July 2005

Screen design:
   M. Fritsch

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NEWS ... and Olds!  This service has been terminated after spring 2006

• Otto Peters, Founding Rector of FernUniversität, will be honoured for his 80th birthday with a Research Colloquium by the faculty of Cultural and Social Sciences in Hagen, on May 18th 2006
• The Senate of the FernUniversität in Hagen confirmed in his 240th meeting on July 6th 2005 that the ZIFF is going to be closed due to financial contraints and following the decision to conduct research only within the faculty/department structure and not any longer in one of the central institutes which are to be understood as service institutions exclusively. There are plans to care for distance education research within the faculty/department of cultural and social sciences.
• Deutsche Fernstudien Dokumentation i s now available on the internet: it combines non-book documentations from different sources; the former DIFF in Tübingen, the ZIFF in Hagen, and is rather voluminous with more that 20.000 items. Thanks to the library of FernUniversität it already works pretty well!
• the last ZIFF Paper appeared: It is the product of a project Virtual classrooms in educational provision" and has the number 126.
• On Dec.1st 2004 the rector of FernUniversität in Hagen informed the Senate that ZIFF is going to be closed. Research is going to take place in the departments only, all central agencies are service institutions from now on.
• Gearoid O Suilleabhain presents his paper on "The Convergence of Higher Education and E-Learning"
• finally there is a German version of the student support services sub-project:questionnaire of LVU students (Jan. 2004)in ZIFF Papiere 124
• New European policy paper by the ODL liaison Committee- supported by EDEN
•  ZIFF- Kolloquium with Dr. John Whatley from Simon Frazer Univerversity, Vancouver: Nov 26th 2004 at ZIFF
• Lalita Rajasingham (New Zealand) presents her view of a new global university in ZIFF Papiere 123 (Nov. 2004) IN SEARCH OF A NEW UNIVERSITY PARADIGM IN A KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
• Helmut Fritsch (Sept.2004) Quality assurasnce from the students point of view, Rome, Sept.24th
• Helmut Fritsch (July 2004) From Distance Teaching to Blended Learning
• June 2004: New ZIFF Papier (122) is online now!A comparative Analysis of European and Southeast Asian Educational Tradition, Values, Systems and Issues and of ICT in Education
• Mlearn 2004 conference near Rome: Georg Stroehlein presents "Hist'O'Brick"
• Dr. Lalita Rajasingham (New Zealand)  is with the ZIFF as visiting scholar from July-Sept. 2004 funded by DAAD- one of her new papers
• International conference about student support services in e-learning in Rome 24th Sept. 2004
• Nächste GMW Tagung in Graz vom 15.-17-Sept.
• ZIFF Kolloquium: 23.3.2004: On usability engineering by Joerg Kampmann, M.A.(Feldmann Media Group)
• Boerje Holmberg had his 80th birthday. Congratulations
• 2004 EDEN research workshop on student support services:  turned out to be THE highlight of this spring!
• The "virtual classroom" project is well under way! Prof.Peter Baumgartner of FernUni hosts this project
• A new project also called m-learning2 has been launched where the ZIFF plays still a certain role although the FernUni will be represented by Dr. G. Stroehlein, now member of the DVT (Prof. Krämer) chair: Mobile learning: the next generation of learning (project leader Ericsson)
• To link Europe and South-East Asia is the goal of a EU project: CAE-eLearn, of which the UOC in Barcelona is the leading partner
• A new consortium project (by the same suspects as usual): Student support services in e-learning
• After the success of the "web-edu" project and the project "from e-learning to m-learning"a conference in each of the projects took place.
• Here is a new paper of P.R Ramanujam, IGNOU, New Delhi- Technology - Pedagogy combine: Need for Quality in Distance Open Learning
• Specialization Program in International Online Education an new program of NKI
• Axel Schmetzke, University of Wisconsin, had a ZIFF colloquium on accessibility
• Dr. Desmond Keegan became professor at the accredited NKI Netskolen (Oslo)
• ZIFF Kolloquium with Prof. P.R.Ramanujam from IGNOU (STRIDE), New Delhi
• Documentation of European courses on the internet - CISAER (UK,IRL,P,N) - with links to institutions under construction!
• VOCTADE Final Report is on the Net: more than 1000 pages - just have a look!