E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

In the Open Access Journal International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) three researchers of the University System of Georgia published on the student and faculty perception of OpenStax in high enrollment courses:

As public funding for higher education decreases and the cost to students to attend college increases, universities are searching for strategies that save students money while also increasing their chances for success. Using free online textbooks is one such strategy, and the OpenStax College initiative at Rice University is one of the most widely recognized producers of such materials. Through a mixed method approach, this article examines the student and faculty experiences of adopting and using an OpenStax textbook. With 1,299 student participants, it was found that students greatly value the quality, attributes, and the cost of the OpenStax Biology textbook, though minor concerns were raised about its online format. Faculty adoption of a free textbook provides unique opportunities for course redesign and improvement, and the approach employed in this course transformation context resulted in clearly articulated learning outcomes, a fully realized structure in the course’s learning management system, and improvements to instructional practice. The student, faculty, and course benefits of this study offer a compelling argument for the adoption of high quality open education resources (OER) in public higher education contexts.

This kind of research shows every time that OpenTextBooks and OER is comparable to commercial textbooks, but it has a couple of important benefits:

• No or limited costs for students. This removes the financial barrier to fully participate in a course and its content.
• More flexibility to the teachers

I fully agree with their conclusion:

Such student benefits, coupled with opportunities for course revision and improvement, create a compelling argument for the broad adoption of OER at public institutions of higher learning. 

Reference
Watson, C., Domizi, D., & Clouser, S. (2017). Student and Faculty Perceptions of OpenStax in High Enrollment Courses. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 18(5). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.2462

Image is screenshot of website OpenStax.org

Next week the new academic year will start with a new Collaboration & Learning Environment Brightspace. This summer the teachers, supported by the migration team, have done a great job in migrating all the courses. More than a 1,000 courses have been migrated. Earlier this year we did a pilot at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE). Based on the pilot we made many improvements to our implementation. One of the teachers involved with the IDE pilot was Jasper van Kuijk, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Below is an interview with him about his first experiences.

‘In the course that I coordinate, we did a lot of things outside of Blackboard. So when Brightspace came along, we wanted to use it for everything that we could’, explains Jasper van Kuijk, Associate Professor at IDE. Last semester, he gained experience in Brightspace at IDE, which was the first faculty to start working with the learning environment. ‘There are a lot of intermediate deadlines in our course, so everything is now arranged via Brightspace’. Jasper points to student assignments as a good example of how the system helps. ‘An added benefit is that all assignments are submitted in Brightspace, so we can easily keep track of who has submitted what. It is all available per group in one place. And that means that your teaching material archive is also kept up to date, which is handy should the inspectors visit, for example’. As a pedigree industrial design engineer, Jasper also considers other crucial aspects, such as design. ‘The design of Brightspace is smoother, such as when drafting messages for students’.

However, he does see room for improvement: ‘The student environment is alright, except that students still do not receive a message when feedback is posted online’.  And what about for teachers? ‘I have seen that numerous coaches in my course without prior experience of Brightspace need a few goes to get the hang of it. I think this is down to the back-end of Brightspace, which if you ask me, sometimes lacks logic. It is very hip and modern, with large letters and lots of white. And it is very spacious; but as a teacher, you sometimes want a better overview’. Jasper admits that some issues are a case of habituation, from both sides: ‘Procedures regarding how something works in Brightspace are sometimes unclear – even after five months, I occasionally still make the same mistakes. Perhaps the amount of time it takes to set-up a system like this was a little underestimated. But I must say that the Brightspace support team take feedback from teachers very seriously and even contact the Brightspace supplier when necessary’.

Courses are being transferred to Brightspace in the run-up to each quarter this academic year. This year the basic configuration is being installed, so that everyone has time to get used to the system. In the next academic year, the focus will be on optimisation and improvement. Jasper’s tip for all teachers still to get started with Brightspace: leave plenty of time to get to know the system. ‘Start on time and explore what Brightspace has to offer – it has different functions to Blackboard. It is much easier to use films and new media, as well as to store assignments and offer your students structure – use this to your advantage. You will not master Brightspace in one day, there is a learning curve. Also give sufficient thought to how you set-up the student environment, to avoid it being different for each course’.

This interview was first published in TU News.

We continue to develop new MOOCs as part of our Open & Online Learning programme. This fall we have 9 new MOOCs that will start, next to the reruns of 16 other MOOCs. In total we have 64 MOOCs announced and a couple more in development.

• Programming for teachers
  Last year we introduced a programming in Scratch for kids, in September the accompanying course for teachers will start. This course will teach teacher how to teach programming to kids. The course is in Dutch.
  
  
• Solar Energy: Photovoltaic Technologies
  This is the second course of the MicroMaster programme Solar Energy Engineering. This course will get you insight into the main PV technologies in the current market.
  
  
• Managing Building Adaptation: a Sustainable Approach
  The biggest sustainability challenge for cities worldwide is adapting existing obsolescent buildings and making them future-proof. In this course, you will learn about adapting buildings for sustainability.
  
