E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

After a great tour around South-Afrika, I attended the Open Education Global Conference 2017 in Cape Town. Off course, I have to be there as board member of the Open Education Consortium, but I really enjoy this conference. I attend many open education conferences and this is by far the most global open education conference.  More than 200 participants from 47 countries. In this blog some observations from me.

Open Educational Practices

There were a wide variety of presentations about open educational practices. OEP is the use of Open educational Resources for teaching and learning in order to innovate the learning process. I counted 15 presentations that mentioning it in the title (Robert made a more in depth analysis). I agree with multiple speakers that OER by itself will not make the difference, you need the pedagogy to make an impact. So these practices are important for the succes of Open Education.

Interesting model that was presented was the continuum model:

Evidence of OER impact

The OER Research Fellows are a group of 44 graduate students and faculty members who are doing research on a variety of OER projects. John Hilton III presented some of the research results. They are 18 months into the project and 3 articles have been published, 12 articles are accepted for publication, 8 articles have been submitted for publication and more is on the way. The publications and a useful toolkit for OER Research can be found on their website.

Bringing the global North and South together

 There was a big presence of the ROER4D project comprising 18 evidence-based OER research studies across the Global South with the aim of improving educational policy, practice, and research in developing countries. There were conference presentations by many of the 18 ROER4D studies as well as a report on the project meta-synthesis by Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams:

The presentation of Cable Green to connect OER to the UN Sustainable Goals is a great way to connect the global North and South.

OER-based Degree Pathways

Interesting is the momentum of theOER based degree pathways in the US. Richard Sebastian of the Achieve the Dream organisation gave a good overview. The concept is to create complete pathway of courses converted to use OER instead of traditional textbooks. The mission of Achieving the Dream is to lead and support a national network of community colleges to achieve sustainable institutional transformation through sharing knowledge, innovative solutions and effective practices and policies leading to improved outcomes for all students. 
Already 38 colleges in 13 US states are working on these Z-degrees and saving a lot of money for students.

OEGlobal was great

The conference brought a great number of interesting people that shared their passion for Open Education. The team of University of Cape Town and the staff of the OE Consortium did a great job to organise this conference. They have set the bar high for us next year in Delft. I'm looking forward seeing you all in Delft!

Below some photos of the conference and Cape Town, More photos on my flickr page.

This week we published our online magazine about the Open & Online Education at TU Delft. The magazine gives a great overview of our activities and the impact it has had.

Open Magazine

 Please leave a comment with your feedback on the magazine.

Educause has released an interesting video of the student of the future. In my opinion they give a good overview of developments in the technology and the diversity of our learners. 

Next week it is time for the 5th Open Education Week. Again we are organising some events in Delft. Both events are on Friday 31st of March. In the morning we start with the Delft Data Science Seminar and afterwards is our Open Science Seminar.

Delft Data Science Seminar

TU Delft’s Delft Data Science organises an event regarding Online Education. Massive Open Online Courses are an innovative way to make education available for everyone. But how do we keep the quality high with such a large demand for Online Education? Delft Data Science’s researchers and international speakers will share their new findings in this seminar with other academics, partners and with you.
Some of the speakers are Justin Reich of MIT and Marcus Specht of Welten Institute.

Open Science Seminar - Being Strategic about Open

Open Science concerns openness in the entire cycle of practicing science, increasing access and transparency in both research, education and valorisation, based on the principle of circulating knowledge by sharing, reusing and collaborating. During this Seminar we will share and discuss examples how openness in education and research can support TU Delft's mission to contribute to a sustainable society for the 21st century and challenge you to think about what open education and open research means for you in your daily practice. More info on our website.

Both events are open for TU Delft employees and externals.  There is one registration form for both events.

At the Open Education Global conference I organised an Action Lab on MOOCs. The session is focused on answer the questions of the audience. This time the audience consisted of a newby, a couple of instructional designers, a couple of researchers and some others. This focused the discussion and slides I showed.

Below is the slide deck I used for the session.

Tonight at the gala diner of the OEGlobal Conference the official announcement was made that the 2018 conference will be in Delft. After a fierceful selection process my proposal to host the conference in Delft was selected by the board.

Although it means a lot of work for me and my team, I think it is a great opportunity for the Netherlands and Delft. There are a lot of activities currently happening and this conference in April 2018 can further focus and showcase this to the rest of the world.

The conference will be from 24-26 April 2018 in the TU Delft Conference Centre. All participants can enjoy kingsday on the 27th of April (bring your orange shirt).

City of Delft

Delft has a historic, picturesque city centre with world famous unique selling points such as the famous painter Johannes Vermeer (girl with the pearl), William of Orange and Delft blue pottery. Due to the central location in Randstad, Delft is easily accessible by car, train and public transport. In 40 minutes you are in Delft from Schiphol Airport. Within a hour you can be in the four big cities Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam or Utrecht.

