in the fall of 2013 I published the first version of our DelftX MOOC Journey based on the creation of our first two MOOCs. Now we have finished the delivery of many more MOOCs we have updated the journey. Suprisingly, the journey was mostly still very accurate.
I will use this journey in the Action lab workshop I'm organising at the OE Global Conference.
The journey is based on the processes of DelftX. We call this a "talking picture". You can download the image below as PDF. Off course the image is CC-licensed. If you have any remarks, please comment below.
This week I'm in the beautiful town of Banff in the state of Alberta (Canada) for the Open Education Global Conference 2015. This is the yearly conference organised by the Open Education Consortium. As board member I have to be present at this conference, but that is never a burden.
It always is a busy conference for me. Next to the conference we also have the board meeting of the consortium. This year Meena also tricked me in some workshops. So you have multiple opportunities to see me in action.
Pre-conference workshop On Tuesday we start with a pre-conference workshop on getting started with Open Education. Together with Robert Schuwer, Martijn Ouwehand, Jure Cuhalev and Meena Whang I will organise a full day workshop. This conference will be based on the workshop we organised last year as part of the OpenCourseWare Europe project.
Action Lab MOOCs On Friday I'm organising an 'Action Lab' about everything you want to know about MOOCs. In this one hour session I will try to answer all the questions the participants have on the production and delivery of MOOCs.
Awards This year the TU Delft has won three awards:
The project manager of the Design mooc is here at the conference, so she will pick up this award. The other two Martijn and I will pick up on behalf of David and Alexander.
This afternoon we organised an Open Education Week Seminar as part of the 4th Open Education Week. I had the honour to do the keynote about the state of Open Education. Below are the slides I used during the presentations. The video recording will follow tomorrow.
Cover report Institutional MOOC strategies in Europe
Last week EADTU released the report "Institutional MOOC strategies in Europe". This research is conducted as part of the EU-funded project HOME (Higher education Online: MOOCs the European way) by Robert Schuwer and Darco Jansen.
This report on MOOCs intends to contribute to literature on MOOCs in Europe. Its specific aim is to present data on the perception and objectives of European higher education inst itutions on MOOCs and the main drivers behind the MOOC movement. In addition, the report makes a comparison with similar studies conducted in the United S tates in 2013 and 2014 and to data produced by the European University Association (EUA) between Octob er and December 2013. The report made clear that involvement is still increasing, but also that arguments to get involved differ from those in the US. The survey was conducted in October December 2014. In total 67 institutions responded out of 22 European countries representing in total about 2.8 millions of students.
The most interesting of the report is the difference with the US:
Some parts of the survey encompasses identical questions as used in the US surveys of 2013 and 2014. The results show large differences between both continents. A large majority of European higher education instit utions disagree with the statement that credentials for MOOC completion will cause confusion about higher education degrees while a majority in the US agrees. Next, more than 80% of European institutions agrees with the statement MOOCs are important for in stitutions to learn about online pedagogy while in the US it has decreased from 44% in 2013 to 28% in 2014. In the US the opinion is mostly neutral or disagree on the question if MOOCs are a sustainable method for offering courses , but in the EU more than half of the institutions agrees.
As sustainable member (and board member) of the Open Education Consortium we feel obliged to actively participate in the Open Education Week (Noblesse oblige). Here you find the overview of the activities we are organising on our campus in Delft. There will be many more activities during the week by all the organisations that are participating.
Monday, March 9th: Research Seminar: Data Science
During the research seminar we will address topics like learning analytics, gamification and assessment. Many researchers from TU Delft and other universities will share their visions on research in Open & Online Education. Time: 9:00 – 13:00 | More info
Monday March 9th: Education Seminar: Open Education
During the education seminar both our E-dean of Open & Online Education, one of the board members of the Open Education Consortium and lecturers of TU Delft and other HE institutions will shed their light on sharing and reusing Educational resources and the impact of Online education on campus. Time: 14:00 – 17:00 | More info
Tuesday, March 10th, Workshop: Develop an 'Open' Course design
Learn about what open educational practices are and how you can design your course around reusing Open Education(al resources).
Sign up for a tour to the New Media Centre, catch a glimpse of the recording studios, learn how to prepare for recording learning videoclips (short workshop) and find out everything you want to know about the services the New Media Centre can provide. Time: 14:00 - 15:30 Group 1 (max. 12 participants), 15:30 - 17:00 Group 2 (max. 12 participants) | More info
Thursday, March 12th: A Future for Open Education?
