Episode 3: Interactive Learning Platform and German UDS Academy

00:00:00: [Music]

00:00:13: Welcome to the third episode of From Campus to Cyber,

00:00:17: presented by the German University of Digital Science.

00:00:21: I'm Professor Dr. Mike Fridtelsen and today we are diving into the digital

00:00:25: heart of our university with a very special guest, Dr. Thomas Stalwitz.

00:00:29: Thomas is at the helm of our learning management system and the innovative German UDS Academy.

00:00:35: He is here to share valuable insights into the functionalities and distinctive features of this

00:00:41: platform. In today's episode, Tom will describe our learning management system and what is the

00:00:47: main support for a seamless and interactive virtual learning environment. Beyond that,

00:00:52: we will discuss the exciting opportunities offered by the German UDS Academy.

00:00:57: Welcome, Tom. You are an integral member of our university who oversees our learning management

00:01:03: system and spearheads the newly launched German UDS Academy. Tom, before we delve into the

00:01:10: backgrounds of the platform, give us a brief overview of your academic and non-academic

00:01:16: highlights because you have had some interesting stage in your career.

00:01:20: Well, quite a while ago I started architecture in Berlin, but basically I realized that this

00:01:27: is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. In that concern, I am a classic dropout,

00:01:33: to be honest. I then followed a classic student's path in driving a cab, running a bar,

00:01:43: and via some summer shops I slipped into trade fairs and films and carpentry,

00:01:49: which came in quite handy when I had to build a couple of things in our studio here.

00:01:55: Basically, it's always good not to forget what you learned long ago.

00:02:01: And then at a certain point, I thought I needed change and started to do

00:02:10: course of studies at SAE Berlin. That was a private school where I started a subject which

00:02:19: then was called multimedia producer. I think the whole course of studies doesn't exist anymore,

00:02:24: and I learned very interesting stuff like Macromedia Director and Flash and all the likes

00:02:30: that actually also don't exist anymore in that case. But I also learned a lot of basics, which I

00:02:38: later on could apply for other things in other studies. Then I started a small web design and

00:02:47: development agency with two classmates, and we worked for mostly musicians in Berlin.

00:02:53: For example, the website for the Melt Festival, that was one of the larger clients that we had.

00:03:00: And then I thought basically I really want to learn what I'm currently doing. So I started

00:03:07: international media and computer science at HDW Berlin. And my bachelor's, my master's,

00:03:17: went from internship to the US to Palo Alto. Actually wanted to stay there, but for reasons

00:03:25: it didn't work out. And then I came back and started to work, did my master's and started to

00:03:37: work at the virtuelle Fachhochschule in Berlin. And during my bachelor's and my master's, I already

00:03:46: started to work on e-learning topics and did a lot of work in that direction already then.

00:03:54: And then I came to the Haseb-Bladner Institute where I did my PhD in also basically e-learning

00:04:08: topics. I worked on scalability in teamwork and group projects,

00:04:15: credible group projects in massive online courses on the OpenHBI platform.

00:04:22: And there I stayed until I came here to the German UDS.

00:04:27: What is your function here at the German UDS?

00:04:31: Well, officially I'm a senior lecturer and I'm currently working on the

00:04:37: learning platform, on the set of systems that come together to form the learning platform.

00:04:45: So it's not only the learning management system that we employ, but it's also the student application

00:04:51: and management system, several tools that will be attached to these learning platform

00:04:57: payment systems like all the bits and pieces to bring them together.

00:05:03: Tom, before we talk about the learning platform, just a quick question. You were at the Haseb-Bladner

00:05:09: Institute for a very long time and played a key role in the OpenHBI platform, I think that's the name.

00:05:16: How does the German UDS Academy platform differ from this A-B-G-I platform?

00:05:22: So basically there's two levels where you could say there's a difference.

00:05:31: So the German UDS platform is way more complex because we have not only to offer

00:05:37: open and free courses as we did on the OpenHBI platform, but we also offer full courses of

00:05:46: studies and there's much more student management involved as it was on the OpenHBI platform.

