Educational Innovation at the Open University of the Netherlands

Transcription

1 Instellingsbreed Programma Onderwijs IPO Open Universiteit Nederland Educational Innovation at the Open University of the Netherlands Kathleen Schlusmans Henry Hermans Steven Verjans Wil Giesbertz Howard Spoelstra Ellen Rusman Desirée Joosten ten Brinke Karel Lemmen Leo Wagemans Martine Coun Henk van den Brink Ruud Hoefakker

2 IPO reports The Open University of the Netherlands offers open distance education for adult learners. As the Open University wants to transform itself from a printed-based university with face-to-face tutorials to a web-based university, in 2007 the Global Educational Innovation Programme (Instellingsbreed Programma Onderwijs - IPO) was established. All the central projects on innovation and quality are coordinated within this programme. The aim of the programme is to help the Open University to keep up the high quality of its courses and to stimulate the transition into an e-learning university. The programme addresses the following issues: the VLE, tutoring and support, testing, quality assurance, multimedia and course development. The IPO reports are publications in which the deliverables of the projects are reported. The IPO reports can be ordered from: Open Universiteit Nederland Secretariaat IPO Postbus DL Heerlen Tel Ria.wijermans-overman@ou.nl Open Universiteit Nederland ISBN:

3 Educational Innovation at the Open University Preface In 2007 the Open University of the Netherlands decided to establish an overall educational innovation programme for the duration of three years. The aim of the programme is to focus the innovation activities of the Open University, to promote e- learning in all the faculties and to achieve cooperation between faculties and the different departments. Central projects in the programme are the implementation and change of the VLE, the introduction of the virtual classroom, the implementation of online testing, the digitalisation of educational materials and the implementation of several quality assurance instruments. This collection of papers presents the main results and findings of seven projects of this programme. Most of these papers were prepared for the 23rd ICDE World Conference on Open Learning and Distance Education Flexible Education for All : Open Global Innovative 7 10 June 2009 Maastricht, the Netherlands.

4 IPO Report Table of contents 1 Educational Innovation at the Open University of...5 the Netherlands Developing a sustainable, student centred VLE: the OUNL case The introduction of a virtual classroom instrument at the Open University of the Netherlands Improving the validity of assessments in Computer based assessment Supporting distance education candidates in Assessment of Prior Learning procedures SEIN System: fine-tuning of a web-based system for the evaluation of distance learning courses at the Open University of the Netherlands.36 7 Course development: From printed-based to web-based courses Practice in distance education: on the role of scenariobased interactive multimediaprogrammems for the web... 49

5 Educational Innovation at the Open University 1 Educational Innovation at the Open University of the Netherlands Kathleen Schlusmans 1.1 Summary The strategic plan of the Open University of the Netherlands states that the Open University wants to become a digital university where Internet plays a major part in all the educational processes. In order to achieve this transformation it was decided to create an overall educational innovation programme for the duration of three years. This programme goes across all existing faculties and departments and the programme manager reports directly to the University Board. The aim of the programme is to focus the innovation activities of the Open University, to promote e-learning in all the faculties and to achieve cooperation between faculties and the different departments. Central projects in the programme are the implementation and change of the VLE, the introduction of the virtual classroom, the implementation of online testing, the digitalisation of educational materials and the implementation of several quality assurance instruments. The paper goes into the scope, the organization and the content of the innovation programme and focuses on four key factors for success: commitment, communication, collaboration and staff development. 1.2 Introduction The Open University was established in 1984 as an institute for open higher distance education. The Internet revolution of the nineties was very important for distance teaching universities. Internet offered means of overcoming distance and provided means of flexibility which were unheard of before. At the Open University of the Netherlands several innovation projects were set up to integrate the internet into our educational system. However, ten years later, the results of all these innovations were rather disappointing. Although there had been a lot of innovative projects they were very diversified and the results were often limited to one or two courses and one or two faculties. There was no shared vision on educational innovation and there was very little collaboration between faculties. In 2006 the board of the Open University decided to make a major leap into the future and to change the whole institute from a print based university into a digital university. One of the strategies in doing so was the creation of a global educational innovation programme for the duration of three years. In the paper we will explain the scope, the organization and the content of the innovation programme and focus on four key factors for success: commitment, communication, collaboration and staff development. In the final paragraph we will discuss several issues we encountered in the innovation programme.

