NeLLL Kickoff MeetingSeptember 29, 2008

NeLLL’s Strategic Goals

• Strengthen profile of the OUNL as The University for Lifelong Learning

• Stimulate the OUNL and its organisational units to do more research on lifelong learning (focus)

• Bring lifelong learning research together in one –virtual– institute (mass)

NeLLL’s Scientific Goals

• “...NeLLL provides a fertile context for starting and conducting high-quality research contributing to the development of theories, concepts, models, instruments and tools that help to understand, facilitate, and realize lifelong learning”

What has been done so far?

• Arrange organisation of NeLLL• Start up activities

– Educational program, funding program, infrastructure, website (www.nelll.nl) etc.

• Appoint program directors– Fred Paas, Peter Sloep, Paul Kirschner

• Develop research program– “Responsiveness, flexibility, and sustainability

in lifelong learning”

NeLLL activities

• Educational program– Cooperate with national research schools

• Funding program– AAA-projects, matching partly funded

projects, incentives on fully funded projects, visiting professors

• Infrastructure, e.g. METIS• Communication

– Website, colloquium series

Today’s program

• Keynote David Boud (UTS)

• Lecture Paul Ayres (UNSW & visiting professor OUNL)

• 14.30 Poster session with coffee/tea

• 15.30 Presentation of NeLLL research program and program lines

David Boud

Rethinking assessment for learning after the

course

Paul Ayres

The relevance of cognitive load theory for

lifelong learning

NeLLL’s Research Program

• Responsiveness, Flexibility and Sustainability in Lifelong Learning

• Three characteristics– Theory driven– Praxis inspired– Application oriented

Four program lines

• Cognition and instruction– Fred Paas

• Tools and guidelines for learning networks– Peter Sloep

• Professional and personal development– Paul Kirschner

• Learning organisations in the knowledge society

PL1: Cognition and Instruction

PL2: Tools and guidelines for learning networks

• Societal trends– human economic activities have become

increasingly knowledge intensive: knowledge society

– knowledge needed has become increasingly a team property rather than that of individuals: network society

– post-initial education is about as important as initial education for youngsters and adolescents: lifelong learning

Learning Networks

• The answers to these kinds of trends is learning in network-like structures: learning networks

• A learning network is an online social network designed to foster non-formal, lifelong learning of professionals

• The design includes social as well as technological infrastructural aspects

Three Research Topics

1. Competence Development

2. Learner Support Systems

3. Emerging Communities

Theme 1

Competence Development

• Competences and ontologies thereof act as a kind of lingua franca

• They allow the description of antecedent knowledge and skills

• They help the ‘interoperable’ specification of targeted skills and knowledge

• The allow learning opportunities that are offered by different providers to be compared

• They foster the formulation of learning opportunities that address skills in action rather than knowledge for its own sake

Research Questions

• What competence descriptions and maps are robust enough to support diverse interest groups and last almost a learner’s full life span?

• How can learning opportunities (materials) best be mapped to a specific competence map?

• How can prior competences be assessed adequately and in ways that are commensurate with their intended usage?

• What tools can be developed such that peer assessments of competences can be carried out?

• How can (commercial) assessment providers be given access to a specific Learning Network in order to offer their services? What privacy issues need to be taken into account and in what ways do they affect such services?

Theme 2

Learner Support Systems

• Are a kind of recommender systems and come in two flavours– collaborative filtering, recommendations based on

statistical averages of the behaviour of all users– peer-support, recommendations based on personal advice

of carefully matched peers

• Demand a variety of techniques,data-mining, ontologies & language technologies (mixes thereof), simulations

Research Questions

• What profiling data on learners need to be stored to allow learner support services adequately to operate?

• What privacy issues are there that constrain data storage and accessibility, and how do they affect the setting up of learner support services?

• What technology is most suited to underpin which learner services: semantic web technologies that demand explicit ontologies, statistical techniques based on language technologies, or mixtures of them?

• To what extent is a pre-defined architecture needed, to what extent can it be avoided to allow for maximum setting-independence?

