Jun 30, 2012

The Megatrend Reports

I've now published the four Megatrend 2007 reports in this Issuu shelf:




The project's Recommendations for robust and sustainable,large-scale e-learning is also available in several languges.

Jun 27, 2012

New job opportunities

Dear colleagues and friends,

I have sent a letter of resignation to NKI, which means that I will end my work at NKI Nettstudier September 30th. Now, my ambitions are to use my competency and network to build an international education- and consultancy operation.

This has been a difficult decision. I’m really thankful for NKI’s longstanding support of my professional development which has made it possible for me to become professor of online education and president of EDEN. However, NKI is now in a tough transformation process with new opportunities and challenges. The prevailing targets and the methods of accomplishing them are making it increasingly difficult for me to feel that I’m contributing sufficiently.

I'm extremely proud of our achievements during the 25 years that have passed since I thought NKI’s first online, distance education course. You know that I care a lot about transparent and cooperative online education, especially the unique opportunities it gives to all the devoted online students and teachers. It's heartwarming to think about our individual planning system, the response and quality barometers, the learning partner services, the global student profiles and all the other innovative online education services we have pioneered. I like to think that this has been of great benefit for the 55.000 online students we have enrolled in nearly 200.000 courses since 1987.

I'm convinced that the future is bright for online education, and I hope that NKI will continue its impressive progress for 25 more years. I wish success and happiness - to all my dear friends and colleagues at NKI Nettstudier. I will miss you, and everything we have achieved together.

I believe that opportunities multiply when we look for them. Now, I look forward to build my new education- and consultancy operation and to work with my good Norwegian and international colleagues in further pursuit of quality, development and innovation in distance and online education.

With warm regards from Morten

Jun 22, 2012

Video Interviews from the EDEN Conference

A camera-tema from Universidade Aberta conducted a series of video interviews during this year's EDEN Conference. The video, which is mostly in Portuguese, is available at  http://vimeo.com/44316614

Eva Suba e-mailed me some questions and Livia Turzo did several of the interviews.

These video interviews tend to be shorter and different from what we expect, so if you are interested in the "full story", here are the notes I made to prepare for the interview which starts 2 minutes into the video:

Jun 9, 2012

EDEN's Best Research Paper Award


EDEN's Best Research Paper Award is granted yearly during the Annual Conference Dinner. The Award is presented in collaboration with the Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning, with the support of a distinguished Jury.

Rapetti congratulated by Bø and Paulsen
This year, former President of EDEN Ingeborg Bø chaired the jury and presented the Best Paper Award at the conference dinner on June 8th.  

This year's winners were Emanuele Rapetti and Lorenzo Cantoni from Universita della Svizzera Italiana in  Switzerland. Their paper is titled Reconsidering "Gen Y" & Co: From Minding the Gap to Overcoming it.


The decision of the jury was unanimously, and the laudation included the following statement:

In the Jury's judgement this paper is an excellent  contribution to the theme of the conference on „Open Learning Generations - Closing the Gap from Generation 'Y' to the Mature Lifelong Learners“ and it is best  in  presenting applicable and transferable results based on a solid methodological approach. The findings are critically discussed with references to the relevant literature and with creative ideas for further research.  

Jun 8, 2012

The EDEN AGM, new EC members and President's Report

The 21th EDEN Annual General Meeting was held Thursday June 7th in the Algandega Congress Centre in Porto.

The results from the election of officers are shown in the picture, and I congratulate the following new EC members who were elected at the meeting:

Lisa-Marie BLASHCKE, University of Oldenburg
Grainne CONOLE, University of Leicester
Fabio NASCIMBIENI, MENON Network

I would also use this opportunity to say THANK YOU to the three retiring EC members Andrea Karpati, Tapio Koskinen and Gilly Salmon.


The President's Report that I presented during the meeting is available at the EDEN Website, and the embedded PowerPoints I used are also available on Slideshare.

Jun 7, 2012

EDEN Welcome Reception with Fellow Awards


The EDEN Annual Conference started tonight with the welcome reception in the Noble Hall of Alfandega Congress Center.

During the reception, I had the pleasure of welcoming the delagates and handing over the diplomas to the new EDEN Fellows. The following are my notes for the welcome address and the laudation of the fellows: