This paper describes the process of introducing blended learning in a CS educational program. The methodology that has been used as well as the motivation for the choices made are given. The rst results compared with results from previous courses that used a more classical teaching approach are given. These results show that the new methodology proves to be promising and successful. The successes of the new program as well as the problems encountered are discussed with their possible solution.
The rapid change in insights in how students learn and the technical possibilities has lead to innovative educational technologies. E-learning and MOOCs are examples of recent developments in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). At the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences a project was started to design a new curriculum for bachelor students. There were several reasons for this project. The rst reason was the fact that due to a reorganisation of several educational CS programs, there was a need for a new curriculum. The other reasons were new insights and the development of new concepts in blended learning as well as the strategic view of our university on future education. The combination of these reasons turned out to be a good starting point for the project.
One of the goals of the project was to construct this new curriculum using new concepts in higher education. Some of these concepts came into existence because of advances in information and computing technology. Nowadays all of our students have high speed access to the internet which opens the opportunity for video, and other multimedia applications that can be used by students at home in a so-called distant learning situation. By combining several kind of possibilities to learn for students a so-called blended learning environment comes into existence. This paper will discuss the approach that has been followed to use this blended learning approach in our course re-design in combination with the
- 274 considerations and motivations for the choices made. A comparison with results from earlier courses is also given.
This paper is organised as follows: In the next section the concepts that are used will be explained. This is combined with a discussion of related work. Next the approach of curriculum re-design is presented in the section "Curriculum re-design". The section "Implementation" is dedicated to the implementation of the rst part of the new bachelor program and the choices that have been made about teaching concepts. The rst results are presented in the section "Results" followed by a discussion where the pitfalls and problems encountered are treated. The tips to avoid the pitfalls or solve the problems are also given. Finally a conclusion and a bibliography will end the paper. 2
The project is based on several innovative concepts in relation to education. In this section the concepts are introduced. In a later section an explanation will be given why these concepts have been used in our innovation project. 2.1
Blended learning [
The idea of blended learning is that the learning content and subjects should
be o ered to the student in several ways. The student can choose the type of
explanation that ts herself the best. Also a combination of learning possibilities
might help a student to understand the subjects. Whitelock & Jelfs [
Of these, the rst is perhaps the most common interpretation. For our approach the third de nition ts the best, but we also heavily rely on web-based approaches. 2.2
Flipping the classroom is an educational teaching method where lectures are
replaced by self-study. This self-study is supported by moments of interaction
between teacher and student where students can ask questions and put the
theory into practice. In Figure 1 this situation is depicted. What is not shown in
- 275
the gure is the fact that in the ipped class students should do their
homework before the moment of interaction with the teacher and other students. The
reason to start using this method is mostly based on the observation that the
concentration of the student is limited to a small amount of time. Working on
a problem related to theory that has been studied before gets the student more
involved. A de nition of ipping the classroom is given by Lage e.a. [
Instruction
Homework making assignments at home
Flipped class
Ask questions Work together
Discuss problems Making assignments
Homework
study subject material
(using ICT or by other means)
ing the classroom means that events that have traditionally taken place inside
the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa. An overview
of ipping the classroom is given by [
The 4C/ID-model is a didactic model that is specially suited for training students
that are determined to have a professional career in the industry [
In Figure 2 a schematic overview of the concept is shown. Students are working
on learning tasks (1) represented by big circles in Figure 2. At the beginning of
4
their study, students start with simple tasks and students will work on complex
tasks at the end. The simplicity and complexity is controlled by giving much
support in the beginning and reducing this support at the end. In Figure 2
this is shown by the level the circles are " lled". The learnings tasks are part
of a project (the dashed boxes, containing learning tasks) that will result in a
product. The type of product the students will work on is related to their future
professional career. Supportive information (2) is given at the beginning of every
project. The supportive information gives the students a solid background to
handle the problems they will encounter. This mostly theoretical information is
also given during the time students are working on their tasks. The procedural
information (3) is presented in a "just in time" manner to the students at the
moment they really need it to complete the learning task. Practising with new
concepts is also included in the model. In Figure 2 this is represented by small
circles (4). A thorough treatment of the concept can be found in [
Our main goal is to build a curriculum that uses new but proven concepts and
ts in the educational concept that was chosen in the preliminary phase of the
project. The concepts should be proven, because a situation where students are
treated as guinea pigs in an experiment should in all cases be avoided. The
quality and high standards used in the past should be guaranteed. The research
presented in this paper has its main focus on the rst part of this new curriculum.