  
• Business Model Metrics and Advanced Tools
  This course is the fifth course in the XSerie on Business Model Innovation. In this course you will learn advanced business model tools and metrics to help you achieve an agile business model.
  
  
• Co-Creating Sustainable Cities
  This is the second course we are co-developing with Wageningen University. This course is about how citizens can be co-creators of sustainable cities when they engage in city politics or in the design of the urban environment and its technologies and infrastructure.
  
  
• Railway Engineering: An Integral Approach
  Discover the science and complexity behind the exciting world of metro, tram and railway systems.
  
  
• Forensic Engineering: Learning from Failures
  Don’t let good failures go to waste! Identify the causes of failure and use this knowledge to enhance safety and improve performance.
  
  
• Globally Distributed Software Engineering
  Software engineering operates ever more frequently in globally distributed settings. This practice, also known as Globally Distributed Software Engineering (GDSE) has advantages and disadvantages that will be addressed in this course.
  
  
• Solar Energy: Photovoltaic (PV) Systems
  This is the third course of the MicroMaster Solar Energy Engineering. In this course you will explore the wide range of solar energy applications and learn to design a real PV installation with excellent performance and reliability.

Our MOOCs keep attracting new learners. This summer we reached the milestones of 1.5 million enrolments and 1 million learners. Overview of all the course we offer you can find on our online learning website.

One of the big sessions at D2L Fusion Conference is the Solution Spotlight. Interesting is that they hardly tell anything new, because they release new features and updates every month as part of the continous delivery cycle (CDC). But it is good to see what has happened in a year time and a couple of new interesting features.

Full story »

After eight years Mary Lou Forward is leaving the Open Education Consortium (OEC). It is with a mix of sadness and gratitude that we see her leave. Mary Lou has played a critical role in the development and success of the organization. It does mean that the consortium has an opening for a new executive director. Will you be the new ED?

Position Announcement

The Open Education Consortium is looking for an Executive Director who is a creative thinker with strong leadership skills to join a small, internationally diverse team of educational change-makers to lead planning and implementation of  activities for our second decade. Under the direction and guidance of the Board of Directors, the Executive Director is responsible for planning, organizing, directing, and managing all aspects of the organization, while motivating staff, volunteers and members to advance open education around the world.  OEC is a virtual organization, and therefore the location of the position is flexible.

Please see the position announcement and description, including how to apply.  The Open Education Consortium is committed to promoting geographical distribution, gender equality and diversity within the organization, and we welcome applications from all who meet the requirements. Position open until filled, with review of applications starting on 30 August 2017. Salary is commensurate with experience.

One of the important chooses an LMS supplier has to make is how to deal with mobile delivery. There are two strategies in the industry:

• full responsive LMS
• separate apps for different platforms.

At the Fusion conference in Las Vegas, D2L made it clear what their strategy is. With Daylight they have choosen for full responsiveness for Brightspace. Other LMSs, such as Blackboard and Canvas, made a different chooses.

I personnally think this is the choose for the long run because of these three reasons:

• One platform
  It is less costly to maintain one platform than multiple. This means that your resources are all working on that one platform and don't need to be distributed among all the different apps. This means you can move faster in developing new features, solving problems and more.
• One learning experience
  It is easier for the users, they will know where to find their information on any devices.
• Less support
  Every extra platform or app means extra questions to support. It is easier for support if there is only one platform. So in the end this means less support is needed.

Offcourse there are also downside to this strategy. One important issue is that the screen layout is not optimised for your screen. We have noticed that currently that is mainly the case for the features of instructors. D2L has prioritised the student experience, so this will certainly improve in the next months.

Developing for responsiveness

A full responsive design also means that your instructors should be aware of this. Some guidelines to make sure that all your content works on any device:

• Create files in HTML (responsive), avoid PDFs and documents (non-responsive) as much as possible.
• Use the accessibility check in the text editor to make sure your content complies to accessibility standards.
• Test your external learning tools (for responsiveness)
• Don't use Flash or Java
• Set max widths on images
• Use video tool to insert videos, or use responsive CSS
• Avoid tables, or use responsive CSS

Altogether I think this a good choose of D2L. In combination with a cloud based platform it allows to move fast and stay ahead of the game.

Last year I attended my first D2L Fusion conference. It was only 2 weeks after we signed the contract. This year we thought it was important to present our project of changing to Brightspace.

In Februari we did a pilot with one of our faculties, in September we go live with all other faculties. Brightspace will be our one and only Collaboration & Learning Environment (CLE). (Blackboard will stay available as archive).

Lessons Learned

In my presentation I presented five lessons learned. One I want to highlight: It's Education!

From the start of this project we have approached the project as an education project and not what I see at other universities as IT project. This means that our Director of Education is in the lead, the project is strongly connected to the academic leadership in the faculties and our strategy is focused on improving education.

When there is a strong focus on education, decision making is less focused on IT issues (there will always be IT issues). It is about how the CLE support our education and the learning process of our students.

Course structure
This focus also made us choose for mandatory course structure for all courses. Technology this wasn't necessary, but from the perspective of our students it was a solution to their biggest complaints: "I don't know where to find certain information in my course. Every course is organised in a different way".

