The Bologna Module as Central Organizational Unit in Canvas
While Canvas offers its own idea of a "module," the higher education sector in Europe defines a module as a container for learning outcomes. At the UWK we turned the module into the central organizational unit for content creation, (sub)account management, and for presenting content on Catalog.
Hello. Welcome to this, fashion. As it says, modules in Canvas, you're perspective. I think when, my institution, we were talking to Jira Instructure Partners and we asks whether we should come out to Denver to instructurecon and whether we should contribute something and they were all excited and said, yes, bring on the a peer perspective. I think back then, we didn't really realize that we would be really exotic here. But, yeah, welcome.
To this session, I'm going to take you, on a small excursion to Europe and the higher education area there. Or at least one tiny aspect of it. Before we really start and get into things, I'm going to ask you some questions just to be sure and to know how much context you will need and how deep I will have to go into certain things. So let's do this the old fashioned way and I would just ask you to to raise your arm or hand. If you feel you belong to one of those groups.
So who of you is located in the United states, and who's not? Okay. And, who of you would call, themselves, and educate or being part or, representing an educational institution today. Okay. Almost all of you. Excellent.
And One more question. Who of you has worked in Europe already or maybe has been a student abroad in Europe? Okay. Some of you. Good. Well, that that will help me, a lot.
And, today we are going to talk about, modules in Canvas, the Bologna system, those of you who know Europe, We'll know what it means, but don't worry. I will go into things and and explain what that actually means to us and why it is a challenge, to work with US partners. And I will start off giving you a bit of background information just to know where I'm coming from and institution is coming from. And then we are going to take a close look at the Bellania System and European High Education in general. And towards Dan, we'll talk about modules, the Bologna System and Canvas, and how we are trying to make it all work together.
So I'm here representing the university for continuing education in Kremes, which is in Austria, Australia is this small country close to Germany. Our native language is German. We are about nine million people. And, yeah, my my university is located in this smaller city or town, of about ten thousand people, about one hour outside Vienna, which is, the capital city. And the university is a university that focuses on continuing education programs only.
In my role there, I'm responsible for teaching development and digital transformation. And, I started off in Austria. I'm Austrian, but, I came back in twenty twenty just before the onset of the pandemic. And before that, I was working in various institutions. In Europe, I lived in the UK, for a long time and worked at the University of Oxford for about six years, moved on to Paris, worked at Suburban and briefly to Germany decided I didn't like it there that much.
I moved back to to my home country, Austria. Where I'm responsible for teaching development and digital transformation. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about this university. Here it says we are the university for continuing education in Europe, the leading public for continuing education. Now in Europe, it is a great thing for university to be a public university.
This university was founded only twenty five years ago. And in twenty nineteen, it became a public So it is a rather young university. One that is also developing fairly quickly and fast. I've worked other big universities and those transform and change rather slowly, but this one transforms at a very rapid change and adapts to what students need nowadays. So it makes it very exciting, to work there.
And it is really the only public In Europe, the only public university that focuses on continuing education degrees. To give you some facts and figures, we have about seven thousand four hundred students from about eighty three different countries. The average student age is thirty nine years. This is because it's continuing education degrees. And for our students, it is a prerequisite to have a number of, professional, a number of years of professional experience in order to be able, to apply for a study program.
All of our students, they work while the study. And one of our USBs is to have student groups that bring together people from different professions where, networking is a very important element for them. Yeah, we have about two hundred different study programs that are allocated, in three faculties. One is health and medicine another faculty focuses on business and globalization and the third on education, arts, and architecture. And because of our special setup, ever since, its foundation, the university has focused on blending formats.
So we've always had asynchronous and synchronous, study content for students, to complete and to follow. And until recently we have worked with, a learning management system that is and has been used in Europe for many years which is Moodle and we have just recently partnered up with Instructure and with Canvas, because we think that this is where the future is going, and we also strongly believe that the way our university is developing teaching goes hand in hand with, how canvas and instructureate develops. And, of the reasons for our change and our decision to move to another learning management system one that is not European, one that is actually English. Well, it was originally designed English. And one that it was only starting to get crowned in Europe, was that we find ourselves in times of transition.
This is not only true for us. This is true probably for all high education institutions. Have a couple of main points here on the side. We see ourselves in a world that has been supercharged, through academic and kind of thrown into, digital transformation, in all areas of life. We see changing workplaces all around us.