This rst part consists of three courses of 5 European credits (EC's) [
- 277 3.1
One year ago there were four di erent IT-based professional bachelor programs at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. These four programs were: { Software engineering (SE) { Computer science and embedded systems (CSES) { Business IT and management (BIM) { System and network engineering (SNE) These trajectories are now combined in one bachelor study with four di erent pro les. Combining bachelor studies was stimulated by the government for all existing bachelor studies. This will make it easier for students to select a certain study and specialize for a certain pro le later. Combining these four given trajectories may seem like a simple reorganisation, but the students are o ered more possibilities to select a set of courses leading to the nal diploma. Cooperation between the di erent types of IT engineers is also more stimulated. This type of cooperation is often needed in the IT industry, so training students to cooperate during their study in multidisciplinary teams will support their professional career. 3.2
As a design principle we used the term MOS for the three properties every course should adhere to. MOS stands for: { Motivation - use of new technology and didactical approaches should align more with students preferences. Working on real assignments (as in the 4C/ID model) and deeper discussions should motivate students more. { Orientation - give students a good overview over the broad IT-landscape and professional roles therein. Guide them towards choosing one of the four specializations within the Bachelor program. { Selection - have the right level of di culty in content and assignments so that passing 10 of the 12 courses more or less predicts nishing the study within the regular duration of four years.
Both orientation and selection are prescribed by regulations of the Dutch
government [
At the beginning of the project, ideas and advice from the teaching team of around 40 persons were collected. Presentations and discussion sessions were organised. During two weeks discussion posters were available where all people involved could post their comments and remarks. The whole teaching and management sta was able to contribute ideas and proposals. This resulted in the following set of requirements: { The same program for all students during the rst half year. { No instruction to big groups, but classes with a maximum of 32 students { Showcases of real-life products as the main drive for the curriculum { Special attention to the development of professional skills by the students during their training. Professional skills are skills that one might expect from a professional IT engineer apart from the speci c domain related knowledge and skills, such as professional written and oral communication, leadership, (team)planning and ethical skills. From the beginning the IT industry as well as the students were involved. The plans for the curriculum were presented to representatives of the IT industry and students from all years of the four-year curriculum. By using the feedback of these meetings, the new curriculum adheres to the requirements and expectations of the software industry as well as the students. Every course under development was also checked this way.
The developers of di erent courses had several meetings to guarantee the coherence between the di erent courses that were given in parallel. All courses started with an explanation of this coherence and why this speci c course had its place in the bachelor program. 4
For the time being, only the rst year will be considered. The rst year curriculum consists of four periods of ten weeks. At the end of the year every student should have a personal assessment to check her knowledge and practical capabilities learned so far. 4.1
For instruction a selection of one the following possibilities has to be made: 1. Blended learning: use all kind of teaching techniques to train the student.
Let the student decide which one ts her the best. 2. Problem driven education: students are confronted with a problem en should discover by themselves what knowledge and information they need to sole the problem. When they have questions, the teacher will get involved. 3. Project based education: a project is the central part of the training and should control all other educational methods involved. 4. Classical approach, giving theoretical training supported by practising the learned material.
Considering the new possibilities in IT, the blended learning option has been chosen. By de nition, all other methods could be included, but the problem driven possibility had been used is the past and turned out to be not so successful.
- 279 A pure classical approach is not apt for our education, because the type of student in our institute is more interested in practical problem solutions, than pure academic knowledge. Pure project based education that has been used in the past, seems to be missing some essential aspects. It turned out to be di cult to nd a set of projects that covers all end-goals of a professional IT engineer. A choice has been made to combine blended learning with ipping the classroom. This approach did not need the instruction sessions for a huge number of students, that turned out to be not so successful in the past.
Next a choice has to be made between 4C/ID and the classical approach.
