E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Yesterday I wrote about the ambiguous times for online learning. I received a lot of positive feedback on it. During the day my former team of Teaching & Learning Services has been working on a quick guide for our TU Delft lecturers. The page offers suggestions for them on how to continue offering education in a remote setting including a list of all the tools.

Teaching & Learning Services

In 2018 this team was created as a merger of different support groups. It is a team of 30 staff members and many student assistants who support both campus as online education. That means that the team already has extensive knowledge about online education and the learning technology to support this. To give an idea about what we have:

• First-line support is manned by trained student assistants. Regular occupation is 4 per shift, but this can be scaled up.
• We have four Learning Technology Support Officers (1 on maternity leave) who are responsible for the support website, documentation, more advanced questions and digital exam creation in MapleTA. They make the connection with other experts of Functional Management, ICT and Learning Developers.
• We have two Instructional Designers who know everything about the platforms and the integrated tools we support. That is Brightspace for campus courses and (open)edX for our Extension School courses.
• We have 14 Learning Developers who are all pedagogical experts and experienced in designing and running blended and online courses.

And I shouldn't forget the two coordinators, who are doing a great job in organising and prioritising all the activities. Since 1st of March they also are acting managers of the team until there is a new me. They are definitely up to the task!

Creating this team, and integration support for both campus and online courses, seems to be a really good decision in the current situation. It makes me proud to see what they are doing in these challenging times and how they are helping our lecturers.

Extra support

We are aware that these are special times and that is why we prioritized the support of lecturers. They even opened up support this weekend:

Weekend Support: from campus to online teaching
As you may have noticed, the web page for teachers has been published yesterday: https://brightspace-support.tudelft.nl/remote-teaching-learning/.

This weekend, extra support for TU Delft lecturers is available. The helpdesk, learning developers, and functional admin are actively supporting teaching staff in moving campus education to online education. This includes email requests for online learning tools, technical queries, as well as didactical advice. All questions can be directed to brightspace@tudelft.nl.

What is really good here is that it is not just the first line support. It is both the technical and didactical second line support as well.

New to remote teaching

For many of our lecturers remote teaching is something completely new. We are working on additional content to help you through this process. The most important advice is that you have to accept that you can't do everything. No one is expecting you to directly replicate your course. You have to focus on what you teach and prioritise on the theoretical concepts. These are relatively easy to convert.
Also, keep the production simple, it is not about being perfect, it is about having something for the students. If you already have a powerpoint slidedeck, recording a voice talking over your powerpoint is simple and easy to do.

One of the challenging things to do online is assessment. Especially if you are coming from written exams. Focus on the alignment of the online assessment to the prioritised learning objectives. The team is working on more extensive information about assessment. We have another 4 weeks before the exam period starts. We can't do everything in a weekend.

Since last week my main job is being the Executive Director of the TU Delft Extension School for open and online education. This week I got a lot of remarks that these Coronavirus times are great opportunities for online education. I'm ambivalent about that. Creating high-quality online education takes time. Careful design and rigorous delivery are important for a good learning experience. Yesterday the Government decided that all Dutch universities should directly move all their education online and not offer any on-campus classes until the end of March.

Scale
Currently, the Extension School has about 150 courses and develops about 30 courses per year. We are in the third quarter of our academic year, this means we have to move at least 800 courses instantly online and April 20th the 4th quarter starts with another 500 courses. This scale means that our regular processes of creating and offering online courses will not work. We have to redesign our processes, expand our tools and support.

So the online education we offer in our Extension School is incomparable to the online education we are going to do in the next weeks. I prefer to call it remote teaching and learning, to clearly distinguish it from our regular online education.

Readiness of students
Our normal learners in our courses make the decision to do an online course. We inform them what to expect. Our campus students are used to classroom teaching, we should be aware that their readiness for online education might not be as high as we expect. It is important to address this in our courses.

