Building tools for research matchmaking

Connecting differents fields of expertise: that’s how many scientific breakthroughs come to be. Hasselt University understood this and decided to build an internal matchmaking tool for its researchers. By enabling researchers to openly share offers and requests, it facilitates serendipity and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Rutger will share lessons learnt from building the tool and invite you to join him in thinking about how this tool can evolve in the future.

Co-create open educational resources with CoCOS

Course material typically starts from the educators perspective and initiative and fails to engage the diverse capabilities of students and experts within the society. Unlocking students’ potential through co-created course content greatly contributes to the quality and richness of the course, and to the development of critical thinkers.

Co-creation has become a hot topic in higher education, especially because of its potential to solve a number of challenges in the current higher education setting. In a society characterised by globalisation, digitalisation, and constant change, educational institutions – higher education institutions (HEI) as well as adult education institutions – must think beyond today and provide students with the skills to shape tomorrow’s society. In the case of co-creation with students, the contributing students naturally bring their individual learning needs and qualities to the table, allowing for increased course diversification and student engagement, leading to better learning outcomes. In other words, deep-level-learning.
Co-creation can also involve colleagues from related disciplines or experts from the professional field. Incorporating their input will not only aid the educator in providing the most up-to-date course material in a rapidly changing environment, it also assures that students pick up on interdisciplinary knowledge and skills indispensable for their future careers.

Unfortunately, learning platforms often fail to strike a balance between free input by students and experts from related professional fields on the one hand and sufficient control and feedback facilities for the educator on the other hand. Furthermore, educators, especially those lacking in digital literacy, often get bogged down by administration and coordination, leaving insufficient room for creativity, inspiration and research. CoCOS tackles the above-mentioned challenges by creating a didactical concept and an open source platform enabling effective and efficient co-creation of educational resources.

More about CoCOS via: https://www.cocos.education/