E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Since 2013 Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) offers online courses for a global population of lifelong learners (MOOCs, ProfEd, and MSc courses). This year we reached 640K enrollments. Online education can be used as a catalyzer for gaining knowledge on learning and learning processes, due to a large amount of data on student behavior. For this reason, TU Delft is looking for external researchers who are interested in creating joint research projects on quality and efficacy / effectiveness of open and online education.

The goal of TU Delft would be to create win-win research projects, where research results can be used by TU Delft and at the same time help the researcher in his / her own research ambitions.

Short-cyclical research projects

External researchers are invited to cooperate with TU Delft through short-cyclical research projects. Such projects provide researchers with ample opportunity for exploration and analysis of a particular research topic, but also aim for output within a relatively short time-span (i.e. six months).
External researchers have the freedom to define their own research project, research questions, and approach within agreed upon constraints (i.e. topic, time, budget). Preferred research themes are:

• Didactics of online learning
• Learning content
• Teacher roles and styles
• Online group dynamics
• Learner support

What do we expect?

• An interested external researcher is invited to write a concise project proposal (max. 4 pages), with support from our research coordinator.
• A project proposal should consist of the research question that will be answered, the methodology that will be used for this, the type and amount of data that needs to be studied, an overview of resources the TU Delft should provide, and any associated costs / remuneration.
• Project deliverables are a research report and scientific papers.
• Potential external researchers can be international or domestic, and can have expertise ranging from social science to engineering science. Delft University of Technology offers opportunities for both ‘short-stay arrangements’ and for researchers to work from their native country and visit TU Delft at set moments.

What do we offer?

TU Delft offers the opportunity to work on pioneering science and education, the opportunity to work with a salient data set, the opportunity to write unique papers with good exposure potential, and a chance to cooperate closely with instructors in creating and facilitating courses to make them better for students. Use of university resources and remuneration are an option.

Available data includes:

• Online education student data based on 635K enrollments.
• Pre-survey, mid-survey, and post-survey data on 30+ MOOCs, ProfEd, and MSc courses (60K+ responses).
• Blackboard and edX course data on 30+ MOOCs, ProfEd, and MSc courses.

Contact

For more information contact our research coordinator: dr.ir. J.P. (Jan-Paul) van Staalduinen.

Earlier this week Joshua Kim published a blog about 5 ways online teaching benefits residential learning. His 5 ways are:

1. A Chance to Rethink What Should Happen In the Physical Classroom
2. An Opportunity to Introduce Learning Theory and Pedagogical Research
3. Exposure to a Team Approach for Course Design
4. An Easier Transition to Blended Learning
5. Online Courses Help Make Teaching Strategies Visible to Educators and Students

These 5 ways are also true for my university. We have seen with a couple MOOCs that is started a complete change of the regular bachelor programme.

A good example is our mooc pre-university calculus. This course ran this summer with 27.000 students. The group that created the MOOC has also started a new programme (article in Dutch) to change the math education for all bachelor programmes. And they created a new website math-explained.tudelft.nl to make their video widely available for any student, but also for other teachers to include in their courses as reference material. And we got confirmation from other teachers that they use the content in their courses.

What we are further investigation is what the impact is on the pass rates for math in the first year. Traditionally the math courses are a hurdle for many students in passing the first year. In the survey the students really appreciated the course as is shown in the wordle above, where student were asked to give a one-word description.

Yesterday I attended the presentation of Dan Wagner about MOOCs4D and the new SDGs at the ICDE Conference. Now you think what the heck is he talking about. MOOCs4D is an initiative of University of Pennsylvania about MOOCs for Development, with a special focus on the bottom of the pyramid. SDG are the recently declared Sustainable Development Goals of the UN.

One of the things what triggered me where those 17 goals and how they match up with our TU Delft MOOCs. One of the objectives of our Open and Online Education programme is "Contribute to the Grand Challenges". I think we have to rephrase that to "Contribute to the SDGs". Back to our MOOCs, I could directly match 10 of our 20 MOOCs to 6 SDGs. In the table below the break-down of it.

We have some more MOOCs in development, but I decided not to add them yet. And there are also MOOCs that have a more general subject, such as our Leadership for Engineering and Creative Problem Solving and Decision Making.

Goal	MOOC
	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. Wind Energy in development
	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.
	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
	Introduction to Water and Climate Explore how climate change, water availability, and engineering innovation are key challenges for our planet.

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.

After two weeks of holiday in South Africa, this week I'm attending the 26th ICDE World Conference in Sun City (South Africa). ICDE is the international Council for Open and Distance Education and founded in 1938 in Canada as the International Council for Correspondence Education and today has members from over 60 countries worldwide.

The theme of the conference is "Growing capacities for sustainable distance e-learning provision". The conference has some interesting keynotes, such as Tressie McMillan Cottom, Audrey Watters, Laura Czerniewicz, Joyce Seitzinger and Wayne Mackintosh.

Today I heard that more than 900 people have registered for the conference, so it will be an busy conference. If I look through the programme is seems as a very traditional conference setup with lots of keynotes and panel discussions.