And on top of that, being a European university, we also are within the you that has a certain agenda for high education institutions, for educational institutions in general. And then of course, we are also in this date of Austria. And there also the state has certain agenda, a certain strategy where, higher education institutions have to move to. And we have seen a legal reform, in Austria that has impacted us quite strongly. And I don't want to go into that in in in detail, but for our university, it really meant that we or it means that we have to redesign all of our study programs, like one hundred percent.
This fall will be the last time that we can offer our old study programs, and we have launched an enormous transformation project where now we are also able to offer bachelor's degrees in continuing education before it was only master's degrees. And, we do have additional degrees that are called, bachelor of professional degrees. Both are now within on year structure. That means, for example, that bachelor degree, even though they are continuing education have to, reach a workload of one hundred eighty ECTS credit points. ECTS stands for European credit transfer system.
I will talk about this more later, but one ECTS point is twenty five hours of workload for a student. And so this is quite, was quite a big impact for us because of course continuing at patient students reaching that workload in a very short amount of time. It is a challenge. And, The third point is that, we are now, well, the the agenda of the Austrian government is that, we have to recognize non university achievements and, validate them or make students give the students the chance to validate. Them two words, their decrease.
And this means formal achievements, but all non formal and informal learning outcomes. And all of this together means that we are in this huge change process. Of our study decrease. And then on top of that, we have the European agenda. And the vision of the European Union is to create, European students.
Now, what does that mean? Europeans, the division of the European students mean that if you have if you are a student in any country of Europe, you have to chance and the opportunity to move across Europe and collect credits from pretty much any institution, in the European Union. And, this is possible through actual mobility by moving from one university to another university, but now it is also possible to engage in digital mobility where you can digitally follow core is, in another country, earn credits there and make them, used towards your European degree. And I think like in other regions in the world as well, Jerry's also focused micro credentials, which may means smaller units, smaller learning units, that make it possible for to really learn throughout life, to continue learning, and to collect credits or modules throughout their student career. In Europe, that can be anywhere in Europe no matter where you're from. And This means that one crucial element, that we get to.
Because of the European agenda, but also because of the Austrian agenda is modularization of curricular. And in fact, this bologna process, is a process that is a driving force to modularization. It facilitates mobility and makes students makes it easier for students to move from one country and also from one university to another. And earn credits at and institutions all over Europe. It facilitates in fostering's lifelong learning.
Because we all know that if you have a modular curricula and you can learn in smaller entities throughout life, it makes it easier for the individual to reskill and upscale, as life happens. Yeah, and on top of that, it helps quality assurance because usually with every module, there is also standardized learning outcomes are defined and make it possible for the European credit transfer system to work. And from a student perspective, it, I think the biggest, positive aspect is, that it gives them the flexibility, to choose from a variety of and to create personalized study paths, that are really based on their interests and based on their career goals. For us, as a university of continuing education, we have older students, the Camvas, They have they have a life already. They have a career.
And, they they do not necessarily need this one stand study program that everybody has to take. But for them, it is important to have the option to really pick and choose and decide what competencies need to complete their profile and to be successful, in the workplace. Yeah. Now, what is a module in the Bologna system? So, a module in the Bologna system is a thematic combination of individual courses. A module can stand alone and it can also be completed in a predefined timeframe.
The idea is that modules can, and should be combined, in order to form bigger units and those bigger units according to the bologna system is, of course, a curriculum. So you have in Europe, you have curricula and they are broken up in modules and then the modules, they are broken up into courses. And for each module, we would describe learning outcomes, and we would set to workload. And of course modules are also graded. So as a European student, when you have your grades on a transcript, you see basically the title of your curriculum and the modules and the grades.
And I'm now going to give you a quick, look at what this looks at, my universe where we have a portfolio of competences that represent, those modules. And inside each module, we have the courses where one course is worth three European credit transfer points and then more courses are combined to bigger modules of six or seven ECTS points, and those together can form, a whole curriculum. And in the end, the students earn their decree. Now modularization in Canvas for those of you who are working with Canvas, you might realize said, oops, there is a bit of a pickle there because module in Canvas are something completely different to what modules are in Europe and are predefined by European Union. So this means we cannot escape this as a European institution.