In our case the 4C/ID model has been chosen because our institute focusses on
training bachelor students to act as a professional worker in the IT industry. The
teaching team had the experience that these students are more motivated when
they are working on real products [
The choices made also t well with the design principles regarding motivation as explained in Section 3.2. 4.2
To give the students the possibility to orient on the possibilities in a later phase of the bachelor program, all three courses should more or less be tied to the nal four tracks the student has to select during the rst half year. Table 1 shows the relationship between the courses and the four tracks. The orientation on the tracks is now guaranteed. A mark means that the course has a signi cant relation with the track mentioned. A missing mark does not mean that the course is not signi cant for the track, but that it is not a main focus. Another reason why these three courses are combined in the rst block of the study is that it is a nice way to demonstrate the layered structure that plays an important role in many IT concepts. At the top is IT in organisations, The middle layer is presented by programming and nally the bottom layer (hardware, operating systems and networking) is covered by computer systems and networks. Having a model and three courses to start with, we will present the results in the next section. 5
The new program started in September 2016 and the rst period consisted of the three aforementioned courses. These courses had the same learning goals as courses we had in our old model so a comparison with courses in the previous year is legitimate. Some minor di erences exists that will be discussed later. As mentioned and motivated in the previous section the courses are: { introduction in programming { computer systems and networks { IT in organisations
In Table 2 the results for the three courses are given for both the blended and classical learning (previous year). Nb is the number of students doing the nal exam for the blended course, Nc is the number of students doing exam for the previous classical course, pass is the number of student that passed the exam (including a second chance exam) and avg. is the average score for the exam on a scale from 1 to 10. The average score has not signi cantly changed, while the percentage of students passing the exam has increased.
Course IT in organisations Programming Computer systems & networks
Figure 3 shows the results of the percentage of students that successfully completed the course in the regular time after a second chance had been o ered. In our institute, every course will have a second exam every year. In the same gure, the results for the previous year have been added. From the gure it becomes clear that the yield has signi cantly increased for all courses. The most successful course so far was programming, though this course was also the most successful one in the previous year. There is also a slight di erence in the content of the program, mainly due to the fact that Python has been used instead of PHP or Java may have in uenced the outcome. The learning goals did not change, so it is fair to state that the new blended course was more successful than the year before. All other courses show a better outcome than the year before. The other two courses are quite similar in content and learning goals, so the results can be compared. One should keep in mind that the new curriculum was not 100 90 80 70 ssed 60 a p tega 50 n rcee 40 P 30 20 10 0 only based on blended learning and the 4C/ID model, but also based on the fact that we did not separate the di erent specialisations from the start. Also the fact that there were no classes with more than 32 students should be mentioned here. In the previous year there were instruction classes for over 100 students. So the positive e ect should be considered as the consequence of all changes in the curriculum. 6
6.1
In this section, some of the problems encountered during development and
introduction of the new curriculum are discussed as well as the successes achieved.
Though the concepts presented were supported by the majority of teachers in
our institute, some remarks should be made here:
1. The amount of work for the developers of the courses was much more than
expected in the beginning. Selecting good online material took much more
time, because the developers should check the quality and adequateness
carefully [
The problems mentioned here are solvable. In the situation described under number 1 and 3 it means making more time available for the teaching sta to prepare the courses and having the possibility to discuss the method and help each other to use good practices. Currently the solution for the problem described under number 2 is under development. Monitoring activities per individual student is necessary and as an Institute of ICT we are strongly involved with the software used to create the blended learning environment. The problem described under number 4 should be solved by explaining the students the concept more carefully. The fact that students know that their home-activities for the course are monitored may also help to activate the students. 6.2
There is also a number of successes to report on the new program. 1. The new learning paradigm turned out to help a bigger number of students to complete the courses within due time. Given the fact that some important improvements still can be made, we expect an even better result for the years to come. 2. Most students in IT expect an IT training to be IT-based. Older ways of instruction are sometimes considered by students to be outdated or belonging to the previous century. This fact also motivates students. 3. Another positive point is the fact that from the beginning both students as well as representatives from the software industry were involved in the construction of the new curriculum. This resulted in a curriculum that was a wide support both by industry as well by the student community. 4. A feature of the new course is multidisciplinary cooperation between students in project. This help students in getting a broader view on the IT domain and getting a better understanding of what other disciplines in that eld mean and accomplish.
Given the fact that the pitfalls we encountered are solvable, the switchover to the new educational approach can be considered as a success so far. 7
In this paper we described a project to renew a CS curriculum. In this curriculum concepts like 4C/ID, blended learning and ipping the classroom play an important role. The concepts that have been used are introduced and explained as well as the implementation and rst results. The rst results are promising.
IT-based solutions o er great opportunities for educational renewal, but care has to be taken about the way the they are used. Also the time and work involved was in our case underestimated leading to a result that is not yet at the level that we had in mind at the start. However, as mentioned before the results so far are promising and give support to the idea that this is a good approach to keep students involved and motivated with their study at the educational institute.