1. Lockdown, not shutdown: openUp2U, the next generation digital learning environment

2. Why ‘openUp2u’?
The COVID-19 outbreak is having a major impact on people’s day-to-day lives and
on European education. To enhance online learning in these extreme times, the Up to
University (Up2U) project, supported by GÉANT, is offering ‘openUp2U’ - a temporary, open,
trimmed down version of our easy-to-use Up2U learning platform - for all educational
institutions in Europe.
What is Up2U?
The EU-funded Up2U project’s main objective is to bring innovation to schools by piloting
teaching and learning technologies and pedagogical approaches that empower teachers
and students to develop digital skills required by the 21st-century internet society. The
key objective of the project is to bridge the gap between secondary schools and higher
education and research by enhancing the digital skills of students. To achieve this
objective, the Up2U project is designing and delivering a Next Generation Digital Learning
Environment (NGDLE - learn.up2university.eu), which integrates the formal and informal
learning spaces for secondary school students and teachers who wish to develop and
enhance their teaching and learning skills up to the university standards.
Who can benefit from openUp2U?
People at all levels of education who have to accommodate the new norms of life can
benefit.
●● Students
oo Experience new technology from the cloud to the classroom and back.
oo Discover informal learning spaces and develop new skills.
oo Learn to adapt to new learning scenarios.
●● Teachers
oo Incorporate online tools into your daily teaching practice.
oo Help your students develop ‘critical thinking’ and be more independent learners.
oo Create critical mass and good practices that can be applied in teaching and learning
activities.
What can teachers and students do with openUp2u?
●● Create and use authenticated courses in the openUp2U platform
oo Multi-disciplinary courses
●● Upload/access lectures and assignments
●● Create and use interactive videos and exercises
●● Create, store and use open educational content in the openUp2U repository
●● Use a virtual room for communication
Why use openUp2u?
●● It is easy to use.
●● You can engage with broad teaching and learning activities.
●● Students and teachers can keep in touch via a virtual classroom.
●● It supports a variety of teaching models, methodologies and tools:
oo Project-Based Learning
oo Experiential Learning
oo Flipped Classroom
The innovation action leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under Grant Agreement No. 732049 - Up2U

3. What 21st century skills does openUp2u support?
●● Critical thinking & problem solving
●● Communication & collaboration
●● Information, media & technology literacy
●● Self-direction
●● Learning to learn
What tools does openUp2U provide?
●● Moodle - serving as the base learning management system
●● eduMEET - a tool for online meetings
●● CERNBox - a file sync and share system
●● SWAN/Jupyter Notebook - to produce digital notebooks and share documents
What are the advantages of openUp2u tools?:
●● Open-source - it is fully customizable, most of the cases it’s free to use and can be a
very fast-developing product, more up-to-date than a proprietary one
●● Interoperable - the tools we offer are integrated with Moodle, but they are built by
design to be easily applicable to other applications or learning management systems
●● GDPR compliant - you don’t have to worry about collecting consent yourself on the
school-level
How to get started?
We encourage teachers and professors to learn and experience the openUp2U Next
Generation Digital Learning Environment, and to choose tools and learning scenarios
that can support the learning process for students in the classroom or learn from home.
Teachers are welcome to invite their students to the platform to experience it together. We
offer tutorials and other support materials to get you started.
The innovation action leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under Grant Agreement No. 732049 - Up2U
up2university.eu/open/
START

4. About us
Up2U project partners are not-for-profit organisations, universities and SMEs that support
research and education, coordinated by GÉANT, the European association of national
research and education networks (NRENs).
The 41-month Up2U project started inJanuary2017 and receives funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No.
732049 - Up2U.
The openUp2U initiative has additional support from the GÉANT project GN4-3, CERN,
KIFÜ (Hungary), GRNET (Greece), NORDUnet, OwnCloud, PSNC (Poland) and AWS. The
openUp2U platform is being offered on a best effort basis.
Please do not hesitate to contact us: contact@lists.up2university.eu
The innovation action leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under Grant Agreement No. 732049 - Up2U
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