Meet Diana Laurillard - Keynote speaker at EDEN 2021 Virtual Annual Conference
Channel: EDEN Digital Learning Europe
Date: 18/05/2021

Register to the Annual Conference: https://www.eden-online.org/2021_madrid/registration/

DIANA LAURILLARD

Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning Technologies, University College London, United Kingdom


Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning Technologies, at the University College London. Formerly Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit at Department for Education and Skills (2002-2005); Pro-Vice Chancellor for learning technologies at the Open University (1995-2002)


A collaborative academic programme to improve higher and professional education
 
One lesson of the pandemic is that the already appalling inequalities in our societies have increased. There is a broad consensus now that we have to use the experiences of the pandemic to reverse that shameful trend to increasing inequalities.
Universities are in a prime position to contribute to change for the better. The mission statement at UCL is that we must be “... engaged with the wider world and committed to changing it for the better... for the long-term benefit of humanity.” Every university has such ambitious aims. And the UN Sustainable Development Goals have framed our thinking about what they mean in practice. 
We need those ambitious aims, because universities have the significant responsibility for developing the professionals who will be initiating the changes needed for all 17 SDGs.
Universities already use the most powerful tool for enabling the world to achieve these ambitions – education. And now we not only have the technology – blended and online learning methods – but also the discovery by teachers across the world that they can work. Now we have to make them work well for all learners.
The talk will work through how academics and university systems might embark on this long-term collaborative programme of learning, exploration, and experimentation, to build that better education of the future.