Dr Antonia Liguori was invited to join a panel of experts in Museum Education to deliver a webinar as part of the initiatives organised by EDEN Europe for the Open Education Week 2022.

In this webinar a panel of expert researchers discussed how open education is contributing to the digital transformation of the museum learning experience. They showed how open education is being embraced by museum educators and explained why that is helping to address inclusion for all, but also widening participation, developing critical thinking, fostering digital citizenship, and promoting wellbeing. Speakers shared best practices and present significant experiences, including current research projects led by the Storytelling Academy.

Either as a response to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis or a strategic move towards a more participatory culture, most museums worldwide are now providing open access online to a large amount of their curated digital heritage content. In order to promote collaboration and learning through co-creation, many opened up their online collections to social tagging, or started working with communities of volunteers to transcribe manuscript archives for digital publishing projects. Some others started crowdsourcing and crowdfunding initiatives. In this new context, Museum MOOCs and OERs have become popular tools and are now used in formal and non formal learning contexts as well as for professional development. As the learning experience becomes increasingly open, hybrid, ubiquitous and personalized, museum education comes to be more engaging, participatory and transformative, as well as more accessible and inclusive.

More info on the Open Education Week 2022 on the EDEN website.

Moderator

António Teixeira is an Associate Professor of open, distance and network education at Universidade Aberta (UAb). He’s also a researcher at the University of Lisbon and collaborates with the Laboratory for Distance Education and eLearning (LE@D).

He was Pro-rector for innovation in Distance Learning at Universidade Aberta (2006-09) and Director of the Department of Education and Distance Learning (2016-20). He was also President of EDEN – European Distance and E-learning Network (2013-16).

From 2007 to 2009, he was a member of the Academic and Administration boards of the Asia’s International Open University (UAIA) and of the Portuguese Rectors Council (CRUP) specialized committees on Scientific Research and Knowledge Transfer, and Evaluation, Quality and Innovation.

He’s an external expert for A3ES, AQU Catalunya and ACPUA quality assurance agencies in Portugal and Spain, as well as the research and innovation national agency of Uruguay (ANII) among others. Having participated in over thirty international projects, funded by the European Commission and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, his research focus on educational innovation, distance learning and open education. António Teixeira is a member of the Board of the Council of EDEN Fellows.

Speakers

Antonella Poce currently holds the role of Full Professor in Experimental Pedagogy at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where she directs INTELLECT (Centre for Research  into Museum Education, Well-being and Teaching Technology) and she is the Head of the one-year post graduate courses “Heritage Education and Digital Technologies”, “Museum Education: general aspects” and the two-years post graduate course “Advanced Studies in Museum Education”.

She coordinates national units within European project frameworks and she has been chairing international academic committees dealing with distance learning. She is author of different publications of national and international relevance on the topics of innovation, assessment and use of technology in teaching and learning and in the context of heritage fruition.

Covadonga Rodrigo San Juan holds a PhD in Telecommunications Engineering from the UPM and is currently Deputy Director of Research, Transfer and Innovation of the ETSI Informática of the UNED. In 2000 she joined the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at the university where she has also held various academic positions being Pro-VC of Technology (2010-2013), Deputy Vice Rector of Applied Technologies in Study Centers (2006-2010) and director of the Research Chair of Digital Inclusion co-funded by the Vodafone Spain Foundation (2013-2018). Her research focuses on accessibility, interoperability and recommendation aspects in autonomous access to educational resources, repositories, eLearning platforms, audiovisual platforms and mobile applications. His work is multidisciplinary with areas such as Economics, Psychology and Art History.

She is a member of AENOR in quality standards in eLearning (UNE 66181:2004 and 2008, PNE 71362), and actively participates in EADTU since 2003 in projects and working groups on quality frameworks for eLearning environments such as the eXcellence seal and OpenupEd Labelling for MOOCs. She has been an auditor in institutions in Cyprus, Costa Rica, Greece, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland and is currently a member of the EMPOWER group of experts for Higher Education, coordinating the sub-group “Institutional Support: ICT, media and educational support services”.

She is an EDEN fellow, member of the IEEE Education chapter and of the Go-GN network on OERs resources. She has been a member of the Executive Committee in the CRUE ICT – technological sector of the Spanish Rectors Conference (2012-2013), leading the group “Virtual campuses: integrated services and quality criteria” and has participated in a total of twenty funded research projects (European and national) and has more than one hundred publications including scientific articles, conference proceedings and technical reports. She is currently the main researcher of the Erasmus+ Spektrum project and the Erasmus+ Inclusive Memory project at UNED.

Antonia Liguori is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Storytelling at Loughborough University. Her academic background is in History and Computer Science. Since 2008, she has been involved in a variety of international research projects to develop tools and methods to foster innovation in education; to explore the role of storytelling in today’s digital world; to investigate and trial ways of using digital storytelling as a participatory methodology for inter-disciplinary research.

Over the past seven years her research has been focusing on three main strands: applied storytelling on environmental issues; digital storytelling in (cultural/heritage) education; storytelling and urban design. More recently, after having joined HEART – Healing Education Animation Research Therapy, she has been exploring digital storytelling as therapeutic intervention.

Before moving to the UK, she was the coordinator of the Multimedia Department at BAICR Sistema Cultura, in Italy, a consortium of five cultural institutions with the aim of contributing to the enhancement of the historical and cultural heritage through the use of innovative methodologies, communicative approaches and the creation of digital environments. She is also a journalist and a SEO manager.

Angeles Sánchez PaniaguaSenior Lecturer and Director of UNED UNESCO Chair in Distance Education (CUED), Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain

Ángeles Sánchez-Elvira Paniagua holds a PhD in Psychology and is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Psychology of UNED since 1991. Director of UNED UNESCO Chair in Distance Education (CUED) since February 2021, she has a long expertise in methodological innovation in open and distance education due to her management responsibilities in UNED as IUED Director (UNED University Institute for Distance Education) 2004 -2013 and May 2019 until now, and IUED Academic Staff Training Deputy Director 2001 – 2004.

She was the Director of the Iberoamerican Course for Distance Education (2004 -2012). As a specialist in OER (Open Educational Resources), she was the coordinator of the first Latin-American MOOC, “Ibervirtual UNED COMA: Basic Digital Competences”, also participating in the design and implementation of the MOOC “ICTs for teaching and learning”.

She is a member of the UNED group of innovation SMART-CG (Smart and Adaptive Learning and Teaching- Crowding Group), coordinating and participating in numerous UNED innovation projects.

She is chair of the Student Support field of expertise of the EMPOWER project (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, EADTU) and a member of the team of reviewers of EADTU for assessing quality in open and distance education (e-Xcellence project) and EADTU Special Interest Group on online assessment. Member of different European digital and distance education innovation projects, she has research, publications, and many contributions in conferences in this domain, as well as national and international counseling and training for universities and other organizations and companies in their transition to digital and distance teaching and learning. In the field of Open and Inclusive museums, she has participated as member of the UNED theam in two projects, Mussacces and Erasmus+ Spektrum, and she is currently member of the Erasmus+ Inclusive Memory Project.