Abstract:

ODS (Open Discovery Space) is a “socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of eLearning resources” by schools, teachers, students and parents. Supported financially by the European Commission, ODS is a collaboration of 50 partners (universities, education networks, non-profits, private technology companies, small to medium enterprises) from 20 countries.

Beginning in 2012, and building on the initial pilot phase of 100+ selected “eMature” schools, ODS will subsequently engage 2,000 schools, 10,000 teachers and 40,000 students by 2015. Once fully tested, ODS will be accessible across the entire twenty-seven European Union member states.

ODS will fulfil three principal objectives:
Firstly, it is empowering stakeholders through a single, integrated access point for eLearning resources from dispersed educational repositories.
Secondly, it is engaging stakeholders in the production of meaningful educational activities by using a social-network style multilingual portal, offering eLearning resources as well as services for the production of educational activities.
Thirdly, it will assess the impact of the new educational activities, which could serve as a prototype to be adopted by stakeholders in school education.

This presentation will describe the demand for the constantly refreshed “state of the art" intelligence required to plan for the ongoing development and sustainability of ODS: To map the shifting educational (and specifically the TEL - Technology Enhanced Learning) landscape – the pedagogies, policies, practices, technologies, philosophies, business models and commercial trends. ODS commissioned research to address this need and the presentation will discuss the research challenges and the findings at the time of the Conference. Key themes will include:

General TEL trends:
European trends versus national trends – divergences, contradictions and commonalities
Responses to austerity
Online, virtual and blended learning trends (including OER and MOOC trends)
OER and MOOC Business Models trends
Emerging Open, Commercial and Hybrid Business Model Trends (including OER and MOOC Business Models trends)
Other emerging trends as of November 2013

The presentation will conclude with a brief update of how this information has been applied to the future planning for ODS (as of November 2013).

Keywords:

e-learning, Blended Learning, Trends, OER, MOOCs, Business Models, Repositories, Portals.