JISC

Over 1860 delegates from 72 countries gathered last week at the largest e-learning conference in the world, the Online Educa conference in Berlin. Four plenary sessions, 84 parallel sessions and an exhibition of over 120 stands attracted a wide range of delegates including a number of JISC speakers.  

Among the four plenary speakers were Mara Brugia of Cedefop, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, who spoke about the importance of learner-centred technology, and Professor Riccardo Petrella of the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium. Professor Petrella spoke of the interactions between globalisation, education and technology. Everything is global, he said, but we need to cooperate more to be competitive. While knowledge is instrumental to power, it is not a commodity but rather something that should be for the common good. Calling for a fundamental role to be played by education and training, he said technology could be a powerful force for cultural change.  

Picking up this theme, Dr Richard Straub from IBM emphasised the need for collaboration in a fast-changing and competitive world. The 'new illiteracy', he said, was when people forgot how to learn. Lifelong learning is therefore a requirement of the digital age.  

JISC had a joint stand at the conference exhibition with Dutch counterpart the SURF Foundation. The two organisations also came together for a session on Open Access Publishing. Dr Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary and Leo Waaijers of SURF gave a brief update on their own organisations’ activities in this area.  

Leo Waaijers spoke first about SURF’s repositories programme DARE and one of its outputs, the Cream of Science, which makes the research papers and articles of nearly 200 Dutch academics freely available. However, he said, while much was being done, there was still a lack of international awareness about the benefits of making research outputs freely available. But it is not only research outputs, but also doctoral theses, conference proceedings and other scholarly materials that could be made available in this way.  

Dr Malcolm Read , speaking for JISC, said that the fruits of publicly-funded scientific research should be made publicly available through institutional repositories. There is a place for publishers to add value to research outputs, he said, but a balance needed to be established that gave greater control of research outputs to the authors who conducted the research and the institutions which funded them.  

A debate followed in which the subjects of advocacy and communications,  copyright, and digital literacy were prominent. A consensus emerged which suggested that while national and international organisations needed to take the lead, real change would only emerge once institutions themselves became convinced of the need to address this issue.  

For further information on Online Educa, please go to: Online Educa