P1: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE)

 

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a dynamic and modern university with three parkland campuses in the Brussels Capital Region hosting eight faculties. High quality education and research are central issues. The research teams are internationally recognised in many disciplines of fundamental and applied research. VUB offers a quality education to more than 14000 students. Add to that the almost 4500 students of the partner, the Erasmus Hogeschool Brussels; the 5000 students at the Centre for Adult Education sharing the same campus, and the more than 150 research teams and a total of 6500 staff members working on all our campuses, making the Vrije Universiteit Brussel one of the biggest centres of knowledge in the capital of Europe. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has been participating in the Erasmus programme for more than 25 years and is a holder of the Erasmus University Charter (EUC). Today, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has more than 275 Erasmus+ inter-institutional agreements with partner universities across Europe that allow for student and staff mobility. 

​

Research Unit IDEA

The Department of Educational Sciences has several high-quality research units. Research Unit IDEA (Innovation, Diversity and Educational Approaches) promotes interdisciplinary collaboration for educational innovation. The IDEA group is composed of 50 core and associated members. The research group combines its multidisciplinary expertise on teachers’ professional development, self-regulation, educational technology, and management and leadership in order to extend knowledge on change processes in education.

Synergising personalized education (self-regulated learning) and digital learning (blended and mobile learning) is a major focal area within the research programs of IDEA. Throughout a long tradition within this domain, the research group aims at understanding the problems and processes of educational change through e-learning environments and the application of these understandings for improving schools and classroom practice. At the micro-level (teachers and learners), processes and effects of innovations on learners, and factors, conditions and interventions and their impact on student learning are investigated. At the organizational-level, the impact of the organizational culture, policy and the role of leadership in the change processes is a particular focus of attention. In particular, the research group examines how change and instructional innovations can meet the needs of the rapid technological developments, and how individuals and organisations react and adopt technology-enhanced innovations at various educational levels.

 

VUB's team

Prof. dr. Koen Lombaerts – Project manager 

The work of Prof. dr. Koen Lombaerts deals with the development and implementation of innovative learning environments within formal and informal educational settings. A central focus in his research is clarifying learner needs when designing learning and e- learning environments, taking into account the impact of self-regulatory skills of students and teachers. He is currently promoter of several Ph.D.’s within this domain and published several peer-reviewed articles in high standard international scientific journals on these topics. He is the project manager of SLIDEshow.

 

Valérie Thomas – Project coordinator

Valérie Thomas is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her research focuses on preventing school drop-out by looking at secondary students’ self-regulated learning and parent involvement. She worked as a researcher for the Flemish inter-university Procrustes project that focused on finding strategies to close the gender related performance gap in secondary education with the ultimate aim to prevent underperformance by both boys and girls. Besides, Valérie is also project assistant for the Open University services at VUB. She is the project coordinator of SLIDEshow.

 

​

​

P2: Oulun Yliopisto (FI)

 

LET is a research group located in the University of Oulu (UO). The UO has ten faculties (Education, Humanities, Medicine, Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, Mining, Architecture, Technology, Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Science and Business) and ca 14 000 students who are studying in 45 programmes. The Learning and Educational Technology Research Unit (LET) is committed to research in the learning sciences and technology-enhanced learning. The focus is on self-regulated learning, and especially the integration of theories on the social, cognitive and motivational processes of learning. The UO’s graduates are employed in exceptionally wide range of businesses, government organisations and NGOs all around the world. Due to its geographic location the UO provides educated workforce for over half of Finland’s geographic area. The UO quality assurance system has been approved by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre and it follows the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. The University of Oulu advances economic wellbeing by educating competent, skilled and adaptable professionals, who are able to drive innovation by applying the latest technological and scientific knowledge in real-life challenges.

​

PhD Hanna Järvenoja works as an associate professor (Tenure Track) at the University of Oulu, Learning and Educational Technology Research Unit (LET). LET is committed to research in the learning sciences and technology-enhanced learning to tackle the challenges the 21st century sets for learning. In LET, Järvenoja is a principal Investigator in the focus area “Emotion and Motivation in Learning”. Her research interest is in the self-regulated learning, particularly motivation and emotion and their regulation in individual and social levels, socially shared regulation processes in collaborative learning, technology enhanced learning and supporting regulation of learning with (technological) tools. She has published in international refereed journals and is actively involved in international research networks, such as European Association for Learning and Instruction (EARLI).

