Author: Terje Väljataga

Tallinn University in collaboration with the SEIS project team is going to virtually host a mLearn2021 conference on October 6th and 7th. The keynote speeches will be given by Mohammad Khalil (Title: Harnessing Learning Analytics with Mobile Learning: Opportunities and Challenges) from University of Bergen and Teemu Leinonen (Title: From physical to digital: What is good for children is good for all of us) from Aalto University. There is still an option to register.

Tampere University is going to host a Summer Camp (educational technology and innovation) on September 14th and 15th 2021 for PhD students and senior staff. It will be a unique opportunity to meet (virtually) Joan Hughes (University of Texas, https://education.utexas.edu/faculty/joan_hughes) and Sean Goggins (University of Missouri, https://engineering.missouri.edu/faculty/sean-goggins/) and learn about their research. In addition, every participant has an option to discuss his/her research, get feedback and meet PhD students from Tampere, Tallinn and Bergen to share experiences and learn from each other.

Nordic Learning Analytics Summer Institute 2021 workshop was organized by SEIS project. The title of the workshop was „Ideal Virtual Research Lab for Learning Analytics“ (workshop was organized by one SEIS partner, Tampere University). Since the conference program was shortened and everything was online the workshop happened also online and lasted for one hour. There were 16-20 participants. At first professor Jussi Okkonen introduced the SEIS project, the idea and many possible definitions for the ideal virtual research lab. The presentation was followed by group discussions.  The goal was to collect ideas, what the colleagues from around the world think the ideal virtual research lab for learning analytics would be for them, what would be the most necessary components? Following ideas emerged – the ideal virtual research lab should: 1) enable to cross common boundaries 2) enable to compile project applications for cross-national research funding 3) provide access and easy usability of open access databases 4) be a substitute for the real learning management system 5) be arena for sharing experiences 6) enable capacity building activities, mentoring 7) enable to create multi-disciplinary research groups/projects 8) have tools that enable rapid data visualization. Critical points raised were: data privacy and secure handling of the data. We are planning longer workshop at Nordic LASI 2022, where each of the discussed component would be elaborated and also teacher as a researcher perspective would be included.

One of the joint initiatives the SEIS team has started is the systematic literature review. The fact that some of the SEIS project members have more experience with systematic literature review than others, provides a good opportunity for a joint research activity to
encourage knowledge transfer between partners, but also to create a common project result. The topic of the systematic review is related with the teacher decisions and model-based learning analytics and adaptive learning technology. The systematic review is in progress and is planned to be finalized in September 2021 with the submission of a journal publication.

During its first year the SEIS team has prepared a number of joint research and development grants, such as:

VIE – Virtual presence in higher education hybrid learning delivery – Erasmus+ KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. VIE aims to design and implement a highly interactive digital collaborative learning platform that will allow learners to actively work together in groups in real-time or asynchronously on jointly owned projects through a commonly owned digital workspace. VIE envisions a digital work environment through which students will design solutions to learning challenges through brainstorming and synthesizing by building on each other’s ideas.

Partners: Tallinn University (Estonia), Tampere University (Finland), University De Vigo (Sapin), University of Thessaly (Greece), Advanced Technology Systems (Romania), Virtual Campus LDA (Portugal).

Budget: 216 322 EUR.

Period: 01.03.2021 -28.02.2023.

iHub4Schools – Accelerating Digital Innovation in Schools through Regional Innovation Hubs and a Whole-School Mentoring Model. DT-TRANSFORMATIONS-21-2020: Mentoring scheme for schools: mainstreaming innovation by spreading the advanced ICT-based teaching practices to a wide circle of schools. iHub4Schools will propose mechanisms to accelerate whole-school digital innovation in and across schools through establishment of Regional Innovation Hubs.

Partners: Tallinn University (Estonia), Bergen University (Norway), University College London (UK), Helsinki University (Finland), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Switzerland), HarNo (Estonia), Steps SRL (Italy), Vilnius University (Lithuania) and Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University (Georgia).

Budget:  1M EUR

Period: 01.01.2021 – 30.06.2023

On March 17-18 2021, a SLATE team at Bergen University is going to organise a virtual writing camp for PhD students as well as for researchers. Check out here.

Today we run an international winter camp mediated by different functionalities of online tools. We have planned 4 very interesting workshops:

Creativity – a spark for Interdisciplinary Innovation – Ingunn Johanne Ness (University Bergen, Norway) 

Using data to inquire your own practice – Cecilie Johanne Hansen (University Bergen, Norway) 

Frameworks for conducting user studies in Digital Learning Ecosystems – Jussi Okkonen (Tampere University; Finland) 

Applying pragmatism thoughts – Merja Bauters  (Tallinn University, Estonia).

The event will end with international 3x3x3 cross-country skiing competition: three countries, three participants per team, three kilometers.

Just before Christmas last year, we had our first advisory board meeting. Considering the pandemic situation the meeting took place via Zoom. In addition to short presentations of our ongoing activities the main focus was on a discussion of how to conduct research and training online. Due to the COVID-19 our team has been in need to find ways to move our planned activities and events online. Therefore, every advice and recommendation on how to do that was very useful.

On November 16th two large Horizon2020 projects – SEIS -Scaling up educational innovation in schools and iHub4Schools – Accelerating Digital Innovation in Schools through Regional Innovation Hubs and a Whole-School Mentoring Model – were presented at aTechnology-enhanced research seminar in Tallinn University. As the projects’ teams (local and international) are partially overlapping the goal was to find synergies between them. As the SEIS project’s approach is to take a holistic Living Labs view on educational research to better adopt and scale up innovation and the iHub4Schools project aims to propose mechanisms to accelerate whole-school digital innovation in and across schools through establishment of Regional Innovation Hubs, it was agreed that there are some strong connection points between these two projects, which will be explored further in the coming months.

In order to fully get started with the SEIS project, first three deliverables have been prepared:

D5.4 – Evolution of the publications (public)

D7.1 – H – Requirement No. 2 (confidential)

D7.2 – POPD – Requirement No. 3 (confidential)