Posts in category Grassroots Seminar 2008

“The world is facing challenges that our university of technology alone cannot meet.” With these words, Rector Magnificus Karel Luyben announced the TU Delft Open Science programme at the Dies Natalis 2016. Now, in 2017, the year that the Open Education Consortium has declared ‘The Year of Open’, we are taking another step forward. The aim is to raise awareness among scientists, lecturers, administrators, and students about the importance of open science.

In 2016, the focus on open science – that is, making scientific knowledge accessible online to all levels of society free of charge – led to the formulation of the open access policy and the creation of a data framework policy (in other words, policy for research data management). Events like the Open Education Week, the Open Access Week, and the launch of the open science course, helped the ideas behind open science to become more firmly established and integrated.

This year, there will be another full open science programme that you too can take part in. Examples include the Open Education Week in March, the launch of the open science course in June, the ten-year anniversary of OpenCourseWare, and the Open Access Week in October.

So keep your eyes and ears open and regularly check the website for all the great things that will be happening as part of The Year of Open.

A global perspective

The Year of Open is a global focus on open processes, systems, and tools, created through collaborative approaches, that enhance our education, businesses, governments, and organisations, organised by the Open Education Consortium. At its core, open is a mindset about the way we should meet collective needs and address challenges.

Communities around the world are bringing open practices to many different fields, such as open source software, open government, open data, and of course open education. Open represents freedom, transparency, equity and participation. When something is openly created and released, the intent is for others to use it, contribute to its development and make it better for everyone, whether that’s adding more features or information, or finding errors and fixing them (source). Learn more about the global Year of Open

During the Open Education Week (March 7 – 11), we will organise several workshops and an Open Education Seminar at Delft University of Technology, where you will learn more about the basics of Open Education, how to connect and/or integrate Open Education in formal education and how you could use open education to increase the learning experience for your campus students.

I can imagine that you do not have time to visit all the events. So, to help you make a better choice in what events to visit, here is a short overview:

Learn about the basics of Open Education

Would you like to know more about what Open Education is and what sets it apart from online education? Then we’d recommend to register for:

• Action Lab: getting started with Open Education – Monday, March 7th, 14:00 – 16:00h
• Open Cinema – Wednesday, March 9th, 10:00 – 11:00 / 12:00 – 13:00 or 15:00 – 16:00h

Learn more about connecting and integrating Open Education in formal education

Would you like to learn how you could use open education to increase the quality of your course, how to enhance the learning experience of your students or what plans the university has in this area, we’d recommend to register for:

• Action Lab: Create your own course design – Tuesday, March 8th, 14:00 – 16:00h
• Open Education Seminar & Debate – Thursday, March 10th, 14:00 – 17:00h

Learn more about options to make your own recordings

• Visit the New Media Center – Monday, March 7th or Tuesday March 8th, 10:30 – 12:00h

We hope to see you there!

This week we the Dutch Special Interest Group Open Education published a new Trend Report on Open & Online Education. It was launched during the annual SURF Education Days conference (Netherlands). This year I (co)wrote 2 articles and participated in the editorial board.

In ‘Opportunities to embed open & online education in campus education‘ Judith van Hooijdonk (Zuyd University of Applied Science) and me describe which trend we see in Dutch Higher education concerning reuse of OE(R), and more importantly we describe a number of barriers teachers (seem to) experience preventing them from reusing OER in formal education.

During a master class centred around the trend report (during the Education days), we started the discussion how we could overcome these barriers to stimulate the reuse of OE(R) in formal education, and at TU Delft we will continue to work on this challenge.

Also, with Robert Schuwer (Fontys University of Applied Science) and Nicolai van der Woerdt (Radbout University Medical Center) I participated in an article on ‘Connecting different forms of openness: seeking a stronger value proposition‘. In this article we explore different forms of openness, such as open research and open source software. We believe that openness only has a shot if we implement openness in different ways towards an open ecosystem where one strengthens the other.

It was great working on the trend report again and hopefully it provides useful insights to you and others.

In Open & Online Education we see a constant struggle between ideological perspectives on increasing access and opening up education by lowering boundaries on the one hand and the urge for a sustainable business model on the other. In that sense, I’ve been involved in this discussion for our MOOCs recently and am a firm believer that (passive, singular) content (without added value) cannot be monetised (in most cases) – you must have noticed the nuance ;).

Obviously, the article in Wired got my attention with this title: “Why Free Is Not the Future of Digital Content in Education”. As you might have guessed, I do not agree (and after reading the article I still don’t). But it is good to learn from other points of view.

The article argues that the price asked for content will not go down to zero when digitised, since it will still generate added value (but in other areas than the content itself). I think terms like ‘content’, ‘free’ and ‘added value’ are key here and need more nuance.

Fred Mulder and Ben Janssen (2013, pp. 36-42) developed the 5 Components Open Education model, where content, learning services and teaching effort apposed to learner demands and employability/capabilities development are considered different elements in (open) education. The level of openness on each element provides an open fingerprint, where the levels of openness in different elements can vary.

