Tapping the Potential of Open Blended Courses in Virtual Worlds in an epic quest for change in higher education.
Upatras Open Workshop presentation in the VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education) conference takes place on Friday March 16th, 6pm SLT/PDT = Saturday, 17th 1 am GMT (London) = 3 am EET (Athens).
For more information on the Open Workshop please visit: http://openworkshop.wordpress.com/ and http://openworkshop.pbworks.com/
1. Tapping the Potential of Open
Blended Courses in Virtual Worlds
Stylianos Mystakidis
University of Patras
2. Stylianos Mystakids
• Learning Innovator @ Library &
Information Services, University of Patras
• Adjunct Faculty @ Open University of
Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain) WWW
• Teaching Assistant @ University of
Washington (Seattle, USA) SL
6. University of Patras (Upatras)
• World Ranking*: #327
• Greece Ranking*: #2
• 24,000 students | 800 Faculty members
• Prominent Research Center on ICT &
Engineering
*Webometrics,2012
7. Patras
• 3rd largest city of Greece
• 222.000 population
• History & Technology
St. Andrew’s Church Rion - Antirrion Bridge
8. Library & Information Services
• National & European Research Projects
• Institution-wide Services (e.g. Repository)
• ISO 9001:2000
• Openness-oriented
19. 1. Information Literacy
• Information Literacy Models (Big6, Sconul
etc.)
• Information seeking
• Location & Access of Information
• Organization & Evaluation of Information
• Information Synthesis
20. 2. Academic Development
• Paper Writing
• Publishing in Journals
• Presentation in Scientific Conferences
21. 3. Life Long Learning
• Personal Learning Network (PLN/PLE)
• Learning 2.0
• Effective use of Social Media & Collaborative
Web 2.0 Services
• Innovation & Creativity
25. Blended Learning
α. Asynchronous Self-Study & Group work
• Wiki (Community & Collaboration)
openworkshop.pbworks.com
β. Synchronous Workshops
(weekly physical & virtual meetings)
• Library & Information Services Lab
• Virtual Immersive Learning Environment (SL)
26. Marketing
• Telephone, p2p
• Posters
• Documents to Departments
• E-mails
• Social Media
27. Administration on the Cloud
• Enrollment
– Google Forms & Documents
• Communication
– Blog (News, Announcements)
openworkshop.wordpress.com
– Facebook Page
facebook.com/UpatrasOpenWorkshop
– Twitter (IM) openworkshopUoP
– Tag: #owilupatras
46. Feedback on Learning Quality
I liked Wednesday’s meeting very much.
[…] I enjoyed the presentation mostly
because beyond plagiarism critique, it
offered practical alternative methods to
avoid it. […] I got several new ideas from
this session.
Faculty Member Comment, 12/10/12
50. 1 Greek University
st
Course in Virtual Worlds
51. Learning without Time limitations
• 2 hours 35 minutes:
Time Interval between the end of the 1st
Meeting and and 1st student activity (edit) in
the Course’s Wiki
• 57,9%:
Percentage of student activity in the Wiki
after midnight during the first week (64,3%
after 9 pm)
52. The end of Geography
Recorded Access Points:
• Greece
Patras, Athens, Corfu,
Rhodes
• France
• The Netherlands
• USA
57. Dr. Catherine Synellis
• Director @ Library & Information
Services, University of Patras
• MSc, University of Bonn, Germany
• PhD, University of Ioannina, Greece
• Hellenic Open University Faculty
58. Dr. Giannis Tsakonas
• Librarian @ Library & Information
Services, University of Patras
• PhD in Information Science, Ionian
University, Greece
• Postdoctoral Researcher in Cultural
Data
59. University of Washington
Special thanks to
• Professor Michael Eisenberg,
UW Dean Emeritus
• Mr. Randy Hinrichs, Faculty of UW’s Virtual
Worlds Certificate Progam
61. Lessons Learned
• Evolution, not Revolution
• Get a Sponsor for your Project (PMI)
• Find Support from the Innovators
• Document & Measure Success (Metrics)
• Inspire the Visionary
• Lead by Example
62. “If you want to
change the world,
start with deceptively
small things”