We have to stick to this, but at the same time, we want to work within structure. We want work with Canvas because we think this also really fits our assistant. So I'm going to tell you about the solution that we are trying out that we found. And, yeah, the way we are trying to overcome this this conflict So what we have introduced at our institution is the module as a metacourse. And we have so for each module shell, we are creating a course.
We call this a meta course. And inside this core this meta course, we link off to different courses. In the medical course, students who are in a module can communicate with one another. The module leader can communicate with the students and also the learning path is organized. From this meta course, student can pick, the courses that they want to take.
Here you have an example of one of the templates that we have had designed. We are working together with a dream. And I realized they're already also in the exhibition hall They are a company from the Netherlands, who help European institutions adapt canvas so that it works with our regulations and our systems. And, here you can see in German at bottom. Students have the option to choose, obligatory courses, and then also elective course versus right from this meta course, that they are, part of.
And we have set the settings in ways so that students can inscribe themselves. So once they are inside a module, they jump off the courses, that they can pick and choose. We have also, because of this changed the organizational system around our teaching a little bit. We introduced module leaders and they are at the same time subaccount managers. And the subaccount managers, they have, an overview of all of the courses that are part of their modules.
They are the ones who administer the teachers who come and teach courses, or administrative assistants. They can also modify standards, of course, order templates. And, they can create reports about their their modules that they, are liters off. Not everything is shiny and not everything is easy and this is something that that we are starting to try end, we already know that there are some hindering aspects. We now know that because of this structure, we do have a lot of sub accounts and that is a bit tricky to to administer.
It helps that at our university of we don't have or we have a certain number of people who are module leaders, and there we often a couple of modules are led by one person. So that makes it a bit easier. We also realize that it is really important to have a proper knowledge to be established across all institutions. And by institutions here, I mean, faculties and departments and centers. So that they all work, with the same standards.
Before that, we we had a learning management system where pretty much every department could do whatever they liked. And, that of course created, well, very individual ways of teaching. And, it made it very difficult for department and teaching staff to collaborate and work together. Now this is something of the past. And, yeah, one other hindering aspect is that with those meta courses, of course, you kind of create additional courses.
And this means you have more courses on your dashboards. That is true for students, but that is also true for members of staff. And, the one of the the drawbacks is also that the actual study track of a student is not, traceable through this. So we are hoping and we're working together within structure to find ways where, this is something, that we can also get to to to the way we're, study paths are more track traceable and, and, yeah, all get learning analytics out from that. But of course, there are some positive aspects about this as well.
And the very, very first is that, those many set accounts that are independent from the university's, or organizational structure is that we create or we have decentralization. And, we get rid of the hierarchies within the faculties. And we really foster collaboration within, or across department across faculties. By having a lot of subaccount managers and module leaders, we create synergies and we have lots of people who create best practices that they also like to share. And one interesting aspect is also that by reports, that allow evaluation on the singular modules.
We also know which modules are more attractive for students, students, and and which are less attractive, which have to be developed and redeveloped. And, yeah, last one would be that modules can be booked easily by several study tracks. So this is something that is a huge benefit fit for for smaller universities because, we do not need to, have academic writing five times offered by three different faculties or this business class offered by three different faculty where we are creating a module and, we are putting it in different curricular and students from the study programs, study one same course, one same module. And, therefore, we are also following one of the goals of our university, which is a transdisciplinary approach where we create teams and also student teams who come from different backgrounds and different study programs and who work together on similar topics and solve problems together eventually. Yeah.
The vision for us at our university is to get from the left, where it says all to the new. We used to have, a clear path for student where students would initially choose the study program, and they had a preset, a preset curriculum and preset set to timetable. And now we want to go, to to this right hand side We still allow for this preset, curriculum to be possible for students who who want to have it easy, who don't, want to have of choices because we also know that exists. People who are overwhelmed by by choice. But, we also want to have, the right hand side where we make it possible for students to start with individually bookable offers, modules, or micro credentials, those that are pretty much modules.
And, then a long dural learning they can choose, pick and choose and, decide on what they want to do next. They don't have to decide everything right from the beginning because sometimes you study your studies. And then after two years, your life changes completely and you need something that is completely different. And here they have the chance to to to also change their learning path accordingly. And, earned a degree as they go along, and put together the modules in micro credentials.