Join the debate and discuss the current developments and future directions of TU Delft Open & Online Education with Anka Mulder, Vice president Education & Operations TU Delft. Time: 14:00 - 15:00 / More info
A couple of researchers of MIT looked at the surveys of 11 MITx courses on edx in the spring of 2014. They found that one in four (28.0 percent) respondents identified as past or present teachers. Of the survey respondents, nearly one in 10 (8.7 percent) identified as current teachers. Although they represent only 4.5 percent of the nearly 250,000 enrollees, responding teachers generated 22.4 percent of all discussion forum comments. One in 12 of the total comments were made by current teachers, and one in 16 were from teachers with experience teaching the subject of the MITx course in which they enrolled:
Teachers are heavily enrolled and engaged in MITx courses on edX, and evidence indicates that they play a substantial role in discussion forums. Measuring the current impact of teachers on other participants is an important area for future research, and one that might help develop learning frameworks that better partner teachers with course staff and other participants. Teachers' motivations in taking a MOOC will play a key role, whether they are engaging in life-long learning, pursuing life-long instruction, or searching for new pedagogy and peer support. Regarding pedagogy and peer support, adoption of new teaching practices is a major challenge facing teachers and school districts in the United States. MOOCs targeting the needs of teachers and providing mechanisms to become personal online courses can potentially provide a space for educators to overcome adoption barriers and a sustainable foundation for MOOCs' continued existence.
Teacher enrollment clearly represents an unrecognized, meaningful audience for MOOC providers. Recent reports have largely focused on demographics within MOOCs,even leading to criticism that the typical participant is older and holds an advanced degree.29 Recognizing the significance of large teacher enrollments in MOOCs may shift perspectives toward course design and MOOC platform capabilities more attuned to expert participants. We believe teacher participants in MOOCS are a resource to respect and value, with the potential of further enriching the MOOC experience for participants.
Today, New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) released the NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition. This edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. They’ve also released this video summary:
This image shows the 6 key trends, 6 challenges and 6 technologies.
In exactly 4 weeks the 2015 edition of the Open Education Week will start. Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its purpose is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free and open to everyone.
Open Education Week is coordinated by the The Open Education Consortium, an association of hundreds of institutions and organizations around the world that are committed to the ideals of open education. Universities, colleges, schools and organizations from all over the world have come together to showcase what they’re doing to make education more open, free, and available to everyone.
Ways to Contribute
There are many ways you can contribute to Open Education Week: upload an informational or inspirational video, host an event in your community, send us links to resources about open education, hold a webinar, and promote open education week in your social media networks. To contribute a video or resource, or to have your event or webinar featured on the Open Education Week Events calendar, please use the submission form at www.openeducationweek.org. To get the website ready, we need your submissions by 10 February 2015. You are welcome to submit multiple resources or events. Please fill out one form for each contribution.
Videos
The Open Education Week website will feature short videos (2-5 minutes in length) showcasing open education projects, featuring short messages about open education, or providing how-to tutorials on aspects of open education. A third category is being added this year for longer, inspirational talks, panels or interviews on open education. We welcome videos that are specially made for Open Education Week, as well as those already available that fit the following categories.
The Higher Education Academy in the UK has written an interesting report on MOOCs. This is their third report on MOOCs within a year.This report is about a study of ten people who completed one of the University of Southampton’s first two such courses during 2014. Its goal is to better understand their motivations for studying in this way , and the learning opportunities and problems they encountered. Findings were discussed with five academics involved in leading, developing and teaching on the MOOCs in order to explore issues from both perspectives. Given the small - scale nature of the project no specific recommendations are made as a result of it. Instead, the final paragraphs offer reflections from the project team about how the research is likely to impact their own practice in the future, and sugge stions about how learners might make the most of the opportunities MOOCs offer.
Interesting conclusion is that the 'completer' interviewees view moocs not as poorer quality version of similar online courses. They experienced a MOOC as something new, exciting and completely unique in their educational experiences.
Ellen Brandenberger is a Master of Education Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Technology, Innovation, and Education program. She has done an interesting research on the course developments of MOOCs:
Recently, with the help of folks at HarvardX, and as a project course on MOOCs taught by Adjunct Lecturer on Education Justin Reich, I set out to examine the course development role across institutions in the edX Consortia to determine if it was uniform across institutions, or a label with little meaning or standard definition.
To do so, I conducted interviews of individuals in course development roles at four different higher education institutions that develop courses for the edX platform. These eight individuals sat down with me for 1-2 hours each, and I used semi-structured interviews to explore their roles, responsibilities, and qualifications.
In three blog posts on Inside Higher Ed she has writen 3 blog posts about this research:
