Many take their daily life for granted. We work, take care of family and home, we train and take care of ourselves, meet friends and pursue various hobbies. This usually happens routinely and without us thinking about it so much. Only when the daily routine does not work, we are reminded of it.

As a McS in Occupational Tehreapy and Reg OT, as well a Professor in POpen Online Learning and expert in open online and flexible learning (OOFAT) I want to share some advises in Corona / Covid19 times.

Everyday work and balnce in life is always the focus for occupational therapists. We support people who encounter obstacles in their everyday life due to disability, illness, crises or for other reasons. We help people to cope with their everyday life.

The next few weeks, perhaps the months, will put an extraordinary amount of strain on our daily lives. We will all have to change our daily routines. We will have to do many of our daily activities in new ways, and there is a danger that our activity balance will be compromised. In order for us to continue to feel good and for our daily lives to function to such an extent, we need to think a little more about what we do and how we behave in our daily lives.

So here are some tips on how we can all organize our everyday life in these corona times: 

Keep the activity balance.

When we spend more time than usual in our homes, it is particularly important to maintain a balance between the various activities of daily life - work and leisure, home and family. Research shows that a balanced activity balance is a prerequisite for perceived health. Plan the day with your family. Feel free to draw up a weekly plan in which you clarify when, with whom and where the various activities should be carried out.

Maintain the possible routines and create new ones.

Maintain your usual times for ascent, meals and bedtime. For both adults and children, set routines provide security and help us feel comfortable. Show younger children how to prevent infections by practicing washing their hands before each meal. Invent new, fun ways to greet each other that do not involve care. This creates a sense of participation. Make it a routine to keep in touch with parents, elderly relatives and friends through the phone and social media. Have dinner together via social media. Remember to keep in touch with work colleagues as well. Our work colleagues are often an important part of our daily social contacts.

The spread of the corona virus has affected colleges and universities around the globe, affecting the way campuses function, how faculty teach, and how staff and students travel. In this evolving situation, things are changing rapidly and there is a lot at stake.  

Many countries have already closed their university campuses, and all teaching will now take place at distance and online until further notice. In my own country Sweden some universities have already from this week /12) gone online due to the Corona/Covid 19 as for example Malmö University, and Kritianstad University Colleage, and most institutions around tbe world are now preparing for a possible closure. In Denmark Schools and Universities were alrady closed down from 11 March 2020. In Finland it will be the same from 17 March and onwards. In most of the countries in Europe it will be the same.

 

This is an unprecedented step and an opportunity for all teachers to gain experience in online teaching. The challenge is to provide the right level of support and advice to teachers who are new to the field and to help them to provide a sufficiently good online experience without risking confusion, frustration and stress. Many researcher and academics in the field of open and distance education have the last couple of days shared their experiences and knowledge on how to go online. Several sources are already out there. I have myself written two blogposts for SADE, the Swedish Associaton for Distance Education (in Swedish)  SVERD/SADE följer utvecklingen av Corona /Covid 19 utbrottet, and Att lägga om utbildning till distans/online/nätbaserad utbildning

 

 

 

Below I have just selected a few articles/blogs/videos/ resources that I found particularly useful and point you in the right direction for a digital transformation and advises when going online,a dn to care about quality and self-determinated learning. At The Swedish Association for Distnace Education /SADE I have collected a comprehensive lsit of various resoursws both in Swedish and English, The site is SVERD_Corona #learningtogether (online resources)

 

UNESCO

Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption

As COVID-19 continues spreading in many countries of the world, how to keep learning in disruption has become a major challenge to the global education community. As stated by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay: “We are entering uncharted territory and working with countries to find hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech solutions to assure the continuity of learning.”

In this regard, UNESCO IITE is joining forces with UNESCO INRULED for a new Handbook on Flexible Learning during COVID-19 and released a special publication entitled “Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption: The Chinese Experience in Maintaining Undisrupted Learning in COVID-19 Outbreak”.

