Policies, management and planning of e-learning	Project	Project aims and description	Participants
	Qualinet: Quality in e-learning	This project area aims to promote and co-ordinate research projects on quality in e-learning. This is an important area for e-learning research for two related reasons. First, governments, accreditation agencies and professional associations are all raising questions about the quality of e-learning; indeed, UOC itself has a working group at a senior management level looking at quality indicators and performance at UOC. Second, this is an area where there is often a lack of clear definition of what is meant by quality, how to measure it, and how to compare quality of e-learning with other forms of teaching and learning.	Albert Sangrà (leader) Elena Barberà Nati Cabrera Elisabeth Galindo Cristina Girona Lourdes Guàrdia Maria Jesus Martínez Josep Prieto Enric Serradell Maria Taulats
	Impact of the creation of UOC on Catalan Society	The direct goal of the project is to identify impact of virtual learning on Catalan society, and in particular othe role of UOC over last 10 years. To identify the impact of VL the study will particularly focus on: Learners (numbers, demographics, IT skills, jobs) Institutions (which are involved in VL) Technology (developments/use) Language and culture Businesses Others	Tony Bates Carles Esquerré Paco Rubio
Teaching and Learning	Analysis of collaborative learning and working experiences in virtual environments: the case of UOC	The aim of the project is: to facilitate the collaborative learning and work in virtual environments both for teachers and students. The objective of this research project, based on the analysis of cooperative work experiences in UOC, aims to provide teachers and students with didactic guidelines that facilitate working in team in a virtual way. The development of methods and tools of analysis of collaborative interactions will allow to give better support to working groups. It is for this reason that the proposal considers to improve the experience of use of the collaborative environment users. The expected results are: description of best practices of collaborative work in virtual environments, teacher’s guideline, student’s guideline, identification of users and their needs, design and evaluation of interaction areas and analysis of users’ interactions with these, definition of an ontological model of the structure of information generated from collaborative interactions, and definition of a decentralized middleware.	Montse Guitert (leader) Ferran Jiménez Teresa Romeu Anna Guerrero Julià Minguillon Enric Mor Atanasi Daradoumis Joan Manel Marquès Joe Hopkins Magi Almirall Jordi Casamajó Nati Cabrera
	IDICT: Instructional Design and Information and Communication Technologies; from the contents design to the virtual environments for teaching and learning design.	The project aims to develop a theoretical framework based on an instructional design model that brings together these two aspects: the design of programs to develop competencies, and the design of learning objects. The aim is to apply new curricula design, based on sound psychology and pedagogy, to the re-use of learning content. The theoretical model will integrate educational context, virtual learning environments, learning methods, interactions between students and professors, assessment and guidance, learning objectives and competencies, and resources and support strategies for learners, with the use of re-usable digital materials.	Lourdes Guàrdia (leader) Guillem Bautista Anna Espasa Albert Sangrà Ferran Giménez Julià Minguillon Enric Serradell Cristina Girona Xavier Mas Magda Lizano Carles Fernàndez Francesc Santanach
	Pan Fil Hum: The Construction of Knowledge by Students in Virtual Envirnments	It aims at finding out how students build their knowledge, how they interact with the learning materials and what strategies they follow when building their discourse, how digital technologies redefine the role of the teacher, and how the possibility of working with a web support contributes to asynchronous teaching-learning. In particular: What do digital technologies provide to teaching-learning strategies? And how do they innovate them? Which skills and strategies do experts recommend to online students and which are actually used by the students? How the design, contents and access and navigation systems of a web support material should be so that its didactic use can be optimized and a virtual learning network can be created? How are the pedagogical, technical and creative aspects structured and how do they interact in the role of the online teacher?	Joan Campàs (leader) Isidor Marí Joan Elies Adell Eduard Aibar Pau David Alsina Elisenda Ardèvol Federico Borges Laura Borràs Roger Canadell Cèsar Carreras Salvador Climent Norman Coe Pauline Ernest Narcís Figueras Joe Hopkins Roger Martínez Mar Massanell Glòria Munilla Francesc Núñez Agnès Vayreda
Web services and content management	PERSONAL. Personalization and standardization of the learning process in virtual environments, using itineraries based in re-usable learning objects and ontologies	To design an e-learning platform based on standards that allow for individualized or personalized routes through learning materials. The research project will identify ways to create learning objects so that they can be designed for personalization what kind of student information is needed for personalizing the learning process how itineraries can be analyzed for improving the learning process how standards for learning objects need to be extended to include personalization how this new way of learning may change student and teacher roles.	Julià Minguillon Mireia Pascual Enric Mor Àngels Rius Lourdes Guàrdia Magí Almirall Jordi Casamajó Francesc Santanach Guillem Garcia Alex Abad M. Elena Rodríguez Eva De Lera Carles Fernàndez Eva Patrícia Gil Núria Ferran Maria Galofré Mª Antonia Huertas Francesc Saigí Laia Llorens Lluís Pastor Nati Cabrera Xavier Mas
	LEARNING TOOLS: Tools for e-learning	identify and encourage new approaches to teaching that develop the skills needed in a knowledge-based society identify and map the current application of new tools by professors at UOC identify and map new learning tools being used in other institutions develop and apply a set of criteria to identify those tools that best support different teaching approaches develop a quality control approach that ensures UOC professors use new approaches and tools in a cost-effective manner develop a scalable, cost-effective technology system to enable the integration of appropriate new tools for learning as they are developed (both internally and externally) update the virtual campus of UOC with innovative tools place UOC as a testing center for new learning tools improve the virtual campus of UOC by measuring the results related to academic performance, satisfaction of learners and teachers and cost reduction allow professors to test and integrate innovative tools and their use extend the possibilities of uses of virtual campuses increase the level of autonomy and creativity of learners and their participation in the virtual campuses design methodologies and tools to evaluate the learning tools	(provisional) Magí Almirall Lluís Tarin Tony Bates Carles Fernàndez Sandra Martínez Eva Ortoll