 

Marika Koivuniemi is PhD student in the Learning and Educational Technology research unit (LET) at the university of Oulu. LET is committed to research in the learning sciences and technology-enhanced learning to tackle the challenges the 21st century sets for learning. Her research interest is in self-regulated learning and especially how SRL is connected to the different learning challenges, and how students can be supported in order to use SRL skills to solve different challenging learning situations they are experiencing during individual and collaborative learning situations.

​

​

​

P3: GO! (BE)

 

GO! organises official education in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. It is an autonomous body of the Flemish government which functions independently of the Flemish Minister of Education. GO! Council’s main mission is to guarantee free choice of education in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region. The GO! Council makes the main strategic choices for the future of GO!. It is supported by administrative and pedagogic services (including an in-service training department), located in Brussels. The organising power belongs to the 27 groups of schools (regional). Each group of schools manages all GO! institutions of education in a given region, consisting of a number of primary and secondary schools. GO! schools are spread all over Flanders and the Brussels-Capital region.

GO! provides education from nursery school, through compulsory school age through to adult education and including schools specialising in creative and performing arts and technical and professional education. GO! provides policy guidance, curriculum development and teacher training for its 700 schools-centres and for 35,500 members of staff serving 220,000 students in compulsory education and 104,000 in adult education.

​

 

​

P4: Padagogische Hochschule Wien (AT)

 

The University College of Teacher Education Vienna (Pädagogische Hochschule Wien, PHW) is Austria’s largest teacher training institution and offers an extensive programme of primary, secondary, vocational and inclusive teacher education. Each year, about 1100 primary school teacher students, 600 secondary school teacher students, 150 special needs teacher students, and 550 vocational teacher students enroll at the institution. PHW also offers continuous professional development (CPD) courses and in-service training to about 50,000 teachers of different school types a year, from single training seminars to two-year professional development courses.

​

 

​

P5: Doukas School (GR)

 

Doukas School is a K-12 educational institution, with educational and athletic facilities amongst the best in design and construction in Greece, offering its 1,600 student body one of the finest educational and athletic programs in the country. Since 1997, Doukas School has organized the web-based Panhellenic Student Competition, LYSIAS, that attracts, on average, 30,000 student participations per year. Doukas School has received many awards for the innovative practices it is implementing in the teaching process. Doukas School became a Microsoft Case Study school in 2012, for its implementation of the 1:1 Computing in the classroom. Doukas School has participated and continues to participate in several EU and National R&D projects and has coordinated extensive European Networks under programmes such as H2020, Erasmus+, Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP), Intelligent Energy Europe, LINGUA, EPEAEK, PAVE etc. Our key areas of interest are: Cloud-based Education, e-Pedagogy, 21st Century Competences, Technology-Enhanced Learning, Personalized Learning, e-Portfolios, Mobile Learning, Game Based Learning and Gamification, Learning Analytics, Career Counseling, Athletics and Nutrition.

​

 Research & Development Department 

Research and development is our major field of activity at Doukas School. We participate in research projects, organise conferences, workshops, seminars to train our teachers and teachers from other schools, we peruse the international biography, visit other international educational organisations and conduct research on innovations in education.   

​

Doukas School Team

​

Yannis Kotsanis holds a PhD in Computer Engineering and Educational Technology from the National Technical University of Athens. Currently he is Head of Research – Innovation & Quality Departments at Doukas School. His main research interests pertain to innovative and competency-based education, with an emphasis in language communication, logic and digital literacies, gamification, educational applications, and adult training. He joined the iRead community combining his initial academic research in Computational Linguistics with his experience as a researcher and project manager in more than 50 R&D national and European projects. Further info and related papers can be found in www.kotsanis.gr.

Thomas Economou is currently conducting his studies in the field of Digital Systems with a focus on Technology Education and e-services (collaborative learning environments, knowledge management, educational psychology, etc.) at the University of Piraeus. He has been a member of the Doukas School R&D Department since 2014 and has been involved with the Project Management and Financial Management of more than 20 educational and training related programmes under Erasmus+, LLP, Horizon 2020 as well as several national projects. During this period, he has also been a member of Doukas School team in several literacy related projects such as Boys Reading, IDPBC, LiRe 2.0 and COMMIX. He has also been actively involved as a researcher in several EU funded programmes.

​