E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Last monday I attended a public hearing of the committee on Culture & Education of the European Parlement. The subject of the hearing was "New technologies and open educational resources". I was nominated as expert by the MEP Marietje Schaake of the ALDE group. There were three experts selected to present their intervention on the subject.

• Are European education institutions ready to welcome OER and ICT-related innovation?
  Presentation by Mr Claudio DONDI, Member of the advisory group to the Commission on Opening up Education, MENON, European network for research and innovation (summary)
• The future of education is online
  Presentation by Mr Willem VAN VALKENBURG, Coordinator of TU Delft Open Education Team, TU Delft
• Opening Up Education – Noble goals, important demands, effective measures? A critical assessment of the initiative and options for increasing acceptance and effectiveness in secondary education
  Presentation by Mr Harald MELCHER, Managing director at educational publisher m2more GmbH, Berlin (summary)

Here is the presentation that I used:

The complete hearing is also recorded and available online.

An important change I noticed is that the discussion on online education is less about why we should do this and more about how Europe can help. That is an interesting and good discussion. The new Erasmus+ programme is also more focused on this. In Erasmus+ the European Commission is specifically looking for impact of a project proposal.

A small but import step for Delft University of Technology. Today we announced the appointments of a Dean of Open and Online Education and a  Director of Education for Open and Online Education:

The Executive Board of TU Delft has appointed Professor Rob Fastenau, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science as Dean of Open and Online Education. Dr Ernst ten Heuvelhof, Director of Education in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management is to take on the role of Director of Open and Online Education.

Together they wil lead an innovation programme to realize the strategy of TU Delft for the next phase of open and online education. Within two years, we will realize a Delft Extension School, based on the model of the Harvard Extension School, in which the open and online education is offered to students from around the world.

In this new extension school we will bundle all of our existing activities, such as OpenCourseWare, DelftX, Online Distance Education and Blended Bachelor programmes, and will expand this with new online and blended courses. I will be responsible for the production and delivery of all this courses. An interesting and exiting new challenge for me and our team.

Afgelopen woensdag zat minister Bussemaker van onderwijs bij De Wereld Draait Door om te praten over de brief die zij naar de Tweede Kamer heeft gestuurd (persbericht). In 13 minuten is dit besproken:

Full story »

2013 has been a busy year for me. Looking back at my blog it suprised me that I still managed to blog 101 posts (including this one) this year. That is one more than last year.  I had the idea that I didn't blog enough this year. The image above shows a Wordle of all the blog titles of my blogs. It is a good representation for the activities I worked on this year. Yes, it was all about MOOCs! ;-)

In the beginning of 2013 my university announced that we joined the EdX Consortium and I was assigned with the task to make some MOOCs. And we did: in September the first two DelftX moocs started and in March/April 2013 three more will start.

The MOOCs have been an accelerator for online education at Delft, which let to a new and ambitious plan for Open and Online Education (O2E). So also in 2014 I won't have time to procastinate or to be bored.

My personal highlight was my election as Board Member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. I think it is a great honour to serve on the Board of organisation that trully believes in Open Education and everyday shows the potential and results of this. We have more than 40,000 courses listed on our catalog!

The research and production behind the Online Course Design Guide is a collaboration between the MIT's Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (MIT-OEIT) and the New Media Consortium (NMC):

to support instructional designers, educators, and facilitators in the development and implementation of online courses. Each section of the guide contains critical information, recommendations, examples, checklists, and resources for further exploration to create and deliver effective online learning experiences.

Download the report (PDF) or go to the website.

Via: Brandon Muramatsu

Dit najaar is een groep van Nederlandse onderwijsbestuurders naar de VS geweest:

Tijdens de studiereis bezoekt de delegatie bestuurders uit het Nederlandse Hoger Onderwijs elf toonaangevende organisaties op het gebied van open education in Washington DC, Boston en New York.

Tijdens de reis is er elke dag een verslag gemaakt. Deze verslagen zijn nu gebundeld tot één document.

