Gold Open-Access
The TU Delft Extension School for Continuing Education develops and delivers MOOCs, programs and other online courses for lifelong learners and professionals worldwide focused on Science, Engineering & Design. At the beginning of 2022, we started a project to examine whether creating an online course had any impact on TU Delft campus education. Through a survey, we collected feedback from 68 TU Delft lecturers involved in developing and offering online courses and programs for lifelong learners and professionals. The lecturers reported on the impact of developing an online course on a personal and curricular level. The results showed that the developed online materials, and the acquired skills and experiences from creating online courses, were beneficial for campus education, especially during the transition to remote emergency teaching in the COVID-19 lockdown periods. In this short paper, we will describe the responses in detail and map the benefits and challenges experienced by lecturers when implementing their online course materials and newly acquired educational skills on campus. Finally, we will explore future possibilities to extend the reported, already relevant, impact of MOOCs and of other online courses on campus education.
Die differenzierte und individuelle Förderung der Leseflüssigkeit in heterogenen Gruppen erfordert ein hohes Maß an diagnostischer Kompetenz. Diese kann nicht allein durch die Vermittlung von Wissen gefördert werden, sondern muss zusätzlich durch praxisnahe Übungen sukzessive ausgebildet werden. Um die Diagnosekompetenz von Masterstudierenden der Grundschulpädagogik (Deutsch) an der Universität zu Potsdam zu fördern, wurde im Rahmen des Projekts PSI-Potsdam ein Seminar entwickelt und durchgeführt, das nach der Idee des Blended Learning mit digitalen Übungen angereichert ist und eine Förderung der Diagnosekompetenz über einen längeren Zeitraum gewährleisten soll. In dem Beitrag werden nach einer theoretischen Einführung sowie einer Darlegung der Relevanz des Seminarkonzepts für Lehrkräfte der Primarstufe Deutsch die Entwicklung und Einbettung der Übungstools im Seminar dargestellt sowie deren praktischer Einsatz diskutiert.
Zukünftige Lehrkräfte auf den Umgang mit Heterogenität vorzubereiten, besonders im Primarschulbereich, ist ein Ziel der Lehrkräftebildung. Ein Ansatz dazu ist die Förderung diagnostischer Kompetenzen von Studierenden. E-Learning-Angebote bieten hierzu angesichts der Individualisierung von Lernprozessen sowie der Möglichkeiten einer Integration in bereits bestehende Seminare viele Vorteile. Im Rahmen der Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung wurde daher ein Online-Training entwickelt, das die mathematische Diagnosekompetenz von Studierenden stärken soll. Das Training ist ein E-Learning-Angebot, das im Selbststudium durchlaufen werden kann und aus Lehrvideos, interaktiven Schüler:innenvideos und interaktiven Übungen besteht. An der Universität Potsdam wurde das Training bisher in drei Seminaren des Lehramtsstudiums für die Primarstufe integriert und evaluiert. Aus der Evaluation mittels Fragebögen ging hervor, dass von Studierenden und Lehrenden die Integration positiv bewertet wird.
Many participants in Massive Open Online Courses are full-time employees seeking greater flexibility in their time commitment and the available learning paths. We recently addressed these requirements by splitting up our 6-week courses into three 2-week modules followed by a separate exam. Modularizing courses offers many advantages: Shorter modules are more sustainable and can be combined, reused, and incorporated into learning paths more easily. Time flexibility for learners is also improved as exams can now be offered multiple times per year, while the learning content is available independently. In this article, we answer the question of which impact this modularization has on key learning metrics, such as course completion rates, learning success, and no-show rates. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of longer breaks between modules on these metrics. According to our analysis, course modules facilitate more selective learning behaviors that encourage learners to focus on topics they are the most interested in. At the same time, participation in overarching exams across all modules seems to be less appealing compared to an integrated exam of a 6-week course. While breaks between the modules increase the distinctive appearance of individual modules, a break before the final exam further reduces initial interest in the exams. We further reveal that participation in self-paced courses as a preparation for the final exam is unlikely to attract new learners to the course offerings, even though learners' performance is comparable to instructor-paced courses. The results of our long-term study on course modularization provide a solid foundation for future research and enable educators to make informed decisions about the design of their courses.
In response to the impending spread of COVID-19, universities worldwide abruptly stopped face-to-face teaching and switched to technology-mediated teaching. As a result, the use of technology in the learning processes of students of different disciplines became essential and the only way to teach, communicate and collaborate for months. In this crisis context, we conducted a longitudinal study in four German universities, in which we collected a total of 875 responses from students of information systems and music and arts at four points in time during the spring–summer 2020 semester. Our study focused on (1) the students’ acceptance of technology-mediated learning, (2) any change in this acceptance during the semester and (3) the differences in acceptance between the two disciplines. We applied the Technology Acceptance Model and were able to validate it for the extreme situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We extended the model with three new variables (time flexibility, learning flexibility and social isolation) that influenced the construct of perceived usefulness. Furthermore, we detected differences between the disciplines and over time. In this paper, we present and discuss our study’s results and derive short- and long-term implications for science and practice.