00:05:56: That's the one level on which we could see lots of differences.

00:06:03: And the other level is basically the system that we use for the learning platform,

00:06:10: for the learning management system. On OpenHBI we used a self-developed system,

00:06:18: so we built that system completely from scratch with the team at the HBI.

00:06:24: And here we switched to OpenEdex. OpenEdex is a very similar tool that was developed at MIT

00:06:36: in Harvard, also quite good addresses to work with. So I would say from the basic functionality

00:06:47: there's not so much difference. There's lots of difference in the details and of course having

00:06:54: developed with the team at the HBI, the OpenHBI platform kind of hurts not to use that anymore,

00:07:04: but on the other hand the OpenEdex platform particularly has this big advantage that it

00:07:10: has a huge worldwide open source developer community in which of course we want to fit in

00:07:16: and we also want to contribute and where we can but also can benefit from the many developments

00:07:24: that are going on there. Can you summarize the core functionalities of the German UDS

00:07:31: learning management system? So the very core functionality in most of those systems is the

00:07:38: video delivery. So basically the delivery of courses of learning material in a way that you

00:07:48: as a learner can watch videos whenever you want. So this is an asynchronous functionality,

00:07:57: but this is only on the surface the core functionality because this is what you see

00:08:02: first and this is what you do the most in many of these courses or what most users are doing

00:08:09: in many of these courses just watching the videos. From my perspective I think the

00:08:16: way more important functionalities are the social functionalities that you can connect to

00:08:23: other learners, you can discuss with other learners, you can discuss with the teaching teams and

00:08:27: so this is the more interesting part at least for me as a teacher and I hope for most of the

00:08:34: students as well. So I think it's a complex combination of a lot of tools and so on.

00:08:43: What were the biggest challenges during the design and installation in the recent months?

00:08:52: I would say that the biggest challenges were the bringing all the different bits and pieces

00:08:57: together, setting up the OpenMedics platform. We're working with lots of partners here,

00:09:02: very good partners and it's a lot of fun to work with them, but bringing everything together and

00:09:09: not forgetting something. There were a couple of moments when I thought oh yeah that is something

00:09:15: that we also need but so having getting an overview of the whole landscape that we want

00:09:24: to create and need to create I think that was the biggest challenge for me.

00:09:28: So how can I imagine what is the user experience design behind that? Can you just describe how it

00:09:38: works and how it functions if a student is starting in the learning platform? What are the

00:09:43: main points for that? Basically it's quite simple. So if you're

00:09:52: visiting or if you're participating in the OpenCourses at least, so not as a regular student in

00:10:00: the study programs but in the OpenCourses you basically just need an email address and a

00:10:05: password of your choice and then you can start, you enroll to the platform, it's free, most of the

00:10:13: courses are free, we have a couple of paid programs and most of the of the offers are free

00:10:18: and then you just select the courses that you're interested in and you start and you can join the

00:10:30: courses whenever you like, you don't have to be there at a certain time. In many of the courses

00:10:35: when there are sort of exams and quizzes and stuff then that normally is a deadline, you have

00:10:42: about a week time to solve these tasks but apart from that you're completely free to

00:10:52: use the material and to work with the material whenever you want within this time frame.

00:11:00: That is for the instructor-paced courses and then we also have the self-paced courses

00:11:04: which are even more free so you basically can watch the material whenever you like, you can do

00:11:11: the quizzes whenever you like, there's no deadlines and nothing in the difference between

00:11:16: those courses. Normally you see that right away so we have big signposts that says that's the

00:11:23: self-paced course, that's an instructor-paced course so you will realize that pretty quickly.

