The research presented in this paper shows how lab work can be organized into three phases: prelab, lab, and postlab, all supported by a Web-based experimental portal and a set of tools, some of which are connected to real lab devices. Different online tools and simulators are used in a flexible and configurable way that can be adapted to student curricula and course needs. This scenario is based upon real cases in distance learning courses in the Industrial Engineering School at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion (The Spanish Open University), Madrid, Spain. The details of the combined real and simulated activities are discussed and some conclusions and lessons learned from this work are presented.

The creation and maintenance of a virtual campus is a task that not only implies the deployment of sophisticated hardware and software but also requires considerable effort in the integration of the main university management systems with the chosen teaching tools present in the campus. Such integration requires the definition of a range of services tailored for the different user profiles. Hence, it has been necessary to develop a management environment for the virtual campus that enables it to be manipulated and controlled in an efficient manner where new services (above and beyond the basic e-Learning platform tools) can be integrated in a seamless fashion. The implementation of these services should guarantee a large degree of interoperability among virtual learning environments, VLEs and tools. To this end, some of these services have been implemented using the IMS Enterprise standard. This standard essentially contributes to the organization of a given e-Learning platform in terms of users, courses and roles therein; leaving to one side the formalization of other services more specific to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) together with the current technological framework.

The political and social instability in many parts of the world has led to large numbers of refugees forced to find a haven in Europe, and the social and political pressure is felt in these countries, as they see the situation worsening dramatically. In this article, an analysis of the geo-sociological assumptions within the conventional conception of social inclusion is undertaken and substituted by a new one based upon the knowledge-based, network-oriented nature of modern European society. This is referred to as Virtual Social Inclusion (VSI) and it aims primarily at two fundamental dimensions of human activity: education and employment. The article focuses on the nature and implications of VSI for inclusive education and its underlying principles, particularly mobility and openness. What VSI requires to turn from a theoretical framework into a practical reality and the foreseeable implications of its implementation are explored. Keywords: Virtual social inclusion, social inclusion, MOOC, open education.

Much as happened with open software, there has been a global attitude shift in the education community toward the open sharing of educational courses and resources. As the largest public distance education university in Spain, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) has had a clear commitment to open learning and content since its very beginnings. Its open courseware (OCW) portal was started in 2006 and has received several prizes for its innovative content. During this period, the OCW materials were used to supplement standard teaching in a variety of educational applications, among them induction and competence transfer courses. These initiatives have been used as a starting point for a comprehensive open educational resource (OER) policy at UNED. Efforts to foster OER initiatives are collected in the project called UNED Abierta (Open UNED). UNED currently publishes its open resources in various platforms and formats, such as iTunes U, MOOC, and OpenCourseWare. This paper presents UNED's experience in OER and describes how it is tackling the new challenges in OER creation and distribution.