De conclusies van de studiereis zijn:

• Open en online onderwijs, in de vorm van MOOC’s of in andere varianten, is een onvermijdelijke ontwikkeling, waar, met name in de Verenigde Staten, met veel passie en veel middelen in wordt geïnvesteerd.
• Het open beschikbaar stellen van kennis is geen bedreiging, het biedt juist toegevoegde waarde en zorgt voor doorbraken. Redenen om te investeren in open en online onderwijs zijn reputatie en educatie:
• De kwaliteit van onderwijsmateriaal en de kwaliteit van docenten wordt zichtbaar;
• De instelling wordt zichtbaar als speler in de internationale online wereld;
• Dat kan talentvolle studenten en docenten aantrekken en nieuwe samenwerkingspartners in onderwijs, onderzoek en MKB en industrie opleveren;
• Doordat het onderwijsmateriaal in (internationale) dialoog kan worden (door)ontwikkeld kan de kwaliteit ervan verbeteren;
• Doordat er op basis van (big) data onderzoek kan worden gedaan naar de effectiviteit van verschillende onderwijsconcepten (learning analytics), kan de kwaliteit van het (campus)onderwijs verbeteren;
• Open en online onderwijs kan een belangrijke rol spelen in het kader van levenlang leren en internationalisering van het onderwijs.
• Nederland heeft een uitstekende uitgangspositie om in te zetten op open en online onderwijs:
• Het hoger onderwijs beschikt over een state of the art infrastructuur voor onderwijs en onderzoek;
• Het onderwijs in Nederland is al sterk internationaal georiënteerd en beschikt al over een breed Engelstalig onderwijsaanbod.
• Om deze uitgangspositie te benutten moeten instellingen serieus investeren in de ontwikkeling van online onderwijs.
• Het zou helpen als de overheid zich krachtig zou uitspreken voor open en online onderwijs, zorgt voor het wegnemen van barrières in wet en regelgeving, innovatie en onderzoek stimuleert en ruimte biedt voor experimenten.
• Open en online onderwijs biedt goede mogelijkheden voor kennisvalorisatie. Ook kan de zichtbaarheid van de kwaliteit van het Nederlands hoger onderwijs een belangrijke bijdrage leveren aan de positie van Nederland als kennisland. Aansluiten bij de topsectoren en samenwerking met het bedrijfsleven liggen daarbij voor de hand. Open en online onderwijs kan ook een programmatische rol spelen in ontwikkelingssamenwerking.
• De docent speelt een sleutelrol in deze ontwikkeling, en moet worden gefaciliteerd in:
• Professionalisering in succesvolle didactiek van online onderwijs;
• Samenwerking met (internationale) vakgenoten;
• Technische randvoorwaarden en voorzieningen.
• Didactiek van open en online onderwijs zou moeten worden opgenomen in de Basis- en Seniorkwalificaties Onderwijs en worden geïntegreerd in de lerarenopleidingen.
• Open en online onderwijs biedt mogelijkheden om effectief leren te ondersteunen met bijvoorbeeld:
• Onderwijs dat is opgedeeld in kleine segmenten met oefeningen;
• Vormgeven van mastery of learning, de student heeft de beschikking over voldoende oefenmateriaal en kan door naar een volgend niveau als hij de stof beheerst;
• Snelle feedback en peerfeedback;
• Gepersonaliseerde leerpaden;
• Learning communities
• De snelle ontwikkelingen vragen om actie, leren door te doen, waarbij belangrijke uitgangspunten zijn:
• Sluit aan bij de eigen onderwijsvisie en laat open en online onderwijs die versterken;
• Investeer in (gezamenlijke) analyse vanresultaten en succes.
• Samenwerking kan meerwaarde bieden bij het ontwikkelen en uitwisselen van kennis en het delen van praktijkervaringen zoals nu gebeurt binnen SURF, bij het aanpakken van vraagstukken over bijvoorbeeld het certificeren van open en online onderwijs en het erkennen van open en online onderwijs in het eigen curriculum, en bij het in samenwerkingsverbanden ontwikkelen van online onderwijs.
• Voor internationale kennisuitwisseling op open en online onderwijs biedt het OpenCourseware Consortium een uitstekend podium.
• Binnen ‘coalitions of the willing’ kunnen instellingen werken aan innovatieve manieren om online onderwijs vorm te geven.

The last month and half I have been traveling a lot and busy with our new plans. That means that I'm a little behind on blogging. This blog post is a summary of interesting articles in the last month or so (in random order):

• Design responses to MOOC completion rates
  Interesting article of the design of the mooc. Is the MOOC designed for retention or selection.
  
  
• Results of U Penn MOOC
  The research tracked several characteristics of the student population.
  
  
• Journal MOOCs Forum
  Online journal about MOOCs
  
  
• Open edX Roadmap now public
  The code for Open edX has been open source for six months now but we now also the roadmap is open.
  
  
• Completion data for MOOCs
  Interesting find: there is a significant negative correlation, ie the more people who enrol then the lower the percentage who complete.
  
  
• It's Not a MOOC, It's a Movement
  in the current era, the Internet has changed our world faster and more extensively than anything we’ve ever seen before. But the biggest drivers to change have come from outside rather than inside higher education. And not necessarily in a good way.
  