Tools
I see a lot of teachers asking for new tools and edtech companies offering their platform for free. This might seem like a good idea, but please be aware of a couple of things:

• implementation of a new tool takes time. From checking GDPR-compliance to setting it up the right way.
• if every teacher starts to use their own tool, the student will get frustrated very quickly. Most of them are fulltime students, who are following multiple courses. If they have to figure out new tools for every course it takes a lot of effort.
• the university offers an extensive set of tools. These tools are integrated, documented and supported, that means if you encounter a problem there is someone to help you.

So for use your campus LMS and the tools that are available. Yes, this will limit you to what you can do, but it is good enough to offer remote teaching and learning.

Synchronous activities
Most of our education is based on synchronous activities in classrooms. This is something that has a lot of limitations online. My recommendation is to only do synchronous activities when absolutely necessary and your group is not to big. If your regular class is a traditional lecture for a large group, online video is probably not the best option. Powerpoint with voice, a discussion board for questions and online office hours might be a much better option in this situation.

Other educational activities
There are a lot of educational activities that are even harder to move online, such as lab work. Another big challenge is our exams. Most exams are still 3-hour written exams. We have the option for digital exams, even with remote proctoring, but most exams have to be redesigned to work as a digital exam and our infrastructure can't handle 26000 students.

Support
These are times that Teaching and Learning support staff can show their value. They are all doing their best within all the limitations to offer the best support for teachers and students. Make use of their expertise and involve them, you don't have figure everything out by yourself. And don't forget to be nice to them, send them hugs and chocolate.

Conclusion

Altogether, what we are currently offering online is remote teaching and learning and is not typical for online education we offer via the Extension School. It does offer an opportunity to continue to run the university as best as possible. Many things will fail, will be frustrating and will impact your life. Don't blame your teachers or university, they are really doing everything in their power to continue to offer your education.

The Digital Credential Consortium has published an interesting white paper on building the digital credential infrastructure for the future. The Digital Credentials Consortium was founded by leading universities with expertise in the design of verifiable digital credentials. Together, we are designing an infrastructure for digital credentials of academic achievement. Founding members are Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), Harvard University (USA), Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam (Germany), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), McMaster University (Canada), Tecnologico De Monterrey (Mexico), TU Munich (Germany), UC Berkeley (USA), UC Irvine (USA), University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), University of Toronto (Canada).
The Delft Extension School is involved in this project, and I'm one of the participants and I reviewed this white paper.

Full story »

This week the Executive Board has appointed me as the new Executive Director of the Delft Extension School per the 1st of January 2020. I’m delighted with this appointment and looking forward to lead the Extension School into a new phase.

Strengthening the foundation of the Extension School

Part of my new role is the transition of the Extension School into a new phase. Together with professor Arno Smets I’m leading a project team to prepare a business and implementation plan for the Extension School. After six years of exponential growth and tremendous success in Open & Online Education for learners worldwide, the foundation of the original setup of the Extension School needs enhancement. In 2021 the Extension School will become a permanent institute of TU Delft to educate the world by offering high-quality online education.

Transition

Per January I will combine the new role with my existing role as Manager Teaching & Learning Services until March 1st. From March 1st I will be fulltime focused on my new role as Executive Director.

There is a growing need for online learning. Blended learning and online courses are becoming a norm for both campus and professional education. The role and tasks of the teacher are different online from teaching in physical classes. It requires additional qualities and digital skills to stimulate a conducive learning experience for students.

That is why my team has developed two courses for our teachers and we now decided to open these courses for an external audience.

Designing an Online Course

After taking the course, you will be able to:

• Describe online learning and the course development process.
• Design an online course module, using three of the principles of the TUD Online Learning Experience model and the course development process.
• Build a learning sequence for an online course in Open edX.
• Reflect on your role in online learning.

The course starts January 28th 2020 and costs € 300. More information and registration can be found on the online-learning website.

