Hurdles to overcome

Here we list the concerns that have been raised by our network and propose mitigations. Overcoming these hurdles is essential, so we welcome any comments you might have! We can use this as inspiration for the next coaching session and Q&A too.

Hurdles for students

Overload

• Co-creation (especially in large groups) comes at a considerable moderation cost.

Yes, when provided with a structure as Google Docs, co-creation gets messy when many people are involved. On the other hand, using a well structured platform as GitHub reduces these issues. GitHub is developed to allow for collaboration in a structured and safe way (the authors have to validate any changes make by the contributors and any changes can always be reversed so no information gets lost).

• Having an overload of annotations sticking to a course at the start of the semester can be overwhelming.

Indeed, although we want to remedy the forum swipes that are currently standard practice we don’t want students to be confronted with an overload of annotations from previous years. Instead, we would advise the author of the course to either integrate suggested changes directly into the course or to discard them when forking the course for the next academic year. Alternatively, the studentenvereniging or any other collective of students could publish their version of the course, including the best remarks, additions and solved questions. Because of the GitHub system, this student version can be merged with the next course provided by the professor to create an up-to-date hybrid version of the course for the coming academic year.

• It should be clear when the course is complete. If the course is changing throughout the semester, how will I know I'm not missing out on anything?

When using GitHub, the author of the course (e.g. professor or assistant) could choose to fork the official course once at the start of the year and a second time at the end of the lectures. In that way, any changes made throughout the semester can be integrated in the exam material while it remains clear what is part of the course and what is not.

• A diversified course with extra material might scare students off.

The benefit of having various formats such as text, figures, video, code etc. is that you can approach the same content in various ways, which enhances your retention of the material. Ideally you would e.g. read the text on day one, look at the video on day two, and try the code on day three. By spreading out the diverse material across time, you should go through the steepest learning curve. So, students could be guided through the material in a learning trajectory suggested by the professor to optimize their learning.

• Some students might prefer to remain passive during the lectures.

Indeed, students are rather used to passively consuming knowledge and active participation might come as a shock and scare students off. (Ruben knows what I’m talking about). The solution is to gradually build up a more active teaching style and teachers might have to be guided in doing this.

Technical skills

• Fear of the technical requirements, especially for students from the alfa and gamma faculties.

Using GitHub might indeed require some programming skills. However, because we are using open source software, there are a number of great GitHub guides that are available online. Also, students equally have to find their way on other platforms so any platform will come at an initial learning cost. Lastly, by forking a course on GitHub you create your own private version of the course, so you can go ahead and try anything and make mistakes without any consequences.

Social pressure

• Social media still gets the most traffic, how will we be able to get the conversation on social media back to the course?

The first question is: is this really our objective? Facebook and other social media can still be used if the students prefer this. In that case, our URLs can at least make it easier to refer to specific parts of the courses and thus make communication about the course easier. However, we off course trust that the platform we offer has major benefits. The structure of the course functions as the backbone on which questions and suggestions can be attached, instantly organizing the interaction among students in an efficient way. Students can easily incorporate notes, additions and corrections from other students in their own course.

• Fear of saying something stupid on a public forum.

On our platform, students can opt to stay anonymous, even when the course is hidden behind a CAS login system. Also, even when not anonymous, you can remove or correct any comments you made. This prevents the forums of becoming a wall of shame or overly cluttered.

Balance between support and autonomy

• When the course is very diverse, students are less required to actively search for additional material and this could reduce their retention of the material.

This is partly true. Yes, when a lot of information is provided students will be less required to develop the essential skills of looking up information. On the other hand, the first goals of open webslides is to embed interactive material directly into the course instead of having it spread out across multiple formats and documents. So our approach merely frees up time spent on switching between existing documents, which is no reason for concern. The second goal is allowing students to add relevant material (such as external sources) to the course, which actively encourages students to go out and find additional material. Lastly, students can link to relevant parts of other courses, enhancing the integration of knowledge across courses which is hard to achieve otherwise.

• Some students do all the work and the others profit.

This is actually an illusion. the students who are doing most of the work will also have the steepest learning curve, so their benefits are evident. Students who choose to feed off of input from others will have a reduced learning benefit. Also, this is a typical situation encountered when collaborating in a large team and dealing with these issues is part of the 21st century skills students should adopt.

• How to achieve a balance between offering opportunities and allowing students to shape their own learning trajectory?

