi

Tuokko, E. (2009). Miten ruotsia osataan peruskoulussa? Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2009/miten_ruotsia_osataan_peruskoulussa

Tuokko, E., Takala, S., Koikkalainen, P., & Mustaparta, A.-K. (2012). Kielitivoli! - Peruskoulun vieraiden kielten opetuksen kehittämishankkeessa 2009–2011 koettua: tuloksia ja toimintatapoja (Raportit ja selvitykset 2012:1). Opetushallitus. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/kielitivoli_!

Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriö. (2011). Rekrytoinnin mustan laatikon avaaminen: rekrytoinnin syyt, rekrytointiongelmat ja hakukanavat Suomessa v. 2010 (TEM-analyyseja 38/2011). Retrieved from http://www.tem.fi/index.phtml?C=97987&s=2687&xmid=4737

  

Workshop on Recommender Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning (RecSysTEL 2012)

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) aims to design, develop and test socio-technical innovations that will support and enhance learning practices of both individuals and organisations.
It is an application domain that generally addresses all types of technology research & development aiming to support of teaching and learning activities, and considers meta-cognitive and reflective skills such as self-management, self-motivation, and effective informal and self-regulated learning.

Information retrieval is a pivotal activity in TEL, and the deployment of recommender systems has attracted increased interest during the past years as it addresses the information overload problem in TEL scenarios with a low cost approach.

*************************************************************
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Saarbrucken, Germany, 18-21 September 2012

Organised jointly with the
European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2012)

http://adenu.ia.uned.es/workshops/recsystel2012
*************************************************************
AIM & TOPICS
Recommendation methods, techniques and systems open an interesting
new approach to facilitate and support learning and teaching.
There are plenty a resource available on the Web, both in terms of
digital learning content and people resources (e.g. other learners,
experts, tutors) that can be used to facilitate teaching and
learning tasks. The challenge is to develop, deploy and evaluate
systems that provide learners and teachers with meaningful guidance
in order to help identify suitable learning resources from a
potentially overwhelming variety of choices.

The aim of the Workshop is to bring together researchers and
practitioners that are working on topics related to the design,
development and testing of recommender systems in educational
settings as well as present the current status of research in this
area. Overall, it aims to outline the rich potential of TEL as
an application area for recommender systems, as well as
expose participants to the challenges of developing such systems
in a TEL context.

Topics include but are not limited to:

* User tasks to be supported by recommender systems in TEL
* Focus of recommendation in TEL
* Requirements for the deployment of TEL recommender systems
* Publicly available data sets for TEL recommender systems
* Recommendation algorithms and systems for TEL
* Transfer of successful algorithms and systems from other application areas
* Evaluation criteria and methods for TEL recommender systems
* Experiences from actual implementation in teaching, learning and/or community building


IMPORTANT DATES

30 June 2012: Submissions
16 July 2012: Notifications
1 August 2010: Camera-ready of accepted papers
18-21 September 2012: RecSysTEL Workshop in Saarbrucken


SUBMISSIONS

The Workshop accepts a variety of submission types:
* Full papers: 12 pages
* Short papers: 6 pages
* System/service demos: 2 pages
* TEL Data sets: 2 pages (and if possible, data set file/URL)

Papers should be original and not previously submitted to other venues.
Submission will be available through the EasyChair submission system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=recsystel2012

If you haven't an EasyChair account yet, you'll be asked to create it before you can access the RecSysTEL'12 page. 


PUBLICATION

Workshop proceedings will be published in a seperate volume by a publisher
that will be announced soon.


STEERING COMMITTEE
* Jesus G. Boticario, aDeNu - Spanish National University for Distance Education (Spain)
* Peter Brusilovksy, University of Pittsburgh (USA)
* Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
* Denis Gillet, Swiss Federal Institute of Lausanne (Switzerland)
* Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen (Germany)
* Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center Graz (Austria)
* Peter Scott, Open University (UK) 
* Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcala (Spain)
* Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT (Germany)
* Riina Vuorikari, European Schoolnet (Belgium)


CO-CHAIRS
* Nikos Manouselis, Agro-Know Technologies & ARIADNE Foundation (Greece)
* Hendrik Drachsler, Open Universiteit Nederlands (The Netherlands)
* Katrien Verbert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
* Olga C. Santos, aDeNu - Spanish National University for Distance Education (Spain)


ABOUT EC-TEL 2012

The European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2012)
brings together technological developments, learning models, and
implementations of new and innovative approaches to training and education.
The conference traditionally explores how the synergy of multiple disciplines
can provide new, more effective and more especially more sustainable,
technology-enhanced learning solutions to learning problems.

