For the maturity of Open Education it is important that we get more solid research evidence about the open education and its value for policy maker, instructors, and students. In my previous blog I already mentioned the Open Educuation Group, another group of researchers that is doing some great work is the OER Hub of the Open University. At the OEGlobal conference I attended a session of the this group about the Open Research Agenda.
This activity is focused on forming a better understanding of research needs in open education. To do this, they published a survey (please submit!) and did sessions at #OEGlobal and #OER16 to collect information about research priorities. The results will be shared in the form of a report.
The researchers of OER Hub will not do all the research questions that will be mentioned in the report. Any researcher can work on the items in the agenda. The more the better I would say!
On the last day of the OEGlobal Conference Martijn Ouwehand and I gave a workshop on Open Course Design. This workshop is designed for teachers to help them create a course design in which they use OER.
Normally the target audience are teachers that are OER novice but are interested in help with their course design. So the workshop also introduces them in Open Education. Below are the slides we used during the workshop. This workshop will be part of the offerings of our training programme for instructors.
An often heard comment is that OpenTextBooks can't be as good as commercial textbooks. At the OE Global Conference John Hilton III presented the result of synthesis of Sixteen OER Studies. John is working for the Open Education Group. The Open Education Group is an interdisciplinary research group that conducts original, rigorous empirical research on the impact of OER adoption on a range of educational outcomes and designs and shares methodological and conceptual frameworks for studying the impact of OER adoption.
The collective results of the 16 studies discussed in this article provide timely information given the vast amount of money spent on traditional textbooks. Because students and faculty members generally find that OER are comparable in quality to traditional learning resources, and that the use of OER does not appear to negatively influence student learning, one must question the value of traditional textbooks.
So if OpenTextBooks don't have a negative impact on the learning outcomes, the argument to use them becomes much stronger. OpenTextBooks saves students a lot of money and that is positive in times that education becomes more and more expensive for students.
On Wednesday 13th of April, I attended a #OEGlobal session in which MIT and OpenUniversity presented their results of many years of Open Education. The general feeling I had over these two presentation was that Open University has a very clear strategy and MIT is just bopping around. I know that this is not true for MIT OpenCourseWare, but it certainly is the impression I got about MITx.
15 years vs 3 years
In 15 years MIT OpenCourseWare has accomplished a lot. They reached 203M people around the world. There production proces and IP handling is very professional and made sure that they have published over 3000 courses. The contrast with MITx can’t be any bigger. They have produced 83 unique MOOCs, but I didn’t get the impression that there is a standardised proces and the process definitely is different from MIT OCW. I really don’t understand why MITx hasn’t used more of the expertise of their OCW team. It seems that they are reinventing the wheel while their colleagues next door, already know the answer.
In their presentation Joseph Pickett and Dana Doyle stated that OCW and MITx are very separate from the start:
Different buildings
No clear communication as to who is doing what
Both groups extremely busy producing course sites and online courses
Since 2015 the teams have been working more closely together, they state "MITx is still a young organization seeking to find an optimum path in a changing environment".
Ten years of open practice: a reflection on the impact of OpenLearn
The presentation of Patrina Law was so different from MIT. The strategy and activities of OpenLearn are very organised. Their strategy in engaging learners seems very logical:
I especially liked the slide with the guiding principles for all their courses:
Learners most value quizzes with feedback
Use of activities and video also highly rated
Select the most engaging content within a module
Make a key topic accessible to new learners
Ensure the course works as a stand-alone piece of learning
Learners
value recognition for their achievement
(statement of participation)
Their project of Badged Open Courses is a very good example of their activities:
The Badged Open Courses project returned the investment in 4 months via extra enrolments (26% clickthrough rate):
2500+ badges issued
The BOCs are generating around 12,000 new visitors a month to OpenLearn
They drive a very high proportion of learners to click-through to make an enquiry to the OU (26.2% Feb-Nov 2015)
Completion rates of BOCs are higher than our MOOCs
350 formal module registrations have been made (mostly entry level)
2,500 prospectus requests
>300 qualification sign-ups (mostly new students)
Satisfaction rates very high (~98%)
57% say that they will be sharing their achievements with an employer
Altogether it showed me that if you have a clear strategy and align all your projects towards this strategy a vialable business model is open education projects.
On the first day I presented about the impact of 30 DelftX MOOCs. In general I can say that the impact of our MOOCs is much higher than we anticipated when we started in 2013. In my presentation I discuss 6 impacts:
Educating the world
Increasing TU Delft’s international Reputation
Improving campus education
New relations between education and research
Collaboration with industry
The whole TU Delft organization
Currently we are writing the evaluation report, so later I will publish more about these impact. For now, you can take a look at my slides:
Last week it was Open Education Week. Many people world wide participated in local and online events during the week. We hope it inspired you for Open Education. Next month is the Open Education Global Conference were you learn more about Open Education and join the global movement in Open Education.
The Open Education Global Conference is the annual opportunity for researchers, practitioners, policy makers and educators to deeply explore open education and its impact on global education.
Conference participants learn from thought leaders in open education and have the opportunity to share ideas, practices and discuss issues important to the future of education worldwide. Sessions cover new developments in open education, research results, innovative technology, policy development and implementation, and practical solutions to challenges facing education around the world. The Open Education Global Conference 2016 will take place in Kraków, Poland from the 12th to 14th of April 2016. The theme of the Open Education Global Conference 2016 is Convergence Through Collaboration.
