Prof. Rob Koper

Prof. Rob Koper is professor and director of learning technologies research at the Open University of the Netherlands, where he leads a team of around 40 researchers. He has 22 years of experience in the field and has (had) numerous roles in management and advisory boards, like the National Assessment Agency, the Digital University Consortium, the local government, standardisation bodies like IMS, CEN/ISSS, elected member of the EU Prometeus board, and advisor for the new European Commissions' RTD programmes.

He has published over 200 publications in scientific journal and books. Recent special issues editor: British Journal of Educational Technology (2004): technology & lifelong learning; Journal of Interactive Media in Education (2005): advances in learning design; Educational Technology and Society (2006): current research in learning design; Interactive Learning Environments (planned for 2007): lifelong competence development. Recent co-edited books are: Integrated eLearning, 2004. London: RoutledgeFalmer; and Learning Design: modeling network-based education and training, 2005. Heidelberg: Springer. Furthermore, he wrote chapters about Learning Technologies and Learning Objects in a variety of books.

He was responsible for the development of Educational Modelling Language (EML), currently an open standard through the IMS consortium (IMS Learning Design) and he leads or participates in a variety of EU-funded R&D projects. He serves and served in many editorial boards and programme committees, and was responsible for the organization of a large number of international conferences, seminars and workshops in the field. He has been involved in many different European RTD projects.

His research focus is on self-organized distributed learning networks for lifelong learning, including the use of interoperability specifications and standards.