6 IPO Report 1.3 The scope of the programme The aim of the programme is stated as follows At the end of 2009 the Open University of the Netherlands offers high quality, flexible, open distance education which is to a large extent web-based and which uses to the full the opportunities the Internet offers. In doing so the Open University becomes a key player in e-learning. A group consisting of members of the faculties, the R&D-department and the services department developed a list of six priorities for the programme: a shared educational mission, the Virtual Leaning Environment, tutoring at a distance, testing and assessment, developing online courses and quality assurance. 1. A shared educational mission In order to make the transition from a print-based university to a web-based university it is essential to have a shared educational mission. The first priority of the programme is to redefine the educational mission of the Open University with regard to the central position of e-learning and to get the commitment of the whole staff and all the faculties for this mission. 2. The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) In 1997 the Open University developed its own VLE and in the Netherlands it was a frontrunner in using a VLE. However at the turn of the century commercial VLE s were introduced and there was a lot of discussion about having our own VLE. Faculties became dissatisfied and started using their own solutions. In 2005 it was decided to make the transition to Blackboard as the central VLE but by that time the use of the VLE had become so diversified that a central solution was not generally accepted. An important goal for the innovation programme is to implement Blackboard and to streamline all other faculty based systems which are used within the Open University. But there is also consensus that Blackboard was not the final answer to the VLE, so in addition to the implementation of Blackboard the programme is also required to start designing a VLE for the future. 3. Tutoring at a distance At the Open University where students study at their own pace only a limited number of students can or will go to the meetings in the study centres. In 2006 the student body advised the Open University to look into the use of virtual classroom software to provide more flexible tutoring and support at a distance. In 2006 one faculty experimented with the virtual classroom and these experiments were so successful that it was decided that the introduction of the virtual classroom in the whole university is a major task within the innovation programme. 4. Testing and Assessment The quality and flexibility of the exams is a fourth major topic. In the early nineties the Open University introduced a flexible assessment system, the so-called sys-exams, for nearly half of the courses. Students can register for these exams whenever they feel ready for it and at the appointed time in one of the study centres an individual exam is generated and printed out for the student. However it is felt that the closed questions which are used in most of these exams do not really match up with the academic level of the courses we offer. Moreover about one third of the exams are still organized three times a year and it turn out that the students feel that those exams hinder their study progress. The introduction of computer based testing (CBT) can solve the quality problems as CBT makes new advanced and flexible item types possible. CBT can also increase administration and scoring efficiency and reduce costs for many elements of the testing lifecycle and can so create more flexibility in the whole testing process. 6

7 Educational Innovation at the Open University Up till 2006 the Open University only accepted prior formal learning experience as shown by formal certificates and degrees for credit exchange. One of the aim of the innovation programme is to explore the ways in which informal prior learning can be assessed at the Open University and be made part of the credit exchange policy. 5. The development of multimedia online courses The printed courses of the Open University are of a high quality and have a structured design. The online courses however are very divers and there is no standard design for a web-based OU-course. There is also no standard way of developing these courses, the quality criteria are not explicit and very often online courses are no more than digitalized version of the printed courses. Developing strategies and tools for developing online courses is the fifth priority of the programme. This also included a focus on developing multimedia materials for the web. 6. Quality assurance The final priority of the programme is quality assurance. At the start of the Open University quality assurance was very high on the agenda but in 2006 the central quality systems needed attention and updating. One issue was making better use of the internet to hear the voice of our students. Another issue was preparing the staff for e-learning and organizing a central teaching qualification programme. These six priorities resulted in the following projects: Themes The mission The VLE Tutoring and support Testing and assessment Course development Quality control Projects The educational mission Implementation Blackboard The VLE of the future The central VLE of the Open University Educational services and student portal The virtual classroom Computer based testing Quality of testing Accreditation of prior learning Developing digital courses Multimedia Measuring study success in distance education Course evaluation Measuring Student satisfaction Information on quality Staff development 7

8 IPO Report 1.4 The organisation and funding of the programme The programme is positioned across faculties and the programme manager reports directly to the university board. The programme manager has been nominated by the deans of all the faculties and is appointed by the board. In the programme office a financial advisor and an office manager look after the administrative and financial side of the programme. University Board Programme Manager Office Steering Committe Student Group Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Project n S.G. S.G. S.G. S.G. Figure 1.1: The organisation of the innovation programme A steering committee of representatives of the deans of the faculties and the head of departments advises the programme manager and all major decisions about the programme are discussed in the steering group meetings. There is also an advisory student group who meets twice a year to advise the programme manager on the content of the programme and to discuss the major problems students at the Open University encounter and how the programme can help to solve those. The programme is broken down into several interdependent projects. Each project has got a project leader who reports to the programme manager. The project leaders and the people who work in the projects are all staff members of the faculties or the departments, most of them work only part time in the programme. Each project has got its own supervisory group (S.G.). The members of these groups are recruited from the faculties, the departments and the student body and they are the ambassadors of the project. They report on the problems faculties encounter and report back to their faculty or department about the results of the projects and they advise the project leader and the programme manager about all issues concerning the project. 8

