E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

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.

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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.

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The Year of Open is a global focus on open processes, systems, and tools, created through collaborative approaches, that enhance our education, businesses, governments, and organizations. At its core, open is a mindset about the way we should meet collective needs and address challenges. 

The Year of Open is community-led campaign, coordinated by the Open Education Consortium (of which I'm a board member). The focus is on the all kinds of open, such as open education, open access, open science, open data, open government, open licenses, open source software. This year we will work together with many organisations to promote openness in all its aspects.

Are you organising an open event, let us know via this form. On the website YearofOpen.org we publish all events and share interesting content.

The TU Delft has decided to use the opportunity of implementing a new LMS to innovate education towards blended and online education. A two-year project was defined to innovate education during the migration to the new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) Brightspace. An important part of this project is to provide excellent technical and didactical support to our academic staff.

As Learning Developer you will be part of the (international) CLE migration and implementation team. This team is responsible for the successful transition to the new LMS Brightspace. The primary focus of the project is to improve campus education, not just move content from the old system to the new CLE.

The focal areas of a learning developer at the TU Delft are:

• Design instructional materials and courses, particularly for digital delivery.
• Manage the efforts of faculty, administration, other instructional designers, and others to achieve better student learning.
• Train faculty to leverage technology and implement pedagogy effectively.
• Support faculty when they run into technical or instructional challenges.

Course Migration Coordinator

This position will have a focus on managing the process of course migration and improvement. You will:

• Coordinate the activities of the other learning developers and student assistants.
• Meet with academic staff to discuss their educational improvements.
• Keep track of the progress of the course migrations and report to the project management.
• Coordinate with the other teams to align all activities towards the project's objectives.

Support Coordinator

This position focuses on the Support process of the transition. You will:

• Coordinate the activities of the support team that consists of student assistants.
• Have contact with academic staff to answer their support questions and resolve the didactical questions.
• Coordinate the development of support materials and manage the support website.
• Keep track of support questions and report to project management.
• Coordinate with the other teams to align all activities towards the project's objectives.

Do you want to be part of innovating education with a new Collaboration and Learning Environment? Join our international support team! Deadline is 9 January 2017, more information on our website.

Last Friday our Credits for MOOCs project opened for students. From this week on our students can join a number of MOOCs and get credits for them. There are no additional costs for them.

Expanding Portfolio

The first 12 MOOCs for credits will be provided by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of Queensland, Australia National University and TU Delft and they will start in February 2017. During the summer a broader variety of courses will be made available by universities such as Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Rice University. Other top 100 universities have said they are keen to join.

We started this project in the fall of 2015 and after many conference calls, presentations, meetings and hard work of my colleagues and our partners we have managed to open it for enrolments. When MOOCs are infiltrating the university curriculum you have to pass many hoops and bypass many obstacles.
Our students can find all the information about the process and which MOOCs are offered on this website.

Assessment

One important aspect is that we asked all the instructors of the MOOCs under what conditions they would offer credits for their MOOCs. For most MOOCs this means that there is an additional assessment requirement. That can be like a proctored exam, a skype interview, or a paper. This is also the reason why we have limited the number of students that can credits. Off course any learner can enroll in these MOOCs.

Virtual Exchange

All current exchange programmes are based of students to temporary move to another city. A great opportunity for students, but for many not possible due to time or financial constraints. With this programme we created a kind of virtual exchange programme. Our students can do courses of other top universities from our campus in Delft. They can learn across borders.

I think this offers a great opportunity for our students. It offers them courses that we as a technical university don't offer and it gives them flexibility.

An interesting report of Intentional Futures on the role, workflow, and experience of instructional designers:

There are many technologies flooding the market that help foster innovative teaching and learning. These tools, such as learning management systems, lecture capture systems, simulation creators, authoring, and video and audio tools, have flooded into the classrooms and lecture halls of higher education. However, the inference that these innovative tools aid learning should not be immediately assumed. With faculties’ full work load, learning and implementing new and often complex tools to improve their online pedagogy isn’t a priority. In fact, as the needs and tools of institutions have evolved, instructional designers have positioned themselves as pivotal players in the design and delivery of learning experiences. Instructional designers exist to bridge the gap between faculty instruction and student online learning. But who, exactly, are instructional designers? What do they do? Where do they fit in higher education?

Their findings:

• Instructional designers number at least 13,000 in the U.S alone.
• They are highly and diversely qualified.
• Contrary to popular belief, they do more than just design instruction.
• Above all, they struggle to collaborate with faculty.
• One thing is certain: instructional designers are dedicated to improving learning with technology

I recognise their findings if I look at my team and their activities.

Highly and diversely qualified

What they name "instructional designer" we separated it in two different job titles:

• learning developer: focused on creating the learning design of a course (constructive alignment) and often acting as project manager
• instructional designer: expert in how to setup the learning design in the a specific platform (we have (open)edX, Blackboard and Brightspace.

All the learning developers have some form of educational science background. From a master in educational science to experience as lecturer with additional courses. The instructional designer have a much more technical background, one of my instructional designer is a watermanagement engineer. They all have finished a Bachelor and Master and some even have a PhD in education.