EC-TEL is a unique opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and
policy makers to address current challenges and advances in the field.
Through EC-TEL, established and emerging researchers as well as practitioners,
entrepreneurs, and technology developers explore new collaborations,
strengthen networks, and complement their core experience.

See http://ec-tel.eu for details.

*************************************************************

My updated CV/resume

I finally got around to work on my Curriculum Vitae. The major change is that from 2012 onwards, I've made a decision to widen my professional horizon and my client-base. This means that since the beginning of the year, I have a half-time contract with one of my biggest clients, which leaves me free for the second half :)

The version below here does not have my contact information for the privacy reasons. If you are interested in contacting me, you can always leave me a message here or look at my professional profile at LinkedIn.

my updated CV (resume)

View more documents from Riina Vuorikari.

My e-learning project involvement from along the way (2000-2012)

I took time to list the major e-learning and technology-enhanced learning projects that I've worked with since 2000. Some of them where led by European Schoolnet (EUN) and in some EUN was a partner. Here is the list with links to my main tasks.

Position: a full time in-house expert in European Schoolnet (after my PhD)

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December 2009- present: Teachers' Lifelong Learning Network (Tellnet)

• To study large-scale socio-technical networks to support teachers' professional development
  
• A Lifelong Learning Programe Project (KA4). Four project partners.
  

My tasks:

• Project manager
• Vuorikari, R., Berlanga, A. J., Cachia, R., Cao, Y., Fetter, S., Gilleran, A., Klamma, R., et al. (2011). ICT-Based School Collaboration, Teachers’ Networks and their Opportunities for Teachers’ Professional Development - A Case Study on eTwinning. In H. Leung, E. Popescu, Y. Cao, R. W. H. Lau, & W. Nejdl (Eds.), Advances in Web-based Learning (Vol. LNCS 7048, pp. pp. 112–121). Presented at the ICWL 2011, Hong Kong, China, December 8-10, 2011.: Springer-Verlag.
  

  Vuorikari, R., Gilleran, A., & Scimeca, S. (2011). Growing beyond Innovators – ICT-Based School Collaboration in eTwinning. In C. D. Kloos, D. Gillet, R. M. Crespo García, F. Wild, & M. Wolpers (Eds.), Towards Ubiquitous Learning (Vol. 6964, pp. 537–542). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
  

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January 2010- present: eTwinning

• eTwinning is a community for schools in Europe with more than 150000 teachers participating
  

My tasks:

• Principal investigator on monitoring eTwinning
  
• e.g.
  Vuorikari, R. (2010). eTwinning Report 2010: Teachers’ professional development: an overview of current practice. European Schoolnet.
  

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November 2009-November 2011:
Acer-European Schoolnet's Educational Netbook Pilot (Netbooks.eun.org)

• Project Manager and Principal Investigator (responsibility for completion of the project, directing the research and reporting)

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September 2009-June 2011:
Quality Network for a European Learning Resource Exchange (eQNet)

• Project Manager

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Position: Working part time in European Schoolnet during my PhD studies (January 2005 - September 2009)

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March 2009-November 2010:
Metaschool

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January 2008 – September 2009:
Open Educational Resources Teachers' Network (Open TN)

• International project funded by the Hewlett foundation
  

My tasks:

• Working with a network of international teachers on the "travel well" aspects of learning resources
• Final report: evaluation of teachers' feedback on the "travel well" aspects

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October 2006 – December 2008:
Metadata Ecology for Learning and Teaching (MELT)

• eContent Plus project with 18 partners from 13 countries

My tasks:

• Expert on social tagging: specifications of a tagging tool for multilingual learning resources;
• Report: Part II: Folksonomies – state-of-the-art, requirements and use cases for the MELT social tagging tool
  
• User studies with teachers
• Analysis of the usage of tags and their usefulness for the system:
• Vuorikari, R., & Van Assche, F. (2007). Collaborative content enrichment in multilingual Europe, European Schoolnet approach on educational resources. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Automated Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-Channel Distribution (pp. 85–88). Presented at the Axmedis 2007, Barcelona, Spain: Firenze University Press.
  
