Introduction

Information Society is a big umbrella to describe the changes produced in the ways of communications and relationships for citizens using ICT. The envisioned Weiser’s prediction pointed that the most profound technologies are those that disappear; they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it [1]. Artefacts (computers, cell phones, laptops, PDA, tablets) and networks (Internet, Bluetooth, WIFI, 3G) allow us to be wired to emerging technology providers (search engines, maps, video services, dictionaries, etc.). But this is not an easy change; it is a revolutionary understanding of our world. The XXI century is collapsed by the dramatic change from analogue to digital, predicted so far by Negroponte [2], as the difference between a bit and a atom. These novel paradigms offer new models of knowledge acquisition, the information goes by new digital channels, users are authenticated against cryptographic data and new protocols appear to be online or connected in the e-community. Learning and training is not an exception and education institutions had to adapt to this trend. Summarising, some key factors, which are influencing these changes so fast, are shown below:

The nomadic society. Mobility is a key issue in our society. People spend a lot of time working and travelling from one place to another. Technology allows us create new models of communication and collaboration, and that nomadic time is spent in technology-aware places.
Our digital identity. Nowadays, we have a huge amount of login and passwords for regular activities. These activities also represent some kind of virtual traces, tracking our activities and intentions on this parallel digital world. The persistence of our activities are encoded in TCP/IP packets, stored, used and recommended to others. The identity is also represented in new dimensions such as reputation, trust, confidence or popularity.
The knowledge provider. Wise and knowledge are also acquainted with Higher Education Institutions. But nowadays, these institutions must adapt their models of learning to new channels and modes of learning. Thus, informal and context aware learning are gaining more attention and interest due to their flexibility, adaptation and easy updating. In deep analysis of self-assessment is also required for recognition.
New rules and codes. The cyberspace has different models of regulation, and governments and companies control these norms. Open trends are another emerging field supported by digital media: open software, free contents, or sharing mechanism are new models of sharing, learning and promoting creativity.

In this paper we overview these themes to understand the challenges produces in society and how these changes are affecting educational institutions. We will focus on some examples of mobility related with Higher Education in Europe and their relevance to further initiatives towards open and rationale knowledge.

The nomadic society

Mobility is a key issue in our society. People spend a lot of time working and travelling from one place to another. Technology allows us create new models of communication and collaboration, and that nomadic time is spent in technology-aware places. Mobility also represents a new model of learning in itself. Learning in context represents an exciting experience where contents are located. Mobile learning (m-learning) allow students to learn anywhere and at any time, enabled by mobile technologies and wireless internet connections, with an interesting feature: the continual changes of location of the learner represent a opportunities to discover services, contents, co-learners or new different learning styles [3].

On the other hand, we have to adapt formal training to mobile communities. Mobile devices provide a way to intensify this experience generating easy ways of expanding the educational procedures. M-learning [4] is the exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning. In [5] is described a system to support the generation of adaptive mobile learning environments. In these environments, students and teachers can accomplish different types of individual and collaborative activities in different contexts. Those nomadic societies are also sponsored by institutions and governments. Europe is involved in a huge change in the Higher Education System in order to create overall convergence at European level [6] and the Erasmus programme is an example of physical mobility of students across Europe. On this context, we have proposed a technological framework to enhance the interchange of experiences among students, and thus, facilitating the integration in a foreign country and culture, using web 2.0 facilities [7]. Learning by storytelling represents another exciting model for location aware knowledge and training.

Digital Identity

Digital Identity is a term to describe the persona an individual presence across all the digital communities in which he or she is represented. Your Digital Identity is everything you create on the Web, but also what other people might say about you there [8]. Digital live in social networks, searching on web browsers or sending mails are examples of how your personal preferences and activities are analysed and used by technological engines. The footprint of any activity you perform on the digital life is seems like a waves that maintain your current activity alive and it can be used to predict or recommend something to others. For instance, PageRank is a well-known algorithm to analyse the relevance of a document calculated [9] by with people’s subjective idea of importance, and thus predicting the user behaviour. A commercial side effect of this technique is the GoogleAds, smart recommendations included on pages suggesting products or information we may be interested.

Also, your Digital Identity is a superset of small world phenomenon in itself. Each one of your identities has their own dimension and purpose: your email ID, your bank account, the social network, e-commerce, libraries, etc. These fragments of your profile (public as well as private) are part of your social identity, a set of individuals with common social interest, features or goals.

These concepts are also related with how people can learn from others. Now the relevance of how other people’s activities are part of the context of one's own activities is crucial to understand new form of social relationships or implicit knowledge. Social-aware computing [10] is based on groups of people with a common interest or a shared purpose whose interactions are governed by policies in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws and who use computer systems to support and mediate social interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness [11]. This is a non-formal and implicit knowledge, which is widely spread by digital media to affect (directly or not) to other users. Related with your identity, new forms of social features are identified such as the trust, reputation or popularity. For instance, a new blog site with growing popularity may change the reputation of the individual and their community supporting them. Learning from other’s activities and task is implicitly represented in the digital society with lots of “smart links” supporting the connectivity (following conversations on twitter, adding friends to social networks, or sending suggestions to others).

