E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

EADTU has conducted a follow-up study on the first Changing Pedagogical Landscape report (published 2015). Based on qualitative research in various European countries, this report identifies patterns in policies and practices of new models of teaching and learning:

European societies changed and will further change, due to the impact of new technologies and through new developments in the economy and in society at large. This has consequences for universities.
An increasing number of universities and colleges offer, next to degree programmes, continuous education and lifelong learning, and open education mainly related to OERS and MOOCs. In all three areas of provision, new pedagogies have emerged, strongly enabled by the innovation/ICT push and facilitated by different support structures at various levels. Universities start to develop visions and strategies to position themselves at the national and international level in each of these areas. Universities need sufficient autonomy to determine their position in these three areas and to act flexibly and rapidly to respond to changes in society and economy. They need a vision and support as well from their governments to enable them to innovate their institutions.
This report is a continuation of the first Changing Pedagogical Landscape study conducted from January 2014-June 2015 (Haywood, Connelly, Henderikx, Weller &Williams, 2015). During 2017, EADTU members conducted a follow-up study with seven additional countries.

The main observations in this study are:

• Key factor: leadership and institutional strategy
  An increasing number of European universities seem to have a digital education strategy of some kind.
  
  
• Gradual innovation at course and curriculum level
  Universities evolve to blended education in their mainstream provisions to enhance quality and to meet the needs of more a diverse and larger number of students.
  
  
• Many incentives for digital education
  Next to an institutional strategy plan on education and leadership for an innovative climate, the development of expertise on blended teaching and learning within the institutions and the continuous development of staff are seen as essential incentives.
  
  
• Increased (scalable) continuous education and continuous professional development offerings
  Online education is seen as a promising field for universities for increased offering for new kind of students related to lifelong learning and CPD.
  
  
• MOOCs as an enabler for innovation
  In many universities, the development of MOOCs by key staff resulted in broader innovations with regard to blended teaching and learning at the bachelor and master level. MOOCs are a lever for innovation in mainstream degree education.
  
  
• Increasing internationalisation of higher education
  Online and blended education is increasingly changing the landscape of internationalisation and student mobility.
  
  
• Important role for governments
  The role of national governments is mainly to create favourable framework conditions to capitalize on the opportunities of digital education in higher education.
  

Their general conclusion is that the uptake of new modes of teaching and education is accelerating although many challenges still exists.

Recommendations

in the report they also have many recommendations on university strategies for digital education, implementation of new modes of teaching, recommendations for teaching staff, continuous education and CPD, OERs and MOOCs, new modes in international education and for governmental policies.

Conclusion

It is a comprehensive report that includes many, if not all, of the trends in European higher education. There is a lot of interesting information in the 88 pages from the different European countries.

Reference

• Haywood, J., Connelly, L., Henderikx, P., Weller, M. &Williams, K., The changing pedagogical landscape – New ways of teaching and learning and their implications for higher education policy, European Commission, Education and Culture, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.changingpedagogicallandscapes.eu/publications/
• Henderikx, P., & Jansen, D. (2018). The Changing Pedagogical Landscape: In search of patterns in policies and practices of new modes of teaching and learning. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/CPLreport2018

Last month Class Central published an article about MOOCs that focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and only one course of DelftX was mentioned. Last week I talked to Dhawal Shah of Class Central and I told him that we had many more courses that focus on the SDGs. In 2015 I already published a list, this is the updated list of MOOCs.

Update: Class Central has included the courses below in their article.

Goal	MOOC
	Healthy Aging in 6 Steps Learn how to make healthy choices and adjustments to your lifestyle and environment to help you live a healthier, happier and longer life.
	Introduction to Drinking Water Treatment Learn about urban water services, focusing on conventional technologies for drinking water treatment. Introduction to the Treatment of Urban Sewage Learn about urban water services, focusing on basic sewage treatment technologies.
	Solar Energy Discover the power of solar energy and learn how to design a complete photovoltaic system. Sustainable Energy Learn how to make the transition to 100% renewable energy from wind, solar and biomass for electricity, heat and fuels for a sustainable future. Solar Energy Engineering Master the technical knowledge required to start or further your career in solar energy.
	The Next Generation of Infrastructure Explore the challenges and complexity of both global and local infrastructure (IT/Telecom, Energy, Water and Transportation) and how to make the best decisions to improve it. Industrial Biotechnology Learn the basics of sustainable processing for biobased products to further understand their impact on global sustainability.
	Sustainable Urban Development: Discover Advanced Metropolitan Solutions Learn why cities are key in resolving global urbanization and sustainability challenges and how you can engineer tomorrow’s cities today. Rethink the City: New Approaches to Global and Local Urban Challenges How do you plan future cities? Explore alternative theories and innovative solutions for urban challenges in the global south. Co-Creating Sustainable Cities Learn how citizen’s co-creation is key in making cities worldwide more sustainable.
	Responsible Innovation Responsible Innovation – exploring the interface of ethics, society and technological innovations. Circular Economy: an introduction Learn how to contribute to a sustainable economic system by implementing novel business and design approaches. Sustainable Packaging in a Circular Economy Learn how to apply the principles of the circular economy to sustainable packaging systems. Waste Management and Critical Raw Materials Learn about waste management and its key role in saving critical raw materials. Engineering Design for a Circular Economy Discover and develop sustainable design and engineering methods to improve the reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling of products for a circular economy.
	Introduction to Water and Climate Explore how climate change, water availability, and engineering innovation are key challenges for our planet. Building with Nature Learn how to use ecological and engineering design principles to develop more effective and sustainable hydraulic infrastructure.

