D-TRANSFORM: University Strategies in the Digital Age
D-TRANSFORM: University Strategies in the Digital Age
Course description
With society, universities and labour market becoming more and more reliant on technology, it is important for higher education leaders to leverage the power of digital resources in order to find a strategy for change.
This MOOC is therefore aimed at raising awareness of digital resources, and especially OER and MOOCs, as a strategic factor for university transformation, with a special focus on teaching and learning processes.
The course explores the following topics:
- the disruption of universities
- models for opening up education
- OER and MOOCs as innovation drivers
- academic libraries and digitally enhanced learning spaces
- assessment and credits in a technology-enhanced context
- learning analytics
- overcoming academic resistance to ICT-enhanced teaching
In addition to that, the course promotes executive reflection on hands-on challenges and offers networking opportunities in a non-formal context.
This is a self-paced MOOC: you can progress through the course at your own speed; you can complete course material and you can you can post on the forum at any time before the course end date.
The target audiences of the MOOC are: university rectors, vice-rectors, rector’s delegates for elearning, rector’s delegates for university third mission, deans of faculties, directors of operational units in higher education institutions and anybody interested in the digital strategy of universities.
Except where otherwise specified, the D-TRANSFORM MOOC is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.This MOOC is one of the outputs of the D-TRANSFORM project (2014 - 2017), whose partners were:
- Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, France (project coordinator)
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
- European Distance and Elearning Network, United Kingdom
- Fundacio per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
- Politecnico di Milano - METID, Italy
- Sero Consulting, United Kingdom
- Université de Lorraine, France
Intended Learning Outcomes
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required.
Activities
The course offers a forum to enable knowledge-sharing and peer learning: MOOC participants can exchange opinions and best practices along with discussing open questions.
Topic outline
Assessment
Quizzes aimed at assessing knowledge and understanding are not available, because they are not relevant to this discussion-based MOOC.
Certificate of accomplishment
You must be registered in POK through Politecnico di Milano personal account to obtain the Certificate of Accomplishment. It will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by filling the reflective quiz and the final survey. You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly from Politecnico di Milano web services. The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
Information about fees and access to materials
You can access the course absolutely free of charge and completely online.
Course faculty
MOOC topics are explored through video interviews with visionaries and practitioners from diverse organisations.
Marta Aymerich
Marta Aymerich is a medical doctor (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1993), has a master’s degree in Public Health (Harvard University, 1999) and a doctoral degree in Medicine and Surgery (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2002). She is the Vice President for Strategic Planning and Research of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – UOC (Spain). Aymerich is also a member of the Translational Medicine and Decision Science Laboratory (TransLab) at the University of Girona, where she was a professor in the Faculty of Medicine from 2009 to 2014. She was director of the Government of Catalonia’s Inter-ministerial Council for Research and Technological Innovation from 2004 to 2006 and led the Catalan Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Research from 2006 to 2008.
Paul Bacsich
Paul Bacsich holds a doctoral degree in Mathematics and is an expert in IT in education, with a long career in academia as a professor in online education, coupled with several years in the education business and as a consultant. He is an expert in benchmarking online learning and in the cost-benefits of online learning, with further experience in the quality, strategy, change management and leadership aspects of open, distance and flexible learning. He works as a senior consultant at Sero Consulting Ltd, company specialised in education, skills and economic growth in the ICT and digital media sectors.
Andras Benedek
Andras Benedek is a professor and head of the Department of Technical Education at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics - BME (Hungary). He has published nearly 150 papers in connection with human resource development issues, among them the essays “New Vistas of Learning in the Mobile Age”, in Mobile Understanding: The Epistemology of Ubiquitous Communication (Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), 2006), and “Mobile Learning: New Horizons and Unstable Summits”, in Engagement and Exposure: Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking (Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), 2009). He was Director of Vocational Training (1984-1989) and then Director General (1989-1990) at the National Pedagogical Institute. As its first Director General in 1990, he established the National Institute for Vocational Education.
Anne Boyer
Anne Boyer is a professor of Computer Science at the Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France) and head of the “Knowledge, Information and Web Intelligence” team (kiwi.loria.fr) at the LORIA laboratory. She is also programme officer of open educational resources, open education and national policy for OER development at the MESR. She has been involved in national and European projects, such as the PIA Pericles and the European Home projects. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in educational data mining, personalization, user modelling, and social recommender systems, and their use in e-education. She represents the French Ministry of Higher Education in the new European Commission working group “Education and Training”.
