Ιnternational CRITON conference – 13th November 2014 – Patras Greece

The International CRITON conference was held on 13th November 2014 at CTI in Patras. The conference was attended by almost 70 people, mainly teachers, tutors and students of distance education and not only.

Prof. John Garofalakis, project coordinator made the official welcome, inviting the keynote speakers to make their presentations. Ms Teresa Cuartero Lausin, Project Officer from European Commission Education, Αudiovisual and Culture Executive Agency made a presentation about the new Erasmus+ programme. Afterwards, Prof. Michalis Xenos from Hellenic Open University spoke about “Prediction of learners’ progress and assessment from the learners” and at the end of keynote speeches Mr Ulf Sandström, Chair of Swedish Association for distance education presented the topic “Assessment and evaluation in distance learning”.

The 1st session was about the CRITON project and its results. Prof. John Garofalakis, made an overview of the CRITON project, Ms Evangelia Boufardea from CTI presented the CRITON platform and its results. Pilot users from Finland (Mr Markku Nikkanen), Lithuania (Ms Violeta Mirinaviciute), Germany (Ms Anne Büttner) and Greece (Dr Adamantia Spanaka) shared their experiences from the pilot testing of the CRITON platform.

The 2nd session was about assessment and prediction in distance learning/e-learning and several presentations were made by Dr Adamantia Spanaka concerning “Trends of Assessment methods in distance learning/e-learning in Europe”, by Mr Erol Koc e-learning consultant about “Predicting drop-out rates in E-Learning” and finally by Mr Kennet Lindquist, Director, Swedish Telepedagogic Knowledge Centre on the topic “Three difference approaches to generating predictability indicators in (e-)learning”.

Project managers from other LLP programmes shared their experience on this type of projects such as E-STEP – Supporting teachers’ and parents’ partnerships through social-networking technologies, New skills for new learning professions and LeaCoMM – Learning Community Migration and Minorities: Platform for Teachers and Teacher Educators.

The Conference closed with a round table discussion on “Predicting course success in distance learning/e-learning”. Associate Prof. Achilles Kameas coordinated the discussion and Prof. John Garofalakis, Prof. Michalis Xenos, Mr Kennet Lindquist and Mr Christian Hendrichs expressed their opinions on the following axes:

• How assessment is affected from prediction accuracy (f2f vs distance education)
• Managing predictions in everyday practice
• Impact of using prediction in the educational practice

The conference proceedings were handed out in digital version. After the conference dinner was given to the Patras sailing club. For more photos please check out the CRITON facebook page

Tags: assessment, Boufardea, Büttner, conference, CRITON platform, Cuartero Lausin, Erasmus+, Garofalakis, Hendrichs, international, Kameas, Kierienė, Koc, Koskeris, Mirinaviciute, Nikkanen, pilot users, prediction, Sandström, Spanaka, Xenos

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