E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Educause just release a new edition of the 7 Things you should know. This one is about the new directions for the LMS. The abstract:

Most of today’s learning management systems were developed in an era when virtually all of higher education was organized around courses and credit hours. Changes in pedagogy, new models of learning, and new opportunities made possible by technology have outpaced developments in LMSs. In response, LMSs are beginning to evolve toward being platforms on which a college or university can build a learning ecosystem. By being learner focused, future LMSs are more likely to meet the needs of institutions and students and to accommodate the new structures of higher education, including developments such as competency-based education, prior-learning assessment, badging, and others.

One of the things is the name. Currently we have started a project to select a replacement for our existing system. We called the project Collaboration & Learning Environment (CLE). This name better reflects what we expect in our new system than the traditional names such as CMS, LMS, and VLE.

The changing requirements at TU Delft are based on our activities to offer online education in the same system as campus and blended courses.

Last week I hosted a little conference at Delft University of Technology. For the first time, the EdX Conference was hosted outside the Boston Area. It was hosted in the beautiful building of our library. It was quite some work to organise it, but it was a great success according to all participants.

It is always exciting to see that the plan you set out works out even better then expected. Thanks to my great team of TU Delft Event Solutions (Anneke, Ginny, Natascha and Marie Louise), thanks to all the speakers of the parallel sessions, thanks to George Siemens for delivering a thought-provoking keynote and off course thanks to all the people who participated in the discussions.

Blogs and articles about the conference:

• ScienceGuide interview with Anant Agarwal
• Inside HigherEd blog of Joshua Kim about the conference
• Inside HigherEd blog of Joshua Kim about the keynote of George Siemens
• ScienceGuide article in Dutch

On my Facebook I placed a selection of photos to give an impression.

This infographics shows 7 habits that teachers should have if they use technology for their teaching.

Stanford University published an interesting report (PDF) about their online activities in 2013:

Since the first three Stanford MOOCs were offered in fall 2011, VPOL has awarded 66 faculty seed grants and has helped more than 145 faculty members from all seven schools deliver 246 online courses and blended campus courses hosted on three different platforms. More than 1.9 million people, from almost every country in the world, have registered for one or more free public online courses taught by Stanford faculty. And since the fall of 2012, our global community of learners has interacted with Stanford Online courses for more than 4 million hours.

The strategy of Stanford shows much resemblance with the strategy of the TU Delft Extension School.

In March 2014, the board of the TU Delft approved an innovation program to accelerate the development of open & online education. The goal is to create a Delft Extension School that will bundle all open & online courses for a global population of life long learners.

To reach those goals we are creating a support team. The team will be a mix of existing staff and new hires. Below is the first batch of 6 job openings that is available:

• Instructional Designer for Open, Online & Blended Education (38 hours 1.0 FTE)
  The Instructional Designer is responsible for the development of fully online courses in the Blackboard Learn LMS (learning management system) for the Delft Extension School.
  More information
  
  
• eLearning Developer for Open, Online& Blended Education (38 hours 1.0 FTE)
  As eLearning Developer you will be part of a team creating advanced eLearning modules that will be part of the new Delft Extension School.
  More information
  
  
• Program Management Officer Delft Extension School (38 hours 1.0 FTE)
  As program management officer (pmo) you are responsible for setting up & running the program management office (PMO) of an innovation program to realize a Delft Extension School.
  More information
  
  
• e-Marketeer Online Education (38 hours 1.0 FTE)
  As e-marketeer you will market accredited & paid online education of the Delft Extension School to potential students worldwide.
  More information
  
  
• Online Education Business Development Manager (38 hours 1.0 FTE)
  As business development manager you will be the projectleader of the workstream business development in the innovation program to set up a Delft Extension School for Online Learning.
  More information
  
  
• Office Manager
  Jij regelt het wel! Als office manager ben jij de spil van de organisatie. Je pakt alles aan wat op je pad komt. Binnen het O2E-team heb je een afwisselende functie waarin het regelmatig nodig is om snel te schakelen. Je werkt zelfstandig en secuur en bent goed in het opbouwen en onderhouden van een netwerk.
  Meer informatie

We are posting these job openings not only in the Netherlands. They are also open to international candidates. The jobs are also available on monsterboard, Guardian, insidehigherED. For the first two openings I am the contact person and will do the first round of selections. Closing date for applications for these positions is the 15th of May 2014.

