News Story

KMi and QualiChain at the EADTU 2019 conference

Alexander Mikroyannidis, Friday 25 Oct 2019

The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC2019) took place on October 16-18 in Madrid, Spain. This is the flagship annual event of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), Europe’s leading institutional association in online, open and flexible higher education. This year’s event was hosted by the National Distance Education University (UNED) and was focused on trends and high impact factors in the global and European higher education. Highlights of the conference included, among others, a keynote by Stefaan Hermans (Director of Policy Strategy and Evaluation at the European Commission), a keynote by Liz Marr (Pro-Vice-Chancellor at The Open University, UK), as well as a presentation of the recent European MOOC Consortium initiative towards a common accreditation framework for lifelong learning.

Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) represented KMi and the QualiChain project and delivered an interactive workshop, entitled “Decentralising online education using blockchain technology”. The session was very well attended with participants contributing scenarios that place the lifelong learner at the very centre of the learning process and its associated data via the use of Blockchain technology. The outcomes of this workshop will feed into the requirements of the QualiChain pilot conducted by the Open University.