The knowledge providers

In the ancient Greece, two special places were the reference for their habitants and for future institutional organisations. The Agora was the place where people went on gathering around speakers; debates, trades, or trials took place there. On the other hand, the Academia (originally a gymnasium) was the centre of learning. People goes there to acquire wisdom, knowledge or to meet each other. Nowadays, those structures are still maintained in official places such, as the University, defined in terms of physical spaces by walls and identified geographically as campuses. But digital age has broken these barriers avoiding blocking entry to those outside; a smart revolution has taken place at universities, as they have started to provide free access to undergraduate course materials. The term online courseware is the initiative to convert course materials, originally designed for their own undergraduates, into non-credit-bearing online versions for the general public [12]. The best example is the MIT‘s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, the origin of the OCW Consortium [13], a wider collaboration of higher education institutions around the world creating a deep body of open educational content using a shared models, born 10 years ago. Also, smart technology allows new models of study, and examples like iTunesU [14] allow people to teach anywhere using their mobile phones or their favourite mp3 players. This challenge is nowadays a consolidated trend. For instance, the most relevant universities around the world offer high-quality audio and video recordings of a selection of popular lectures and interactive contents.

Although these universities, in fact, don't offer online credit or degrees, such trend is the beginning to open up institutions to new approaches for teaching and learning. But this challenge is much more than a simple marketing tendency, with more profound implications

The audience is no longer restricted to a well-understood enrolled student population. Institutions are offering their expertise to a more general public, so your abilities for teach and training are observed and analysed from the outside.
These initiatives are costly in human and technical resources. Funding needs to maintain such offer with good average of quality is another problem that institutions have to overcome.
It also appears new fears in teachers and academic staff; the awareness of technological benefits for training could kill the teaching experience [15].
New redefinition of the missions of the university. It is clear that research and teaching are the two most important goals for institutions. However, researching was traditionally focuses to publishing (on journals and refereed books) whereas teaching was always more restricted to proprietary courses belonging to the institutions. Recognition of both activities is also unbalanced in most of the institutions.
Students who enrol at universities expect to find much instructional material available electronically, so this is becoming as a new service offered (and demanded) by institutions.
The role of Universities to accredit competencies is not only based on traditional degrees. Trends gos towards a dramatic change for life-long learning accreditation and even considering learning contracts instead of the conventional degree.
The way universities are publishing in the Digital Age is also changing. Nowadays regular journals or traditional books are replaced by alternative distribution models (institutional repositories, pre-print servers, open access journals) with the aim to broaden access, reduce costs, and enable open sharing of content an opened to new digital communities [16].

Some of these challenges are based in fact on the scholars’ use of information is moving online, and we need new publishing models in the electronic environment. These aims need a strong support of universities and a clear conviction that this model will allow universities to maintain their status as academia in the new digital world.

The new digital rules

Internet and cyberspace was born with not barriers to create, share and produce services on a huge networking activity. However, there are emerging new codes influencing the way in which information and users interact. But nowadays, changes are pushing the Net from the unregulable space it was, to the perfectly regulable space it could be due to the interaction between commerce and government will change the effective architecture of the Internet [17]. These norms such as Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), access control, software licenses, Digital right management (DMR), patents regulation are mechanisms to control and regulate the market and the business model in the digital life.

In contrast, openness (free code or access) is an emerging trend that gave birth to the Internet. Great success such as the GNU project built an operating system (GNU/Linux) allowing the free use of Informatics for all. New forms of sharing contents are also created the Creative Commons License or sharing contents using peer to peer networking. It is interesting to observe how regulations are building constantly according the needs of the online community, creating and promoting their own tools, contents and methods, whatever how business models are promoting. The digital age offer new opportunities to create a knowledge-based economy based on e-communities.

Conclusions and future trends

This paper shows several key issues to understand the new learning experiences in the digital age. In most of the cases, the technology enhances new models of knowledge sharing, but in all these experiences, the (digital) community always gives the added value to such models, supporting contents, dissemination and sustainability. Thus, Higher Education Institutions are adapting their structures to these new models of sharing, and one of the most important activities is the accreditation and assessment [18]. Informal learning, as shown before, represents a novel and important role in the expertise of digital citizens. Once evidence is collected, it needs to be documented. Tools such as e-portfolio present a synthesis of the personal, social and occupational experiences to highlight competences, relevant information on the career, education, training and other experience. The expertises decide if these evidences provided and achieved judges these competences. Validation of non-formal and informal learning is the relevant activity that institutions should take into account according to these trends. We are now starting with a promising project called OER.Test [19] to profound in these aspect and the implications on Higher Education Institutions.

Acknowledgments and Disclaimer

This paper has been funded with support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission, (EACEA) project agreement number 2010 – 3887-Virtual Campuses (OER-TEST). This paper reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

This study contains part of a research project supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education, project (MICINN – TIN2010-17344): Adapting Social & Intelligent Environments to Support people with special needs.

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