So this is our vision where we hope, to create interesting offers for students who are in the middle of of their lives, who want to reskill upskill at a later point. And, yeah, earn a degree eventually. We, of course, do know that there is future challenges or challenges to overcome. One of them will be the coordination and planning, of all of this. And we see that Canvas and Instructure and some other partners are really assisting us in this way because it seems that all of their vision really aligns with our vision of where we create more personalized and individualized learning paths.
Of course, the assessment methods that have to be adapted per module, are are a challenge, also the integration with the crease. And I think in general, probably all institutions, the promotion of lifelong learning, the continuation of learning, and to making to make to make learning, really accessible for everybody, also at an academic level, at universities. And, yeah, this is already my last slide. It's a kind University, we know that we'll continue learning, within structure through the exchange with others. So thank you for being here.
Thank you for listening. I look forward to any questions you might have. And, stay connected, keep in touch. If you are in continuing education, if individualized learning's stackable learning is something that your institutions are focusing on. I'd be super happy to to connect and and get in touch.
And yeah, thank you very much. I see a hand up. Yeah. Sorry? I mean, because you haven't made four shelves. Yeah.
And then they have to that it's all linked to other course shells. Exactly. So, a student enrollment is in the module course shell. So, it is in the meta course. Yeah.
She also but they have access to Then they have from that, they have access to the, I call it, subcourses, and then they are enrolled in or they can describe themselves into the subcourses. But they are first first depicted module right. So if that's the case, doesn't mean that the, more shelves on public. No. They are sold or wrong.
Yeah. They sell people. Yeah. But they're not public. Yeah.
So I have a so you you're using these scores as a meta course, just basically as a Farfetch spot for Exactly. Floor the elementary thieving within Canvas? We we did explore many things. Yes. We also, tried out, or tried, we we were one of the first uses and testes of credentials and and pathways. Is, it changes the view at the subaccount level.
Yep. And it creates what is called a homeroom. It's meant for primary school -- Yep. -- students. But basically, what you are doing as the meta course.
You will probably need to manipulate the CSS so it won't look elementary. Maybe this is something we have never seen because we are not. Yeah. Because we are not is a homeroom, this medical course. Yeah.
And the subjects, the courses are attached to them. Okay. With the entry point, in instead of the dashboard. Yeah. This is basically what we created.
I'll show I'll show you. Yeah. Perfect. Meant for primary schools that a lot of easy boosters are using it to give about basically structures your subaccount. Okay.
Relate the subject for this unit. A new mechanic, you can actually change the CSS, so he won't lose. Yeah. Because he has, like, a phone painting and, you know, so things that look more for child and my children, but you can change that quite easily. And you work for I work for a few Okay.
Including instructor. Okay. Well, that that is great input. Thank you. It's not very similar to competencies.
It is yeah. Yeah. We are we are based basing everything on on on competencies. Yep. How many course might show up on a person's dashboard in this model.
It really depends on on what person we are talking about, whether you are. Look might they see on their dashboard in terms of the number of courses? Yeah. We have students who have about twenty or more different course overall. It is. Yeah.
And this is also I didn't know if this is a problem in in in the States as well because to most European institutions I have talked to. This is one of the biggest, things that everybody kind of complain about having a cluttered dashboard and having no chance to to kind of really declutter it in any simple and easy way. Would be a big usability issue for green desserts. And we had I don't work I work in a sort of a professional development setting. So it's on credit certificates.
And we want to log. Yeah. So that so that we're not, having our learners go to the dashboard. For that reason, Yeah. We also built an MVP with catalog.
Initially, we thought that we put our hopes in there. But in the end decided against stitch. So now we might use catalog just for our storefront to offer micro credentials. But not for the whole study programs that are still an option as well. Sorry.
I is there a term ending to the Not to, not to all of them. But we have, developed a, we call it roll over strategy. This is when when courses close and start up again. Because we do have courses that never end. And that is especially true for metacourses.
Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. So some sort of evaluation at the end of exam, like an a level of manual. So something that we're going to demonstrate on payments. Yes.
For for courses, definitely, and not for all modules. But some modules also have a final kind of, assessment, but it depends on on the type of module. Yes. And there's no way you're doing API codes to basically hide some of the for sharing the dashboard. So far, we Okay.