A week ago TU Delft launched their first MicroMaster programme. The topic is about Solar Energy Engineering. This programme is part of the announcement of 16 new MicroMaster programmes on the edX platform.

What is a MicroMaster?

It is a series of MOOCs, which allow learners to specialise in a certain topic and advance their careers or studies. It can be finished with a certificate and may be counted towards a regular master programme after admission. With MicroMasters programs, we are helping to bridge the knowledge gap between higher education and the workplace by offering content and credentials in the most in-demand fields and skills needed for success in today’s rapidly-evolving and tech-driven world. These credit-eligible, career-relevant programs are free to try, and can help advance careers and offer a pathway to an accelerated Master’s program.

Solar Energy Engineering

Our online solar energy MicroMaster programme includes four rigorous courses and a practical project derived from TU Delft’s Master of Science programmes. The workload is around 18 EC (European Credits). It will provide learners with most of the technical knowledge they need – from the physics of photovoltaic solar cells to the design of microgrids. But the MicroMasters programme offers more  than that – it will lead to a valuable MicroMasters credential when finishing all courses and the project successfully. For prospective students who apply and get admitted to specific TU Delft Master of Science programmes, it will allow them to use the MicroMasters credential to request an exemption for the equivalent solar courses (depending on their Individual Exam Programme).

Demand from industry

The renewable energy market develops rapidly. It is our university’s mission to contribute to solving tomorrow’s problems and that includes supporting the transition to renewable energy through research and education. Providing education to professionals in the solar energy sector is one way of doing that. In line with our approach to lifelong learning, we hope to close the knowledge gap for engineers and other professionals who desire to develop their expertise with this MicroMaster Programme on solar energy. 

In the first week already more than 4,000 learners enrolled in the first course that starts on April 24th.

Last week the Dutch National Plan Open Science was presented. The plan was written by a team led by my colleague Wilma van Wezenbeek (TU Delft Library Director). The key ambitions of the plan are: 

• Full open access to publications in 2020
  Continue the Dutch approach for all Dutch research organisations and research areas whilst recognising their differences and similarities.
• To make research data optimally suited for reuse
  To set clear and agreed technical and policy-related preconditions to facilitate reuse of research data, including provision of the necessary expertise and support.
• Recognition and rewards
  To examine together how open science can be an element of the evaluation and reward system for researchers, research groups and research proposals.
• To promote and support
  To establish a ‘clearing house’ for all information regarding all available research support.

Important is that the plan is not only focusing making publications open access, but also change the evaluation and reward system for researchers.

Full story »

The Open Education Leadership Award of Excellence is presented to an individual who has shown strong leadership in the field of Open Education.
It is awarded by the Open Education Consortium to recognize truly exceptional work and dedication to the ideals of Open Education. Previous winners are leaders such as Nicole Allen, Peter Smith, Anka Mulder, Fred Mulder.

This year two awards are granted in this category:

Jet Bussemaker, Minister of Education, Culture and Science for the Netherlands since 2012 and major advocator of Open Education.  Her support of openness has served as an example for governments around the world.

During her 4 years as minister of education, Jet Bussemaker has positioned open education as an important strategy of her policy. She started a structural granting programme, supporting bottom-up initiatives for universities. During the EU Presidency of the Netherlands (first half of 2016) she placed open education on the agenda and organized a big event during the Open Education Week.

The Dutch Minister of Education has made major policy changes towards open education.  By 2025 all educational resources should be open and available via an (inter)national platform.  She has also made available a grant programme for open education with a yearly budget going to 2 mln euro. In 2015, eleven projects were approved and in 2016, twelve projects were approved.

Dr. Bakary Diallo, is the rector of the African Virtual University, a pan-African project with 35 partner universities.  He has served two terms on the OEC board of directors and has been treasurer during that time. His service to the global open education movement has come from his lifelong commitment to the expansion of educational opportunities.

Through Dr. Diallo’s leadership, the AVU has developed OER-based courses and degrees in math and science teacher education and in computer science. Through his advocacy for open educational resources and his broad international network, Dr. Diallo has shone a bright light on open education, on our global consortium, and on the opportunities that expanded access to higher education will bring to underserved communities throughout the world.

Both winners trully deserve this award. They will receive the award at the upcoming conference in Cape Town 8-10 March. You can still register and attend this great conference!

Last week Harvard and MIT published an interesting report about four years of MOOCs. They explored 290 Harvard and MIT online courses, a quarter-million certifications, 4.5 million participants, and 28 million participant-hours. That is a bit more than TU Delft, we currently have 1.2 million enrolments of 821,283 unique accounts, 75 courses, 31 thousand certificates, but our first MOOCs didn't start until September 2013. In this blog post I guide you through their findings and have tried to add some comparisons with our DelftX data.

Full story »