Actually, the only thing open webslides and GitHub provide is the basic course content and a good structure for adjusting the material. Apart from that, students are free to shape their own trajectory. However, professors should be challenged to think about how they want to structure the course and whether or not they want to reinforce active participation.

Hurdles for teachers

Time pressure

• Are there ways to facilitate conversion from e.g. powerpoint or latex to webslides?

Yes there are, see our existing software and tools page for examples. However, note that it is very hard for any program to digest and reproduce the graphical layout of powerpoint in another format. So while you might be able to recuperate your text, you will have to fine-tune the layout. In addition, it would be a pity if you only use open webslides like powerpoint slides without harnessing their full potential. With latex, this should be less of a problem.

• Dealing with the input of the students is time-consuming.

With the existing software platforms used it is indeed time-consuming. For example you receive an email from a student stating "op page xxx paragraph xxx I don't understand xxx" and you have to search the book and start looking up the page... Or even worse, students don't detail where their question is located in the course. With a GitHub system it becomes much easier to click trough the suggested changes and either accept them or reply to the commit explaining why you don't accept the suggestion.

Technical skills

• Fear of technical requirements.

On our page on how to promote our proposed tools we detail how we want to support interested professors and assistants by organizing practical sessions and by creating a local support network within the faculty. Also, there are a number of highly intuitive GUIs to make open webslides just like powerpoint slides (but better of course). See our page on existing software and tools page for examples. Also, by choosing to work with open-source software, you can rely on demos and tutorials that are available on the internet without having to make everything yourself.

• Teachers with little technological expertise might be overwhelmed by ambassadors that are highly skilled (such as the pioneers that we are currently bringing together).

Indeed, we also address this issue on our promotion page. In short, training a teacher with little technical skills might result in a much more convincing and effective ambassador towards the larger population of teachers.

Changing teaching style

• It might be harder to engage and surprise the students when the material is already available in advance.

This is true. Basically, when you put the material online before the course, your lecture should contain new material to keep the students engaged or should focus more on group discussion. Teachers might have to be made aware that using new technology also requires a paradigm shift during the lectures.

• Discussion on the online course should be followed by some feedback during the lecture (terugkoppelingsmomenten).

This is indeed part of the paradigm shift during the lectures described above.

Welcoming input

• Fear of losing control and final responsibility.

With GitHub this is no problem at all. The professor (and assistants) are the authors of the course and can accept or reject any suggestions by the contributors. Also, GitHub works decentralized: the slides are yours, and you can place them on any platform that you want.

• Teachers don't like being judged on their teaching (especially when it's not their main job and when the feedback is make publicly).

Unfortunately evaluations are now used as a tool for promotion and not as a tool to improve the courses. Professors are also often annoyed by less positive student feedback, especially because the feedback comes at the end of the year (no remediation possible) and is usually rather vague. With co-creation through GitHub, students can see how the professor takes their feedback into account and small frustrations are easily remedied. This could lead to better evaluations at the end of the year.

• Fear of perceived incompetence, e.g. when slides/course are accessed outside the UGent or even by UGent colleagues. This might be more of a problem for young staff who are uncertain about their expertise or when you're required to teach a course outside of your main area of interest.

We agree that professors will become more vulnerable for critical reviews of the course material. However, our professors are used to going through gruesome peer review procedures where anonymous reviewers bash your cherished new results. Why don't we embrace the same openness to external input when teaching? If professors have survived years of critical reviews on cutting edge material with high personal and financial stakes, than surely they can handle helpful suggestions when little is at stake.

• Increased accountability: when a GitHub system is tracking the changes made to a course, it doesn't look good when a course is not being updated frequently enough.

Indeed, but the alternative is no updates at all, at least you can show you are open to suggestions.

Disinterest

• Teachers don't believe in the relevance of co-creation by the students (do the students have any valuable input?)

On our page on how to promote our proposed tools we detail how we want to connect to less intrinsically motivated teachers. In the information sessions professors can exchange ideas about the usefulness of co-creation with our pioneers who have tested the system.

• There are many different kinds of slides and slides are used in various ways (e.g., from a set of pictures to illustrate a story to a text-heavy summary of the course). Not all courses will lend themselves to open webslides. is there any territory we are not covering?

There certainly is. Our goal is not to reach every single professor. If a tool is not useful or when a professor cannot be convinced of the added benefits, it would be unwise to force anyone to make the transition to open webslides or any other tools we propose.