9 Educational Innovation at the Open University A central fund of 3 x euro was put aside for the programme. Moreover it was agreed that a considerable number of staff members of the educational technology department and the ICT-department would participate in the programme without additional funding. Faculties en the services department received extra funding based on their actual input in the programme as an incentive to participate. All external expenses and the cost of the programme management were paid for by the central fund. 1.5 Key factors for success The key factors for success of the programme are: commitment, communication, collaboration and staff development. The innovation programme is organized in such a way as to ensure maximum commitment. Especially the steering committee and the supervisory groups are very important to involve faculties in the projects. By continually listening to the needs of the faculty and by taking those needs into account in the development of the projects, faculty members feel that the innovative solutions are actually relevant and helpful and not just something the management or the educational designers have thought up. A second important factor for success is communication. A lot of time and effort is spent in informing the organization about the programme and the projects. Regular seminars and demonstrations are organised. The annual day of teaching is introduced. This is an internal conference to which the whole staff is invited and in which all the projects present themselves, where people can have hands on experience with the latest technology and where the staff can discuss the major educational issues they encounter. Every issue of the student magazine and of the staff magazine contains a least one article about the programme. Every week one or more announcements about the programme is made on the Open University bulletin board. Despite these efforts, reaching the whole staff has been one of the hardest things of the programme. One of the aims of the programme is to have more collaboration and cooperation between the different faculties and the departments. In each project people from different faculties and departments work together and learn from one another. Moreover in the supervisory groups members of all the faculties and departments meet regularly to discuss the progress of the project and this had the added advantage that they also start finding similarities between the faculties which often result in collaborative activities between faculties even outside the programme. The timing of our programme coincided very luckily with a national initiative of all Dutch Universities to introduce a teaching qualification for lecturers. Since 2008 all university lecturers are obliged to get a teaching qualification in higher education. Each university is responsible for the training of its own staff. The design and organization of the university teaching qualification at the Open University is also one of the projects in the innovation programme. It was decided to position this qualification project in the centre of the programme with links to all the other projects. Each project in the programme is asked to deliver one or more training modules which can be used in the lecturers qualification programme. This enables us to use the teaching qualification activities to introduce the lecturers to the new e-learning approaches and the new quality assurance tools. Especially the new lecturers who participate in all the workshops and training modules are from the start aware of our innovation activities and are very willing to participate in trials and pilots.. 9

10 IPO Report 1.6 Discussion and conclusion The programme has been going now for two and a half year and although in general the programme is successful and the results of the programme already become visible in the educational system of the Open University, there are also issues which still remain to be solved. The first issue is to get the balance right as far as the extent of e-learning is concerned. The management of the Open University has decided to make the transition to a complete webbased university but the question remains if our students and our staff are ready for this transformation. Most of our students seem to be very positive about the possible added value of e-learning. They feel that e-learning can overcome the distance, connect them much more to the faculty and the tutors and make their study life in general much easier. But the students have high expectations. They want much more tutor activity and tutor presence on the web than they are getting at the moment. They want the same high quality in online courses as they are used to in the printed materials. And they want added value, they are not satisfied with online courses if the only thing they can do is to print them out. They want the technology to work flawless and efficiently. A lot of our lecturers have much more reservations about the e-learning revolution. There are three groups of them: the eager lecturers, the so-called early adopters go out on the web, find the latest tools and want to use them immediately with their students. The majority of the lecturers are willing to admit that e-learning might have its benefits and they are prepared to use the mainstream technology if it is user friendly, does not take up too much time and when there is enough support. There is also a third, luckily small, group of lecturers who do not believe in e-learning at all and this group is not at all reached by the innovation programme. The early adopters are the inspiration for the programme, they get things going in the faculties and they force us to rethink every process and tool we want to implement. But they also make it very difficult for the projects to implement systems on a large scale. As soon as an innovative practice becomes available in the whole university they have already moved forewords and they feel that the innovation programme always offers too little too late. So although it can be temping to focus the programme on the early adopters, the innovation programme should focus on the majority of the lecturers. Getting the majority of the lecturers to use new tools and to change their pedagogical approach is the main challenge of the programme and will also create the most visible long term effects. The second issue lies in the heart of the programme structure. The programme stops after three years but the need for the implementation of innovation does not. The programme is now nearing the end of its term and changes are already visible. There is more focus on educational innovation, there is more consensus on using e-learning and multi media. But when the programme stops there is no organizational unit to take over the concerns of the programme. There is no central unit at the Open University responsible for the overall innovation, for quality control, for staff development and for introducing new technologies. One of the challenges of the last period of the programme will be to set up the organization in such a way that the results of the programme do not get lost when the programme stops and to find a way of keeping the innovative effort going. 10