00:11:29: Tom, you have a lot of experience as the teacher so what are some of the challenges you faced

00:11:35: while integrating traditional educational methods with modern digital tools in this

00:11:41: learning management system? I'm referring now back to the time at OpenHPI when we started with that

00:11:53: and one of the major learnings that we had right away in the beginning was that

00:12:00: lectures like full-fledged lectures as you know them from

00:12:06: universities to our lectures so that just doesn't work in the video format in an online platform

00:12:15: so you have to reduce the length of the video so that the students are always in

00:12:23: still kept interested that it makes sense for them to start a video when they basically know

00:12:32: they have to leave in 10 minutes or so stuff like that and then of course the scalability

00:12:37: so if you have an open learning platform many people are joining so we had in some of our courses

00:12:46: about 10 to 15 thousand learners with the teaching team of about six people and that of course means

00:12:53: that you cannot do some sort of manual grading or something like that so all of this has to be

00:12:59: automated or outsourced so for example for grading we also use the peer grading method so that the

00:13:07: learners are basically grading each other and that in itself would be a topic I could talk

00:13:16: a couple of hours about because it also has my feet up I know that you just work today on

00:13:25: on conceptions and also a video

00:13:31: planning and the online videos for the teachers answer on.

00:13:37: What are the challenges in this way?

00:13:40: Do we need some more technical support or what is the base for all the content we just have in this platform?

00:13:48: So currently we're basically recording the first set of videos.

00:13:55: We see a couple of challenges in the studio.

00:13:59: We solved most of them.

00:14:01: There's a couple of others coming up.

00:14:05: I mean, having done that for years, building it again still comes with new things.

00:14:12: Some of them we might have known before, but in the end if you redo things and try to do them a little bit different, you always encounter new challenges.

00:14:26: On the website of the German UDS we find some explanations.

00:14:34: The German UDS Academy is explained.

00:14:36: Can you give us a short description of what the German UDS Academy is?

00:14:43: The German UDS Academy is the open branch of the German UDS.

00:14:50: While at the German UDS we offer study programs for full-fledged, regular students, MBA, master's, specialist programs.

00:14:59: You study for one, two or three years on the German UDS Academy.

00:15:05: We offer programs that target more like a non-student audience.

00:15:22: You probably will not be a regular student here, maybe because you already have completed your studies or because you're working in a job environment and you want to reskill or you want to upskill.

00:15:37: So basically what we offer here and what we offer in general for free are courses that can be taken by everyone.

00:15:47: We need to know some prerequisites for some of the courses.

00:15:52: If you're doing a course on AI technology there might be some math involved.

00:15:59: I guess that is something that you have to bring with you.

00:16:05: But we don't test you for that.

00:16:09: If you want to do that and then you basically have to figure out where are the gaps in your knowledge and you have to fill them yourself.

00:16:19: We try to offer a program that covers most of it, but in some cases we also might direct you to other offers by other providers, for example.

00:16:31: So there are two different parts on this platform. One part is for the master programs, the learning management system and on the other side there is the German UDS Academy.

00:16:44: Exactly. So it's basically the same system, the same but different.

00:16:52: It's the same technological basis that we're using here. On the one side it's both based on this Open edX platform that I already mentioned.

00:17:01: And the learning management system, this is where you will find all the contents of the study programs and where you only will have access if you're a regular student.

00:17:13: The German UDS Academy is the open platform, the open offer of the German UDS where everybody can join, where everybody can take courses.

00:17:24: There will be in the future also programs that we call micro-credentials or micro-decrease.

00:17:33: So these are stackable programs also, stackable decrease.

00:17:38: So basically you can do a couple of micro-credentials, add them up to a micro-decrease and then for example do a couple of micro-decrease and basically stack them together and an MBA for example, or use them to reduce the time that you need to spend for the MBA because you already done some things.

00:18:07: Is there a campus management system integrated in this whole system?

00:18:15: So we have a campus management system integrated in the student part, in the university part for the German UDS because of course we need a campus management system here.

00:18:29: We have regular students, we have application processes, we need to decide if you're eligible to study for a master's or if you want to study for a master's of course you have to have a bachelor's first and we need to check that.

00:18:45: And for this we have a tool which we partner with which is called full fabric, which is quite established tool which is used by many known universities which is very nice to work with.