Publication is available here

OECD OECD Education and Skills Today

A helping hand: Education responding to the coronavirus pandemic

Commonwealth of Learning (COL)

Keeping the doors of learning open COVID-19

Technology makes learning truly meaningful. Doesn’t matter whatever condition or crisis we are in, we can keep ourselves in learning if we use technologies meaningfully and continue our teaching-learning staying at home. Let’s not allow Corona to stop us from learning! The Webinar on 30th March (31st March in Asia Africa and oceanian region) will give us an understanding on the essentiality of OER in TEL implementation. Register soon – it’s free.
Link to register: https://colsurvey.limequery.com/284895?lang=en

Some guidelines to consider include:

1. Institutions should take emergency policy decisions to adopt alternative ways of teaching, including online learning.
2. Ensure that learning is delivered using ICT tools such as radio, TV, mobile devices so that no learner is disadvantaged.
3. Identify and use existing OER to provide quality learning.
4. Develop and implement strategies for synchronous/asynchronous approaches.
5. Encourage teachers to use free resources such as MoodleCloud to conduct online classes.

ICDE, International Council for Open and Distance Education

ICDE CORONA #Learningtogether

Facing the corona virus outbreak, more than ever open, distance and online teaching is needed. Join us in our efforts to help educators succeed through the crisis.

EADTU

EADTU joining forces in organising online teaching; bringing together the basics and expertise in online education, useful resources and free (live) webinars, seminars and course

Moving HE teaching online – a group for educators everywhere (please share with your networks) ONEHE

LinkedIn grupp ONEHE

Om att lägga om utbildning till distans/online/nätbaserad utbildning (in Swedish)
Hjälp till skolor att bedriva undervisning online (in Swedish)

 https://www.dcu.ie/nidl/resources/Swiftly-Moving-Online-Coronavirus.shtml

https://www.voister.se/artikel/2020/03/gratis-digital-skola/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nyhetsbrev+200315&utm_content=Gratis+digital+skola

The 6th March I was invited to give a speach at the DIGITAL COMPETENCES FOR OPEN EDUCATION WORKSHOP, 7TH EDITION 6 MARCH 2020, which was part of the Open Educational Week 2020. The workshop was oeganized by the eLearning Center - Politehnica University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania.

My presentation was about Skills for Industry Strategy, and more specificly on the initiatives on Promoting online learning in the workforce in Europe and Skills for Industry, Curriculum 4.0 by PWC, EASME and EC Digital Growth. In Romanian it was entitled Abilități pentru industrie: oportunități de training online pentru forța de muncă din Europa – o inițiativă aEASME/DG GROW, Comisia Europeană . 

Follow the presenation at my Slideshare

Promoting online learning in the workforce in Europe

The report written by PwC EU Services reveals the role of online training in implementing new approaches matching SMEs' needs and realities in a digital world. The challenges SMEs face today related to the digital transformation of the economy, new regulatory and market requirements demanding a sigificant shift in their environmental footprints to achieve the UN sustainability targets by 2030, with significant expected impact on the skills of the workforce, have to be addressed while also considering the budget constraints, limited capacity, fierce competition for talent and extreme time pressure SME deal with.

Contracting authority: EASME/ DG GROW of the European Commission

Contract Nr. EASME/COSME/2017/001

Contractor: PwC EU Services (together with EDEN and Espace Mendes France)

Duration: 2 years (September 2017 – October 2019)

Skills for industry curriculum guidelines 4.0. 
Future-proof education and training for manufacturing in Europe : final report - Studie