11 Educational Innovation at the Open University 2 Developing a sustainable, student centred VLE: the OUNL case Henry Hermans and Steven Verjans 2.1 Summary The Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) has adopted the concept of the personal learning and working environment (PLWE) as the future delivery platform of its educational services to students. This concept means that students should be able to shape their own personal virtual (learning) environment, based on individual tool and technology preferences. To support this concept the OUNL faces the challenge of setting up an architecture and investing in the development of a set of educational services that can be integrated not only in the institutional learning environment, but that can also be merged with personal environments. In this presentation we describe the first steps of a distance teaching university in its move towards this PLWE concept. This means reconsidering the role and position of the current, more traditional VLE, and developing new educational services that aim at getting students more committed and involved, inspired by the success of current web2.0 technology. 2.2 Introduction How does a distance teaching university deal with the technological dilemma of supporting its students across an increasingly wide range of Internet technologies whilst continuing to offer a reliable and secure institutional platform? In answer to this dilemma, the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) in 2008 adopted the concept of the PLWE, the personal learning and working environment (Verjans et al., 2007). This concept describes the ideal situation in which users access the information and services that the OUNL offers through any number of different technologies that support (open) standards. Where does this technological dilemma come from? On the one hand, there is a group of not-so-technicallysavvy students and staff for whom working with a traditional VLE (virtual learning environment) is quite a challenge. This group has grown used to the paper-based distance education supported by face-to-face coaching sessions, and is only gradually being coaxed into accepting web-based support and coaching. On the other hand, there is a group of knowledge workers who are using advanced web2.0-technology in everyday (working) life to fill their ever-growing need for up-to-date personalised information and knowledge. This group expects educational services to be delivered seamlessly to their personal (learning) environment. In this contribution, we describe the path that the OUNL is following in order to solve this dilemma. In the first section, we zoom in on the concept of the personal (web) environment, also referred to as PE, as opposed to the managed learning environment (MLE) that we describe in the second section. In the third section then, we describe a number of possible approaches towards an environment that combines the best of both worlds. The fourth section then goes on to describe the case of the Open University of the Netherlands and the overall approach that was chosen, a concept that we have labelled the personal learning and working environment. We conclude the paper by describing some experimental pilots in more detail. 11

12 IPO Report 2.3 Personal (web) environment as an instrument to create order in the knowledge society The modern knowledge worker is being confronted with a growing amount of knowledge and knowledge related services on the Internet. Museums, newspapers, universities, governments, all these institutions are in the process of making their information and archives available to the public on the web, and are providing user services, often originating from new business models. Much information that has so far been stored in dusty archives and was hard to access is now simply becoming available from home, work, or on travel. Next to organizations and institutions it has also become much easier for individuals to create and share information on the web and to broadcast themselves. Varying from full websites, wiki s and weblogs, over assets like pictures / slideshows, video s, bookmarks, or the recently popular micro blogs. Also a variety of personal information is being shared on social networks like Face book or the Dutch equivalent Hyves. In addition, other (new) tools or services are responsible for generating a new and evergrowing type of information based on existing online information. If you look at a social bookmarking site like delicious for example, you see that all kinds of user generated (meta)data is being transformed to new information like bookmark counts, tag counters, and representations like tag clouds. Social networking tools make connections available that were hidden in real life. Customer behaviour, stored in CRM applications, make it possible to personalise recommendations for new products like books or CD s. The web is making all this information available through a variety of channels. The challenge we are facing now is how to create order in this chaos and how to manage this knowledge overflow? A solution in this respect can be found in the current so-called mash-up tools, providing one with the opportunity to structure information and information services according to one s own preferences using key technologies like RSS-feeds and widgets. This type of tools is evolving more and more towards a personal desktop within the browser, providing knowledge workers with an environment to create an online, personal web of knowledge and services, that can be accessed independent of time, location and platform. We ll address these tools as personal environments (PE s). Typical for PE s is that the individual user is in control, and can shape his or her environment. Within the PE the user may distinguish between work, private and study related information and information services, or mix them up completely as this subdivision may not be a relevant organizing principle. The educational equivalent of the PE is what Graham Attwell (Attwell, 2006), Scott Wilson (Johnson et al., 2007; Wilson, 2005; Wilson, Liber, Griffiths, & Johnson, 2007) and others have termed the personal learning environment or PLE. However, as learning both formal and informal and working are becoming more and more intertwined, which is especially the case for lifelong learners, the narrowing to learning is becoming irrelevant, which is why we prefer to use the term personal environment or PE. The left hand side of Figure 2.1 below illustrates the concept of a personal environment. Good examples of these PE s are tools like Netvibes ( or igoogle ( Within these tools one can easily create structure using tabs, and add feeds and widgets/gadgets that are shown as kind of portlets within these tabs. The look and feel can be customized according to personal preferences. 12

