Co-created Courses through Open Source initiatives Erasmus Project

Project Title

Co-created Courses through Open Source initiatives

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Co-creation has become a hot topic in education, especially because of its promising potential to leverage the input of students, fellow educators and experts in the professional field to provide up-to-date course material in a rapidly changing environment. This is especially the case in higher and adult education which is characterised by an increasingly diverse body of students, including learners with additional degrees and prior work experience. Involving students in the co-creation of course material not only actively engages them with the subject material, it also provides a learning opportunity for 21st century skills such as digital fluency, multidisciplinary collaboration and self-management. Furthermore, co-creation also encompasses the input from fellow educators from related disciplines and stakeholders in the professional field, augmenting the diversity of perspectives offered through education. However, co-creating courses content often proves to be a highly time consuming process for the educator, with a lot of time being spent on course management and hence reducing their focus on content. The time bottleneck is peculiarly present in higher and adult education where educators have a wide variety of roles and large numbers of students.

The aim of this project was to test the co-creation approach in a wide variety of educational settings. We therefore choose a varied set of partners, including universities, university colleges and adult education partners. Through these pilot courses we learned from each other and the partners disseminated experiences in their local networks. The project consisted of a preparation, test, evaluation and dissemination phase. Partners were prepared for the pilot courses in a co-creation training via a MOOC and a hands-on training session using design thinking tools. The co-creation approach was subsequently evaluated during a series of pilot courses in various educational settings. Finally, all developed training material and resources were made openly accessible via a CC-license on the projects’ website: https://www.cocos.education > outcomes > intellectual outcomes.

To facilitate co-creation, the CoCOS project applied the mindset, methods and tools gleaned from open source development to the co-creation of course content. Within the project we shared our experiences with and further pilot open source platforms explicitly designed to reduce course management during course co-creation. Using version control technology – typically used in software development – these platforms automatically keep track of what content was created by whom at what point in time. In addition, they provide a hierarchical control structure, allowing the educator to keep (or delegate) editorial control over the final course. Since no such platform exist(ed) the consortium build a proof of concept of such platform based on the projects’ findings. This open source web based platform “CoCOS Suite” is available via https://www.cocos.education > get started > CoCOS Suite. Since the different stakeholders involved really believe in such a platform the project lead Artevelde University of Applied Sciences decided to continue to invest in the development of the platform in order to being able to release a stable 1.0 version to the public.

The project mainly kicked-off with a training event in Ghent, Belgium once the basis resources (conceptual framework and online training) for this training were developed, in which educators were trained via design thinking tools, followed by the pilots in the different partner institutions. Throughout the pilot trajectory 512 students were reached across all partner institutions via 21 different pilot courses. The experiences of students, educators and experts were monitored and analysed via surveys. This resulted in a Learning Guide where do’s and don’ts based on the pilots’ analysis, with regards to co-creation were bundled. All project outcomes are available in English, Dutch, Spanish, Bulgarian and Slovenian via the projects’ website. At the end of the project each partner organised a local multiplier event, which was meant to be organised during a F2F format. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the format was changed into a virtual format with a set of video’s, a webinar and with hands-on sessions in those partner countries where the restrictions allowed to do so. In total 112 people participated during the online or face-to-face organised multiplier events.

The project resulted in 6 very important outcomes:
– IO1 : Conceptual Framework
– IO2 : On-line training platform and co-creation tool
– IO3 : Method and Resources for F2F Co-Creation Training: Guidebook
– IO4 : Pilot approaches and analysed results
– IO5 : Learning Guide for Educators
– IO6 : Website, with MOOC, testimonials, presentations, user-stories and published outcomes

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 223231,85 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARTEVELDEHOGESCHOOL & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje
• National Training Center
• Stichting Kenniscentrum Pro Work
• UNIVERSITEIT GENT
• JAITEK TECNOLOGÍA Y FORMACIÓN SL