TF-EDU annual event: The (future) educational case for NRENs

The GÉANT Task Force for Educational Activities (TF-EDU) would like to invite you to a pre-TNC21 Conference workshop focussing on both strategic opportunities and challenges, and sharing knowledge and best practice on practical issues related to the delivery of education, both nationally and globally.

Our annual event for 2021 will be hosted by TF-EDU Steering Committee members, using their experience, individually and collectively, and the knowledge gained from our community sessions over the past year, and during the pandemic. Our annual events attract a global audience, from NRENs, educational institutions, international organisations, governments and commercial companies.

We are delighted to welcome our keynote speaker, Jet de Ranitz, CEO of SURF, the Dutch NREN with a history of strengths and a focus on education. Jet will talk about SURF’s vision and approach to the digitalization of education, sharing SURF’s plans for acceleration of digitalization and engaging with relevant organisations with a role in education. She will also discuss data, what constitutes ‘meaningful data’, its ownership, learning analytics, and associated ethical questions. Jet will also touch upon how education is changing with the mobility of students and lifelong learning, the NREN’s role, and importance of open educational resources.

Following this we will deliver a provocative and evocative panel session to consider whether there is a changing role for National Research and Education Networking organisations (NRENs), facilitated by Esther Wilkinson (Jisc), and made up of a globally representative panel of experts with rich experience and a range of views on ‘what next?’ for NRENs.

At the service level, the session ‘What’s next for educational services?’ will be hosted by Nathalie Roth (SWITCH) and Tomi Dolenc (ARNES), where Christoph Graf from the Swiss National Research and Education Network SWITCH will provide an insight in student mobility and edu-ID.

Our legal session will focus on the remaining and/or emerging issues with respect to GDPR that have become more exposed in our sector due to the accelerated use of ICT services in the pandemic year, specifically the uncertainty that follows the Schrems II case. The session will be hosted by Vegard Moen (UNIT) and Tomi Dolenc (ARNES) and include expertise from Andrew Cormack from Jisc as well as insights from the Republic of Slovenia (tbc).

We will endeavour to set out the context for these discussions at the outset with an overview of the most recent results from our third ‘Annual Survey on Educational Services and Activities’, looking also at any trends from the earlier surveys and possible early impact of the pandemic, brought to you by Dragana Kupres (CARNET).

The workshop will help TF-EDU develop a forward-looking roadmap to better understand the changes as a community, and for the education sector as a whole.

More information and agenda can be found at the TF-EDU wiki page.