Colin de la Higuera is Professor at Nantes University (France). During his career, he has been involved in a number of research themes in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
He has been chairman of the International Community in Grammatical Inference (2002-2007), the founding president of the SIF (the French Informatics Society) in 2013, and is currently a trustee of the Knowledge for All foundation.
In 2017, based on the project Class’Code he contributed to launch in France, UNESCO created a Chair in Technologies for the Training of Teachers by Open Educational Resources at University of Nantes. In 2021 UNESCO renewed the Chair in “Open Educational Resources and Artificial Intelligence”. In 2023, UNESCO created a Unitwin Network in Open Education (UNOE), with 16 partners from 14 countries; Colin is the coordinator of this network, launched on June 26th, 2024.
Colin de la Higuera is actively engaged with Open Education. He has given many talks on the topic, specially linking the issues of open education with those of Artificial Intelligence.
In Nantes, Colin and his team from the Chair have been involved in the policies leading to opening up the education. Colin is also in charge of the open education aspects of the Alliance EUniWell.
Colin de la Higuera was Rapporteur at the interministerial meeting of May 2019 which prepared the UNESCO 2019 recommendation.
Between the projects he has been involved in concerning Open Education, let us mention:
- X5-GON was a Horizon-2020 whose goal, a Europe funded project whose goal was to explore how artificial intelligence could be used to construct, manage a large set of OER.
- OpenGame was an Erasmus+ (2019-2021) European project in which a serious game for open education was built.
- AI4T was another European project (2021-2024) resulting in courseware for teachers addressing the issue of AI in education. One of the outcomes of AI4T was “AI for and by Teachers: the open textbook” published in 5 languages (https://pressbooks.pub/aiforteachers/).
- Univ-Ouverte@Maroc was a programme delivered online to hundreds of Moroccan teachers in 2022, on Open Education.
- The 2021 edition of the Open Education Global conference was held online in October 2021; Colin was co-conference chair.
- The 2022 edition of the Open Education Global conference, which was held at la Cité des Congrès of Nantes, in May 2022; Colin was co-conference chair.
- In 2023-2024, Colin de la Higuera has been teaching in a series of MasterCourses in the different public Universities in Morocco
- Since 2021, Colin and his team collaborate with the French Ministry of Education through numerous actions around AI and OE, including AI4T, webinars and seminars and the Groupe Thématique Numérique : Intelligence artificielle et Éducation Ouverte
Furthermore, Colin has been active in writing (Chaire UNESCO Relia, EUniWell Open Education blog), publishing and editing, and organizing events such as “AI and the ODDs” in Macao, 2019 or on “Women Empowerment and AI” in Paris, 2019.
Follow Colin de la Higuera on LinkedIn.
Colin is recognized for his vision and inspirational mentoring in the field of OE. His commitment to open access to educational resources and his collaboration with the French Ministry of Education are testament to his enduring leadership and influence.
Award Nominator
Professor Colin de la Higuera has an impressive range of achievements in Open Education, taking the subject at the highest level and globally for their policies advancement, publishing articles and books, hosting the conference in his university and also taking care to create the necessary legal infrastructures to support his action and gain in funds and staff. He has demonstrated his leadership also by a real open mind, and his kindness. His actual achievements are remarkable and he has successfully given a dynamic at his own university, in France, in Europe and in many other institutions and countries, taking all the opportunities and enabling many others. Colin is recognized for his vision and inspirational mentoring in the field of OE. His commitment to open access to educational resources and his collaboration with any stakeholders, and new comers, are absolutely remarkable.
Award Reviewer