• Vuorikari, R., & Berendt, B. (2009). Study on contexts in tracking usage and attention metadata in multilingual Technology Enhanced Learning. In S. Fischer, E. Maehle, & R. Reischuk (Eds.), Im Focus das Leben, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) (Vol. P-154, pp. 181, 1654–1663). Presented at the Informatik 2009, Lübeck, Germany: Gesellschaft für Informatik.
  
• Vuorikari, R., & Koper, R. (2009a). Evidence of cross-boundary use and reuse of digital educational resources. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 4(4), 51–56. doi:http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/1709
• Vuorikari, R., & Koper, R. (2009b). Ecology of social search for learning resources. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 26(4), 272–286. doi:10.1108/10650740910984619
• Vuorikari, R., & Ochoa, X. (2009). Exploratory Analysis of the Main Characteristics of Tags and Tagging of Educational Resources in a Multi-lingual Context. Journal of Digital Information, 10(2). Retrieved from http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/447
• Vuorikari, R., Sillaots, M., Panzavolta, S., & Koper, R. (2009). Are tags from Mars and descriptors from Venus? A study on the ecology of educational resource metadata. In M. Spaniol, Q. Li, R. Klamma, & R. W. H. Lau (Eds.), Advances in Web-Based Learning - ICWL 2009, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 5686/2009, pp. 400–409). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Retrieved from http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/1849 (BEST PAPER AWARD!)

January 2005 - March 2006 : Learning Interoperability Framework for Europe (Life)

• The aim of the LIFE project was to improve interoperability and the use of standards in the field of eLearning
• Project funded by the DG of Education and Culture

My tasks:

• "Insight: observatory for new technologies and education":
  to run a section about interoperability issues to policy-makers (articles in 2005 ; 2006; 2007)
• Study: Can European teachers find curriculum related digital learning resources? (wiki)
• Vuorikari, R. (2004). Methods for Sharing Open Source Content: The School Network’s Perspectives. Didamatica 2004. Ferrara, Italy.

October 2003 - September 2005:
EPortfolio Initiatives Coordination Committee (EPICC)

• A project looking into the potential of e-portfolios.
• An 18-month project funded by the DG Education and Culture in 2003
  

My tasks:

• Co-ordination and implementation of European Schoolnet's participation in the project (WP)
  
• Scenario-tool for the use of portfolios in education
• Vuorikari, R. (2005). Can personal digital knowledge artefacts’ management and social networks enhance learning? Proceedings of the ICL2005. Villach, Austria.

Position: a full time in-house expert in European Schoolnet

September 2002 - March 2003:
Study on Virtual Learning Environments for European Schools

• An outlook on the use of Virtual Learning Environments in educational settings in Europe (Over 500 schools and 17 ministries and national agencies responded to surveys)

My tasks:

• Organise and implement the surveys, analyse of the data, final reporting
  
• Reports available here
  
• Vuorikari, R. (2003). Virtual Learning Environments in Schools: Overview of Open Source and Open Standards Development in Europe. Proceedings of Online Educa Berlin (pp. 265–268). Presented at the Online Educa, Berlin, Germany: ICWE.

March 2002 - August 2004:
OASIS (Open Architecture and Schools in Society)

• To develop a concept of virtual communities especially suitable for small schools, which do not necessarily have the resources required to implement new technologies on their own.
  