But you can, upload a JavaScript to do that? You you can't. We've we've done that where we actually pull it off. Oh, so you're basically taking the star out then will still be divorced without the document. Right. That that's what we do.
Yeah. For this particular case, would that be possible because you Exactly. And that makes it super tricky. But it is a question that we have as well and that we are not done exploring. So if anybody ever comes across an idea, to reach out, please.
Yes. So, are you explaining where the subaccounts come in? Is that the modules? Yes. The modules of subaccounts? Yes. Okay. Within the module, then you have the course.
Exactly. Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm curious. I think I'm not completely understanding the structure within the meta course. So each of the modules contains courses itself.
Like logistically, are those individual courses within the module within the meta course, all are are are those all contained within this same meta course? Like, within the same canvas course? So Or they redirect it somewhere else. They they are actual, actually all canvas courses. So the meta course is a canvas course, and the regular course is also canvas Otherwise, it would have been our perfect solution. But, it it doesn't work like that. So we had to to create this, this kind of system.
Gotcha. Sorry. I have one more question. Yeah. Go ahead.
So because they self enroll in the sub wash shelves, how do you have to be graded? How were actually, the data to whatever system you have in terms of, they completed this process because it's a continuous Yeah. The good thing about our other system is that it is super enclosed and you cannot automatically upload anything. So that has. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Yes. The meta course, how does the self enrollment work from the meta course? Simple as a what's that process like? It is fairly simple because once a student is in part of of the medical course, they see what you could see so this template.
And then we have, is where they can click on it, they are kind of transferred to the actual course where they can then self describe. But the administration of who gets into which module is done on this meta course and then what also makes what we then have is we have a certain number of of students who all want into this first course, which is part of the module, and then we know, okay, we open up the second course with the same content. Or we have a course that nobody feels like taking and then we can also push that and say okay we make this course a special course is offered as a single micro credential and have people from other areas come into that course, for example. Yes. But is your student getting enrolled? Is there any integration that enrolls the student in the meta course, or does the student pick the meta course in your campus Is that also manual? Or is it are they So that happens before, but we have, we have a learning agreement.
And, student advisors that were where students on which modules, they want to be enrolled in and then that is done manually. Maybe you said this, and I missed it. So are are the courses that they select, like self pay where there's no start and end date is just sort of a rolling notice. There's a fix. All of the so so it's different from module to module there are some self paced, modules and courses.
But there are others as well. And, the important thing here is communication, communication, communication. So make sure or communicate students when it's possible to enroll which, modules and courses and, also when modules and courses close because of course, the self paced courses, they also have assessment, in certain weeks. Would you have a start and end date, or would it just be leggard? Like, when do you when do you close of course if it's very self paced. So we have different rollover models for different modules that are part of different study programs.
So we have this one distance learning, program, which is an MBA program. That works slightly differently to in terms of timing throughout the year. And we do have an overlap. So for example, the first one starts in October and it will be open an entire year. And then the second one already starts when the year is not over and past, but yeah.
Yep. Sorry. I think you were first Sorry? How do you actually pay taxes? What do you mean? Some of these developments. Yes. It's self paced.
So, you are actually paying for the development of the not the facilitation side. We pay pay for both. Our faculty, they developed and student enrolled in the course. Is that how you work? Partly. So, there is different elements, but our financial team has a very complex system similar to what we have, for the European credit credit transfer system where we have the workload for students.
We also came up with a system for a workload for fatty or teaching staff. And, then of course, it depends on on how many students there enrolled per for a course, especially if it's a self paced course. But then there are other courses where, we know that we won't get that many students but, they are important courses because, there are certain social topics that are important, like Chanda diversity or certain STG topics, and then those courses, they are fully funded by the university, no matter how, how many students there in the course. Yeah. Is that, metacourse and sub course structure very templatized now where when you roll out new modules, it's easy to duplicate that on an administrative level? Or is it all, like, individual everything's kind of manual, new structure, new sub courses.
I think we're not there yet because, that that that that will be a good question to think about and answer in the future, but yeah, we've we are really at the beginning, this hole. Yeah. So for now, we know that we want to have certain things automated, but we know that right now. We also have a lot of staff who who have been used to to doing a lot of stuff manually and this is something we also want to keep for a while because if we automate everything like that, we would also have a problem on that side. Does, like, each sub account have its own medical course, like, business, and here's all the options, and then, like, an English major It's it's the other way around.
