Aim for a critical international perspective
The online courses of TU Delft have an outstanding international aspect, though this international aspect is not being reflected in the on-campus courses. International aspects are important, because a broad international debate is paramount for urban planning education. Increasing the range of urban planning practices fosters students to think creatively and develop a critical perspective.
Therefore, this project aims to connect online and on-campus courses. This means that the TU Delft Urbanism master students are connected to students from online courses. The integration will start with the development of a platform connecting first year students from the master course ‘Methodology for Urbanism’ with participants of the ‘Rethink the City’ MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The idea is that the case studies and the discussions from the online MOOC course will broaden the debate in the on-campus course. In turn, this will increase diversity and bring a critical international perspective to the classroom.
Initially, the integration of online and on-campus students will be done in one discipline. However, the project has the potential to be expanded to other master disciplines inside and outside the faculty. The Comenius Teaching Fellows grant covers the first phase of development and implementation.
Development and run of the two courses
The first phase of the project was dedicated to the development of interaction tools between the online and the on-campus students and the alignment between the online course ‘Rethink the City’ and the on-campus course ‘Methodology for Urbanism’. The Bridging DOCS platform host the tools that make interaction possible. These tools are: the forum discussion in the MOOC, Sketchdrive, WebEX and an online game. The tools were used in different sessions of the Methodology for Urbanism course.
The online and on-campus courses ran in parallel, because this offered the opportunity to generate simultaneous activities with the two groups. The run of both courses was followed by a two months evaluation of the performance and of the feedback received online and from the on-campus students. After the evaluation phase of the first run, a seminar was organized to share the results of the first experience and to try to attract interested parties for a second run.
Corona and budget were challenging to the project
The project team adapted the project due to the corona crisis and the new regulations imposed. The aim to connect online and on-campus students was challenged because form March 2020 onwards all the students became online students. The main challenge was to transform the educational game into a digital one that could be played exclusively online. This was done, but it took more effort and the result is a bit different than expected. The game is available as an open source.
Also, the costs of the game development turned out to be higher than expected. This requested some adaptations to simplify the game and to increase the number of hours dedicated from the side of the project team to game development while reducing the outsourced programming.
First indications of more diversity in courses
Both courses were evaluated by students and also lectures gave initial feedback. The project tested four forms of interaction: feedback on each other’s work, forum discussions, development of visuals and the educational game. The project leader does not have access to the results of student evaluations yet. The initial feedback from the lecturers was that the exercises added an element of diversity to both courses.
Replicate in other courses and possibly abroad
The Extension School of TU Delft closely follows the project and supports to further replicate the strategy in other courses. The Bridging DOCS project established a new way of connecting online and on-campus students throughout interactive exercises. This was the first time such strategy was implemented at TU Delft. The approach proved to be successful because it offers flexibility to connect different courses on specific moments without having to align completely different courses that run in different domains (online and on-campus).
Additionally, the presentation that the project team held on an international conference raised a lot of interest from universities abroad. The team is aware of some that asked for more information to also implement the educational game that is developed during this project.
Three most relevant research publications for this project
- Kurucay, M., & Inan, F. A. (2017). Examining the effects of learner-learner interactions on satisfaction and learning in an online undergraduate course. Computers & Education, 115(Supplement C), 20-37.
- Rosier, J., Slade, C., Perkins, T., Baldwin, C., Coiacetto, E., Budge, T., & Harwood, A. (2016). The benefits of embedding experiential learning in the education of planners. Planning Practice & Research 31(5).
- Watson, V. (2016). Planning mono-culture or planning difference? Planning Theory and Practice 17(4), 663-67.
Presentations, publications and products from the project
Comenius Teaching Fellow 2019