13 Educational Innovation at the Open University Figure 2.1: PLE versus MLE (from Wenmoth, 2006) 2.4 Managed (learning) environments offered by educational institutions The opposite of PE s are so-called institutional environments. In relation to educational institutions, Derek Wenmoth (Wenmoth, 2006) refers to these environments as Managed Learning Environments (MLE s). The right-hand side of Figure 2.1 illustrates the concept of an MLE. These MLE s are built around applications usually referred to as virtual or online learning environments (VLE s or OLE s) like Moodle or Blackboard, usually supplemented with a collection of applications for specific services. Through these VLE s educational institutions provide students and staff with a wide range of services supporting the primary process of education: instruction, tests, fora, news, monitoring et cetera. At the present moment many institutions deploy integrated, monolithic VLE solutions, like Blackboard. Stereotypically, one can say that the institution is in control in an MLE and not the user. The educational institution has a supply-driven approach and decides which services are best for students and staff, where and how to deliver the services, and how much students are charged for usage. The functional design/setup/implementation of the environment often reflects the organizational structure of the institution. The institutional portal and MLE are separated environments, and are often poorly connected. Web2.0 services are hardly offered and typically restricted to the features that the VLE applications (such as Blackboard or Moodle) offer. RSS feeds are scarcely present, there s a small set of pre-defined user profile fields, and online sharing of information between users is difficult and restricted to institutionalized applications like portfolio s. Commercial VLE s are almost always password-protected, and restricted to registered students 13

14 IPO Report 2.5 Bridging the gap between the personal and the managed learning environment? But then of course there is the growing group of staff members and students who have already explored and adopted the benefits of new public domain tools, and who prefer including all their information and knowledge sources to be integrated. In this paragraph we describe a number of possible approaches for bridging the gap between the personal environment (PE) and the institutional MLE or managed learning environment. These approaches are indicated in Figure below. Approach 2 WWW PE MLE Approach 1 Approach 3 Figure 2.2: Stylised version of the relation between personal environment, managed learning environment and the World Wide Web (based on Wenmoth, 2006). The main assumption underlying figure 2.2 is that the institution knows about and recognises the importance of web-based applications and platforms (Web2.0) and of a personal environment. Raising the awareness of the growing potential of personal (learning) environments for the lifelong learner (and for the professional or academic staff member) is a major issue when an institution wants to move towards a more student-centred digital environment. 1. When this awareness is present in the institution, a first possible approach to bridging the gap between the personal and institutional environments is to open up institutional borders for Web2.0, and thus for personal environments. a. A first possible set of actions in this approach is to use Web2.0 for distributing public domain content and services. For instance, (a) public domain video materials can be published on YouTube, Vimeo, itunesu or TeacherTube, (b) public educational and research bookmarks can be shared on delicious, furl or diigo, (c) audio and video materials can be distributed as podcasts on itunesu, podcaster or podomatic, (d) presentations can be made available through Slideshare or Slideboom, (e) public news and blogs can be made available by providing RSS-functionality so they can be included in personal (learning) environments. 14

