Posts tagged blended learning

What have they done with the MOOCs?! The impact of MOOCs on Campus Education

Posted on 19/10/2016 by

Article published in the Conference Proceedings of The EADTU Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference 19-21 October 2016 in Rome.

Abstract

In 2013 Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) started to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) onthe EdX platform. One of the main principles in the MOOC development process was to publish alleducational resources under an open license (Creative Commons License) (Ouwehand, 2015). This alignedwith TU Delft’s Open Access Policy. Another important starting point in the MOOC development process was the aim to improve campus education by integrating MOOC content in those courses.
The impact of MOOCs concerns not only the world outside the university, but more importantly also withinthe university. Especially for a traditional brick-and-mortar research-based university, like TU Delft, this is abig gain: education has become more important. In the past three years it has become clear that developing a MOOC has led lecturers to re-think their approach towards teaching and to integrate MOOC materials in campus education, which has impact on the way they teach on campus.
MOOCs are used on campus in different ways, from a small addition to an existing course to a full integration into a completely redesigned campus course. Moreover, some teachers became conscious of the importance of educational resources under CC License and started to use material from other universities. One of the faculties created a course which uses MOOC materials to help the students to prepare for a master program.
This paper describes the way in which MOOCs have been used in campus education and the impact this has had on teaching and learning.
Keywords: Open Educational Resources, Improving, Campus Courses, MOOC, blended learning

Reference

Cabral, Pedro; Van Valkenburg, Willem; Dopper, Sofia (2016). What have they done with the MOOCs?! The impact of MOOCs on Campus  Education in Ubach, George & Konings, Lizzie (2016). Conference Proceedings The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference 2016. Published by EADTU. ISBN:978-90-79730-25-4 [Page 652-660]

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Push or Pull Students into Blended Education: a Case Study at Delft University of Technology

Posted on 04/10/2016 by

Paper is published in the International Journal of Engineering Education (ISSN 0949-149X) Volume 32 Number 5(A).

Abstract

Blended education, or ‘‘flipping the classroom’’ is rapidly becoming a mainstream form of teaching within universities. Within Engineering Education, it is popular as it allows more time in-class to focus on hands on activities such as demonstrations and solving complex problems. This paper discusses the effort conducted to re-structure, according to the blended learning principles, the ‘‘Propulsion and Power’’ course of the Aerospace Engineering Bachelor degree programme at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The redesigned course was supported by a dedicated online & blended education unit within the university, and is characterized by a very peculiar structure due to the different approach chosen by the two involved lecturers. The first lecturer decided to ‘‘pull’’ the students, by proposing a number of additional videos available in the World Wide Web as a support and complement to the material taught in class. Conversely, the second lecturer opted for a ‘‘push’’ approach, self-recording theory videos to be watched by the students at home and devoting the in-class hours to exercises and applications of the theory. This format resulted in a clear improvement of the average exam grades and pass rates. The student feedback showed enthusiasm about the new blended course, with only a very small minority still preferring the previous, more traditional approach. Although there seems to be a slight preference of students towards the ‘‘push’’ strategy, the ‘‘pull’’ approach has also been widely appreciated.
However, the objective to re-attract students to the contact hours in class was only partially achieved, since just a slight improvement in the number of attending students was observed. This paper clearly shows that the efforts to implement a blended teaching strategy has great benefits for both students and staff alike.

Keywords

blended learning; online education; student engagement; electronic assessment; aerospace engineering

Reference

Cervone, A., Melkert, J.A., Mebus, L.F.M., Saunders-Smits, G.N. (2016). Push or Pull Students into Blended Education. A Case Study at Delft University of Technology. In International Journal of Engineering Education. Volume 32 Number 5A. ISSN 0949-149X (page 1911-1921)

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