E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

For the EMBED project we like to validate a framework for blended education and learning. Therefor we want to ask the opinion of experts in the field of blended education and learning. This blogpost describes the research design and explains how you can participate in this research.

Introduction: The EMBED project

The European Maturity model for Blended EDucation (EMBED) is a strategic partnership between seven1 institutes of higher education in Europe. EMBED will create a reference model for developing and implementing blended learning, embracing all levels of an institution: the design of the blended course (micro level), organisational aspects such as staff support and training (meso level), and institutional leadership, developing policies and strategies making the institution continuously innovative (macro level). The maturity model is a model with criteria and instruments to assess the degree of maturity of blended learning and innovation.

This research

The aim of this research is to validate the maturity framework for blended education. We developed a draft maturity framework, based on an extensive literature research and dozens of interviews. The draft maturity framework consists of two levels; the micro-level (course and curriculum level) and the meso level (institution level). For each level we have identified dimensions to describe the level and indicators to measure the maturity. The next step is to validate the draft maturity framework with experts in blended learning (that would be you).
This validation will be done using a Delphi research. In a Delphi research we ask experts in the field of blended education their opinion about the draft framework. This will be done in two rounds. We will use the input from round 1 to adjust the framework for round 2.

Round 1 (will take place between 21 November 2018 and 12 December 2018)
In the first round you will validate the dimensions of the draft framework. We defined 7 dimensions on micro-level and 9 dimensions on meso-level. We’re asking if you agree with the dimensions and also to give reasoning why you agree, or not. This will be done using an online questionnaire, which will take about 30 till 60 minutes to complete. The questionnaire will be available from 21 November till 12 December.
After Round 1 we will refine the framework based on the input of the participants.

Round 2 (Will take place between 16 January 2019 and 6 February 2019)
In the second round we will present the revised list of dimensions. First we will ask you to rank the dimensions in order of importance. After the ranking we will present the indicators for maturity per dimension. We will ask you to what extent you agree with the indicators and why. In this round we will also use an online questionnaire and it will take about 60 minutes. The questionnaire will be available from 16 January 2019 till 6 Februari 2019.

What do we ask of you?

We ask the following of the participants in this research:

• You have any experience in the field of blended education, learning or teaching. This can be in a role as director, manager, teacher, educational advisor or something else.
• You can spend 60 minutes per round, to fill in the online questionnaire. Round 1 will be from 21 November 2018 till 12 December 2018. Round 2 will be from 16 January 2019 till 6 February 2019.

How can you participate?

If you like to participate with the research for the EMBED project, please enrol using this link:
https://delftxtudelft.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3fPI86ZZiG2D5kx

At the annual EADTU conference Open, Online and Flexible Higher Education Conference at Aarhus University (Denmark) I was also invited to present about the European project we are currently participating in. The Erasmus+-funded project focuses on developing a European Maturity Model for Blended Education (EMBED).

 My keynote focused on the three levels of blended education that our framework will connecting.

Defining the blend

In the project we focus on the blend between online and face-to-face activities. We use these definitions:

• Blended Learning
  learning as a result of a deliberate, integrated combination of online and face-to-face learning activities.
  
  
• Blended Teaching
  designing and facilitating blended learning activities.
  
  
• Blended Education
  the formal context of BL that is determined by policies and conditions with regard to the organization and support of blended learning.

Three levels

Within the project we identified three levels:

• Micro
  blended learning and teaching of a course or programme. Primary actors are the students and teachers.
• Meso
  This is the context of the institute for blended education. Is there a policy for blended learning? Is there support available for teachers? Are classrooms setup suitable for blended learning?
  The primary actors are the leadership of the institute and support staff to make blended teaching and learning possible
• Macro
  the macro level is outside the institute, such as governmental policies, accreditation organisations. Interesting societal discussion on more classtime for students can influence the maturity of blended learning on the micro level.

In the feedback I received, it is especially the MESO level that is a eye-opener for many people. It is important that all three levels align to reach a level of maturity in blended education.

 Below the slides of my keynote, the session was not recorded.

Two weeks ago I attended the annual EADTU conference Open, Online and Flexible Higher Education Conference at Aarhus University (Denmark). One of the interesting presentations was of Diana Laurillard. She is working at the Knowledge Lab of University College London (UCL). The title of her presentation was Blended and Online Learning: Teachers changing the pedagogical landscape. Central in here presentation were two questions:

• Does pedagogy need to change for a digital world?
• How do we change the landscape of pedagogy?

She answered these questions with the help of the Conversational Framework she developed.

This framework is

• a series of iterative exchanges
• between learner and a ’teacher’ and
• between a learner and their peers
• at two levels of concepts and practices.

Her conclusion was that the fundamentals of learning have not changed, but the range of means by which we support learning differs. There are many more activities you can do online to learn a concept and to practice. Teachers need support to show them the options and learn them when to use specific means. Below her slides:

Last Thursday was the official opening of the new education building Pulse at TU Delft. This building is a state-of-the-art teaching building to facilitate the growing number of students on campus.

