More international signatories are underlining their commitment to an agenda of digital secure portability of academic data by signing up to the Groningen Declaration.
The Groningen Declaration Network will hold its annual conference in the UNESCO world heritage city Puebla, Mexico, in April 2019.
The eighth global conference of the group, which aims to proliferate the spread of responsible digitisation and data in international education, will see at least 12 new signatories of its Declaration – including The PIE News – the first media organisation to do so.
“We believe the sector itself should take this in its own hands”
The three-day event will host speakers from UNESCO, the Dutch Education Executive Agency (DUO), and Commonwealth of Learning, and many more.
It will take place under the banner of ‘Creating the New World for Academic and Professional Mobility’, it will be the first bilingual conference held by the Network – with live translation in English and Spanish.
Speaking with The PIE News, the Network’s executive director Herman de Leeuw said it was important to bring UNESCO to the conference, following the publication in 2018 of the report: ‘Digital credentialing: implications for the recognition of learning across borders’.
“We are lucky to have the regional [past] director of UNESCO’s Education institute with Latin America [speaking at the conference]. They are aligned with us,” de Leeuw said.
Indeed, UNESCO’s director for policies and lifelong learning systems, Borhene Chakroun, is another ally of the GDN.
“We believe the sector itself should take this in its own hands, we would like to make this an industry driven [trend of digital credentialing],” added de Leeuw.
The GDN aims to bring together international education stakeholders to collaborate and create an “ethically centred Digital Student Data Ecosystem”.
Herman de Leeuw, one of the main drivers of what is now a global collective, was shortlisted for a PIEoneer Award in 2018 for Outstanding contribution to the industry.
The PIE has taken the decision to sign up to the Declaration as we believe in the benefits of international education, and agree with the aims of digital democratisation and security the Network strives for. We think the world is better when knowledge is shared, and by signing up and continuing to spread the word, we hope to help the project advance.
