learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Antonios Andreatos
Stanford (“Stanford Engineering Everywhere”) and Yale (“Open Yale Courses”) - see
http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/ 1_Top_10_Universities_With_Free_Courses_Online.php
There are several advantages associated with this option: guaranteed quality, leading to known
expected results; saving of time, possibility of certification by the specific university or its affiliates,
prestige, etc. If a specific course (e.g. communication, cooperation and team work skills or Innovation
management) makes part of a specific master's programme (e.g., MBA), then there is an additional
motivation for employees to attend the course: enrolling in the programme and taking additional
courses, even from distance, will allow them to earn a formal degree, possibly leading to a better
position. Professional development goes hand in hand with organisational development; therefore,
organisations ought to offer continuing education motivation to their people for mutual advantage
(Fonstad & Lanvin, 2010). Table 1 below summarises the most important options with their pros and
cons.
Table 1: The most important options in designing a continuing education in-house programme
No Option Pros Cons
1 Adopt an existing
course, for instance,
from a recognised
university
2 Make your own
course
3 Adopt an existing
course and enhance it
with selected LOs
Assured quality and specific level (grad., postgrad,
etc.); Ready; time saving option;
Guaranteed acceptance;
No certification problems; May easily lead to
certification by external universities or firms
Fully adapted to organisation's needs; also may
adapted to various learning styles; economic
under conditions; certification is questionable
May by adapted to learning styles, personalised
needs & organisation social capital; possible
certification by external universities or firms
Cannot be adapted to specific
personalised needs & learning
styles; may not fully comply
with organisation social capital
or needs; cost in case of
external certification
Time consuming; unscertain
recognition
Moderate time consuming;
Moderate difficulty in
assessment;
The most important reasons for adopting an existing course from a recognised university are:
ascertained quality, ready-to-use, easier way to certification (such as a Mastrer's degree, perhapswith
additional study).
In case the organisation selects to make its own course, the person responsible to select the LOs has
two options: either carefully examine (i.e., read, watch or listen to) the OER exhaustively; or to select
LOs by examining their metadata.
3.2 LO metadata
Learning Objects are described by metadata, i.e., information required to fully or adequately describe
their content. Typical metadata information may be author's name, institution, file size, description,
location, time of creation, language, culture etc. This information is important for the recall of learning
objects, their appropriateness regarding specific uses tasks and their quality (Andreatos & Katsoulis,
2011).
From another perspective, metadata can be either a priori or a posteriori. A priori metadata are
created in advance by the authors of learning objects or professional indexers. A posteriori
metadata, in contrast, are created after usage by the users themselves or by automatic means
(Andreatos & Katsoulis, 2011).
However, professional LOs are described by high quality metadata information related to their content
or even the specific learning needs they intend to cover. Such a scheme greatly facilitates search and
data mining processes. As an example, consider the articles embedded in the “Help” of office suites.
When a user needs help, he/she types a specific keyword in the help textbox and immediately the
system finds, recalls and presents a set of articles, as well as, related topics (Figure 2).
Ley et al. (2008) describe a smart technology-enhanced work-integrated platform facilitating in-house,
just-ιn-time learning, developed in the APOSDLE project. They model the typical IT-based workplace
as a set of three conceptual inter-related spaces: the work space, the learning space and the
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