Hurdles

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!

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.

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Hurdles to overcome

Note: safety is a recurrent theme here

Hurdles for students

• fear of saying something stupid (maybe the student would prefer to remain anonymous or use a different user name)
• fear of the technical requirements
• co-creation (especially in large groups) comes at a considerable moderation cost
• students might still prefer to make their course notes by hand, preventing a lot of notes and feedback from reaching the platform
• the solution we offer should not create yet more fragmentation of the course material.
• the solution we offer should actually benefit the students, but do they really experience these benefits? (often, the best study methods are actually the ones you feel worse about as a student)
• social media still gets the most traffic, how will we be able to get the conversation on social media back to the course (is this even our objective or do we want to go towards a sort of integration)
• 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?)
• balance between incentivizing the students and undermining their intrinsic motivation
• balance between offering opportunities and allowing students to shape their own learning trajectory
• some students might prefer to remain passive during the lectures, so a more active teaching style might require a gradual build-up
• when the course is very diverse, students are less required to actively search for additional material
• a diversified course might scare students off, instead this diversified material should be rolled out in different phases
• having a lot of notes sticking to a course at the start of the semester is not a good idea: instead, either directly implement suggestions in the course or discard them when forking a new course for the next year.
• some students do all the work and the others profit (is that really a problem? is there really a learning benefit?)

• everything we offer is optional, there is no pressure
• there are a number of tutorials and online support to help you get started as well as nice gui's
• by forking the course you can make alterations without any consequences when making an error

Hurdles for teachers

• fear of the technical requirements
• fear of apparent incompetence (e.g. when slides/course are accessed outside the UGent or even by UGent colleagues; this might be more of a problem for beginning staff who are uncertain about their expertise or when you're required to teach a course outside of your main area of interest.)
• fear of plagiarism (e.g., slides/course are used by other person without receiving credit)
• fear of violation of intellectual property laws (e.g., when using material in your course without the necessary references)
• perceived loss of possible (monetary) gain (i.e., in case of making the slides public and someone uses your slides, someone is benefiting from you work for free. So they can actually further their career at the expense of you time investment without a clear benefit for you personally.)
• harder to engage and surprise the students when the material is already available in advance (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)
• fear of being judged (e.g., will the feedback that is publicly generated by the course affect my evaluation for a promotion? What about the reward structure?)
• even if their is useful material of other professors online, I just want to make my own course (so what's the point of sharing my slides when the chances are small they will actually be used?)
• teachers with little technological expertise might be overwhelmed by ambassadors that are highly skilled (as the pioneers that we are currently bringing together). Therefore, training a teacher with little technical skills might result in a much more convincing and effective ambassador towards the larger population of teachers.
• the solution we offer should not create yet more fragmentation of the course material.
• teachers don't believe in the relevance of co-creation by the students (do the students have any valuable input?)
• teachers don't like to be judged on their teaching (especially when it's not their main job)
• 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 (increased accountability)
• dealing with the input of the students is time-consuming
• fear of losing control and final responsibility
• how to incentivize professors?
• how to keep your audience engaged when the course material is already online? Actually, the time spent in the auditorium should offer something on top of the course notes. This means it required an additional effort by the professor to diversify the course material or to actively engage with the students.
• discussion on the online course should be followed by some feedback during the lecture (terugkoppelingsmomenten)
• the transition from Latex to WebSlides is logical (more dynamic platform), but is there an easy converter?
• are there any other ways to facilitate conversion from e.g. powerpoint to WebSlides (hard because of the graphical layout)
• actually there is no need for being scared of intellectual property right infringements. The WebSlides or Jupyter courses are as safe as any other course. the security is not built into the course, it is built into the key to access the course (the CAS 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), is there any territory we are not covering?
• using WebSlides and Annotations will change the structure of the course and the way of teaching. Are you ready for this?

Low implementation cost

• easy to make, there are a number of GUIs so just pick the one that works best for you
• a community of practice (CoP) provides the necessary support for pioneers and second wave users
• actually most of the tools already exist, we only need a network of inspiration
• by opting to use open source material, you can use demo's that are already available online (no need to create everything yourself)
• benefit of using GitHub: the professor and the assistants (the authors) remain the owner of the course and can approve or reject suggestions by the students (the contributors)
• GitHub works decentralized: the slides are yours, and you can place them on any platform that you want

By using open source software, we are able to make use of the tools that are being developed elsewhere.

Hurdles for the UGent

• intellectual property issues
• due to cuts in budgets, the existing networks of expertise between the UGent and its partners (e.g. Artevelde Hogeschool) have come to a stop. Now we're on our own again.

Other hurdles

• currently, we have two components that we like: the annotations on the one hand and the versatile courses on the other hand. However, as of yet there is no good implementation that connects the two.
• increased ICT possibilities lead to material fragmentation
• increased ICT possibilities still need to be used in a way that makes educational sense (e.g., delay feedback as much as little as possible, engage students actively (watching a video instead of reading a text is not necessarily an activity))
• keep balance between providing students with opportunities and allowing them to shape their own learning strategies (autonomy)