An ELIXIR/GOBLET workshop: defining an e-learning lingua franca

Tuesday, September 15, 2015
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine, Vrazov trg 2, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Objective:

This workshop will provide an overview of e-learning systems used within ELIXIR and GOBLET. The aim is to compare them, to understand their respective strengths and weaknesses, and to define a common e-learning ‘language’ to facilitate communication within and between the GOBLET and ELIXIR trainer communities. The outcomes of the workshop will be summarised in a draft white paper, describing the various e-learning approaches and their applications, and providing recommendations for their use.

Organisers:

Brane L. Leskosek (SI), Teresa Attwood (UK), Michal Linial (IL) and Patricia Palagi (CH)

Motivation:

Within ELIXIR and GOBLET, there are many different views and understandings of what e-learning actually is. Examples of so-called ‘e-learning’ systems include: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), such as those provided by Coursera, Udacity, edX or MIT OpenCourseWare; platforms for uploading and hosting course materials, such as that provided by GOBLET; platforms to harvest and link course materials together, such as in TeSS; and learning management systems (LMS), like Moodle, to name but a few. All of these can and have been brought together under the banner of ‘e-learning’; however, they do not necessarily mean the same thing from user, developer or content- provider perspectives. To help the ELIXIR and GOBLET trainer communities work together more coherently, it is imperative to gain a clearer picture of the current e-learning landscape, and a clear and common understanding of what we collectively mean by e-learning. Ultimately, this will allow us to better serve our communities.

Workshop objectives and expected outcomes:

In this workshop, we will:

  • Provide an overview of and compare different e-learning systems,
  • Define a common ELIXIR/GOBLET e-learning vocabulary,
  • Define the appropriate means to ensure an effective use of this vocabulary and the adhesion of the GOBLET/ELIXIR communities,
  • Define a common e-learning strategy,
  • Make recommendations on the relative strengths and weaknesses of e-learning systems,
  • Draft a skeleton white paper describing the various e-learning approaches and their applications, and summarising the workshop outcomes and recommendations.

 

Invited Speakers:

- Phillip Compeau (Computational Biology Department, Carnegie Mellon University, USA): Lessons learned from three MOOCs hosted on Coursera

- Anthony F. Camilleri (the Knowledge Innovation Centre): Metrics and assessment of the quality of e-learning methods and tools

- Victoria Nembaware (H3Africa Consortium, South Africa): H3Africa eLearning Strategy

- Teresa Attwood (University of Manchester, UK): TeSS, GOBLET and EMBER

- Richard Grandison (EBI, UK): EMBL-EBI’s Train online eLearning portal

- Ronen Tal-Botzer (Bar Ilan University, IL): Sense - Making personalised education scalable

- Brane L. Leskosek (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine, SI): ELIXIR.SI eLearning platform - EeLP

- Grégoire Rossier (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, CH): e-proxemis, eBiomics, Moodle and stand-alone e-learning modules

- Pedro Fernandes (Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, PT): Engaging Learning experiences