TU Delft's Vice President Education and former President of the consortium Anka Mulder will be one of the keynote speakers. Martijn Ouwehand and me we also attend the conference and we will participate in a couple of sessions. I hope to see you there!
It was a busy week with all the activities during the fifth Open Education Week. Every year the Open Education Week is a great way to share our thoughts about Open Education and inspire others to start with opening up their education. Here an overview of the activities I participated in.
Getting Started with Open Education
In Monday I started with an Action Lab on Getting Started with Open Education. We had a group of 20 people among many teachers who were new to Open Education. Below are the slides of that sessions
Workshop Open Education
On Wednesday Martijn Ouwehand and I were asked to give a workshop about Open Education at the European Students' Convention. This event was organised by ISO and LSVb, in cooperation with ESU. I already blogged about this earlier this week.
Open Education Seminar & Debate
On Thursday we organised a seminar. It started with a keynote of Anka Mulder, which included a few minutes about Open Science by Wilma van Wezenbeek and ended with a panel discussion with some of the partners of our Credit for MOOCs alliance. Below is the recording of that session:
After the keynote there were 7 presentations in two parallel rounds. These sessions were not recorded, but the slides are available on our website. The closing of the day was a debate, which I moderated.
Open Sketching
In the week before and during the Open Education Week we asked people to sketch or write what Open Education means to them. Many have submitted a card and Mark van Huystee made an awesome drawing of it. You see a small version as header image of the blog. For a full version go the our open sketching blog. you can also see the making process of it.
Conclusion
Looking back at this week give me a feeling of satisfaction and proud. Satisfaction because we organised a lot of events and everything worked out as planned and proud in the leadership my university is showing in open education. I hope that we have inspired the participants of all the events to take steps in opening up their education. If you need help or more inspiration, don't hasitate to contact me or one of my colleagues. We are always willing to share!
Gisteren heeft SURFnet een verkenning gepubliceerd over regelgeving en aandachtspunten bij opschaling van open en online onderwijs. Deze verkenning is geschreven door mijn collega Marinke Sussenbach en Janina van Hees van SURFnet. Ik ben een van de vele mensen die input hebben gegeven voor deze verkenning.
De verkenning is bedoeld als handvat voor universiteiten en hogescholen die zich (willen) richten op de inzet van open en online onderwijs. Het doel is drieledig:
de belangrijkste randvoorwaarden en regelgeving identificeren en toelichten;
voorbeelden presenteren uit de praktijk van een onderwijsinstelling om te laten zien wat er binnen de huidige kaders mogelijk is;
een vergezicht bieden naar de opschaling van open en online onderwijs: in hoeverre moeten randvoorwaarden en wettelijke kaders worden aangepast?
Er zijn totaal vijf thema's waar deze drie aspecten worden toegelicht. De thema's:
begeleiding van studenten;
implicaties van tijd- en plaatsonafhankelijk onderwijs;
online toetsen;
erkenning van online onderwijs in formeel onderwijs;
delen van leermaterialen.
Natuurlijk gebeurd open en online onderwijs al jaren, maar er is nu wel de ontwikkeling om dit op grotere schaal te gaan toepassen. Volgens de auteurs zijn er vier argumenten voor het aanbieden en faciliteren van open en online onderwijs:
hogere onderwijskwaliteit
effectievere besteding van contacttijd
flexibilisering onderwijs en onderwijs op maat
rijkere en internationalere leeromgeving
Belangrijke vraag hierbij is of de huidige wet en regelgeving deze ontwikkeling in de weg staat.
Hieronder enkele interessante observaties uit het rapport:
de definitie van contacturen wordt nog vrij veel beperkt tot fysiek bij elkaar zijn, terwijl online begeleiding net zo waardevol kan zijn voor een student.Virtueel contact wordt nog vooral als aanvulling op het fysieke contactmoment gezien. Ten onrechte volgens mij.
de huidige wetgeving laat zich nog erg beperken door fysieke grenzen. Door online onderwijs vervagen deze en de huidige regelgeving heeft hier verduideling nodig en misschien ook wel aanpassing.
Op basis van de wetgeving is het geen probleem om een vak te vervangen door een MOOC. Wel is dat nodig als een instelling student verplicht stelt om het certificate te halen. Vrijwel alle mooc providers bieden alleen nog maar een betaald certificaat aan. Volgens de wet kunnen deze kosten niet doorberekend worden aan student en dus moet er een alternatief georganiseerd worden (aparte assessment, vouchers oid).
Online onderwijs biedt studenten mogelijkheden om een individueel leerpad op te stellen. De huidige werkwijze via de examencommissie is niet opschaalbaar. Er worden door verschillende instellingen naar alternatieven gekeken. De TU Delft kijkt naar een Credits for MOOCs alliantie.
Al met al een uitstekende verkenning over de complexe wet en regelgeving in het onderwijs. Zeker goed om te lezen.
In this workshop we give them an overview about Open Education and focus on why Open Education is important for students and how they can contribute in the adoption of open education. Below are the slides we used during the workshop:
Assignment
At the end of the workshop we gave the students a homework assignment:
What would be your next step in Open Education?
and we asked them to share their response as comment on this blog item. We are looking forward to their responses and their creative ideas to move Open Education forward in their countries.
Results
I have published the photos of the flipovers that the students created during the two workshops on Flickr.
Today I was asked to do an Action Lab on Getting started with Open Education in one of the new rooms of the Science Center (photo on the right). This workshop was aiming at lecturers that are new to open education. Below are the slides I used, you are more than welcome to reuse them as I have reused many slides from others in the Open Education Community.
Today is the first day of the