We are in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The main challenges are related to the exponential growth of digital tools that include robots, cobots, connected objects, communication systems, data centers and associated energy consumption. The industrial sector must find new technologies, new designs, new architectures, new communication and data storage concepts, in order to increase the performances of the digital world and, at the same time, to minimise the related energy consumption. Specifically, Europe needs highly skilled, flexible, emotionally and socially intelligent manufacturing professionals that can solve tomorrow’s problems already today. While skill requirements are changing rapidly, enterprises, especially SMEs, struggle to find the talent they need. For industry, it is crucial to support the upskilling of their workforce towards new and higher-skilled roles, as competition for talent will become even fiercer in the coming years. For workers, there is a need to take personal responsibility for their learning trajectory and embrace the concept of lifelong learning. How can education and training providers keep pace with this unprecedented level of change? How does a future-proof curriculum look like? While there are already examples of effective approaches towards adapting engineering training to the needs of Industry 4.0, numerous education and training providers only now begin to consider the necessary development. Reshaping curricula is a considerable challenge, implying complex decision-making processes and various administrative obstacles. Many departments and faculties are still dominated by traditional approaches and subject-related ‘silo thinking’, while the new industrial age requires fundamentally new mind-sets and visionary leadership. The current initiative (January 2018 – December 2019) aimed to address the abovementioned challenges by developing the Curriculum Guidelines 4.0, offering education and training providers a systemised overview of the new ways of organising learning experiences of individuals and groups for Industry 4.0. The guidelines aim to provide key stakeholders with an analytical base for developing curricula for the new industrial age. The objective is to offer a source of inspiration, conceptual guidance and good practice examples. The guidelines aim to be applicable for both designing fundamentally new educational offers and advancing existing curricula, depending on the level of required change

During the Open Education Week 2020 I hosted a webinar o behalf of EDEN on Microlearning and Quality for Lifelong Learning in the Digital Age. EDEN hosted a sereis of webinares during the OEW2020, and my contribution on the 6th March 2020 was one of those and tha last one durong the week.

I had a great team  presenting on microlearning and myself on microlearning, OER amd quality. The presenters were Badrul Kahn, Rene Corbeil, Maria Elena Corbeil and myself.

                                                                           Photo Rene and Maria Elena Corbeil

 The theme for the webinar was presented as:

With the rise of technology, combined with the explosive growth of social media over the last decade, the concept of personalized mobile learning through bite-sized learning snippets has come to the fore. In addition, in the context of major global challenges such as globalization, digitalization and demographic change, and learning for all, there is an urgent need for a variety of learning opportunitiesand pathways for lifelong and life-wide learning. The concept of microlearninghas been around since about 2000, but what is it and how to make learning in bite-sized form successful, attractive and effective, as it to be just right for meand learning in education, training, achievement and talent developmentcontexts. Micro-learning offers opportunities to incorporate, integrate and personalize cost-effective and meaningful learning and training solutions for eachindividual in terms of personal, environmental and organizational performanceimprovement. During this webinar with invited experts in this field there will be opportunities to learn more about the growing field of micro-learning / bite-sizedlearning snippets and quality for life-ong learning.

Microlearning and  mobile learning goes hand in had as it is just for me and just in time leanring, it can be described as Snippets and or the similarities wwith lego, you can pcik and mis and or have it as  aboz with pieces to build on in your own pace.

 

 

Some benefits of Micro-learning

The presentation from Badrul Kahn, Rene Corbeil, and Maria Elena Corbeil  was based on the foerthcoming book on the Microlearnong framework developed by Badrul Kahn.

My presentation focuse on  microlearning and OER and  on the UN UNESCO OER recommendadtions adopted 25 November 2019.

The Connecting Online Conference CO20 hosted by Dr Nellie Dutsch took place during the weekend 21-23 February 2020. For Dr Nellie Dutsch it was her eleventh (11) CO, for me I have presented and participated since 2013. I have also since then on regular base and anually presented in Dr Nellie Dutsch  Spring and Autumn Blog Festivals as well as her MOODLE MOOT/MOOC events. It is amazing and great opportunities to take part, to learn from others, to network and to share and disseminate research results and or ongoing research. 

 

 

This year, during the CO20 I presented on Open Education/Learninng and Social Juatice related to the UN UNESCO SDG. You can follow my presentation as below  from the YouTube Channel. My slides are available at my SlideShare

 

 

It was also of interest to listen to the interview with Dr Nellie Dutsch about why and how it all was started, see the YouTube as below, Vance Stephens Interviews Dr Nellie Dutsch.