Optimizing Distance Learning Educational Programs

Colleges and universities faced a wide range of challenges, including disengaged students, high dropout rates, and the ineffectiveness of a traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach to education. Furthermore, the current COVID pandemic has highlighted the need for an innovation in training and education. This need had a number of characteristics. In this context, flexibility was required to accommodate for the needs and timetable of the students and educators and respond to unforeseen situations. Moreover it was critical to enable the ability to reach remote areas without extreme costs for new infrastructure, exploit the advantages of the digital realm and provide immersive learning experiences. These experiences ought to take into account the profiles and preferences of students and educators so that education could move from its traditional style and was rendered to one of personalized learning. Digital, distant education efforts, had not addressed all mentioned dimensions. The ODLEP approach made possible especially, in the case of personalized learning to move digital education one step further from its current status and made it more attractive not only to students but also to educators, adults, policymakers.

One of the core objectives is personalized education. With personalized education, every student enjoys a unique educational approach tailored to their needs. The same applies for educators. Personalized education has the potential to increase the educational quality and performance of the course without additional costs, time and effort. As a result, the ODLEP approach developed an advanced digital culture for universities by applying innovation and creative implementation. In general, digital education is not a mere utility but as an opportunity for universities to lead in the 21st century and make breakthroughs. Thus, the ODLEP approach, leading towards the breakthrough, is an innovative effort that has been designed as “disruptive technology”. ODLEP is an approach that combines and focuses both on the technological aspect and development and at the same time the project approach keeps at its core students and instructors. In this context, ODLEP builds on technological developments and on personality traits, learning and teaching preferences. All these developments will facilitate changes and reengineering processes within the institutions and universities and researchers and urge them to re-think the notion of education.

WP2 produced extensive reports presenting the critical educational success parameters, characteristics and attitudes of the students and instructors, and identified personality traits for both students and instructors. The report was complemented by focused and specialized statistical analyses along with bibliometric analysis. A knowledge database was produced and also published (Deliverable 2.1). In addition, two more databases were produced including data on 480 and 1007 papers respectively. WP3 provided firstly a report on the mathematical framework, an extensive literature review on the Multi-Criteria Decision Aid methodologies (Deliverable 3.1) and two additional databases with relevant research papers. Furthermore, the ODLEP platform with its two capabilities, constituted deliverable 3.2. WP4 disseminated through all available media and events the context and content of the ODLEP project and created synergies. Extensive testing began of the ODLEP’s platform. A report on the conduction of courses was produced describing the process across all partners’ institutions. Finally, partners evaluated ODLEP application and created a comprehensive report on the best practices and policy recommendations (Deliverable 4.1).