Gold award for OUC’s digital education app

The Open University of Cyprus (OUC) has won a gold award at the Cyprus Education Leaders Awards 2021 for innovative applications of digital technology in education for a third consecutive year.

The distinction in the category “digital education” was awarded for an interactive digital application for the Ancient Theatre of Philippi, and highlights OUC’s know-how and specialisation in open and distance education, in a period that the educational landscape has changed dramatically due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The project is a 3D virtual tour of the ancient theatre of Philippi and an interactive learning application for students to learn and experience the ancient Greek theatre.

It will be used by students of the undergraduate programme “Studies in Hellenic Culture” and the postgraduate programme “Theatre Studies”. The application was designed and jointly developed by George Pappas, officer of the OUC laboratory of educational material and methodology, and academic staff of the two aforementioned programmes (associate professor Antonis Petrides and professor Vaios Liapis). Dimitris Vogiatzis (DIVO Graphics) constructed the 3D theatre model, and delivered it to the OUC.

The Open University of Cyprus is the only university in the Republic of Cyprus that offers distance learning tertiary education, and in its 15 years of academic operation has succeeded in attracting students from all over the world. Important distinctions, such as this gold award, are supporting OUC’s vision and promote its efforts to combine effective use of technology and distance teaching and learning methods to allow its students to study whenever and wherever they wish, adjusting their study programme to fit in with job, family and any other commitments.

The Cyprus Education Leaders Awards ceremony took place on September 28, 2021, at Lemon Park, Nicosia. A total of 50 awards were presented, including two platinum, 13 gold, 13 silver and 22 bronze awards.

The awards were organised for the third consecutive year by Boussias Cyprus and presented by the Bank of Cyprus.