Opening the FORGE platform – Build your own interactive course for free!

FORGE is part of the online education revolution. It is bridging the gaps between FIRE (future internet research and experiment) and the educational community. To push the boundaries of online courses, FORGE is soon releasing an open call to extend the use of the project’s methodologies and tools to external learners, educators and researchers. Within the call, FORGE will solicit proposals for the development of experiment-driven courses, built over the project’s platform (or any other educational platform with FORGE widgets), using real infrastructure on FIRE facilities.

The FORGE project delivers an environment for introducing the eLearning community to the experimentally driven research, and also to act as a training facility for FIRE in general. Through the project’s development methodologies and best practices, FIRE experimentation facilities are offered to learners and to the learning community in general.

The project has already developed a number of prototype courses targeting both at the content specific learning goals of the course (such as understanding a certain communication protocol) and at the basic and advanced usage of FIRE facilities for creating experiments. These courses are available at: http://www.forgebox.eu/.

However, these prototype courses only form the stepping stone for a whole new world in education! Through this upcoming call, FORGE provides an opportunity to educational institutions to build their own widgets and innovative interactive courses and include them to their curricula.

The call will be open to anyone interested to contribute or use the FORGE methodologies and tools together with FIRE facilities and world class computing resources. All FORGE tools, processes and the platform will be open and available to the community, potential users and contributors. FORGE will act as a conduit facilitating the passing of lessons learnt to the FIRE facility owners, so that both the educational and FIRE communities will be engaged and benefit from the initiative.

By participating, you will be entitled to free access to the FORGE tools and processes and guaranteed support by the FORGE consortium, covering guided training and technical assistance. The consortium will also provide relevant documentation and tutorials. Moreover, cloud infrastructure to build your courses is offered for free by GRNET, the Greek Research and Education Network.

More details and practical information on how to become part of the FORGE world will be soon announced here.

Please contact us for any question related to open access at: opencall@ict-forge.eu