Daniel Cohen
Dan Cohen is the former Founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America - DPLA (United States), where he works to further the DPLA’s mission to make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all. Prior to his tenure, Dan was a Professor of History and the Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. His books include Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (with Roy Rosenzweig) and Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith. In 2011 he received the Frederick G. Kilgour Award from the American Library Association for his work in digital humanities, and in 2012 he was named one of the top “tech innovators” in academia by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Dan received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton, his master’s degree from Harvard, and his PhD from Yale.
Paola Corti
Paola Corti is a Project Manager at METID, the unit of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) devoted to teaching and learning innovation; she is an instructional designer and coordinates the design and production of the “MOOCs for Teachers” series, offered on Polimi Open Knowledge platform and aimed at promoting teaching innovation in higher education: among them, the “Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching” MOOC, winner for MOOC category at OER & Project Awards for Open Education Excellence 2017.
Ryan Craig
Ryan Craig is a founding Managing Director of University Ventures (United States). He received bachelor’s degrees in Literature and Economics summa cum laude and is a Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University. He got his Law degree from Yale Law School. Craig leads the firm’s investments in Revature, Credly, Portfolium, ProSky and ReUp Education and is the author of College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education.
Yves Delville
Yves Deville is professor at the Louvain School of Engineering at UCLouvain - Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). Since September 2014, Yves Deville is senior advisor to the president for the digital university art at UCLouvain, Belgium. He participates in the definition and the implementation of the Digital strategy at UCLouvain. He chairs the MOOCs committee and the executive committee of the information system at UCLouvain.
Florence Ducreau
Florence Ducreau is professor of management at Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France).
Ariane Dumont
Ariane Dumont is professor at at the HES-SO (Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale - Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences), Educational Developer and responsible for promoting innovation in pedagogy. She has trained over 300 faculty members to implement the flipped classroom in their teaching.
Barbara Getto
Barbara Getto is a postdoc researcher on higher education development, with focus on innovation in teaching and learning at the Learning Lab at Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany). She has been working in the field of digitisation in higher education for over ten years in several projects on organizational Change Management, the promotion of elearning and staff development for the use of digital media. Since 2008 she is the manager of “Elearning NRW”, the governmental agency for digitisation in higher education for the federal state of North Rhine-Westfalia, her present research interests include the development of higher education digital strategies and the promotion of open education.
Ada Giannatelli
Ada Giannatelli is project manager at METID, the unit of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) devoted to teaching and learning innovation. Along with instructional design, her areas of interest include issues related to MOOCs and open education in general. She curated the content of this MOOC and coordinated its design and implementation.
Cable Green
Cable Green is director of open education at Creative Commons. Cable works with the global open education community to leverage open licensing, open content, and open policies to significantly improve access to quality, affordable, education and research resources. Cable has 20 years of academic technology, online learning, and open education experience and helped establish the Open Course Library. Cable holds a PhD in educational psychology from Ohio State University.
Andreia Inamorato dos Santos
Andreia Inamorato joined the Joint Research Centre - European Commission in September 2013. Her role involves research and policy support on “ICT for Learning, Skills and Open Education”. Her work contributes to finding ICT opportunities and challenges and open education implementation at a policy level to innovate and modernize teaching, learning and training practices in Europe. Her current focus is on the promotion and uptake of openness in higher education institutions and Member States. Inamorato holds a doctoral degree in Educational Technology from the Open University of the UK (2011) and a master’s degree in Research Methods for Educational Technology from the same institution (2003).
Rosie Jones
Rosie Jones is responsible for setting the strategic vision for the Library Services of the Open University (United Kingdom), ensuring that they deliver a leading-edge service by responding positively to new opportunities and challenges within a rapidly changing environment. 2014 PSS, Library and Cultural Institution Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Manchester. 2014 Guardian HE Award Winner for Alan Gilbert Learning Commons Project.
Andrea Karpati
Andrea Karpati is head of the Centre for Science Communication, UNESCO Chair and member of the Information Technology in Education Committee of ELTE University (Hungary). She is author of more than 250 books and papers in six languages and coordinator of EU and UNESCO projects on multimedia in teaching and learning. Karpati is also a former member of the EDEN Executive Committee and the IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing) Technical Committee for Education.
Vijay Kumar
Vijay Kumar is Associate Dean of Digital Learning and responsible for Strategic Educational Initiatives at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States), where he provides leadership for sustainable, technology- enabled educational innovation. He is a member of the MIT OpenCourseWare advisory committee, and an executive officer for MIT’s Council on Educational Technology. In prior roles at MIT and other institutions, Kumar has been responsible for strategy development and the integration of information technology and media services into education. He has authored numerous articles in the area of educational innovations and technology strategy and is a co-editor of a Carnegie Foundation book Opening Up Education (MIT Press, August 2008).