• FP5 project on IST with 10 partners (education authorities and industry)

My tasks:

• Co-organisation and running the EUN Pilot:
  Experimentation report on the EUN Pilot; Implementation and Evaluation report
• "Insight: observatory for new technologies and education":
  run a section on interoperability issues for policy-makers (articles in 2003; 2004)
  
• Work on the area of interoperability,
  e.g. Research on School Information Systems;
  Investigation of localisation of School Interoperability Framework in Europe;
  
• Participation in CEN/ISSS workshop on Learning Technologies on issues around SIF
• Vuorikari, R. (2003). Ressources d’apprentissage européennes. Actes de la conférence EIAH 2003 (pp. 31–39). Presented at the EIAH, Strasbourg, France: Paris: INRP. Retrieved from http://archiveseiah.univ-lemans.fr/EIAH2003/Pdf/n006-143.pdf

January 2002 - 21 March 2003:
European Quality Observatory (EQO, project description)

• Project funded by the DG Education and Culture in 2002

My tasks:

• Working on various quality aspects
• Quality description model, specifications for the implementation of the repository
  
• VanAssche, F., & Vuorikari, R. (2006). A framework for quality of learning resources. In U. Ehlers & J. Pawlowski (Eds.), Handbook on Quality and Standardisation in E-Learning (pp. 443–456). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/3-540-32788-6_29
• Anderson, J., Vuorikari, R., Lind, L., McCormick, R., Van Assche, F., Duval, E., Dyson, K., et al. (2005). Thematic dossier: Quality Criteria. Retrieved from http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/thematic_dossiers/qualitycriteria.htm

March 2000 - March 2002:
European Treasury Browser (etb.eun.org)

• To build a metadata network infrastructure for schools in Europe to access educational resource on the Web
• FP5 project on IST with a partnership of 11 education authorities

My tasks:

• Survey on Educational repositories in Europe;
  
• Quality assurance of learning resources;
  
• Participation in CEN/ISSS workshop on Learning Technologies on issues around Quality Standards
  
• News and communication,
  
• Assistance with cost statements and other project support tasks

The hybrid world of eTwinning

Lately, I've been thinking and talking a lot about how online world has changed thanks to social media. What I find intriguing is that a lot of communication on social media takes place between people that I already know, I rarely talk to strangers.

If I think of time before social media, that's how the Internets mostly was; if I communicated with someone over the web, e.g. in a forum or chat, it was usually someone that I had never met before in the physical life.

I talk about it as a hybrid world, an easy combination of life offline and online. That's why I was very glad to see some current research on the topic.

According to Caroline Haythornthwaite and Lori Kendall, professors in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois, online interactions not only have positive outcomes for real-life, place-based communities, but the intersection between online communication and the offline world also forms two halves of a support mechanism for communities.

Previously, most attention was paid to highly virtual, online-only experiences. But as information and communication technologies have become increasingly intertwined with everyday life, the Internet and social media have combined to create a vibrant and indispensable communication and information platform and infrastructure for today's world.

"In its earliest incarnation, the online world was considered a separate realm, and it was not viewed as a serious venue for work or business," Haythornthwaite said. "But as more people have come online, the more online communication has become the norm. So it isn't thought of as a separate realm anymore, but as one that merges and overlaps with our daily activities. Full article"

This is something that I have also experienced with the eTwinning action, and it's quite interesting. It is just something rather had to pinpoint.

Book out: Educational Recommender Systems and Technologies: Practices and Challenges

It's always nice to see a piece of work coming alive that one has been part of. In this case, I was involved in the reviewing process of the articles for the book called "Educational Recommender Systems and Technologies: Practices and Challenges", a topic that is very dear to me.

The editors of the book will collect reviews to share them with all, they will be compiled here.

Recommender systems have shown to be successful in many domains where information overload exists. This success has motivated research on how to deploy recommender systems in educational scenarios to facilitate access to a wide spectrum of information. Tackling open issues in their deployment is gaining importance as lifelong learning becomes a necessity of the current knowledge-based society. Although Educational Recommender Systems (ERS) share the same key objectives as recommenders for e-commerce applications, there are some particularities that should be considered before directly applying existing solutions from those applications.

Educational Recommender Systems and Technologies: Practices and Challenges aims to provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art practices for ERS, as well as the challenges to achieve their actual deployment. Discussing such topics as the state-of-the-art of ERS, methodologies to develop ERS, and architectures to support the recommendation process, this book covers researchers interested in recommendation strategies for educational scenarios and in evaluating the impact of recommendations in learning, as well as academics and practitioners in the area of technology enhanced learning.