Teaching an Online Course

After taking the course, you will be able to:

• Describe moderation techniques and best practices.
• Produce an engaging artifact for an online course.
• Provide feedback in an online environment.
• Provide a list of online student expectations.
• Create a strategy for student engagement with both peers and content.

The course starts March 11th 2020 and costs € 300. More information and registration can be found on the online-learning website.

Every ranking is debatable, but if you are ranked #1 worldwide it does feel good!

Yesterday the MoocLab introduced the new World University Rankings by MOOC Performance (WURMP). This ranking evaluates universities on 5 performance indicators that measure an institution's performance across the number of MOOCs provided, the provision of learning pathways, micro-credentials, degrees and the institution's average world ranking.

The WURMP 2020 includes over 200 universities across the world that offer courses on the three leading MOOC platforms - Coursera, edX and FutureLearn. The WURMP are the first ever world university rankings based on MOOC provision.

The top 10 is dominated by US universities, but my own university Delft University of Technology is leading the top 10.

Top 10 Universities ranked by MOOC performance

1. Delft University of Technology – Netherlands
2. University of Pennsylvania - USA
3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - USA
4. Coventry University - GBR
5. University of Michigan - USA
6. University of Washington - USA
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - USA
8. Deakin University - Australia
9. Harvard University - USA
10. University of California, Berkeley - USA

More information about the methodology and the complete ranking. You can find our MOOCs on online-learning.tudelft.nl.

In January 2020 we are organising the second Erasmus Exchange Week from January 28 to 31 in the TU Delft Teaching Lab:

The Delft Teaching Academy invites both academic and administrative staff members from Higher Education Institutions to our Teaching Lab, the home of our teachers; a place where we bring educational activities together under one roof, accelerate initiatives and strengthen collaborations with peers. At TU Delft, we approach education like we approach research: experiment, learn and share findings. 

Programme

In a four-day programme we’ll dive into a wide range of topics. From online and open education to teacher training and the best way to support our TU Delft teaching community. During our Erasmus+ Exchange Week, we aim to exchange ideas, evidence and expertise. We’ll share our vision on education and focus on the variety of available services and programmes to help teachers improve their education. We’ll give demonstrations of our spaces for experimentation, collaboration and exposure. And we are very much interested in your own institutes’ vision and practices!

Experiences of the first week

In 2019 we organised this week for the first time to streamline all the visit requests we receive. 12 people participated and all were enthousiast about what they learned in the week:

“The TU Delft Exchange Week offered me a unique chance to share best practices and processes with colleagues from TU Delft and around the world. It was truly inspiring!”

“The best thing about visiting at TU Delft was to gain insight into their explicit strategies and approaches for online and blended learning. Highly recommended”

For more information and registration, please check out this page.

Our university is facing growing number of students and are hiring more teachers. This also has a influence on the support staff, so I have been hiring quiet some new people and currently have two positions open:

Florence Martin, Kiran Budhrani, and Chuang Wang wrote an interesting paper on faculty perception of their readiness to teach online:

Faculty readiness to teach online is a state of faculty preparedness for online teaching. In this study, it is measured by faculty attitudes about the importance of online teaching competencies and faculty’s perceptions of their ability to confidently teach online. Validity and reliability of faculty responses to an online instrument and factors related to faculty perception are examined. Descriptive statistics and item-level means for the competencies are provided. For course design, course communication, and technical competencies, faculty rated the perception of importance higher than they rated their ability in these areas, whereas for time management their perception of their ability was higher than their attitude about its importance. MANOVA showed significant differences in gender, years of teaching online, and delivery method for faculty perceptions of importance of online teaching competencies. Significant differences were also noted in years of teaching online and delivery method with respect to ability to teach online.

Online Teaching Competencies

In this study, the examine four areas of online teaching competencies:

• Course Design. Course design is identified as a pedagogical competency, alongside course implementation, facilitation, and assessment.
• Course Communication. Faculty must be able to communicate through writing and/or audio to the students within the given learning modality. Feedback needs to be adequate, timely, and prompt.  Facilitating discussions is a key competency when teaching online.
  