00:19:07: If we summarize, so we have the non-academic part on the German UDS academy and the academic part on the typical learning platform at the German UDS.

00:19:23: I was trying to exactly avoid this formulation when I started to study because I didn't find the right word when I said it's non-student part.

00:19:39: I mean from the content I wouldn't say that the two parts are differing so much. So yes of course the academic part is the part where you get your full academic degrees, bachelor's, master's, MBAs, whatever.

00:19:55: And the other part is the more informal part where you can get a micro-decrease or you just do a course and don't get any degree at all or some sort of confirmation of participation or whatever.

00:20:11: But I wouldn't call it non-academic because the material basically is very similar and in some cases it's exactly the same.

00:20:21: So for example also guarantees the stackability so we have to, it's not non-academic content.

00:20:29: We might offer this in different forms for example so mostly in the way how it is delivered, for example in the timeframe it is delivered.

00:20:43: So the non-academic part is more, in many cases maybe more stretched out so that you have the chance to work on these courses next to your job and stretched out or maybe even packaged in smaller packages.

00:21:09: The main topic these days is AI, all the people are talking about artificial intelligence.

00:21:15: So can you explore the influence of AI on future learning platforms or maybe also in the status quo of our platform at the German UDS?

00:21:27: So I mean we employ AI technologies in a couple of ways that basically probably wouldn't even think about that this is strongly AI based.

00:21:42: In the beginning so for example if we create subtitles for the videos that is of course done not manually by us but by some sort of AI also the automatic translation of these subtitles and stuff like that.

00:21:58: I think what I've seen on many conferences so far is the creation of learning material will be strongly simplified by using AI technologies to support you.

00:22:17: So I don't think that at least in the very near future we will become completely obsolete so it will not be, I don't think so at least.

00:22:28: It will not be the case that in let's say two years the AI will do the learning material on its own so it will still need to be directed in some way.

00:22:43: Other things that I see for example what you did with this avatar so that basically students can ask questions to you or your avatar while you actually don't have to be awake 24 hours a day.

00:23:07: And if this model, if this avatar is trained well with the course contents or with your background or audition or whatever then I guess it's maybe not a 100% replacement for you but at least something that can support you and the students in certain discussions.

00:23:31: I mean there's a lot, a long going history of student assistants like in tutors, automated tutors and so on.

00:23:48: I think that will be this whole field of research will get a strong boost by the new technologies.

00:23:58: There's so many fields in the whole area.

00:24:04: If you start to poke a little bit there will be things that can be found, applications that can be found where you can use AI.

00:24:17: So one thing for example is assessments.

00:24:21: I guess what we currently still see is that the assessment of creative tasks is something that cannot be done very well by a machine in the moment.

00:24:40: That could be at least supported in the future with the help of AI so that you probably still, I read an interesting paper a couple of days ago where a teacher actually tried to ask chat GPT to do the grading for the school work of I think it was fourth graders or so.

00:25:02: She asked chat GPT to do this grading and chat GPT answered I'm not able to do that and you should do it yourself.

00:25:11: I can support you in that and I guess that will stay for a while but at some point who knows.

00:25:19: Tom I think we will just have the next episode and next year after the first experience with this learning platform.

00:25:25: Tom what do you like about the German UDS and why you are convinced that the tutorial university works?

00:25:33: What I currently mostly like about the German UDS is basically the startup feeling that we have here and it's really nice to see things grow.

00:25:45: When I came here we were sitting on boxes but it was pretty improvised and now you see everything is, the bits and pieces are coming together and this is really nice to see how such an endeavor is growing and coming together.

00:26:07: It seems to be successful.

00:26:17: Tom it's a pleasure talking with you, not even only in the Mensa and many thanks for these very interesting insights into the function of the German UDS and the learning platform.

00:26:30: Yes this was the third episode from Campus to Cyber. We would be delighted if you would continue to follow us on the journey of the German UDS.

00:26:39: Shaping the future of digital education. Stay tuned.

00:26:43: [Music]