ePIC 2025: Dialogical Validation in Flexible Higher Education
ePIC 2025 is the 23rd International Conference on Open Education and Open Recognition Technologies and Practices, held 21–23 October 2025 in Paris (France), at the congress centre of the International Union of Railways (UIC) near the Eiffel Tower. The 2025 conference theme—“From Open Education to Open Recognition”—invites practitioners, researchers, technologists, employers, and policymakers to explore how recognition practices and digital credential ecosystems can scale inclusion and lifelong learning.
At ePIC 2025, I delivered a workshop session that brought Dialogical Validation into conversation with the everyday realities of flexible higher education and workplace-integrated learning. Building on my recent work, the workshop positioned validation not as a final administrative act, but as the starting point for personalised, transformative learning pathways—grounded in dialogue between learner, institution, and workplace.
The workshop centred on one core question: flexible learning promises autonomy and recognition, but institutional routines still operate through standardisation and bureaucracy? Using student experiences from NCOI University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), we examined three recurring tensions (paradoxes) that shape the learner experience:
- Autonomy paradox: students value ownership, but self-regulation demands strong guidance structures.
- Flexibility paradox: flexibility is promised, yet often when content/assessment remain rigid.
- Validation paradox: validation aims to streamline learni ocedurally heavier than “just doing the module.”