Blended and active learning

There are no traditional lecture rooms in this building. All rooms are setup for interactive teaching and learning. The students are grouped around a table (or can be easily turned around) to work together on assignments. Almost all walls double up as whiteboards and there are numerous LCD screens to enable groups to share information.

For the design of the building we used different inputs:

• According to the TU Delft Vision on Education we use "diverse teaching methods to stimulate active learning and use digital technologies to enhance  teaching & learning" (page 12). 
• Since a couple of years we have a team from different departments that created together the cookbook Education Spaces. The cookbook describes requirements for lecture halls, classrooms and study workplaces at TU Delft and contains four generic chapters: A) Pedagogic Classification, B) Education Space Typologies, C) Education Space Requirements, and D) Study Workplaces. It has been drawn up in close co-operation with teaching staff, students and supporting staff.
• Analysis of our current educational spaces and the expected demand in the coming years. This analysis showed that we especially needed rooms for 60-120 students.
• Pulse’s design came about in close cooperation with students and lecturers who discussed the preferred lay-out for the instruction rooms and the experience of the study landscape in the building. Their input has, for instance, resulted in the building having a lot of writable walls in the lecture rooms, extra lockers and longer opening hours. Students will be able to take classes by day, have a nice meal outdoors on the patio and then continue to study until late in the evening.

The building

The result is a building of 4,700 m2 with a total of  1,020 education spaces:

• 2 terraced rooms with a capacity of 125 people
• 8 rooms with capacities of 60 to 100 people
• Three special rooms for non-standard educational settings
• Approx. 160 self-study spaces

Energy-neutral building

Pulse is the first energy-neutral building of the university and scored the highest BREEAM score. The building is equipped with approximately 750 m2 PV panels combined with underground thermal storage and a triple-glazed façade. An intelligent building management system ventilates, lights, cools and heats the various spaces at Pulse in accordance with their usage. 

Training for lecturers

My team is offering a short training session of 1,5 hours. The training will focus on the delivery of lectures from an active learning perspective, whilst trying to fully benefit from the didactic advantages of the 4Q system and digital writing system. It would be disappointing if these beautiful rooms would be used for classical lectures.

Tomorrow the first official lectures will start in Pulse. Then we will know how students and lecturers will experience the new building. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

Photos

Below some photos to give you an impression of the building or take a look at the virtual tour of the building. Photos are provided by the education spaces team and are copyrighted TU Delft.

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

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.

Last week the DCU's National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) and the Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice (CARPE) published an interesting report on portfolio use in higher education. The report synthesizes and reviews the literature on the use of the 'learning portfolio' in universities and higher education institutions.

Traditionally the (paer-based) portfolio was associated with the fine arts/design as a means for individuals to showcase samples of their work. Nowadays the portfolio is used as a pedagogical and assessment tool in all different kind of disciplines and in all levels of education. The definition the authors mention is a good reflection of this:

‘a portfolio is an organized compilation that demonstrates knowledge, skills, values and/or achievements and that includes reflections or exegesis which articulate the relevance, credibility and meaning of the artefacts presented.’

In the report they distinguise three types of portfolios:

• showcase portfolio: this most closely resemble the original paper-based portfolio
• summative/evalution portfolio: students receive a grade based on the work submitted in their portfolio.
• Learning Portfolio: Unlike showcase and assessment portfolios, learning portfolios may include drafts and ‘unpolished’ work, with the focus broadened to include the process of compiling the portfolio, as well as the finished product. 

The report focuses on the learning portfolio.

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Last month the European Commission published the report European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. This report presents a common European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu). The DigCompEdu framework is directed towards educators at all levels of education, from early childhood to higher education and non-formal learning contexts. It can help to guide policy and to adapt training programmes (such as BKO/UTQ).

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Two weeks ago I attended the F2F kickoff meeting of the recently granted Erasmus+ project EMBED: European Maturity Model for Blended Education. EMBED is a strategic partnership with frontrunner universities in blended education. The project is coordinated by EADTU and partners are KU Leuven, TU Delft, University of Edinburgh, Tampere University, Dublin City University and Aarhus University.

Withing the project we will develop an multi-level maturity model on blended education:

• micro-level of teaching and learning processes
• meso-level of institutional innovation and enabling strategies
• macro-level of governmental policy and support structures.

The first discussion was how do we define blended education. On the micro-level we talk about blended learning. Blended education is broader than just the learning, it also includes policy, support organisation, etc. The blend is focused on the mix of face-to-face and online:

“Blended learning refers to a deliberate, integrated combination of online and face-to-face (on-site) learning outcomes.”

The first activities are focused on developing the model. Katie Goeman, Veerle van Rompaey and Stephan Poelmans of KU Leuven are coordinating this. In the process we already identified many blended learning models, but I would like to invite you to reply with your favorite blended learning or education model.