Another element which plays a part in me disagreeing with the article in Wired is the added value which influences pricing. In my opinion, content as is, has very limited added value, unless it is incredibly good, or unique, etc. I too use Spotify to shuffle through songs, but I also still buy CD’s. Simply because the physical shape, artwork, collection of songs in a certain order, etc have added value to me.

I think the comparison between the music industry and education is in this sense not so very far off. The added value in education does not so much lie in the content, but in the experience, which is the result of a combination of mostly learning services, teaching effort and learner demands. The added value lies in other elements than content – and that’s what is read in the Wired article as well: it’s the experience in the gaming industry which is interesting, not so much the game itself.

So yes, after reading the article on Wired, I still believe content can be offered for free, since the added value is somewhere else. Which might mean that elements in that experience could be monetised. But then we enter a new discussion on open sustainable business models.

This struggle will be part of my presentation at the Open Education Global Conference in April. See you there?

Last week we organised a number of activities to celebrate Open Education during the global Open Education Week. We organised these activities to increase awareness on Open Education (and inherently also the Open & Online Education program) among mainly our own teaching staff. The activities proved to be a great success in reaching this goal:

Over 130 people registered, resulting in over 200 participants in total for all activities. We’ve seen a lot of new people who got inspired about Open Education on the one hand, but on the other also walked away with very useful insights about course design, support services around video recording and discussion points in Open & Online Education. Obviously the contributions of colleagues of other universities (Leiden University, The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Fontys University of Applied Sciences) have been very useful, supplementing the activities we already undertake at Delft University of technology.

Unfortunately in the Netherlands, I haven’t seen a lot of activities being organised. For the most part, most universities are mostly focussed at online education then open education. Then again, activities which have been organised, like the lunch lectures supported by SURF, haven been very interesting (worth checking out, but some are in Dutch). The low amount of activities and attention given to them provides the Dutch Special Interest Group Open Education with a nice challenge towards next year.

At the same time, internationally, again a lot of activities worldwide have been supported by the Open Education Consortium. Obviously it is great to see so many activities again! But after… has it been 4 years since the first Open Education Week?… and so many presentations shared… I wonder what next year will bring… What would be the next step…

I’m looking forward to 2016!

Vandaag heb ik een presentatie gegeven over de mogelijkheden tot hergebruik van OER/OCW in een formele onderwijssetting. De slides en de opname van de presentatie staan inmiddels al online.

Het was opnieuw leuk om bij de Onderwijsdagen aanwezig te zijn. Dit jaar leken De Onderwijsdagen erg in het teken te staan van Open Education. Dat is niet vreemd als je ziet welke ontwikkelingen daarin gaande zijn. Je kunt een heel aantal presentaties terugkijken op de website van De Onderwijsdagen. Ook de Keynotes vond ik erg interessant! Voor mij een geslaagde dag dus. Mooi om te zien wat er momenteel speelt in het Nederlands Hoger Onderwijs.

En hopelijk zien we een aantal deelnemers over een maand terug op de SIG Open Education Netwerkdag op 12 december 2013!

Two weeks ago the OpenCourseWare Consortium organised their annual OCWC Conference, this time in Bali, Indonesia. During the conference we had a chance to explore the global dimensions of the open education movement, recent trends and future directions. During the conference I was fortunate enough to receive two Awards for OpenCourseWare Excelence for the TU Delft, on behalf of the teachers behind these courses:

• Award for Outstanding text based Course: Delft Design Guide (Ir. Annemiek van Boeien and Jaap Daalhuizen, Faculty of Indstrial Design) and
• Award for Outstanding Multimedia Course: Introduction to Aerospace Engineering I (Prof. dr. ir. Jacco Hoekstra, faculty of Aerospace Engineering)

My Impression of the conference

My personal impression of the conference is that the Open Education movement has reached a certain level of maturity. I didn’t really see very impressive new developments running in surprising directions.

Obviously there was a lot of attention for MOOCs. I heard a lot of old discussions held all over again; discussions which we had a few years ago about OpenCourseWare which I thought we had tackled already.

A question worth asking however (and asked a lot during the conference) is how MOOCs and OpenCourseWare can exist together. This asks for a strong vision. But TU Delft actually really has a strong vision and a powerful Open Education portfolio, in which OpenCourseWare, Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, Online Distance Education and Campus Education reinforce each other in multiple ways. Is this going to change education? Probably. Should education become more open? Definitely! Moocs as well if you ask me. But how, that’s a different question.

What I didn’t hear during the conference, was how we can re-use existing Open Educational Materials so that our campus education can benefit from it. A lot of presentations still aimed ad producing and sharing materials with others. My presentation did address this question.

The OpenCourseWare movement has reached a point where we need to think about where we should be going. The OpenCourseWare Consortium will adress this question I hope, under their new President Larry Cooperman and new board members among which Willem van Valkenburg.

More re-use of other’s materials, more actual exchange of course materials and more using Open Educational Materials as tools to adress existing demands, problems and goals sounds to me like a good direction, not forgetting or ignoring developments like MOOCs or Online Distance Education. Why not do it both? We’re working hard to reach those goals with our TU Delft Open Education Team.