15 Educational Innovation at the Open University b. A second set of actions that can be taken as part of this approach is to establish an institutional presence in the relevant (or most popular) social networking sites. For instance, (a) set up a company profile within LinkedIn to assist the institution in its hiring processes, and to provide employees with a home, (b) set up an official presence in the most popular informal social networking sites, such as Hyves, Face book or Net log, in order to provide passers-by with correct information and somewhat balance the increasing number of informal student or staff groups or pages. c. A third set of actions in this approach is to encourage staff and faculty to incorporate links to external streams of information (e.g. relevant blogs, relevant people to follow on Twitter / Delicious) into their courses, or to encourage students to co-create a knowledge stream by allowing them to suggest additional materials, sources or relevant blogs to a particular course. 2. A second approach is to offer users not only public information and services, but also more personalised information through private RSS or other standards. For example, course announcements, contributions to closed discussion forums, or specific internal institutional information can be made available through private RSS-feeds. Another example consists of an alerting and registration service for specific events, tutorial sessions, lectures or conferences related to one s field of study. Such event data could be made available through a Google calendar widget or a private feed with ical or vcal data. The institution might also choose to collect thematic information streams (both personalised and public) into a number of pre-set clusters of feeds / knowledge streams. For instance, the department of finance and accounting can bring several relevant feeds related to public auditing together in a single cluster and offer it as a public Netvibes tab, an igoogle tab, or an OPML file. Such a cluster would then contain knowledge materials produced, selected or filtered by Open University staff, such as recorded lectures, textual or multimedia open educational resources, blog posts, shared bookmarks, but also event-related information about workshops or study sessions. This offering can then simply be included in a user s personal environment and tailored to their needs. 3. A third possible approach is to allow users to tailor their personal workspace within the managed learning environment, allowing students to add relevant personal feeds or knowledge sources to their personal space in the institution s virtual learning environment, even to include external widgets. This customisation can be situated at the individual level (a student adds personal feeds), but also at the group level (study groups, regional groups), the course level, the programme level, the faculty level or even campus wide. Students could for instance choose to share their calendar within their working group or their course colleagues to make it easier to arrange virtual study sessions. Another option could be to support students in using the managed learning environment as an e-portfolio platform, where they can bring together their learning products, process and achievements. The aim of this approach would be to make the institutional environment their central knowledge hub as far as their field of interest is concerned. The next paragraphs describes the case of the Open University of the Netherlands, and the steps it is taking towards establishing a personal learning and working environment. 15

16 IPO Report 2.6 Towards a personal learning and working environment at the OUNL At the end of 2007 the OUNL had an extended institution-wide strategic discussion concerning the future VLE-approach (Verjans et al., 2007) and it was decided to draw up a new roadmap for electronic servicing of students and staff for the next period of seven years. Key starting points in this new approach is that we should take into account that (1) people/students have different aims, needs and preferences and (2) people/students have different learning and working environments. The latter of these principles has been addressed through the emerging concept of the Personal Learning and Working Environment (PLWE). The PLWE is centred on the idea that students as adults (should) take responsibility for their own learning and their own learning environment. In other words, the student is in control and both wants to and is able to largely determine for himself/herself how he/she wants learning materials to be provided and with which degree of quality, which supervision and assessment services he/she wants to utilise at both programme and course level and which technological environment/environments and applications he/she wishes to use for organisation, communication, and information. The large majority of OUNL students also have a job, with the associated ICT-based working environment, and want to be able to integrate what the OUNL offers into that working environment. For the OUNL, the adoption of the PLWE concept presents a challenge that involves the study programmes, the OUNL organisation, logistics and technology. From the technology point of view, the institution needs to reorganise its ICT services and content in such a way that they may be provided as flexible, pluggable objects that can be included in various technological environments. This implies shifting from thinking in applications towards thinking in services. It also means rethinking the ICT architecture and moving towards a more open model. In fact, it involves operating on the basis of a properly thought-out design and not on the basis of ad hoc decisions and facilities. The aim is sustainability and the ability to keep pace with new developments, for example in educational theory or technology. It also means maximally sticking to open standards, as our content and educational services have to be interoperable to have them integrated or running outside the institutional environment. Content and presentation need to be separated as much as possible in order to allow for flexible delivery through different communication channels. The student that is in control can decide himself /herself whether to read a text online, either on a computer screen or a Smartphone, to download it as a PDF and read from an ereader or have it printed in the copy shop around the corner and read from the printed version. This implies completely new workflows and tooling for content production and management. The OUNL is tackling the process towards a PLWE on a number of organisational levels in parallel, following the institution-wide discussion. At the institutional level, a central decision board has recently been installed, the socalled Programme Board for Service Development. This board will keep track of ongoing ICT development projects in the different departments, projects and programmes and will prioritise the central support for these development projects. Workshops and other dissemination activities are being organised to raise awareness about the potential of Web2.0 and personal environments for the academic community (e.g. Hermans & Verjans, 2008). A list of student-centred services was drafted and discussed at different levels within the institution. A roadmap was agreed upon for a two-tier approach regarding the further development of the MLE platform: (a) upgrading / streamlining of the current MLE application, in parallel to (b) experimental piloting with new services. As for (a), the 16

