Scientific report 2016 2017

Scientific REPORT regarding the implementation of the project

EUROIN: European Innovation and Inclusion through Open Education: an interdisciplinary approach Academic year 2016 – 2017

Project manager: associate professor Gabriela Grosseck, PhD Host institution: West University from Timișoara (WUT)

With the support of the ERASMUS+, 575370-EPP-1-2016-1-RO-EPPJMO-MODULE

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Telefon: 0256-592.303 B-dulVasilePârvan, Nr. 4, 300223 Timişoara, România.

Email: dci@rectorat.uvt.ro Tel./Fax: +4 0256-592.168, www.uvt.ro. .

The activities of the project can be divided into two main categories: activities focused on teaching and activities focused on scientific studies and dissemination of results.

A. TEACHING ACTIVITIES During the academic year 2016-2017 West University Timisoara (WUT) organized five courses, held on a private learning management system (WUT has a partnership with Google for GAFE apps suit; all students and teachers have an academic account on classroom.google.com). The courses included new technologies, tools and methodologies, having a cross-disciplinary activities with OERs and MOOCs integrated. All courses were taking by students on Wednesday or Thursday each week (first or second semester). WUT is the only university in Romania that hosts transversal courses each week and have a time slot available weekly for these courses between 16:20-17:50 and 18-19:30. All courses were held in Room 314A or 314B, third floor, during the time interval mentioned above.

1st Semester DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR EMPLOYABILITY

2nd Semester DIGITAL LITERACY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

14 hours of teaching by Gabriela Grosseck for 14 hours of teaching for students from students from bachelor level, all WUT bachelor level, all WUT specializations by: specializations (e.g. see figure 1).

- Vlad Chiriac STEM students (chemistry, biology, physics and math); - Ramona Bran – humanities and performing arts; - Laura Malita - social and political sciences, economic sciences and law.

Figure 1. Screenshot of the Digital Storytelling course platform (classroom.google.com available only with institutional accounts)

1st Semester 2nd Semester MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 10 hours of teaching by Carmen Holotescu for students from master and postgraduate level, all WUT specializations (see figure 2).

ONLINE PRIVACY IN EUROPE THE AFFORDANCES OF MOBILE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION 6 hours of online interventions with students UNDER A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE from bachelor level, all WUT specializations

by Malinka Ivanova (online interventions, 6 hours of online interventions with students Skype: ivanova.malinka) (see figure 3). from bachelor level, all WUT specializations

by Mar Camacho (online interventions – see figure 4).

Figure 2. Screenshot of the MOOC in HE course (classroom.google.com available only with institutional accounts)

Figure 3. Screenshot of Malinka Ivanova module

Figure 4. Screenshot of Mar Camacho module

B. RESEARCH ACTIVITIES We applied during the academic year 3 questionnaires for students and teachers in order to improve learning outcomes, learning support and teaching, including retention, completion and progress. One of the survey was applied with the help of Quality Management Department of WUT. Here there are (all surveys will remain open for each academic year): • Survey about how students perceive academic life in different aspects, available at https://goo.gl/jTcLmw (see figure 5). The surveyed was applied to all WUT students. The results are presented in pdf file in Romanian, and were presented to WUT academic staff in June 2016 (see slides at https://goo.gl/photos/ZzSNknPsSxKJUbPG7. Currently the informational content and slides are in Romanian – we’re being in the process to write a report with recommendations.

Figure 5. Students survey about academic life

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Survey about fake news and online content (in Romanian) - available at https://goo.gl/forms/EEX3Q07Fuq6YqtSB2. We gathered 246 responds and are in the process of analyzing data (see figure 6).

Figure 6. Fake news content survey (246 respondents)

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Survey about the importance of new language of the net (in Romanian) - available at https://goo.gl/forms/EfyvzKUYd8RlmCP73 with 354 responds and are in the process of analyzing data (see figure 7).

Figure 7. Students’ survey – 354 respondents

Based on students’ answers we are now in the phase on changing the content of the courses according with students’ learning needs. Moreover, we are now in the phase of developing content in Romanian and English language for MOOC courses. For e.g. “Povestiri Digitale pentru angajabilitate” (Digital Storytelling for Employability) and “Evaluating Fake News”.

The contents are designed to appeal to anyone without special digital prerequisites, but specially for students enrolled in our university who attend transversal disciplines and teachers from preuniversity system. The courses are ready for enrollments on the WUT e-learning platform for MOOC (https://west-university-timisoara.teachable.com/, see figure 8). All the modules will be open after the participants’ enrollments ends (a period of 30-45 days was established by the team project in order to achieve a significant number of participants enrolled).

Figure 8. WUT MOOC platform

C. DISEMINATION The dissemination activities are as follows: • A Project website available at http://euroin.uvt.ro or http://euroin.strikingly.com.

• Participating in scientific events as follows: a. Laura Malița, Gabriela Grosseck, Fighting against fake news & content, Library 2.0 conference, 13 April 2017

http://www.library20.com/forum/topics/fighting-against-fake-newscontent-1

Figure 9. Library 2.0 conference, http://www.library20.com/forum/topics/fighting-against-fake-news-content-1

b. Mădălin Bunoiu, Laura Malița, Gabriela Grosseck, Digital University Issues And Trends In Romanian Higher Education, SMART 2017 conference, 8-9 September 207 Timisoara, Romania, http://academia.edusoft.ro/conferences/smart-2017-internationalconference/. c. Carmen Holotescu, Gabriela Grosseck, Ramona Bran, Ten MOOCs for open educators, ICVL 2017, International Conference on Virtual Learning, 26 Oct. 2017, Sibiu, Romania. d. Ramona Bran, Gabriela Grosseck, Learning English with MOOCs, 9-10 Nov. 2017, Timisoara, CESC 2017 - 3rd International Conference on Communication and Education in Knowledge Society. e. Grosseck Gabriela, Malita Laura, Bran Ramona, Perceptions Of Digital Literacy Skills Among Higher Education Teachers, ISERD - 314th International Conference on Education and E-Learning (ICEEL), Brisbane, Australia, 4th-5th February, 2018, http://iserd.co/Conference2018/Australia/1/ICEEL/

• An OER repository elaborated by students, to be published on the project’s website,

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under a CC license, to be freely usable not only by the WUT students but also by the general public and by any other interested stakeholder – this is a work on progress (e.g. see the latest in the online environment https://flipgrid.com/fspstudent).

Hybrid Workshops, took place simultaneously on-site in Timisoara and online, in the framework of other events (e.g see the else2017 Conference “E-learning and software for education”, 27-28 April 2017, Bucharest). The conference is indexed in Conference Proceedings Citation Index (ISI Proceedings, access via Web of Science), http://elseconference.eu/pages/view?page=open_education_open_online_courses – all Romanian team members participated in this workshop, having as key note speaker Giles Pepler, from Sero Consulting UK (former JISC partner for the Digital Student Skills project).

A social media presence: The participation of the EuroIN team in different events, other information regarding articles, studies, projects, or platforms analyzed by team members for research purposes, can be found on the project’s Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/digitalliteracies/ .

At the time of writing this report, the project results are available on the project’s website http://euroin.uvt.ro (or http://euroin.strikingly.com/).

In conclusion, we consider that we have achieved the indicators for the first year of the project.

Project manager, Assoc. prof. Gabriela Grosseck, PhD