Do you want more information about the Extension School, please take a look at these articles:

• Launch of the Extension School
• TU Delft starts Extension School for online education

Alweer de derde editie van het trendrapport geschreven door de SIG Open Education. De vorige edities hadden nog als titel "Trendrapport OER". Deze editie hebben we aangepast naar Open Education. Dit past in een wereldwijde trend en geeft beter aan waar het trendrapport over gaat:

Dit Trendrapport Open Education 2014 beschrijft de trends op het gebied van open education in binnen- en buitenland, geschreven vanuit de context van het Nederlandse hoger onderwijs. Dat gebeurt aan de hand van acht artikelen van Nederlandse experts op het gebied van open en online onderwijs en acht korte intermezzo’s.
Het Trendrapport Open Education 2014 is een uitgave van de special interest group Open Education van SURF. De special interest group faciliteert en bevordert communityvorming, kennisontwikkeling, kennisdeling, samenwerking en visievorming rondom open leermaterialen en open onderwijs binnen het hoger onderwijs in Nederland. Activiteiten van de special interest group worden gecoördineerd door een kernteam van experts uit de instellingen. De special interest group is dus van én voor het hoger onderwijs, en wordt ondersteund door SURF.

Het trendrapport is te downloaden op www.surf.nl/trendrapportopeneducation2014. Daar vindt u ook een link naar de Engelstalige versie.

Het rapport bevat de volgende hoofdstukken:

• POSTINITIEEL OPEN EN ONLINE HOGER ONDERWIJS:  HET PERSPECTIEF VAN DEELNEMER, wERKGEVER, OPLEIDER EN ONDERWIJSPROFESSIONAL
  door Nicolai van der Woert, Ria van ’t Klooster, Mark Visser en Jody Hoekstra
• OPEN FOR BUSINESS?
  door Matthijs Leendertse en Jop Esmeijer
• ERKENNING VAN MOOC’S IN HET ONDERWIJS
  door Marja Verstelle, Marije Schreuder en Hester Jelgerhuis
• TOETSEN EN BEOORDELEN BINNEN MOOC’S
  door Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter en Sofia Dopper
• INTEGRATIE EN HERGEBRUIK VAN OPEN EDUCATION IN HET FORMELE ONDERWIJS
  door Martijn Ouwehand en Ria Jacobi
• OPEN EDUCATION, BIG DATA EN LEARNING ANALYTICS
  door Sander Latour en Robert Schuwer
• MOOC’S: DE KANSEN EN GEVAREN VOLGENS STUDENTEN
  door Marianne Kaufman en Tim van den Brink
• OPEN EDUCATION EN JURIDISCHE VRAAGSTUKKEN: TRENDS EN ONTWIKKELINGEN
  door Esther Hoorn en Robert Schuwer

Daarnaast bevat het rapport een heel aantal intermezzo's:

• My (open) education app
• MOOC-platforms
• Open education en het semantische web
• Databronnen over open education en MOOC’s
• Publicaties
• Universiteit van Nederland
• Open education en academic ranking
• XYOC: varianten op MOOC’s

Het rapport bevat een aantal duidelijke trends voor Open Education:

• als aanjager voor het verbeteren van de onderwijskwaliteit
• als aanjager voor flexibilisering in het onderwijs
• als aanjager voor een leven lang leren
• als aanjager voor samenwerken
• als aanjager voor ‘unbundling’
• als aanjager voor discussie rondom erkennen van online onderwijs

Al met al is dit weer een uitstekend trendrapport en ik raad iedereen aan om dit te lezen.

Next week is the third Open Education Week. Open Education Week is a series of events to increase awareness of open education movement. There are both online and offline events around the world. Through the events and resources, we hope to reach out to more people to demonstrate what kind of opportunities open education has created and what we have to look forward to.

TU Delft

At our university will will organise three events. The events are free to join, but you have register:

• March 12^th Lunch Launch: Delft Extension School (12:30 - 14:00h, Hive, TU Library).Rob Fastenau, e-Dean of the Delft Extension School, will tell you something about the activities of the Delft Extension School and the possibilities of online worldwide education. Feel free to ask questions and discuss any online education subject.
  
  
• March 13^th MOOC Workshop (12:00 - 13:30h, Snijderszaal, Faculty of EEMCS) One of our first DelftX MOOC teachers, Dr. ir. Arno Smets (MOOC Solar Energy)will share his experience in MOOC making. He challenges you to think about what MOOCs can or cannot mean for you.
  
  
• March 14^th, edX Hackathon (15.00 - 21.00, Hive, TU Library) With the support of an edX developer and free pizza, students and staff are challenged to develop a concept and make a prototype of a new or improved functionality of the Open Source MOOC platform of edX.

On Tuesday we are also participating in the Dutch Symposium Open en Online Education and the Nuffic Jaarcongres 2014.

Last week I attended the second European MOOC Summit in Lausanne and I was not the only one. More than 400 attendees from a lot of different countries, not only European. There were 20 participants from the Netherlands. The conference was held in the Rolex building on the EPFL campus.

Although the conference was about MOOCs, the discussion was as much about online learning. Their were four tracks at the conference:

• Policy
• Experience
• Research
• Business

The conference had good and interesting keynotes. I personally didn't like the the setup of the parallel tracks. That were very long session with multiple presentations with limited interaction and not easy to switch within a session.

During the conference I tweeted  a lot. My tweets can be found in my tweet archive. Summit proceedings are available online (PDF, 294 pages), video recordings of keynotes will follow soon.

