COMBLE – “Project of the Month” at elearningeuropa.info

On August 13, 2010August 13, 2010 By MariisIn Blended Learning, COMBLE, e-learning, Moodle, Press, SL4 Comments

In July it was announced that the COMmunity of integrated Blended Learning in Europe (COMBLE) project had been chosen as “Project of the month” by the elearningeuropa. info portal. This portal is established by the European Commission to promote the use of multimedia technologies and Internet at the service of education and training, and so all of us involved in the COMBLE project are quite happy about this recognition of our work :-)

In this project several colleagues from e-Learning Lab (Aalborg University) and I worked together with partners from Germany, Poland and Estonia from January 2008 – December 2009.

In the COMBLE project we investigated the following questions:

When is an institution (universities, further education, enterprises) ready for Blended Learning?
What are the common challenges and solutions?” and
How can trainers design for active and collaborative learning?

Together with my PhD-colleague, Heilyn Camacho, I designed and ran a highly successful 6 week course on Problem Based Blended Learning in Second Life and Moodle on which I’ve written several posts (i.e. this one explaining the course concept).

A scene from one of the SLectures in the course.

Besides this the COMBLE project also resulted in:

A wiki-based community called Methopedia for Blended Learning experts to share relevant knowledge and experience. Methopedia is available in four languages and contains about 100 different learning activities and an interactive seminar planer.
A Blended Learning Readiness Wiki to support strategic planning, change management and the evaluation of blended learning scenarios at the institutional level.
The Methopedia Learning Designer: an online flash tool to design seminars.

BTW: we would like to encourage anyone interested in Blended Learning to join our community – either at the Methopedia website or on Facebook :-)

/Mariis

Another SL project wins Innovation prize

On November 19, 2009November 19, 2009 By MariisIn Education, Educational design, IRL Conferences, MIL, Press, SL6 Comments

Tuesday and Wednesday this week the Research Network, that connects Danish universities and research institutions, held its annual conference and announced that this year’s winner of the Innovation Prize is Inge Knudsen/Inge Qunhua and her work on innovative in-world designs for teaching and learning.

Inge getting the prize RL :-)

Inge was one of the first Danish residents I met when I rezzed back in spring 2007. Inge is always very happy, friendly and helpful and I enjoy taking my students to visit her and her island. Inge has embraced the many affordances of SL, has created new and interesting designs and has more than 300 hrs. of international teaching experience in-world. So I’m truly delighted that she got this kind of recognition and combined with the other award recently given to a SL project (where Inge btw also played an important role) this really is good news for all of us :-)

A short description and the jury’s arguments for giving Inge the prize can be read here (in Danish), but I really encourage you to explore Inge’s designs first hand in-world …

Overview over the small kiosks where some of Inge’s designs can be found

Inge is currently enrolled as a first year student at The Masterprogramme in ICT and Learning (MIL) and the good news broke just as I was going in-world with my class and we quickly decided to congratulate her in her own environment :-)

/Mariis

SL project wins annual e-Learning award

On November 5, 2009 By MariisIn e-learning, Education, Press, SL10 Comments

Yesterday, November 4th 2009, The Danish Ministry of Education together with National Knowledge Center on e-Learning announced the winner of the annual e-Learning award. The winner is the VIA University College who have developed a sim for training work place security targeted at professionals in especially the carpentry industry. Big Congrats!

Given the negative press surrounding Second Life this truly is good news for all Danish in-world educators/researches :-)

/Mariis

SLurl to VIA University College.

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