At the 30th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU2016) in Manila, Philippines, two concurrent pre-conference seminars marked Day 1 of the event. Three education experts were invited to discuss about learning analytics and open publishing for academics. This was held at the Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria on 26 October 2016.Pre-Conference 1 was about Learning Analytics (LA) sponsored by the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) Network with two of their Expert Group in Learning Analytics (EGLA) as speakers. Dr. Qiong Wang is a Professor of Educational Technology and the Director of the X-Learning Center at Peking University. During her talk on "Using Data to Improve the Design of MOOCs", she shared the results of their study on MOOC instructional design with intended data collection in mind and also discussed how the collected data can be utilized to improve the design of MOOCs.
Dr. Bodong Chen, Assistant Professor at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, led the participants in activities in Learning Analytics which covered topics on access to LA technologies and the effectiveness of LA in current researches, among others. He promoted active participation of the discussion using Padlet.com, a virtual bulletin board which allows collaboration among participants.
The second Pre-Conference Seminar is about Open Publishing for Academics by Dr. Laura Czerniewicz, Director of University of Capetown (UCT) Centre for Innovation and Learning.. Prof. Czerniewicz discussed the various concepts on open publishing in the academe. According to her, "open access" does not automatically mean "free", and does not mean that publishers lose copyright, a common misconception amongst academic researchers. She also talked about the current state of open publishing in the academe, and stated that a large number of academics still do not have a full grasp of what it means to be an "open publisher" in today's day and age. Faculty, staff, and representatives alike actively participated in the discussion and the open forum, and issues on copyright restrictions, publishing fees, and the like were included in the discourse. Prof. Czerniewicz also encouraged participants to build and maintain their online academic profiles in keeping up with the digital age.
AAOU2016 is hosted by the UP Open University (UPOU) and was held on 26-29 October 2016 at the Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria with the theme "Open Education in Asia: Changing Perspectives". The four-day event was attended by 559 participants from 96 institutions in the Philippines and 24 countries from around Asia and the world. (Nikki Culing, Grace Buno & Anna Cañas-Llamas)
