Keynote Speaker

On the importance of being open

Erik Duval - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Abstract:

In this talk, I will talk about some of the meanings of the word 'open' in relation to learning - open source, open standards, open educational resources, open on-line courses, ... are some of the terms I may refer to. The emphasis will be on the added value of openness and transparency. Maybe we'll discuss some problems and dangers too. I will definitely show some concrete examples of our work in this area.

Biographical Information:

I am a professor in the research unit on hypermedia and databases, at the computer science department of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

My research focuses on management of and access to structured and unstructured data. In practical terms, we research repositories, federated search, harvesting, content management, but also more end user oriented aspects like information visualization, mobile information devices, multi-touch displays and mash-ups. We typically apply our results to technology enhanced learning, access to music and ‘research2.0′. My current obsession is massive hyper-personalization (“The Snowflake Effect”) – a topic on which I regularly keynote.

If you want more details, then please have a look at the pages of my research unit, my publications, my presentations, my facebook page and my blog.

This academic year (2009-2010), I teach courses on:

• Human-Computer Interaction (course wikis for one, two and three years ago),
• Multimedia (2008, 2007),
• problem solving and design in the 1st, 2nd (last year) and 3rd bachelor of engineering,
• capita selecta of computer science (last year, year before).

I serve as:

• president of the ARIADNE Foundation,
• chair of the IEEE LTSC working group on Learning Object Metadata,
• a fellow of the AACE,
• a member of ACM, and the IEEE computer society.
• on the Editorial Review Board and the Executive Advisory Board of the International Journal on E-Learning,
• on the Steering Committee and Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TLT),
• on the board of editors of the Journal of Universal Computer Science,
• a member of the informatics section of the Academia Europeae.

I co-founded two spin-offs that apply research results for access to music and scientific output.