E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

An interesting post from Mike Caulfield about the trend of full-time residential students taking “distance learning” courses through their residential institutions. At TU Delft we are also seeing this trend. The great benefit of an online course is the extra flexibility a student gets in planning his time.

The online masters we are starting will mainly focus on distance learning students, but our residential students can also profit from it. The content that will be developed in our online masters will be available on our OpenCourseWare website. This is also a way that regular student (and all other visitors) have access to that content.

We are also doing an pilot with a blended bachelor programme at the faculty of TPM which combines online and classroom learning.

Today I was invited to speak at the fourth day of the 2012 Ticer International Summerschool. Ticer stands for Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources. Ticer is a business unit of Tilburg University's Library and IT Services.

The theme of the 4th day was Connection Students, Faculty and Resources and I was asked to talk about Open Education (and it's context) in relation to the library. This was the abstract I send in a couple of months ago:

Universities no longer have the monopoly on educational content. Students can find almost anything online. More and more universities are sharing their educational content as Open Educational Resources (OER). In 2007, Delft University of Technology started participating in the OpenCourseWare programme. It started as a pilot and has brought the university many good things.
In this presentation, Willem van Valkenburg will go into details about the reason to start with OER and especially what it has brought Delft University. He will also take a look at the future with Open Education, Open Educational Practice, and how libraries can lead.

My presentation is available on slideshare and embedded below:

Vandaag heb ik deelgenomen aan de eerste live webinar van DIV .. if you dare. Het onderwerp was OpenData en de opname vonden plaats in het TU Delft New Media Centre.

Samen met Iens Boswijk van iens.nl, Theo Klarenbeek van de Belastingdienst, Maarten Louman van Qiy en onderleiding van Eppo van Nispen van CPNB (en voormalig directeur DOK) hebben wij bijna een uur gesproken over Open Data.

Eerst was er een korte introductieronde, waarna Eppo een inleiding verzorgde en vervolgens mochten wij elk 5 minuten een "lightning talk" houden. Hieronder mijn slides daarvoor:

De tijd vloog voorbij, gelukkig is de hele webinar nog terug te kijken in Silverlight of zonder Silverlight (net beschikbaar voor Collegerama).

Last month there was a special edition of the Journal Distance Education about OER. After a lot of online comments the publisher Taylor & Fancis opened the issue to the public, so now everyone can read the articles.

The articles in the journal are:

• Fostering social inclusion through open educational resources (OER)
  by Gráinne Conole
• A review of the role of national policy and institutional mission in European distance teaching universities with respect to widening participation in higher education study through open educational resources
  by Andy Lane
• Opening up Down Under: the role of open educational resources in promoting social inclusion in Australia
  by Carina Bossu, David Bull & Mark Brown
• The OER mix in higher education: purpose, process, product, and policy
  by Samuel Nikoi & Alejandro Armellini
• Equity considerations for open educational resources in the glocalization of education
  by Julie Willems & Carina Bossu
• Open educational resources: education for the world?
  by Thomas Richter & Maggie McPherson
• Open educational resources in support of science learning: tools for inquiry and observation
  by Eileen Scanlon
• Making a difference—inclusive learning and teaching in higher education through open educational resources
  by Christine Hockings, Paul Brett & Mat Terentjevs
• The role of postgraduate students in co-authoring open educational resources to promote social inclusion: a case study at the University of Cape Town
  by Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams & Michael Paskevicius
• Non-government distance education funding: the need for equity in Australian schooling
  by Terry Harding
• Politics, practices, and possibilities of open educational resources
  by Liam Phelan
• OER perspectives: emerging issues for universities
  by Don Olcott Jr.

You can view the articles here and download them as PDF.

Yesterday I saw some tweets about a 'Mechanical MOOC' and I really had no idea what to expect. My first association was with Amazon's Mechanical turk, but I couldn't see that in regards to a MOOC.

In the press release it states:

The mechanical MOOC is an attempt to leverage the power of the open Web, by loosely joining together a set of independent building blocks.
This so-called “mechanical” MOOC will combine the offerings of three leading open education projects – MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenStudy and Codecademy – loosely linked together by an e-mail list managed by Peer 2 Peer University

The first course will be "introductory Python Programming". The course will be based on MIT OpenCourseWare’s 6.189 A Gentle Introduction to Python class. The class is scheduled to start mid-October, 2012, with initial enrollment available starting August 21 at http://mechanicalmooc.org.

