Open Access

A Stereo Active Vision Interface is introduced which detects frontal faces in real world environments and performs particular active control tasks dependent on changes in the visual field. Firstly, connected skin colour regions in the visual scene are detected by applying a radial scanline algorithm. Secondly, facial features are searched for in the most salient skin colour region while the blob is tracked by the camera system. The facial features are evaluated and, based on the obtained results and the current state of the system, particular actions are performed. The SAVI system is thought of as a smart user interface for teleconferencing, telemedicine, and distance learning. The system is designedas a Perception-Action-Cycle (PAC), processing sensory data ofdifferent kinds and qualities. Both the vision module and the head motion control module work at frame rate. Hence, the system is able to react instantaneously to changing conditions in the visual scene.

Almost unnoticed by the e-learning community, the underlying technology of the WWW is undergoing massive technological changes on all levels these days. In this paper we draw the attention to the emerging game changer and discuss the consequences for online learning. In our e-learning project "Work & Study", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, we have experimented with several new technological approaches such as Mobile First, Responsive Design, Mobile Apps, Web Components, Client-side Components, Progressive Web Apps, Course Apps, e-books, and web sockets for real time collaboration and report about the results and consequences for online learning practice. The modular web is emerging where e-learning units are composed from and delivered by universally embeddable web components.

Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodological/theoretical knowledge, but also prepare them for the future tasks in the world of works! This contradicts academia’s focus on sustainably teaching basic principles. With the extra-curricular international online program erp4students, we successfully managed to bridge this "conflict-of-interest”.

Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with demands for employees in others. However, the numbers of early school leavers and university dropouts significantly increased in the hosting countries. We propose a higher measure of cultural sensitivity in education in order to prevent frustration. The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on international level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable. After a brief introduction, we subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and found results. Subsequently, we introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the usefulness of the data and insights from our Learning Culture Survey in the context of practical scenarios.

The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on international level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable and support educators to prevent and solve intercultural conflicts in education. So far, we found that culture-related expectations differ between educational settings, depend on the age of the learners, and that a nationally homogenous educational culture is rather an exception than the rule. The results of our recently completed longitudinal study provided evidence that educational culture on the institutional level actually is persistent, at least over a term of four years. After a brief introduction of the general background, we will subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and achieved general insights regarding educational culture. Last, we will introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to w hich people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the method’s functionality on examples from the Learning Culture Survey.

After an introduction, we discuss the conflicts that occurred in a highly experimental course setting, in which we implemented a student-centered course in urban higher education with a constructivist, blended-learning design. We analyse to which extent the cultural country profiles from our Learning Culture Survey suffice to prevent intercultural conflicts in education and provide support for the design of respective interventions.

Culture, at least to some extent, is related to particular (individual and collective) experiences. In terms of education, this means that a learner, who experienced particular services in his/her past, might perceive such services as usual for educational culture and thus, expect them to be delivered in any kind of learning scenario. In German universities, education is meant to be a full-time job and usually is designed to provide a broad basis of theoretical and methodological knowledge. Achieving methodological competences is a core goal of German academic education: Once a student leaves the university, he/she is expected to decide about appropriate methods for any kind of problem (in the field of study and beyond) and how to modify the known methods in case of need. In contrast, in professional training, the learners have to study in extra-occupational situations (time is a serious issue) and might expect training that pointedly prepares them for very specific tasks. We assumed that scenarios of professional training have their own educational cultures. When designing learning contents and learning scenarios for professional training, it might be essential for the learning success to meet the learners’ expectations and contextual peculiarities. We found remarkable differences between the results of the investigated enterprises, but even more significant diversity between the results of the German enterprises and the priory investigated German universities. As a general conclusion we can assume that generalizing research results that were solely achieved from national university students might lead to an inappropriate design of learning scenarios for particular professional contexts. Professional training for a particular enterprise should be developed according to its specific educational culture.

One idea behind Open Educational Resources (OERs) is opening up the access to learning resources for stakeholders who were not the originally targeted users. Even though making educational resources available for the public already is a remarkable achievement, their usefulness often is limited to a very particular context because of unclear or missing appropriateness regarding other contexts. In this paper, contextual appropriateness is investigated as a special quality criterion for OERs. We will introduce barriers against the use of OERs and demands from the educational community that need to be addressed in order to overcome such barriers. We will show that the hitherto implemented quality standards for Technology Enhanced Learning do not yet fully support such particular demands and discuss which additional steps are required for the context of OERs. We conclude with an outlook and recommendations that can open up the full potential of OERs.