Making courses public

• Fear of violating intellectual property laws (e.g., when using material in your course without the necessary references).

It might be a good idea to provide teachers with a brief description of what they can and cannot do in order to avoid IP law infringements. We are currently exploring this issue with some experts.

• Fear of plagiarism and perceived loss of possible (monetary) gain. For example, when slides/courses are used by another person without giving you credit. Other people can actually further their career at the expense of you time investment without a clear benefit for you personally.

Note that making your material public is optional, although we think it could have many benefits. This is a legitimate concern that equally applies for any course material you place on Minerva (or more generally behind the CAS login system). Anyone who can get a login can download material and put it online on other sites. Actually there is no need for being especially scared of intellectual property right infringements when using open webslides or Jupyter notebooks compared to e.g. powerpoint. They are as safe as any other platform: the security is not built into the course material, it is built into the key to access the UGent paltform (the CAS system). In addition, by putting your slides/course online through open webslides you can more easily claim your material because it can easily be traced back to your e.g. GitHub account that includes your entire history of making and editing the course. Also, when people are stealing your material because it is that good, you can brag about it on Twitter (or call your lawyer when the terms and conditions (algemene voorwaarden) have been violated).

Hurdles for the UGent

ICT hurdles

• Increased ICT possibilities lead to material fragmentation. Will this be just another app that causes yet more fragmentation and that is difficult to maintain or will soon be replaced by yet another tool?

This is a very legitimate concern and we are confident that we are not making the mistake of making just another app. The GitHub platform we want to use is a widely adopted platform that is highly flexible. By opting to use HTML as the basis for our courses, we allow any future tools freely available on the internet to be compatible with our course. Students might even start using tools we currently cannot foresee, thus spontaneously improving our format. Also, a worldwide community of users helps building the platform so the UGent is not responsible for keeping it up to date.

• Currently, we have two components that we like: the annotations on the one hand and the versatile courses on the other hand (open webslides and Jupyter notebooks). However, as of yet there is no good implementation that connects the two. We also lack a good tool for taking digital notes during the lecture.

Any inspiration is welcome at our existing software and tools page. There is already a GitHub project that focuses on annotations called Annotator. This might be an interesting project to develop in order to get good annotations on open webslides. Maybe we can use the COCOON funds to customize this tool?

• Due to cuts in budgets, the existing networks of expertise composed of the UGent and its partners (e.g. Artevelde Hogeschool, HoGent and Howest) have come to a stop. Now we're on our own again when it comes down to educational innovation.

We are already in close communication with the blended learning team at Artevelde and plan on reaching out to the other partners as well.

Educational hurdles

• Increased ICT possibilities still need to be used in a way that makes educational sense.

For example, delay feedback as little as possible, engage students actively through dialogue and interaction (watching a video instead of reading a text is not necessarily an activity). The new ICT tools allow for some interesting educational tweaks that can boost learning, but professors need to be aware of them. This information could be disseminated in the expertise and training network we want to develop.

• Keep educational research in mind when creating teaching platforms.

We are a knowledge institute with expertise in education. Why not mine the activity of students on an online course to see how we can improve their learning? Let's use the valuable data that we already have or could be collecting (given a good ethical framework).

• Will open webslides and open Jupyter notebook courses lead to external input and development?

It is a remarkable finding that teachers rather make their own course instead of using a course freely offered by one of their colleagues. Is there anything we can learn from past experiences?

Intellectual property issues

We are currently gathering UGent expertise on IP law to assess any possible issues and figure out how to solve them.

Incentives

Note that everything we offer is optional, there is no pressure.

• Is it necessary to incentivize students and professors in some way.

On the one hand, we hope that the tools we propose naturally bring benefits to the students and professors. When intrinsic motivation is present it is not advisable to give an additional incentive as this undermines the intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, when professors and students put in additional effort we should encourage them. Maybe providing them with the necessary support and feeding their natural curiosity is enough? For example, at the mastat the professors organize a cheese and wine evening at the end of the year in order to get some student feedback for next year. This is a very good example of how both parties can be rewarded for their efforts in a noncompetitive way.

• The best learning strategies are the ones that make you feel worst.

Learning is painful and therefore students usually prefer learning strategies that are sub-optimal (they mainly give you the illusion of mastery). Distributed training and rewarding your progress are handy tools for tackling this natural tendency. Can we incorporate this in our courses in some way? Can we make our students experience their progress?