High-level Policy Forum

Next to the conference the Open Education Consortium is organising a high-level forum together with UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning. The theme of the High-Level Policy Forum is "Higher education for the sustainable future we want. The way ahead for online, open and flexible learning: opportunities and actions”.

The Forum will bring together leaders and decision makers from around the world, including senior officials of education ministries and policy makers in higher education, academia, representatives of teacher associations and student organisations, UNESCO Chairs in ICT/ODL, ICDE Chairs in OER, Ed-Tech industry, global and regional networks, researchers, and leading non-governmental organisations in the system.

The Forum will build on the Global High-Level Policy Forum “Online, open and flexible higher education for the future we want,” that took place in Paris from 9 to 11 June 2015 and that was organised by UNESCO, in partnership with the ICDE.

But first, I will start with a full day for the board meeting of the Open Education Consortium.

SURFnet is een nieuw initiatief gestart: de Innovation Challenge:

Via de Innovation Challenge maken duo’s van docenten en studenten in het hoger onderwijs kans op € 10.000 voor experimenten waarbij zij innovatieve ICT-toepassingen inzetten om flexibel en gepersonaliseerd onderwijs te stimuleren, onderwijs op maat te bieden en aan te sluiten bij de leerbehoeften van studenten. De experimenten kunnen een toepassing, product of dienst opleveren waar studenten en docenten direct baat bij hebben in het hoger onderwijs en die een directe bijdrage leveren aan het verbeteren van het onderwijs.

Het gaat om experimenten waarbij innovatieve ICT-toepassingen worden ingezet binnen een onderwijscontext. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan toepassingen waarbij slim gebruik is gemaakt van augmented reality, 3D printing, drones, wearables, big data etc. Of aan producten of diensten als apps, games, ebooks of interactietools.

Interessant aan het initiatief is dat het gaat om een combinatie van een docent met een student. Binnen de Extension School bestaan de meeste Course Teams uit een team van docenten en studenten. Onze ervaring is dat dit erg goed werkt.

Om mee te doen aan het voorstel moet je voor 9 oktober je voorstel indienen. Het gaat hierbij om het invullen van een template en het aanleveren van een video of animatie. Het voorstel dat je indient moet binnen 6 maanden te realiseren zijn.

Meer informatie is te vinden op innovationchallenge2015.surf.nl.

Last week MIT published an interesting working paper about a new methode of cheating in open courses. They named the method “copying answers using multiple existences online” (CAMEO):

In this method of cheating, a user creates multiple accounts, one of which is the primary account that will ultimately earn a certificate. The other accounts are used to find or “harvest” the correct answers to assessment questions for the master account.

The easiest solution to prevend this is to randomize questions or to create questions with randomized parameters. These techniques are easy to employ in STEM courses, but much harder in other courses. The test system of edx (and other mooc providers) are still very basic and more mature test systems (such as Maple TA and QuestionMark Perception) already have much more advanced possibilities to prevend this.

Interesting is that they also found cultural differences:

The strategy is mostly used by learners outside the U.S. While only 0.4 percent of the learners in the U.S. earned their certificates by using multiple accounts, 12 percent of learners in Albania did. Indonesia, Serbia, Colombia and China rounded out the list of the top five countries with the highest rates, registering at between 4 and 2 percent.

Receiving Credits for a MOOC

The problem above is why not a lot of colleges and universities are accepting MOOCs for credits. Exams have to be proctored to count for credit. Personally, I think we should invest more in alternative ways of assessment that better fit the online world.

Last week University of Maryland announced that they are replacing all the textbook with no-costs online resources.

As of this fall, UMUC has moved away from publisher textbooks to no-cost digital resources embedded in courses, saving each UMUC undergraduate student hundreds of dollars a session—potentially thousands over the course of the degree.
By the fall of 2016, all of UMUC's graduate classes will be textbook-free, too. The collective savings is estimated to be in the millions for the more than 80,000 students taking classes at UMUC annually.

This is the kind of leadership we need to fight the power of the publishers and make university more affordable. At the Open Education Global Conference the Open Education Consortium already honoured the university with the President's Award.

Although the costs of textbooks in Europe are lower, it is expense to buy books for a year of university. It would like to see that we could do the same for our Bachelor education.

Sarah Hayes has written an interesting report about MOOCs and Quality. She wrote this report in commission for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) in the UK. This literature review presents a number of different perspectives from a broad range of sources relating to the nature of MOOCs and pertinent considerations of quality.

The report gives a good overview of MOOCs and quality. I agree with Sarah that with each new learning innovation, MOOCs present the possibility of new approaches to education, but the promises now need to be evaluated to see what can be delivered in the longer term, on a sustainable basis and with what implications for HEIs and for the assurance of quality.

Download report

Do you want to be part of innovating education with online education? Help us to become a world leader in online education? Educate the world! We are looking for 2 eLearning Developers to join our (international) team!

TU Delft

Delft University of Technology is the leading University of Technology in the Netherlands with a global reputation in the fields of science, engineering & design. TU Delft’s mission is to make a significant contribution towards a sustainable society for the twenty-first century by conducting ground-breaking scientific and technological research which is acknowledged as world-class, by training scientists and engineers with a genuine commitment to society and by helping to translate knowledge into technological innovations and activity with both economic and social value.

