Anka Mulder is my boss at the the department of Education & Student Affairs. In 2011 she got additional responsibilities as secretary-general of the university. Today we received the announcement that she will succeed Paul Rullmann as Vice-President of Education & Operations in the Executive Board of the university:
Today Delft University of Technology announced that we will join the EdX Consortium. In January our President announced at the Dies that we would start with MOOCs and that we would join an international consortium.
We have talked and negotiated with Coursera and EdX. Both organisations wanted us to join them. So we had the luxury to make our own decision on which platform to join. After some considerations we decided to join EdX.
Net zoals vorig jaar organiseren Surf, OpenUniversiteit en de TU Delft weer een groot evenement tijdens de internationale Open Education Week. Het evenement vind plaats op woensdag 13 maart in het Geldmuseum in Utrecht. Het programma bestaat dit jaar o.a. uit:
- presentatie van Matthijs Leendertse over onderwijstrends
- presentatie over het trendrapport OER 2013 (versie 2012 staat hier)
- presentatie over Open en Online Onderwijs door Anka Mulder (TU Delft)
- presentatie over de ontwikkeling in Europa door Fred Mulder (OU)
- Videoboodschap van Europees Parlementslid Marietje Schaake
- Presentatie over de impact van de Paris OER Declaration door UNESCO
- en het grote studenten OER-debat
Ik ben zeer tevreden over het interessante programma dat we weer hebben kunnen samenstellen en dat door de dagvoorzitter Paul Rullmann aan elkaar gepraat zal worden.
Aanmelden is natuurlijk gratis en gaat via de Surf-website. Hier vind je ook het volledige programma.
Yvonne Belanger and Jessica Thornton from Duke University have written an interesting paper on the creation and delivery of the MOOC Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach on the Coursera platform.
In the summary they have listed the most important findings:
- Over 600 hours of effort were required to build and deliver the course, including more than 420 hours of effort by the instructor.
- The course launched on schedule and was successfully completed by hundreds of students. Many hundreds more continued to participate in other ways. The number of students actively participating plateaued at around 1000 per week.
- Over 12,000 students enrolled, representing more than 100 countries. Approximately 8,000 of these students logged in during the first week.
- At the time of enrollment, one-third of enrolled students held less than a four year degree, one-third held a Bachelors or equivalent, and one-third held an advanced degree.
- 25% of students who took both Week 1 quizzes successfully completed the course, including 313 students from at least 37 countries. Course completers typically held a Bachelor’s degree or higher; however, at least 10 pre-college students were among those who successfully completed this challenging upper level undergraduate course.
- Students who did not complete all requirements cited a lack of time, insufficient math background or having intended to only view the lectures from the outset. Regardless of completion status, many students were primarily seeking enjoyment or educational enrichment.
- Most students reported a positive learning experience and rated the course highly, including ones who did not complete all requirements
- The Coursera platform met the needs of the course in spite of being continuously under development while the course was live. Technical issues reported by the students and instructor were generally minor, of short duration and/or quickly resolved.
- Patience, flexibility and resilience on the part of instructor, Coursera students, CIT staff, and Duke University Office of Information Technology media services staff were key elements in the success of this course.
If you are involved in the creation of delivery of a MOOC you should certainly read this paper.
New technologies present a much more complex environment for instructors to navigate. Instructors need to balance intense teaching, research and publishing loads with staying abreast of advancements in their respective fields. At least initially, any new technology is often "yet another thing" to have to find time for.
Yesterday we finalised the project proposal for the OCW4STEM project. Together with my collegue Michel Beerens (expert in writting grant proposals) we have crafted 392 pages and a very big excel sheet with the budget.
The proposal is for the EU Erasmus Life Long Learning programme as an Academic Network grant. Now we have to keep our fingers crossed until the summer to hear if the proposal is assigned.
Last Monday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the Open Book Project:
The Open Book Project is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization and leading education innovators to expand access to free, high-quality open educational resources in Arabic, with a focus on science and technology and online learning. Open educational resources are materials released under open licenses that allow free use, sharing, and adaptation to local context. Offering access to these resources will help to create educational opportunity, further scientific learning, and foster economic growth.
The initiative will:
- Support the creation of Arabic-language Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the translation of existing OERs into Arabic.
- Disseminate the resources free of charge through our partners and their platforms.
- Offer support to governments, educators, and students to put existing resources to use and develop their own.
- Raise awareness of the potential of open educational resources and promote uptake of online learning materials.
Partners in the project are US Department of State, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation and our open collegues, such as Creative Commons, the Hewlett Foundation, ISKME, Meedan, MIT OpenCourseWare, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, and Rice University OpenStax College.
The full text of Secretary Clinton's speech.
Inmiddels zijn er drie universiteiten in Nederland die hebben aangekondigd om te starten met MOOCS.
Universiteit Leiden was de eerste met de aankondiging van "European Law" op het Coursera platform (inmiddels meer dan 10.000 deelnemers). De UvA heeft er voor gekozen om de MOOC "Introduction to Communication Science" te gaan doen op het platform van Edia dat gebaseerd is op Sakai. Twee weken gelden heeft de TU Delft aangekondigd dat zij dit jaar ook MOOCs gaat aanbieden, maar dat de keuze voor het platform nog niet gemaakt is (red: nog steeds niet).
"Most predictions are wrong. The small number that turn out to be right are largely luck, but we tend to remember them because they reinforce our naive belief that the future can be predicted."
Every December and January you see lots of prediction of what the new year will bring. Very known predictions are the Gartner Hype Cycle and Horizon report of Educause and the New Media Consortium. If you look at the Horizon Report for 2012 they completely missed the development of MOOCs, while 2012 was declared as Year of the MOOCs by the New York Times.
Most of these predictions are based on some sort of research methodology, but also a lot of guessing. This year David Kernohan created a FOTA EdubBeardStroke Parabola 2013. I personally really like the methodology he used to create this:
This diagram was prepared by taking one person who thinks too much about learning technology, leaving them on a train for a stupid amount of time and then marinating in beer and nachos
Yesterday at the Dies Natalis of the university, the president of TU Delft announced that we will be offering MOOCs this year and that we will announce the platform this next couple of weeks (see recording in Dutch after 1:49:40).
The start of MOOCs is the next step the university is making in the field of Open Education. In 2007 we launched our OpenCourseWare website, now we have more than 100 courses online. Last year we announced that we will start with offering of 3 online masters (Aerospace Engineering, Watermanagement and Engineering & Policy Analysis). The MOOCs fill in the gap between our OpenCourseWare and our online masters.
Our executive board has decided that we will offer at least 3 MOOCs this year. They have assigned me as project manager. This will be an exiting and very busy journey.
The big question is which platform we will use. I can tell you that is one of the platforms I mention in this blogpost. ;-)