CASTALIA AT THE “ONLINE, OPEN AND FLEXIBLE HIGHER EDUCATION CONFERENCE”: PRESENTATION ON MOBILE LEARNING FEASIBILITY STUDY WITH AN ONLINE UNIVERSITY IN ITALY

Castalia Co. Ltd. (headquarters: Tokyo, Japan, hereinafter “Castalia”) participated in the “Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference” (hereinafter OOFHEC) held in Rome, Italy from October 19 thru 21, 2016, and made a presentation with regards to the smartphone-based feasibility study conducted as a joint project with Università Telematica Internazionale UNINETTUNO (hereinafter “UNINETTUNO”), a university based in Italy.

 

OOFHEC is an annual international conference organized by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) on open educational resources (OER) and massive open online courses (MOOC) in Europe. This year, under the theme of “Enhancing European Higher Education: Opportunities and impact of new modes of teaching”, presentations were made by universities and other institutions from across Europe.

 

Presentations were made with regards to the efforts by NGOs on distance education for refugees, which has been an agenda in Europe in recent years, as well as feasibility studies on the prevention of disengagement from e-learning. Focuses were on the fields such as open education, lifelong learning, social inclusion in higher education, and learning analytics to name a few.

Castalia was chosen the sole presenter from Asia; CEO Satoshi Yamawaki and Consultant Atsushi Inutsuka made presentations with regards to the feasibility study on mobile learning targeting students in the Middle East and North Africa, which had been conducted last year as a joint project with Uninettuno.

 

Castalia’s CEO Satoshi Yamawaki giving the presentation
Castalia’s CEO Satoshi Yamawaki giving the presentation


 

The presentation, entitled “Mobile learning: A one-year-old Italo-Japanese collaboration”, focused on the result of the feasibility study conducted by providing students in the Middle East and North Africa with Uninettuno’s lectures on object-oriented programming, by way of Castalia’s mobile learning platform Goocus. Plans on future joint projects with Uninettuno had also been announced.

 

Castalia’s Consultant Atsushi Inutsuka giving the presentation
Castalia’s Consultant Atsushi Inutsuka giving the presentation


 

Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference
http://conference.eadtu.eu/

 

■European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU)
EADTU is an association that consists of 15 distance-teaching high education institutions and 14 organizations from 25 European countries, and promotes distance education in Europe. It is one of the key partners of the European Commission in the field of distance-teaching higher education. Based on the Bologna Accords and “Strategic framework – Education & Training 2020” (ET2020), they are working on the creation of learning spaces in Europe.
http://eadtu.eu/

 

■About Goocus
Goocus is the mobile learning platform developed by Castalia. The principal axis of its development is on the “continuity of learning” mainly on smartphones. In pursuit of “social learning”, the “visualization of learning”, and “gamification”, we research on how to make the learning experience a day-to-day process.
https://www.gooc.us/

 

■Università telematica internazionale "UniNettuno”
The International Telematic University (UniNettuno) is a private online university founded in 2005 and headquartered in Rome, Italy. It was established by the decree of Italy in 2005 as the communication and broadcasting-based university dedicated to distant learning, as part of the educational measures in the European Union to provide higher education mainly in the Mediterranean coastal regions. Lectures are offered not only in Italian but also in English, French, Arabic, Greek, and Portuguese.
http://www.uninettunouniversity.net/

 

■About Castalia Co., Ltd.
Castalia Co., Ltd. is a company that reinvents learning under the slogan of “find solutions to social problems with the fusion of education and IT”. We develop mobile learning platform “Goocus” and supply it to corporations and educational institutions. In addition, we collaborate with Shingakukai, an educational conglomerate that operates mainly in Nagano Prefecture, for the curriculum design at Code Academy High School ( http://code.ac.jp ), Japan’s first extensive correspondence high school that sets programming (coding) as mandatory subject.
http://www.castalia.co.jp/

 

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Email: info [AT] castalia.co.jp   (When you contact us, convert  [AT]  into at sign.)