Open & Online Education

TU Delft has been a forerunner in the field of Open & Online Education since 2007, and is one of the sustaining members of the Open Education Consortium and since 2013 charter member of the EdX Consortium. In March 2014, the board of the TU Delft approved a 3-year innovation program to accelerate the development of open & online education. The goal is to educate the world by creating an online learning portfolio with open & online courses for a global population of life long learners. Our courses are listed on https://online-learning.tudelft.nl.

Job description

As eLearning Developer you will be part of the (international) Extension School team, which supports and leads the online learning developments of the university. You will create advanced eLearning modules that will be part of the TU Delft Online Learning portfolio. The Extension School delivers MOOCs, Professional Education, blended and online education (bachelor and master level) to a worldwide audience. You will have considerable experience designing and developing online & blended education courses.

In this role you will partner with and support the academic staff to create outstanding open and online courses. Your project management skills contribute to your success in this role as you will be responsible for managing multiple projects. Together with a team of eLearning developers you will also work on constantly improving course designs and deliveries.

• Devise complex technical methods and processes to meet new and unique eLearning and web requirements and resolve technical problems.
• Ability to work independently. Ability to interact effectively with various faculty members in the TU Delft organization.
• Recognize, recommend and participate in the development of standards and procedures that support quality improvement in the Delft Extension School and products for our students.
• Provide project management for e-learning projects with tight deadlines. These projects bring together people from various departments and backgrounds to develop content, technical specifications and functional prototypes for the Extension School.
• Provide training to faculty on developing and teaching online courses.
• Meet all internal deadlines according to project plan regardless of project limitations.

Requirements

• Master of Education (M.Ed) in Instructional Design, Educational Technology or related experience plus 1 year recent curriculum design and/or course development experience in online education;
• Demonstrate a keen sense of organization and attention to detail;
• Demonstrated ability to handle unforeseen difficulties and obstacles with ease;
• An excellent team player that is able to work on complex projects with a group of other course developers;
• Ability to work on a tight, rapidly-changing schedule;
• Experience with using ICT in education, such as digital assessment, e-moderating, online teaching methods and platforms;
• A committed consultant with strong communication skills in English, mastery of Dutch is a plus;
• Experience in higher education;
• Experience as a teacher of open or online education is a plus.

For more information and application, please visit our official vacancies website. If you have questions you can contact me via contact form above.

The world of education is changing in the current internet age. That means that definitions of education are also needs to be updated. A definition that is commonly used is the one of the Sloan Consortium (2007) (nowadys known as Online Learning Consortium):

Course that blends online and face-to-face delivery. substantial proportion (30 to 79%) of the content is delivered online, typically uses online discussions, and typically has some face-to-face meetings.

Below is the full overview of their definitions from traditional to online education.

Defining blended within the TU Delft

Within the TU Delft we noticed that this definition was not working for the Extension School programme. there seemed two different kind of blended education:

• traditional education adopted to blended learning
• online learning adopted to blended learning

Both are called 'blended learning', but they were completely different and more important there seems to be a path from traditional education -> blended learning -> online learning. But in practice that path didn't lead to the online learning we want to offer (off course there are exceptions).

So we defined blended for the Extension School with a focus on the reuse of (open) online resources:

Blended education involves embedding online products, such as MOOCs, online courses or open educational resources in your campus course.

OLC Updated E-learning Definitions

Recently the Online Learning Consortium published an updated list of definitions. They list 7 types:

1. Classroom Course – Course activity is organized around scheduled class meetings.
2. Synchronous Distributed Course—Web-based technologies are used to extend classroom lectures and other activities to students at remote sites in real time.
3. Web-Enhanced Course – Online course activity complements class sessions without reducing the number of required class meetings
4. Blended (also called Hybrid) Classroom Course – Online activity is mixed with classroom meetings, replacing a significant percentage, but not all required face-to-face instructional activities.
5. Blended (also called Hybrid) Online Course – Most course activity is done online, but there are some required face-to-face instructional activities, such as lectures, discussions, labs, or other in-person learning activities.
6. Online Course – All course activity is done online; there are no required face-to-face sessions within the course and no requirements for on-campus activity.
7. Flexible Mode Course – Offers multiple delivery modes so that students can choose which delivery mode(s) to use for instructional and other learning purposes.

In these new definitions the Consortium makes the same kind of distinction in blended as we did (compare 4 and 5). Furthermore, I think we have courses in all seven categories at our university.

There is more to blend

If you look at the definitions there are based on the mix of two types: online versus face-to-face. I agree with Steve Wheeler that there are much more modes of learning that you can blend. Some examples he lists are the mix between social and personal learning, between synchronous and asynchronous activities, between mobile and tethered learning experiences. I fully agree with his summary:

So blended learning is becoming an increasingly complex concept, with multiple possibilities and infinite options. Blended is about choice, and about maximising your learning in the modes you find most convenient. Learning in all its forms is a little like the blender in your kitchen. Put in the right ingredients, and use a little effort, and hopefully the result will turn out to be very useful.