So each module has a subaccount. So we have lots of of subaccounts, actually. And then there is, for example, one person can be the owner of multiple subaccounts and modules. But it is it is not organized according to subjects, but according competences. Yeah, and and skills. Any other questions? If not, thank you very much. Thanks for staying with me.
To this session, I'm going to take you, on a small excursion to Europe and the higher education area there. Or at least one tiny aspect of it. Before we really start and get into things, I'm going to ask you some questions just to be sure and to know how much context you will need and how deep I will have to go into certain things. So let's do this the old fashioned way and I would just ask you to to raise your arm or hand. If you feel you belong to one of those groups.
So who of you is located in the United states, and who's not? Okay. And, who of you would call, themselves, and educate or being part or, representing an educational institution today. Okay. Almost all of you. Excellent.
And One more question. Who of you has worked in Europe already or maybe has been a student abroad in Europe? Okay. Some of you. Good. Well, that that will help me, a lot.
And, today we are going to talk about, modules in Canvas, the Bologna system, those of you who know Europe, We'll know what it means, but don't worry. I will go into things and and explain what that actually means to us and why it is a challenge, to work with US partners. And I will start off giving you a bit of background information just to know where I'm coming from and institution is coming from. And then we are going to take a close look at the Bellania System and European High Education in general. And towards Dan, we'll talk about modules, the Bologna System and Canvas, and how we are trying to make it all work together.
So I'm here representing the university for continuing education in Kremes, which is in Austria, Australia is this small country close to Germany. Our native language is German. We are about nine million people. And, yeah, my my university is located in this smaller city or town, of about ten thousand people, about one hour outside Vienna, which is, the capital city. And the university is a university that focuses on continuing education programs only.
In my role there, I'm responsible for teaching development and digital transformation. And, I started off in Austria. I'm Austrian, but, I came back in twenty twenty just before the onset of the pandemic. And before that, I was working in various institutions. In Europe, I lived in the UK, for a long time and worked at the University of Oxford for about six years, moved on to Paris, worked at Suburban and briefly to Germany decided I didn't like it there that much.
I moved back to to my home country, Austria. Where I'm responsible for teaching development and digital transformation. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about this university. Here it says we are the university for continuing education in Europe, the leading public for continuing education. Now in Europe, it is a great thing for university to be a public university.
This university was founded only twenty five years ago. And in twenty nineteen, it became a public So it is a rather young university. One that is also developing fairly quickly and fast. I've worked other big universities and those transform and change rather slowly, but this one transforms at a very rapid change and adapts to what students need nowadays. So it makes it very exciting, to work there.
And it is really the only public In Europe, the only public university that focuses on continuing education degrees. To give you some facts and figures, we have about seven thousand four hundred students from about eighty three different countries. The average student age is thirty nine years. This is because it's continuing education degrees. And for our students, it is a prerequisite to have a number of, professional, a number of years of professional experience in order to be able, to apply for a study program.
All of our students, they work while the study. And one of our USBs is to have student groups that bring together people from different professions where, networking is a very important element for them. Yeah, we have about two hundred different study programs that are allocated, in three faculties. One is health and medicine another faculty focuses on business and globalization and the third on education, arts, and architecture. And because of our special setup, ever since, its foundation, the university has focused on blending formats.
So we've always had asynchronous and synchronous, study content for students, to complete and to follow. And until recently we have worked with, a learning management system that is and has been used in Europe for many years which is Moodle and we have just recently partnered up with Instructure and with Canvas, because we think that this is where the future is going, and we also strongly believe that the way our university is developing teaching goes hand in hand with, how canvas and instructureate develops. And, of the reasons for our change and our decision to move to another learning management system one that is not European, one that is actually English. Well, it was originally designed English. And one that it was only starting to get crowned in Europe, was that we find ourselves in times of transition.
This is not only true for us. This is true probably for all high education institutions. Have a couple of main points here on the side. We see ourselves in a world that has been supercharged, through academic and kind of thrown into, digital transformation, in all areas of life. We see changing workplaces all around us.