  
• Data Mining Exposes Embarrassing Problems for Massive Open Online Courses
  Not only does student participation decline dramatically throughout the new generation of Web-based courses, but the involvement of teachers in online discussions makes it worse.
  
  
• An edX SPOC as the Online Backbone of a Flipped College Course
  This is Part 1 in a series chronicling the process and findings from Brian White's blended learning experiment.
  
  
• A review of online learning in 2013
  Another year of the MOOC
  
  
• the post-MOOC-hype landscape: what’s REALLY next?
  Challenge the empty narratives that your administrators or your faculty have been sold. Find ways to talk about why what you’re doing matters. Change the narrative from unicorns back to what education is about: learning.
  
  
• The greatest MOOC conference in the history of MOOCs
  According to attendees it was the best conference they have attended.
  
  
• MOOC Platforms : a primer - biggies, newbies & freebooters
  As the MOOCosphere expanded, more and more platforms sprung into action.
  
  
• The (Off-Campus) Future of MIT
  MIT names EdX key component of their educational strategy

John Robertson (aka kavubob) posted an interesting presentation about the use of someone else's MOOC in your course. He identifies four different models:

• The guest lecture
• The reading
• The textbook
• The distributed flip

Below is his presentation:

Other interesting studies about using MOOCs in the classroom:

• Rebecca Griffiths - MOOCs in the classroom?
• Wrapping a MOOC: Student Perceptions of an Experiment in Blended Learning

William G. Bowen has written an interesting article about online learning in EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 48, no. 5 (September/October 2013). William G. Bowen is President Emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, President Emeritus of Princeton University, and Founding Chairman of Ithaka/JSTOR. He is also the author of the book Higher Education in the Digital Age:

To realize the potential and promise of online learning (and MOOCs), colleges and universities must be aware of the pitfalls while taking full advantage of the wonderful, if problematic, opportunities provided by ingenuity and technological prowess.

In his article he discusses 8 propositions:

1. We need to distinguish among target populations.
2. Different pedagogies are right for different disciplines.
3. A limited degree of "local" customization of online courses is important and should be facilitated.
4. It is critically important that we assemble more real evidence, from more rigorous research, concerning the learning outcomes associated with online offerings.
5. We must focus self-consciously, and relentlessly, on controlling educational costs.
6. System-wide thinking is required; many of the most challenging questions for our educational system cannot be addressed on a single-campus basis.
7. New thinking is needed on faculty roles and on optimal organizational and decision-making mechanisms.
8. Stratification worries deserve much more attention than they receive.

I share his opinion he makes in the final note of the article:

I am optimistic that the world at large will be a far better place because of online learning—and because of MOOCs. But for that to happen, we need to be able to take full advantage of the wonderful, if problematic, opportunities provided by ingenuity and technological prowess. And we must include in our calculations the needs of the less privileged. At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves where all of this is heading and what the real consequences will be—not just for the privileged but for society writ large.

Via: Wilfred Rubens

Alastair Creelman and Linda Renland-Forsman have written an interesting paper on completion rates in online courses:

Statistics are often used to reveal significant differences between online and campus-based education. The existence of online courses with low completion rates is often used to justify the inherent inferiority of online education compared to traditional classroom teaching. Our study revealed that this type of conclusion has little substance. We have performed three closely linked analyses of empirical data from Linnaeus University aimed at reaching a better understanding of completion rates. Differences in completion rates revealed themselves to be more substantial between faculties than between distribution forms. The key-factor lies in design. Courses with the highest completion rates had three things in common; active discussion forums, complementing media and collaborative activities. We believe that the time has come to move away from theoretical models of learning where web-based learning/distance learning/e-learning are seen as simply emphasizing the separation of teacher and students. Low completion rates should instead be addressed as a lack of insight and respect for the consequences of online pedagogical practice and its prerequisites.

According to the authors we should call in the HEROEs: Highly Empowered Resourceful Online Educators. Which means once and for all abandoning a consumerist approach to education applying a meaning-oriented approach.

Their conclusion is that the low completion rates of many online courses and in particular today’s mainstream MOOCs is not a credible gauge of course quality. We need to move the focus from a simplistic head count to developing strategies for increased interaction, collaboration and collective responsibility in online learning – HEROES could do the trick.

Reference:
Alastair Creelman, Linda Reneland-Forsman (2013). Completion Rates – A False Trail to Measuring Course Quality? Let’s Call in the HEROEs Instead. In European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning 2013/II.