We held a workshop on Open Education and Student Mobility On Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 June 2013 in Madrid, at the facilities of UPM. On Tuesday we discussed what institutions can do with OpenCourseWare to promote student mobility, e.g. in the context of Erasmus Exchanges.

The workshop opened with a presentation by Willem van Valkenburg (TU Delft) on the OCW EU project. After a very inspiring exchange between  Alvaro Escribano (Telefonica-UC3M Chair of Economics of Telecommunications and Vice-Chancellor or International Relations of the University Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)) and Miguel Angel Muñoz (Deputy General Director for European Affairs, Madrid’s Regional Government) moderated by Mary-Lou Forward (OCWC), Sophie Touzé (VetAgro Sup) and our host Edmundo Tovar (UPM) presented different scenario’s for OCW in mobility. See the slides here. They used the student exchange cycle to show how in each phase of the exchange OCW can help students to overcome problems and be better prepared. Marinela Garcia (Associate Dean for International Affairs and Director of the Program of Languages for Internationalization,  UPM) stressed the importance of language as a barrier for student exchanges.

During the second day, which was devoted to the students’ perspective, Stephanie Verbeken showed the new promotion videos we made.

Trailer OCW new from Stef on Vimeo.

Guest speaker George Ubachs (EADTU) presented the results of the NetCU project on Networked Curricula. Mariet Vriens (KU Leuven) gave a virtual presentation on EU-VIP.

I presented some ideas on “Perpetual Learning”: in fact, not only we, but the social network that we build on the internet is continuously learning, and continues to do so while we sleep.

We wrapped up with an interactive session moderated by Stephanie, using a voting system to discuss statements on OCW and student mobility.

Stay tuned for the final workshop in Lyon in december, where we will present the Student Handbook on OCW and Mobility, Guidelines for Institutions and present the OCW EU videos!