• Time Management. Competent faculty have adequate time-management skills so that lifestyle commitments do not interfere with the ability to instruct the course. Online course design and planning is time-consuming and takes significantly longer for a first-timer, as all the course objectives, content, activities, and assessments have to be redesigned for an online format. The second time the online course is taught is less time-consuming compared to the first time
  
• Technical. Technical competencies are specific to the use of the technology, independent of pedagogy. They include technical knowledge (e.g., knowledge about how to use software, synchronous and asynchronous tools, operating systems, learning systems and tools, and Web browsers, and how to implement security updates) and proficiency in the use of current technology, the ability to troubleshoot technology issues, and the ability to assist learners effectively.

I fully recognise these competences to be necessary for succesful teaching online.

Framework

They define faculty readiness to teach online as a state of faculty preparation for online teaching. Within the context of this study, they focus on two aspects of readiness:

1. faculty attitude on the importance of online teaching
2. faculty perceptions of their ability to confidently teach online. 

Conclusion

For me this framework is a useful tool to help is select new online courses. We have already experienced that some course development and running of courses goes without problems and others have all different kind of issues. This framework can help to pinpoint the issues and help to get to a solution.

Reference

• MARTIN, Florence; BUDHRANI, Kiran; WANG, Chuang. Examining Faculty Perception of Their Readiness to Teach Online. Online Learning, [S.l.], v. 23, n. 3, sep. 2019. ISSN 2472-5730. Available at: https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/1555. Date accessed: 05 sep. 2019. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i3.1555.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an useful guide on online teaching. The teaching suggestions in this guide are not revolutionary. Once you read them, they’ll probably seem like common sense. But that’s just the point.

Professors often fail to make the connection between what we do in a physical classroom and what we do online. This guide aims to make that connection explicit — to help you think about what you do well in person so that you can do those things in your online classes, too. If you already employ some of these practices, the intent here is to help you think more comprehensively about what else you can do to be an excellent online teacher. With that goal in mind, let’s get to work.

10 Essential Principles and Practices

• Show Up to Class
  When you are regularly present and engaged in the online classroom, your students are more likely to be, too.
• Be Yourself
  Students need to know you in order to engage with you online. So look for ways to be yourself via technology, just as you do in person.
• Put Yourself in Their Shoes
  students should know exactly what you are teaching and what they are supposed to do as a result.
• Organize Course Content Intuitively
  Try to think like a student when you organize course materials.
• Add Visual Appeal
  When thinking about the visuals of an online class, look to your favorite websites. Why not apply this philosophy to an online class?
• Explain Your Expectations
  provide as much meaningful support as you can — without going overboard — so that students don’t have to guess what you want them to do.
• Scaffold Learning Activities
  Look for ways to break down complex tasks so that students make timely progress and receive feedback on their work while there is still time to adjust their approach if needed.
• Provide Examples
  Online learners benefit from multiple explanations of difficult concepts and multiple examples of the kind of work you want to see.
• Make Class an Inviting, Pleasant Place to Be
  When you teach in person, you do a lot of things to help students feel welcome and comfortable in the classroom. Apply that same principle to your online classes.
• Commit to Continuous Improvement
  A hallmark of good teaching is the desire to keep getting better at it. Even small efforts can have a big impact.

Common Misperceptions

Unfortunately there are many common misperceptions. In the guide they list four of them:

• Online classes are like slow cookers: Set and forget.
• Online students are lazy/disengaged/(insert negative adjective here).
• Online classes don’t work.
• Teaching online is not as enjoyable as teaching in person.

These misperceptions are still alive in the academic world. I still encounter them quiet often.

Conclusion

This guide is an excellent read to lear more about how to be an excellent online teacher. It isn't rocket science, just common sense!