Online Seminar: Open Education for Water Professionals

Seven years ago, during the 2013 Open Education Week, IHE Delft launched the OpenCourseWare platform. Since then 82,533 people have used our Open Educational Resources. In total they viewed over 933,000 pages. The number of Open Educational Resources IHE Delft offers is still growing. A good reason to celebrate that with this webinar during the Open Education Week 2020! This webinar will look back at the lessons learnt and the achieved impact. We will also look ahead and discuss how Open Education fits within the broader range of educational products that IHE Delft and partner organisations offer, ranging from traditional face to face classes to blended learning and eLearning. We’ll look into how we can combine IHE Delft’s tradition of sharing knowledge for water professionals with responding to the changing needs of our learners and the increasing availability of internet-based tools. Online and blended education substantially increases access to our educational offering because of lower costs and the flexibility it offers to study self-paced and combine it with work and family. This is especially relevant for our target group of (female) mid-career professionals from the Low and middle income countries in Africa, Middle East, Asia and Latin America & Caribe. In addition, traditional face-to-face education will benefit from the online courses, since learners will be able to study online and make better use of contact time with lecturers (“flip the classroom”). Furthermore, preparatory online courses allow participants to refresh knowledge of basic topics and learning skills, and obtain the required level to be able to fully benefit from. With eLearning we can offer graduates the possibility to do one or more specialized courses in the years after graduation. Knowledge, insights and technologies relevant to the water sector are continuously evolving. Lifelong learning is an important element in the IHE Delft education programme. Online education and exchange of experience greatly facilitates continuous learning and upgrading of knowledge and skills. Finally, an optimal blend between face-to-face and online can substantially increase accessibility, economize air travel, time and money and reduce IHE Delft’s carbon footprint, an important part of our strategy of greening IHE Delft. The webinar is great opportunity to exchange experiences on this topic and to learn from each other.