Mark Nichols
Mark Nichols is responsible for the learning systems, learning innovation and TEL design teams at the Open University (United Kingdom). One of his team’s roles involves working with faculties to provide them with analytics insight into their activities and module performance. In his previous role, Nichols was associated with a major New Zealand project dealing with the use of learning analytics at an institutional level.
Ebba Ossiannilsson
Ebba Ossiannilsson is an international independent researcher, expert and consultant in open online, flexible, and distance learning. She serves as a quality reviewer and expert for EADTU and ICDE. She is the Vice President for The Swedish Association for Distance Education/SVERD, and for The Swedish Association for e-competence.
Joseph Pickett
Joseph Pickett is the former Publication Director at MIT OpenCourseWare, MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States).
Josep A. Planell
Josep A. Planell graduated in Physics from the University of Barcelona in 1975 and earned his doctorate in Materials Science from Queen Mary, University of London in 1983. Since 1992 he has been full professor in the Materials Science and Metallurgy department of the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He was Director of the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and since 2013 he is president of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – UOC (Spain).
Azim Roussanaly
Azim Roussanaly is programme officer for ICT-enhanced learning at the Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France). He is a senior researcher on the KIWI team and is in charge of the PIA Pericles project on quality assessment in e-education. He is the UL referee within the national MOOC project, France Université Numérique.
Susanna Sancassani
Susanna Sancassani is Managing Director of METID, the unit of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) devoted to teaching and learning innovation. She is a specialist in elearning and e-collaboration, and she is the author of several books,including Progettare l’Innovazione Didattica / Designing teaching and learning innovation (2019), The sense of the network (2011), and The bit and the turtle (2004), among others.
Michael Stewart
Michael Stewart is a founding director and Director of Communications for the Interactive Design Institute – IDI (United Kingdom). As a member of the Board and the management team, Michael has fulfilled a variety of functions, including the development of pedagogy for online delivery, the creation of elearning materials across a range of media and international and domestic business development. The Institute has been shortlisted in the QS Reimagine Education Awards (2015) and the Times Higher Education Leadership Awards (2016).
Marinke Sussenbach
Policy Advisor at TU Delft (the Netherlands), where she is Head Education & Student Affairs at the Faculty Technology, Policy and Management (TPM).
Andras Szucs
Andras Szucs is Member of the Working Group ET2020 Digital Skills and Competences (European Commission DG Education and Culture), Senior Advisor EU Affairs at Budapest University of Technology and Economics – BME (Hungary), Centre for Learning Innovation and Secretary General of EDEN European Distance and Elearning Network.
Françoise Thibault
Françoise Thibault holds a doctoral degree in Communication and Information Sciences and is one of the most recognized French experts on the use of IT in higher education organizations and research policies. She has been an advisor on higher education policies at the Ministry of Higher Education (France). At present, she coordinates the D-Transform project. Thibault also leads ATHENA Alliance and is a member of the FMSH Strategic Committee. From 2004 to 2012, she led the TEMATICE research programme at the FMSH, which focused on ICT in higher education and research. Her recent publications focus on the role ICTs play within the major reforms of French universities.
Steve Wheeler
Steve Wheeler leads the computing and science teams on the initial teacher training programmes at the Plymouth Institute of Education, Plymouth University (United Kingdom), where he also leads the Learning Futures Group. He has 40 years’ experience in research and development of educational technology. Besides his work at Plymouth, Wheeler also chairs the NAP Steering Committee at EDEN, and he is an EDEN fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK).
Dénes Zarka
Dénes Zarka is instructional designer and Director of the Centre for learning innovation and adult learning (OIFK) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics - BME (Hungary). Graduated as electrical engineer (M.Sc) in 1989 at the Budapest University of Technology. Worked as project manager at the Budapest Training Technology Centre in 1992-1997, joined as Senior Advisor of OIFK in 1997. Experience with elearning, ODL and ICT research, managing projects, online course development, staff training, corporate relations and market research.
Course design
Ada Giannatelli
Ada Giannatelli is project manager at METID, the unit of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) devoted to teaching and learning innovation. Along with instructional design, her areas of interest include issues related to MOOCs and open education in general. She curated the content of this MOOC and coordinated its design and implementation.
Susanna Sancassani
Susanna Sancassani is Managing Director of METID, the unit of Politecnico di Milano (Italy) devoted to teaching and learning innovation. She is a specialist in elearning and e-collaboration, and she is the author of several books,including Progettare l’Innovazione Didattica / Designing teaching and learning innovation (2019), The sense of the network (2011), and The bit and the turtle (2004), among others.
Contact details
If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.