17 Educational Innovation at the Open University current MLE will undergo streamlining in the sense that redundant applications will be faded out. Software upgrades of the central MLE applications will be benchmarked as to their compatibility with the PLWE principles. Those upgrades that support either of the approaches outlined above will be prioritised. For example, an RSS building block for the current MLE has been installed, and other Web2.0-related building blocks are being investigated. As for (b), the experimental pilots being undertaken will be discussed in more detail in the next paragraph of this paper. It is our contention that the move from an institutionally oriented MLE to a studentcentred PLWE is such an all-encompassing change that it requires parallel actions at a number of fronts. 2.7 The OUNL s first steps towards a PLWE In this section we will sketch the first experimental steps of the OUNL towards the new PLWE concept. One of the OUNL projects investigating new student centred services is called MyEducationalServices (MOD). The MOD project members coming from different departments within the OUNL work closely together in order to pilot new concepts and services and subsequently advise the internal decision making authority, the so-called Programme Board for Service Development. Before discussing the pilots that are being undertaken within MOD we want to briefly describe the current MLE, which is known within the institution as Studienet. The main application within Studienet is the Blackboard system, which serves as a student portal as well as course management system. Recently, Moodle has been added to Studienet as an alternative course delivery system, specifically for more interactive course tasks. Certified testing and examinations are to be handled by Question Mark Perception. Finally, Studienet also contains a variety of dedicated tools and utilities that are being used throughout the organization. Next to Studienet which is a closed environment the digital environment consists of the corporate website of the OUNL ( Studienet and the corporate website are separate web environments, only connected through a series of hyperlinks. Pilot 1: Towards a personal workspace with social networking services In the long run, Studienet will evolve towards an integral part of the corporate website and no longer exist as a separate environment. The corporate website will serve as the institutional portal with personal workspaces for registered users, giving access to all relevant information and information services with maximal personalisation. These personal workspaces will be designed from the perspective of the user. Following the Web2.0 paradigm, the user will be in control to organize his/her own OUNL working space, plug in and share personal data and widgets, or the other way around plug OUNL data and services in their own mash-up tool. As personal interaction, communication and collaboration are key for improving learning processes in face-to-face education as well as distance education, social networking services should be an important part of this workspace. In pilot 1, the OUNL is investigating the requirements for online social networking in an academic environment through pilots and surveys amongst students. The results will provide the institution with useful insights and the functional requirements for designing and implementing the personal workspace. Figure 2.3 shows a screenshot of the environment that was developed for this first pilot. 17

18 IPO Report Figure 2.3: Prototype of student personal workspace (myounl) Pilot 2: Google Apps Since 2008, the OUNL has its own Google Apps domain. Google Apps is a collection of web based applications ( , calendar, chat, collaborative document authoring, sitebuilding) that work closely together and that can be well integrated in igoogle, Google s personalized environment or dashboard. Up to the time of writing, only the mail application has been made available for students as it was not clear what the added value of the other applications might be. After all, the Google Apps are available for free within the public domain, so why offer the same services from the institutional domain? In Spring 2009 two pilots will be carried out to investigate the added value of Google Apps. One pilot will focus on collaboration, the other will focus on making institutional event data available in a more flexible way using Google calendar services. This pilot can be situated within the previously described approach 1 opening up the MLE to Web2.0 Pilot 3: Stars and comments At the start of 2009, several pilots were started that provide students with online rating and comment services throughout the course material. Rating, annotating en tagging services are becoming more and more common services on the Web, giving consumers the possibility to provide feedback about their experiences and appreciations. As such they provide valuable information for other consumers and on the other hand it may help OUNL staff to improve their services. Within current VLE s such as Blackboard, this type of functionality is hardly available. Pilot 4: Personalised delivery (e.g. for ereaders) In 2007 the OUNL made Dutch national headlines by being the first university in the Netherlands to offer parts of their course materials on electronic paper for a numbers of students of the Faculty of Management. In the long run, the OUNL as a distance education institution wants to shift from delivering course materials in paper form to web-based distribution where the student decides in which format he/she wants to receive the study materials. Printing-on-demand, e-book readers and computers that make reading of electronic documents comfortable, are key technologies that will help us to realise this vision. 18

