By Urte Jurgaityte
On the 2nd of April, 2009, The Amsterdam University of Applied Science (HvA) organized the 5th HvA Education Conference at the Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam. The conference, with the theme of ‘The Learning Community,’ started with an informal lunch with about 800 participants. Most of the attendees were HvA employees, (lecturers, staff and management), as well as the research depts. (‘lectoraten’) such as the Institute of Network Cultures, and labs like MediaLAB Amsterdam. The opening speech by Dymph van den Boom, rector magnificus of the HvA, was followed by the two interesting keynote speakers Trude Maas and René Jansen, who addressed the importance of community building and networking.
In the afternoon, everybody split into small groups to have roundtable discussions about a variety of important topics related to education and research. The roundtables were arranged according to 8 main themes: Learning Community, ICT and Education, Learning the Big City, Young Teachers / Professionalizing, Excellency / Masters, Divergent Perspectives, Study Success, and Environment Awareness.
The Institute of Network Cultures led a discussion about the use and possible value of social networks within higher education, with the title ‘Is your EduHyves LinkedIn yet?.’ At this roundtable, moderated by Geert Lovink and Paul den Hertog, social networks were discussed from an educational and policy perspective. What could a HvA fabecook be? And should it be accessible for both students and teaching staff? Who is it for? And what are the pitfalls of yet another social networking platform? The outcomes were of great value for the further developments of the HvA social networking tool that Paul den Hertog is designing.
Another roundtable in the ‘Learning Community’ theme was initiated by three students from the MediaLAB Amsterdam. Daphne Gautier, Rochus Meijer and me were responsible for a discussion about Open Courseware. We did a short introduction about Open Course Ware at MIT and TU Delft and introduced IAM Open Courseware project. We debated whether the HvA is ready for an open culture in which knowledge sharing could facilitate education, and examined the possibilities of Open Course Ware at HvA.
For more information about the project IAM Open Courseware, see:
http://ocw.medialab.hva.nl/