ED+ICT

[ED+ICT], education and ICT, is a research unit of the teacher training department of the Limburg Catholic University College (KHLim).

[ED+ict] has three divisions: e-learning, multimedia and support and counts six researchers.

The e-learning division does research on several projects concerning e-learning, blended learning and online education. Two main projects at this moment are projects financed by the Flemisch government, department economics. The first project is a general project that does research to open the knowledge in the university college for the region. More and more universities try to combine a traditional university with an open university. The project hopes to offer a blended-learning model for implementing both ways of learning in the KHLim. The second project is a specific program for nurses. A virtual learning environment about delirium is developed. Main goal is to offer nurses the latest developments and information about how to deal with delirium. The virtual learning environment will be available for the nurses anytime anywhere, also at the workplace in hospitals. The content will be divided into very small packages, so that e.g. during the night nurses can study for a quarter of an hour, during the working time.

The multimedia division does research on two main domains, namely mobile learning and gaming. WW-Kids is an ongoing project financed by the Flemisch government in which experiments are implemented about teaching and learning with the personal digital assistant (PDA) and i-phone. Five secondary schools with one hundred pupils in the province Limburg were selected and are learning this year with whispering stories in the nature and out of school.  The gaming research focuses  especially on the pedagogical and didactical aspects of gaming. Also the resistance against gaming in education and the way gaming can be accepted by teachers as useful learning are parts of the research goals and activities.

The support division acts ‘on-demand’. In the own institution, but also in companies and organisations is [ED+ict] teaching courses like Microsoft Office, … [ED+ict] has ‘flying ECDL-examinators’. This means that ECDL-testsessions are organised in companies and institutions.
 
The research results are not only disseminated on a short-term basis. With the research results of the e-learning division a “postgraduate E-Learning” is designed. Last year students teacher training and in-service teachers can attend this 2-year course, that leads to a diploma. This course starts every academic year. The multimedia devision is at this moment designing  a “postgraduate edutainment and gaming”, a two year formation in 4 modules that covers the pedagogical and didactical aspects of gaming in education. This formation starts for the first time in September 2009 and will then start every academic year.

[ED+ict] has recently published a book about WEB 2.0 in Dutch in Belgium (September 2008) and published online in iJET (Vol. 3, 1, 2008) and US-China education review (July 2008) and is participating regularly  at international conferences, like e.g. the International conference on learning in the workplace (New York, June 2008) and the International Conference on Blended Learning (Brasil, November 2008).