I also left out Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning. Because that includes all our MOOCs and our online courses for lifelong learners.

This week I was invited to speak the 9^th international e-learning conference of the Thailand Cyber University project. The theme of the conference was MOOCs and beyond. Normally I don’t hear or read a lot about the developments around MOOCs and online education in Asia, so this was good opportunity to learn.

Keynotes

They had a great line-up of keynotes with Paul Marca of Stanford Center for Professional development, Zoraini Wati Abas of Wawasan Open University Malaysia, Madya Alyani Ismail of Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia, Dhawal Shah of Class Central, Masato Kajimoto of University of Hong Kong, Anuchai Theeraroungchaisri of Thailand Cyber University (TCU) Project and me.

General Impression

Every Asian country has initiated a national MOOC project in the last couple of years. Most of these projects are directly funded by the government. For example, the ThaiMOOC project is funded by three ministries (education, science & technology and ICT). In Thailand this project is included in the national education strategy 2017-2036(!).

Most of them use open.edx as platform to offer MOOCs. Most important reason is setup their own platform is the language. English is still a barrier for most Asian people. They all configured the platform in their native language(s). It is positive that they are using open.edx platform and not developing their own.

The goal of most projects is not specifically about MOOCs, but more about modernising the educational sector. What I understood is that the education sector was still very traditional and suffered from declining enrolments. A lot of students wanted to study abroad and now also online. The government needed to do something to kick-start this transformation and MOOCs were the perfect project to do this.

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Today I was invited to give a keynote presentation at the 9th international e-learning conference of the Thailand Cyber University in Bangkok. The theme of the this years conference is “MOOCs and beyond”.

The long-run impact of MOOCs

In my keynote I used Amara’s Law to build my presentation:

we tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but we underestimate it in the long run

I think this is the case for MOOCs as well. In a lot of articles lately there is disappointment of the impact of MOOCs, but when I look at the long-run impact MOOCs have had, it is much more than we anticipated.

I identified five long-run impacts that were caused or accelerated by MOOCs:

• From Courses to Programmes to Credits
• From National to a Global World of Education
• From Initial Education to Continuous Education
• From Traditional lecture rooms to Blended Learning
• Towards Open Education

Below are my slides and soon the recording will be online soon:

 Video recording of my keynote:

Part of our participation in the EMBED project (European Maturity Model for Blended Education) is the organisation of a couple of training events to share our knowledge and to give you the opportunity to learning about state of the art research and innovation in blended and online teaching and learning.

The first training event will be 26-28 September 2018 in Tampere, Finland. The training will be done by experts from KU Leuven and TU Delft. The training event is free to attend, but you have to register and pay for your own travel, hotel and food.

More information about the event and registration is available on the EMBED website.

A little over a week ago the Open Education Global Conference 2018 was finished. More than a year we have been preparing for this conference. The conference was a blast: everything went according to plan or better!

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Arizona State University Foundation and the Boston Consulting Group published an interesting report about digital learning. The focus of report is on how the use of digital technologies in postsecondary education impact students’ access to education, student outcomes, and the return on investment for students and institutions. The resulting Making Digital Learning Work study provides interesting data, case studies and best practice recommendations for institutions looking to scale digital learning. 

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This weekend I received an interesting question about the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and open education:

A trend in open online education is a shift from attention to publishing and reusing open materials (including MOOCs) to their effects on education. Terms such as Open Educational Practices and Open Educational Pedagogy are part of this. Such practices are characterised by using openness in a much broader context: not only OER, but also open data, open platforms (such as forums, twitter, blogs, Wikipedia, etc.). Most of these practices involve students creating content on such platforms, for example as a form of assessment (such as writing a Wikipedia article).

Most such platforms require (justifiably) non-anonymity in order to be able to make contributions. That is where my question lies. What I understand is that under the GDPR you cannot force students in an educational setting to share their data in that way. Wilfred recommends looking for alternatives that do not have such a requirement or (if that platform is used structurally) concluding a data processing agreement. However, it is precisely this non-anonymity of contributions that cannot be prevented, so platforms that do not demand it will not, in my opinion, be available. And is Wikipedia, for example, waiting for processing agreements to be concluded with all kinds of educational institutions?

A very interesting question and one I try to answer. Big disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, anything I write here is my interpretation of GDPR and not legally binding.

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In three weeks Open Education Global Conference will be in full swing. That means less than three weeks to get everything organised for the conference from 24-26 April. Here some updates I want to highlight.

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Last week MIT published the report "The global state of the art in engineering education":

The report, authored by Ruth Graham, is a global review of cutting-edge practice in engineering education. It is informed by interviews with 178 thought leaders with knowledge of and experience with world-leading engineering programs, combined with case studies from four different universities. The report paints a rich picture of successful innovation in engineering education as well as some of its opportunities and challenges.

The study was structured in two phases. First phase provided a snapshot of the cutting edge of global engineering education and a horizon scan of how the state of the art is likely to develop in the future. Phase 2 involved case studies of four selected institutions identified during Phase 1 as being ‘emerging leaders’ in engineering education. TU Delft was selected as one of the four institutes, next to Singapore University of Technology and Design (Singapore), University College London (UK), and Charles Sturt University (Australia).

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