At UOC in Barcelona

D-Transform: The First Leadership School

Barcelona (E), July 2016 - This first-of-its-kind event is aimed at heads and directors of European higher education institutions – presidents, rectors, vice presidents, deans of faculty and directors of units – who are interested in learning, sharing, and developing the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for correct decision making regarding the uses of digital technologies in eLearning, distance learning, MOOCs, and educational digital transformation in teaching and learning in the classroom and online. Digital libraries, digital natives, and academic resistance to ICT will be some of the main topics dealt with.

The agreement to organize this first Leadership School, which will take place 14-18 Novermber 2016, was made at a transnational meeting of the European research project D-Transform – which the UOC is part of – in Budapest on 13-14 June. Representing the UOC were Marta Aymerich, UOC Vice President for Strategic Planning and Research, and Israel Conejero, project manager for D-Transform.

Aymerich said, "The Leadership School was the main focus of this meeting, which was extended an extra day in order to meet our objectives and approve the changes in the new budget. The visit to Budapest coincided with the annual conference of the European Distance and eLearning Network (EDEN), in which D-Transform organized a workshop led by the UOC and headed by Marta Aymerich in colaboration with Antoni Pérez-Navarro, a professor in the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications."

D-Transform aims to prepare those at the forefront of higher education to be architects of change for tomorrow’s universities. To achieve this, it offers a training programme focusing on the major role played by digital technologies and Open Educational Resources (OER) in the necessary transformation of their institutions. It receives funding from the Strategic Partnerships sub-programme (part of the Erasmus+ European programme) and has a total budget of almost 500,000 euros. It is set to run until 2017.