They do more than just design instruction

According to the report most instructional designers have four categories of responsibilities:

• Design instructional materials and courses, particularly for digital delivery
• Manage the efforts of faculty, administration, IT, other instructional designers, and others to achieve better student learning
• Train faculty to leverage technology and implement pedagogy effectively
• Support faculty when they run into technical or instructional challenges

The activities of my team perfectly aligns with 4 categories. Although sometimes they do even more, such as marketing, administration, policy advise.

Struggle to collaborate with faculty

With every course team an instructional designer has to win the trust of the faculty members. Faculty members are the experts on the topic of the course and have been teaching for many years. They have to accept that designing and delivering an online or blended course is a different cup of tea than classroom teaching. The instructional designer have been done this for many courses, so they know how to design an online course.

Dedicated to improving learning with technology

Despite the struggle with faculty they are always  dedicated to make it work. Sometimes it means that the end result is not the best, but it was what could be reached within the time span and context of that course.

Recommendations

In the report there are a few recommendations. Two I want to strongly emphasize:

• Institutional leaders and administration - Involve instructional designers early, often, and throughout your technology transition. Develop clear standards that are expressed to all participants — institutional leaders, instructional designers, faculty, and students. Also, think about incentivising faculty to work with instructional designers from the get-go. Survey respondents made clear that they’d like more resources allocated to their work, which could have a high return on investment in terms of student success.
  
  
• Faculty - We know student success is top priority for you. An instructional designer can help you engage your students and give you more class time by using online tools. There is potential impact to be made for your students by collaborating and using new technologies that instructional designers can guide you to. They share your goal and want to see you shine for your students.

Since a couple of years the Open University creates an report about innovating pedagogy. Yesterday they published the fifth report. It is produced in collaboration with the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.

The ten innovations they identified were rated on potential impact and in what timescale.

Reference
Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi, C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University
Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. ISBN 9781473022812

Image Credit CC-BY 3.0 licence Innovating Pedagogy 2016

On November 6th at the Dutch education days, SURF presented their trendreport. Since last week the report is also available in English. This trendreport focus on customised education.
SURF invited 44 Dutch experts, including three experts of TU Delft, to contribute to this report. This trend report describes 13 technological trends that may affect the content and design of education.

Thirteen trends

The trends:

• Virtual Reality
• Serious Gaming
• Gamification
• Internet of Things
• Virtual Classroom
• Student as owner of their own identity
• Digital Badges and micro-credentials
• From Open Content via Open Pedagogy to Open Education
• Personalised learning environment for cross-institutional study
• Adaptive learning environment for agile education
• Learning Analytics
• Digital Assessment and Learning Analytics
• Artifical Intelligence

Three Themes

The thirteen trends were grouped in three themes:

Didactic enrichment

Firstly, a number of trends lead to the enrichment of teaching and learning. Thanks to the sensory experience it provides, virtual reality can, for example, facilitate interactive learning in authentic learning situations. The same applies to the use of serious games. Gamification offers opportunities for providing feedback and encouraging self-management in that students can earn badges that act as milestones. Digital assessment allows students to obtain feedback immediately and gives them a better idea of their progress. The virtual classroom also enhances inter-active and collaborative learning without students and lecturers having to be physically present in a single location. Although many lecturers still regard a virtual classroom session as ‘nothing to do with them’, this learning technology, in conjunction with digital assessment, probably comes closest to the way we are used to learning within our education system. Rather than a drastic change, then, it is an improvement.
All in all, these technological trends are able to support key principles of effective education.
It is clear, however, that the quality of some technologies needs to be improved if they are to actually make education more effective and more attractive. For example, there is rather a large amount of variation in the quality of technology available for virtual classrooms. Meanwhile, VR applications that use ‘cardboard’ currently offer limited opportunities for interaction.

Organising flexibility

Secondly, we see the incorporation of flexibility in education, which ‘blurs boundaries’. Students are increasingly studying different programmes within the same institution, at different institutions (both within the Netherlands and abroad) and outside the traditional higher education system. They can follow programmes that incorporate open pedagogy and courses that are rewarded with microcredentials (such as massive open online courses). Micro-credentials and digital badges allow students to utilise the knowledge and skills they have acquired in different contexts. These technologies demonstrate that students have also developed their skills beyond the traditional education system. Students undergo a wide range of online and offline learning activities to develop an online education identity – in effect a personalised education number that they can use throughout their lives. The educational institution’s monopoly over the awarding of qualifications is definitely a thing of the past.

Adaptive learning

Thirdly, a number of technologies enable adaptive learning. This includes both highly advanced applications that could play a key role in the long term and technologies that enable a certain amount of ‘adaptivity’ in the short term. Artificial intelligence is an example of an advanced application. Here, students follow personalised learning paths based on the digital traces they leave in online learning environments. One example of a simpler application is digital assessment combined with learning analytics. Another example is the personalised learning environment that gives individual students access to the applications they use for learning purposes.

Download the report here. The report is published with an open license.