Only education and learning
Blackboard has been used for all different kind of activities, as a portal, for software distribution, communities for research projects and many more. In 17 years people find a lot of different ways to use the system for not intended purposes. With our clear focus on education, we have decided to be very strict: the CLE is only for education and learning. Our number of organisations is cut by 90% because of this. New courses and organisations need to be approved by the faculty managers Education & Student Affairs. They are made responsible for this.

Slides

Here the full slides of my presentations

Today we launched the conference website for the Open Education Global Conference 2018 in Delft. The theme of the Open Education Global 2018 Conference is Transforming Education through Open Approaches.

This theme is a result of many discussion within the programme committee (Robert Schuwer is the chair of the committee) and I think it reflects very well the global development how education is transforming. The open approaches are not limited to education, it includes the broader perspective of openness. This aligns with the Year of Open strategy of bringing together all the different kinds of openness, suc as open science, open access, open data, open ict, open education, open research and more.

Call for Proposals

The website includes the Call for Proposals including the conference tracks:

• Open Connections 
  Connecting different worlds of Open, such as open access, open science, open source software; strengthening our reach and increasing impact through collaboration.

• Open Education Research
  Research on practices to mainstream openness in education; evidence of impact, studies of educational transformation using open modalities.  

• Innovation through opening traditional practices
  MOOCs as an accelerator for open & online education, opening teaching practices through open textbooks, openly licensed student work as OER.

• Policies & strategies for Open Education
  Setting priorities and conditions for mainstreaming Open Education, designing effective policies and strategies, connecting open education policies to larger policy movements such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Open Government Partnership.

• Institutionalizing Open Education
  Intellectual property arrangements at schools and universities; reward and recognition systems; institutional conventions; disciplinary norms; types of in-service training for Open Education; impact on hiring practices; challenges and barriers for mainstreaming openness; openness as a tool for community outreach, enhancing leadership in open education.

• Tools & Technologies for Open Education
  Supporting the development and use of tools for OER production, hosting, use and remix, authoring OER, conventions for tagging OER, hosting derivative works, citation conventions for derivative works, standards for remixable formats.

• Open Educational Practices/Open Pedagogy
  New approaches to teaching and learning based on openness, personalization of education, OER-enhanced teaching, facilitating informal learning with open resources, course redesign with a focus on open.

• Connecting Open Education to formal education
  Accelerating adoption of open education, recognition and rewards for open education adoption, alignment of open education values to institutional mission, accreditation of open education, recognition of learning through open means.

• Student perspectives
  Student-led initiatives to advance open education and research, impact of open for students, student perceptions of open education, students as open education leaders.

The deadline for submitting proposal is 23rd of October. I hope to see many great proposals from around the world. Check out the conference website for more information.

Charles Lang, George Siemens, Alyssa Wise, Dragan Gašević have edited an extensive handbook on Learning Analytics. The Handbook of Learning Analytics is designed to meet the needs of a new and growing field. It aims to balance rigor, quality, open access and breadth of appeal and was devised to be an introduction to the current state of research. The Handbook is a snapshot of the field in 2017 and features a range of prominent authors from the learning analytics and educational data mining research communities. 

The book is 356 pages. What is really great is that it is openly licensed, although the ND is quiet restrictive.

Reference

• Charles Lang, George Siemens, Alyssa Wise, Dragan Gašević (ed). The Handbook of Learning Analytics. ISBN: 978-0-9952408-0-3.
  DOI: 10.18608/hla17

At the Creative Commons Summit two weeks ago the book Paul Stacy and Sarah Hinchliff Pearson worked on for two years was released: Made with Creative Commons. It has been interesting journey and a great result. The book is an excellent read on how to make openness core of your business model:

Made With Creative Commons is a book about sharing. It is about sharing textbooks, music, data, art, and more. People, organizations, and businesses all over the world are sharing their work using Creative Commons licenses because they want to encourage the public to reuse their works, to copy them, to modify them. They are Made with Creative Commons.
But if they are giving their work away to the public for free, how do they make money?
This is the question this book sets out to answer. There are 24 in-depth examples of different ways to sustain what you do when you share your work. And there are lessons, about how to make money but also about what sharing really looks like -- why we do it and what it can bring to the economy and the world. Full of practical advice and inspiring stories, Made with Creative Commons is a book that will show you what it really means to share.

Today Paul Stacy presented the research to our Extension School team as part of our Year of Open activities, below are his slides:

Business Model Innovation

We also invited Mark de Reuver. He is associate professor at TU Delft and is the coordinator of the European project ENVISION and of our MOOC Serie on Business Model Innovation. ENVISION is an EU funded program aiming at understanding and supporting business model innovation.

The combination of the presentation of Mark de Reuver and Paul Stacey gave us great insights and inspired our team in current discussion on the business model of the TU Delft Extension School. During the event Mark van Huystee made sketches of the event. They will be published on our Open Sketching blog.

Image Credit: Creative Commons CC BY-SA