On the website of P2PU there is also a nice post about this new concept:

The Mechanical MOOC is a man (or machine) of mystery. It sends out emails to thousands of small groups pointing them to lectures, tutorials, and exercises – but also encourages learners to think for themselves and share additional resources with each other. It provides a map to learning Python, but doesn’t discourage folks from careening off the beaten path. This is the open web, after all.

If you read this description it certainly sounds a little like the concept of the mechnical turk. Interesting is if they will use this service from Amazon. I will probably hear more about this when I talk again to Philip and Steve.

Today I saw this post of Lisa Lane about three kinds of MOOCs:

I think the distinction is a good one and can help us all in the defining a MOOC. Although I'm not really convinced yet of the Task-based type. In some of the task-based examples I also see network-based characteristics.

Volgende week donderdag neem ik deel aan een webinar van "DIV...if your dare".

Live discussie vanuit de TU Delft over de veranderende rol van data en nieuwe business modellen.
Eppo van Nispen (directeur CPNB) neemt u mee in een spannende nieuwe (data)wereld aan de hand van een aantal sprekende voorbeelden.

We zien dat mensen het heft in eigen hand gaan nemen (Qiy),
we zien synergie ontstaan door het koppelen van administraties (Belastingdienst),
we zien hoe ons onderwijs radicaal verandert door de beschikbaarheid van online kennis (Opencourseware)
en we zien hoe informatie tot stand komt via het on-line delen van ervaringen (IENS).
Klik hier voor het volledige programma.

Een nieuw initiatief van de makers van DIV… If you dare! Het netwerk van informatieprofessionals die toe zijn aan… iets nieuws.

Kijk en luister mee op donderdag 23 augustus 14.00 – 14.45u via www.divifudare.nl.

De webinar wordt live uitgezonden vanuit de studio van de TU Delft via het collegerama-systeem. Ik ben zeer benieuwd hoe dit gaat. Ik heb wel eerder webinars gegeven, maar dat was dan via mijn eigen pc en niet in een studio.

Interesting TEDtalk of Daphne Koller. She is professor at Stanford and started Coursera:

Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. Each keystroke, comprehension quiz, peer-to-peer forum discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed and, most importantly, absorbed.

Tony Bates has written a good and critical blog post about this video.

On 19 and 20 September 2012 OpenCourseWare Europe is organising a Workshop and Training on Open Content licensing in Barcelona.

The main goal of this two-day event is to clarify legal issues with regard to regulations that govern the ownership and use, reuse or modification of educational resources, which are produced at Higher Education Institutions in Europe.  A direct focus is placed upon copyright. Participants will learn about the meaning of the open content licensing framework for OpenCourseWare & Open Educational Resources. They will gain practical skills on how to use such frameworks, through the utilization of Creative Commons licenses, to license and disseminate their own content or to use, reuse or modify educational content produced elsewhere.

The workshop is open and free to attend, but you have to pay for your own travel and accomodation costs.

More information is on the website of OpenCourseWare Europe.

The Open University UK started a serie reports about innovating pedagogy:

The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.

The first report deals with 10 innovations that are already here, but are not used on a large scale. The 10 innovations they discuss are:

1. New pedagogy for e-books
2. Publisher-led short courses
3. Assessment for learning
4. Badges to accredit learning
5. MOOCs
6. Rebirth of academic publishing
7. Seamless learning
8. Learning analytics
9. Personal inquiry learning
10. Rhizomatic learning

Personally I like the term "seamless learning". This is connecting learning across settings, technologies and activities:

Seamless learning is when a person experiences a continuity of learning across a combination of locations, times, technologies or social settings. Such learning may be intentional, such as when a learning activity starts in a classroom then continues through an informal discussion with colleagues, or online at home. It can also be accidental, for example when an interesting piece of information from a newspaper or television programme sparks a conversation with friends. Seamless learning can be a collective or an individual process. It can extend across time and locations, offer ubiquitous access to learning resources, encompass physical and digital worlds, engage multiple types of device, and integrate different approaches to teaching and learning.

The report is easy to read and also for me it included new and interesting information. Download the report here.

Via: Wilfred Rubens