19 Educational Innovation at the Open University In pilot 4, we are investigating the delivery for e-books of our own courses together with materials from publishers. The aim is to deliver a complete study programme electronically, be it interactive materials in our electronic learning environment or by delivering more static materials on e-book readers. 2.8 Conclusion This paper states that for modern knowledge workers the trend towards and the need for personal (web) environments (PE s) is growing and cannot be ignored. Web2.0 puts the user at the centre, and it is the user who decides how he or she wants to shape the process of knowledge sharing and creation and what services to use to support this. The challenge for educational institutions, especially distance teaching institutions that serve the market of lifelong learners, is to find a way to keep up with these demanding users and interesting new web2.0 applications. In many cases they are faced with monolithic VLE s, that can hardly compete with the speed of new developments. We have indicated three possible approaches that may be combined into an institutional strategy towards a more user centred virtual learning environment. These approaches are: (1) using the public domain for distribution of public content and services, (2) making personalized content and services available and pluggable, e.g. through private RSS feeds and (3) opening up the VLE and allowing students to add relevant information to their personal workspaces and to contribute knowledge to their learning communities. The Open University of the Netherlands recently adopted such a student centred approach and is preparing to move towards a situation where each individual student can shape his or her personal learning and working environment (PLWE). It is obvious that the implementation of such a strategy will affect business processes, architecture and technology choices and therefore requires a high-level orchestration of the change process. 2.9 References Attwell, G. (2006). Personal Learning Environments [Electronic Version]. the wales-wide web - Graham Attwell on learning, knowledge & technology. Retrieved from Hermans, H., & Verjans, S. (2008). Van www naar een persoonlijk kennisweb. Onderwijsinnovatie, 10(2), Johnson, M., Liber, O., Wilson, S., Beauvoir, P., Sharples, P., & Milligan, C. (2007). Mapping the Future: The personal learning environment reference model and emerging technology. In D. Whitelock & S. Wheeler (Eds.), The next generation. Research Proceedings of the 13th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2006). (pp ). Scotland, UK: Herriot-Watt University. Verjans, S., Hermans, H., Bertrand, M., Eshuis, J., Janssen, D., Mofers, F., et al. (2007). Principes voor een persoonlijke leer-en werkomgeving voor de Open Universiteit Nederland - Rapportage "Elo van de toekomst". Heerlen, NL: Open Universiteit Nederland. Wenmoth, D. (2006). More on MLEs and PLEs [Electronic Version]. Derek's Blog: musings on the use and impact of technology in education, and of the future of education in general. Retrieved from Wilson, S. (2005). Future VLE - The Visual version [Electronic Version]. Scott's Workblog. Retrieved from 19

20 IPO Report Wilson, S., Liber, O., Griffiths, D., & Johnson, M. (2007). Preparing for disruption: developing institutional capability for decentralized education technologies. Paper presented at the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2007, Vancouver, Canada. 20

21 Educational Innovation at the Open University 3 The introduction of a virtual classroom instrument at the Open University of the Netherlands Kathleen Schlusmans, Wil Giesbertz, Ellen Rusman and Howard Spoelstra 3.1 Introduction In 2006, the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) started running trials with a so called virtual classroom. A virtual classroom is a combined set of tools for conducting classroom-like sessions live over the Internet. Since 2006, more than 20 pilot projects have been carried out, involving more than 25 tutors and over 200 students. We intended to use the virtual classroom as a replacement for face-to-face (f2f) tutoring sessions, which are normally organised in our study centres located across the country. The questions we asked ourselves were: Is the virtual classroom a suitable alternative for f2f meetings and, if so, what is the best pedagogical approach to use and the best way to organise it s use? All pilots were organised in a project that was positioned directly under the OUNL central board, and in which most faculties participated. We investigated several virtual classroom instruments in order to come to a first selection of promising candidates. In the end, two instruments were closely investigated in our trails: first LearnLinc from Ilinc and later on Eluminate Live! Academic version from Elluminate. All pilots were evaluated extensively. Our findings indicate that the virtual classroom is a valuable addition to our educational offerings. In this paper we will describe what a virtual classroom is, why we choose to implement it and how we came to our selection of an instrument. We will also report on our findings from pilot projects and our recommendations on how to use a virtual classroom instrument in distance education settings. 3.2 What is a virtual classroom? A virtual classroom is an instrument for conducting live classroom-like sessions over the internet. In it, students and tutor(s) can communicate using voice, video, chat and whiteboard tools. They also have facilities like application sharing, polling, breakout sessions and quizzes. It allows the tutor and students to participate in real time lessons and discussions. Students can ask questions, draw on the whiteboard, and participate in breakout sessions. (Almost) everything that can be done in a real classroom, can be done in a virtual classroom. Moreover, the whole classroom session can be recorded and made available for review afterwards. In Figure 3.1 we present a screen shot of the virtual classroom instrument Elluminate Live!. Fout! Objecten kunnen niet worden gemaakt door veldcodes te bewerken. Figure 3.1: screenshot of an empty virtual classroom in Elluminate Live! (student view), indicating some interaction functions. 3.3 Why we considered using a virtual classroom? The main pedagogical model of the Open University of the Netherlands aims at supporting self-directed learning. OUNL students study independently, in their own time and at their own 21