Short Profile

Eummena organization is established to increase, advance, open up and exchange research and development practices in the field of learning technologies and digital media.
To fulfil the main aim of the organization, Eummena works towards the following objectives:
- Contribute to developing, adopting and adapting learning technologies standards, applications and services to the needs and cultures of users across cultures and countries;
- Provide university and school teachers with tools and training on best practices for the use of learning technologies and systems, outcome-based learning and open educational resources;
- Provide consultancy and professional support towards the exchange of open educational resources, learning outcomes and competences, learner achievements between learning and HR systems and repositories;
- Provide training and seminars on latest technologies and services in the domain of learning technologies and open educational repositories;
- Encourage and facilitate collaboration, networking and mobility between practitioners and researchers in the domain
Eummena is active in the exchange of EU research, development and practices with the neighboring Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) cultures.
The overall goal is to support better research and use of technology and digital media (content) for superior human experience in education, training and lifelong learning.

Key People

Dr. Najjar Holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) on learning technologies, standards, applications and user experience. He is a senior expert in EU projects and standards bodies in learning technologies, metadata, attention/usage metadata, learning management systems, competences based educational systems, repositories and specifications. Dr. Najjar is also a part-time assistant professor at AL-Quds University (Jerusalem). He worked as senior researcher at Institute for Information Systems and New Media, WU Vienna and served as workpackage and team leader on iCoper eContentPlus project, focused on development and evaluation of learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and competencies) standards and systems.
Dr. Najjar research interests includes competency metadata models, eportfolios, Attention metadata, metadata of learning objects, empirical analysis on actual use of metadata and learning objects, interoperability, metadata application profile. Human Computer Interaction, user studies, usability engineering, software testing and web engineering.
He is a co-author of the Contextualized Attention Metadata (CAM) and Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes (PALO) specifications; focused on tracking and managing data about user attention, interests and achievements across systems and contexts.
Furthermore, Dr. Najjar worked on  MACE and MELT eContent+ projects and involved in Ariadne and Globe foundations for the knowledge pool. He serves as reviewer and program committee member on several international journals and conferences.

Selective List of Publications
Najjar, J., Klobučar, T., Nguyen-Ngoc, V. A., Totschnig, M., Müller, F., Simon, B., Karlsson, M., Eriksson, H. (2011). Towards Outcome Based Learning: An Engineering Education Case, IEEE International Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) 2011, Amman, Jordan, 4-7 April 2011.
Klobucar T., Najjar J. (2010). Learning Outcome-Driven Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education, eChallenges e-2010 Conference Proceedings, Cunningham P and Cunningham M. (Eds), IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2010 ISBN: 978-1-905824-20-5.
Najjar, J., Derntl, M., Klobucar, T., Simon, B., Totschnig, M., Grant, S., & Pawlowski, J. (to appear 2010). A data model for describing and exchanging Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes (PALO). International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research.
Crespo, R. M., Najjar, J., Derntl, M., Leony, D., Neumann, S., Oberhuemer, P., Totschnig, M., Simon, B., Gutierrez, I., & Delgado Kloos, C. (2010). Aligning Assessment with Learning Outcomes in Outcome-based Education. IEEE International Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) 2010, Madrid, Spain.
Manouselis, N., Najjar, J., Kastrantas, K., Salokhe, G., Stracke, C. M., Duval, E., Metadata Interoperability in Agricultural Learning Repositories: An Analysis, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Special Issue on Information and Communication Technologies in Biological and Earth Sciences, Elsevier, 70(2), 302-320, March 2010.
Najjar, J., Simon, B. (2009). Learning Outcome Based Higher Education: iCoper Use Cases,  IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), workshop on  European Workshop On  E-Learning Standards Best Practice, Riga – Latvia, July 14 – 18, 2009.
Zschocke, T., Beniest, J., Paisley, C., Najjar, J. and Duval, E. (2009), The LOM application profile for agricultural learning resources of the CGIAR, International. Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, Vol. 4, Issue 1/2. pp. 12-23.
 
Full list of publications is available here http://www.najjar.be