Other interesting blogs about the conference:

• Signals of Success and the EMOOCs Summit #emoocs2014
• blog about the keynotes
• Blogs of Ignatia: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• storify day 1 and day 2 and 3 
• Is there a business model for MOOCs? Report from #emoocs2014
• Pierre Gorissen (in Dutch): day 1, day 2, day 3
• Peter Sloep: European MOOCs Stakeholder Summit 2014 - EMOOCs 2014

New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) recently released  the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition. This eleventh 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:

Interest is to see the developments NMC Horizon has identified over the last couple of years:

The six trends featured in the report were selected by the project’s expert panel in a series of Delphi-based voting cycles, each followed by an additional round of desktop research and
discussions:

Fast Trends: Driving changes in higher education over the next one to two years

• Growing Ubiquity of Social Media
  For educational institutions, social media enables twoway dialogues between students, prospective students, educators, and the institution that are less formal than with other media. As social networks continue to flourish, educators are using them as professional communities of practice, as learning communities, and as a platform to share interesting stories about topics students are studying in class. Understanding how social media can be leveraged for social learning is a key skill for teachers, and teacher training programs are increasingly being expected to include this skill.
  
  
• Integration of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning
  Education paradigms are shifting to include more online learning, blended and hybrid learning, and collaborative models. Students already spend much of their free time on the Internet, learning and exchanging new information. Institutions that embrace face-to-face, online, and hybrid learning models have the potential to leverage the online skills learners have already developed independent of academia. Online learning environments can offer different affordances than physical campuses, including opportunities for increased collaboration while equipping students with stronger digital skills. Hybrid models, when designed and implemented successfully, enable students to travel to campus for some activities, while using the network for others, taking advantage of the best of both environments.

Mid-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education within three to five years

• Rise of Data-Driven Learning and Assessment
  In online environments especially, students and professors are generating a large amount of learning-related data that could inform decisions and the learning process, but work remains on structuring appropriate policies to protect student privacy.
  
  
• Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators
  A shift is taking place in the focus of pedagogical practice on university campuses all over the world as students across a wide variety of disciplines are learning by making and creating rather than from the simple consumption of content. Creativity, as illustrated by the growth of user-generated videos, maker communities, and crowdfunded projects in the past couple years, is increasingly the means for active, hands-on learning. University departments in areas that have not traditionally had lab or hands-on components are
  shifting to incorporate hands-on learning experiences as an integral part of the curriculum. Courses and degree plans across all disciplines at institutions are in the process of changing to reflect the importance of media creation, design, and entrepreneurship.

Long-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education in five or more years

• Agile Approaches to Change
  There is a growing consensus among many higher education thought leaders that institutional leadership and curricula could benefit from agile startup models. Educators are working to develop new approaches and programs based on these models that stimulate top-down change and can be implemented across a broad range of institutional settings.
  
  
• Evolution of Online Learning
  Over the past several years, there has been a shift in the perception of online learning to the point where it is seen as a viable alternative to some forms of face-to-face learning. The value that online learning offers is now well understood, with flexibility, ease of access, and the integration of sophisticated multimedia and technologies chief among the list of appeals. Recent developments in business models are upping the ante of innovation in these digital environments, which are now widely considered to be ripe for new ideas, services, and products. While growing steadily, this trend is still a number of years away from its maximum impact. Progress in learning analytics, adaptive learning, and a combination of cutting-edge asynchronous and synchronous tools will continue to advance the state of online learning and keep it compelling, though many of these are still the
  subjects of experiments and research by online learning providers and higher education institutions.

The guys from CETIS have written an interesting white paper on the next phase after MOOCs:

The key opportunity for institutions is to take the concepts developed by the MOOC experiment to date and use them to improve the quality of their face-to-face and online provision, and to open up access to higher education. Most importantly, the understanding gained should be used to inform diversification strategies including the development of new business models and pedagogic approaches that take full advantage of digital technologies.

According to the authors three key themes emerge from the MOOC experiment:

• Openness – new approaches to online learning, including models for scalable provision that may generate revenues, and promote open learning, which goes beyond institutional boundaries through the use of online communities. [Increasing impact & long term, likely for most institutions]
  
  
• Revenue models – different revenue models taking the established ideas from technology start-ups, such as applying the concepts of freemium and premium offers into online learning, providing institutions with new ways of thinking about marketing and income generation. [High impact & medium term, more likely for institutions looking for new revenue streams]
  
  
• Service Disaggregation – experimentation with business models that include unbundling and re-bundling of courses and delivery related services, such as offering paid for assessment and/or teaching and support, on top of free online course content. This may have a wider impact across institutions in the future through better deployment of existing resources to add value to customers where there is greatest benefit and to reduce costs through outsourcing (unbundling is already happening independently of MOOCs). [High impact & short term, likely for most institutions]

Institutions should consider exploring a set of opportunities that have been brought to the attention of mainstream education by MOOCs, and experiment with new approaches for developing technology-enabled changes in teaching and learning to improve opportunities for individual learners.

Download the white paper.