• What incentive structures, if any, are needed to fire off and maintain on the long term learner support services? Are these domain, profession or culture dependent?

Theme 3

Emerging Communities

• In lifelong learning, we do not have cohorts,homogeneity, nor a curriculum

• To avoid that learners become lone-learners, to teach them how to work in teams, to help them expand their professional network, learning networks are introduced

• The ad-hoc transient communities that are formed when delivering peer support are the driving force for community formation

Research Questions

• How should learner support services be configured so as to contribute maximally to the emergence of sociability in a Learning Network?

• How can sociability best be defined and measured if it is to act as a proxy for the kinds of social relations that Learning Network inhabitants should maintain to further their own interests qua lifelong learners?

• How can desirable network structures be attained? To what extent are they bound by profession, domain, culture, dominant age, etc.?

• How, if at all, can a balance be achieved between a Learning Network that is self-organised and self-organising on the one hand and plays host to a variety of for-profit support service providers on the other hand?

PL3: Professional and Personal Development

• Lifelong Learning– “...all purposeful learning activity, undertaken on

an ongoing basis with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence” (EC, 2000).

• Special societal relevance– individual cultural/personal growth (UNESCO)– human capital (OECD)– competitiveness of Europe’s business and

industry (EC)

How?

• Responsive to needs of professionals and individuals

• Flexible in time, place, and predetermined pedagogy independent

• Sustainable for one’s whole life

Fundamental Changes

• External and internal conditions – economic, political, cultural, social, personal

• Effects on the individual– social, psychological, physical

• Process of learning/profiting from experiences– formal and non-formal (formal accreditation?)– multimedial and immersive– protoprofessionalisation

Lifelong Learning Questions

• How do individuals adapt and change to meet present and future challenges?

• How do individuals use learning opportunities to bring greater fulfillment to their lives?

• Under what conditions are the motivation and disposition to learn (explicit and implicit) present or can they be fortified?

Professional and Personal Development

Research projects on:

• creating conditions for professionals

• stimulating and supporting intended and non-intended consequences for professionals

• creating conditions for individuals

• stimulating and supporting intended and non-intended consequences for individuals

• …

PL4: Learning organisations in the knowledge society

• Program director: vacancy

• Knowledge is major creative force in modern society

• Learning organisations– Create conditions that facilitate lifelong

learning amongst their employees– But foremost, nourish a culture in which

lifelong organisational learning is central

Learning organisations, innovation, and performance improvement

• Finding balance between personal and collective benefits of LL

• Combining acquisition of formal and dynamic types of knowledge

• Relationships between organisational learning and performance improvement– Profit organisations– Not-for profit organisations

Research questions• What are adequate quantitative measures of lifelong

organisational learning?• How does organisational lifelong learning contribute to

the innovative power and competitiveness of business and industry?

• What are the core competences of organisations that serve as launch points for new products and services and how can they best be developed through lifelong learning?

• How can knowledge management be organised in such a way that it contributes to organisational learning?

• How can educational institutions be redesigned to become learning organisations and optimally prepare their learners for the knowledge society?

Learning cities, regions, and nations

• Paradigm of Education and Training needs to be broadened– From education/training in the organisation– To lifelong learning in highly dynamic

networks of organisations

• Networks of people and organisations give rise to processes that drive and sustain lifelong learning

Research questions• What mechanisms in successful learning regions are

responsible for an increase in lifelong learning-related activities?

• What does lifelong learning mean in the context of the city, the community and the region?

• How would cities and regions know that they are ‘learning cities’ or ‘learning regions’, as opposed to cities and regions that just support education and training?

• What are the tools and techniques that can help cities and regions to evolve into ‘learning cities’ and ‘learning regions’ and to reach longitudinal rather than short-term outcomes?

• How do ‘learning cities’ and ‘learning regions’ contribute to the development of the knowledge society and how are they related to globalisation?

Forthcoming Activities of NeLLL

• Formal acceptance of projects

• December colloquium (David Shaffer)

• End of year: NeLLL Strategic Plan 2009-2012

• March/April 2008: first NeLLL Annual Scientific Report 2008

Questions and Closing