And on top of that, being a European university, we also are within the you that has a certain agenda for high education institutions, for educational institutions in general. And then of course, we are also in this date of Austria. And there also the state has certain agenda, a certain strategy where, higher education institutions have to move to. And we have seen a legal reform, in Austria that has impacted us quite strongly. And I don't want to go into that in in in detail, but for our university, it really meant that we or it means that we have to redesign all of our study programs, like one hundred percent.
This fall will be the last time that we can offer our old study programs, and we have launched an enormous transformation project where now we are also able to offer bachelor's degrees in continuing education before it was only master's degrees. And, we do have additional degrees that are called, bachelor of professional degrees. Both are now within on year structure. That means, for example, that bachelor degree, even though they are continuing education have to, reach a workload of one hundred eighty ECTS credit points. ECTS stands for European credit transfer system.
I will talk about this more later, but one ECTS point is twenty five hours of workload for a student. And so this is quite, was quite a big impact for us because of course continuing at patient students reaching that workload in a very short amount of time. It is a challenge. And, The third point is that, we are now, well, the the agenda of the Austrian government is that, we have to recognize non university achievements and, validate them or make students give the students the chance to validate. Them two words, their decrease.
And this means formal achievements, but all non formal and informal learning outcomes. And all of this together means that we are in this huge change process. Of our study decrease. And then on top of that, we have the European agenda. And the vision of the European Union is to create, European students.
Now, what does that mean? Europeans, the division of the European students mean that if you have if you are a student in any country of Europe, you have to chance and the opportunity to move across Europe and collect credits from pretty much any institution, in the European Union. And, this is possible through actual mobility by moving from one university to another university, but now it is also possible to engage in digital mobility where you can digitally follow core is, in another country, earn credits there and make them, used towards your European degree. And I think like in other regions in the world as well, Jerry's also focused micro credentials, which may means smaller units, smaller learning units, that make it possible for to really learn throughout life, to continue learning, and to collect credits or modules throughout their student career. In Europe, that can be anywhere in Europe no matter where you're from. And This means that one crucial element, that we get to.
Because of the European agenda, but also because of the Austrian agenda is modularization of curricular. And in fact, this bologna process, is a process that is a driving force to modularization. It facilitates mobility and makes students makes it easier for students to move from one country and also from one university to another. And earn credits at and institutions all over Europe. It facilitates in fostering's lifelong learning.
Because we all know that if you have a modular curricula and you can learn in smaller entities throughout life, it makes it easier for the individual to reskill and upscale, as life happens. Yeah, and on top of that, it helps quality assurance because usually with every module, there is also standardized learning outcomes are defined and make it possible for the European credit transfer system to work. And from a student perspective, it, I think the biggest, positive aspect is, that it gives them the flexibility, to choose from a variety of and to create personalized study paths, that are really based on their interests and based on their career goals. For us, as a university of continuing education, we have older students, the Camvas, They have they have a life already. They have a career.
And, they they do not necessarily need this one stand study program that everybody has to take. But for them, it is important to have the option to really pick and choose and decide what competencies need to complete their profile and to be successful, in the workplace. Yeah. Now, what is a module in the Bologna system? So, a module in the Bologna system is a thematic combination of individual courses. A module can stand alone and it can also be completed in a predefined timeframe.
The idea is that modules can, and should be combined, in order to form bigger units and those bigger units according to the bologna system is, of course, a curriculum. So you have in Europe, you have curricula and they are broken up in modules and then the modules, they are broken up into courses. And for each module, we would describe learning outcomes, and we would set to workload. And of course modules are also graded. So as a European student, when you have your grades on a transcript, you see basically the title of your curriculum and the modules and the grades.
And I'm now going to give you a quick, look at what this looks at, my universe where we have a portfolio of competences that represent, those modules. And inside each module, we have the courses where one course is worth three European credit transfer points and then more courses are combined to bigger modules of six or seven ECTS points, and those together can form, a whole curriculum. And in the end, the students earn their decree. Now modularization in Canvas for those of you who are working with Canvas, you might realize said, oops, there is a bit of a pickle there because module in Canvas are something completely different to what modules are in Europe and are predefined by European Union. So this means we cannot escape this as a European institution.
We have to stick to this, but at the same time, we want to work within structure. We want work with Canvas because we think this also really fits our assistant. So I'm going to tell you about the solution that we are trying out that we found. And, yeah, the way we are trying to overcome this this conflict So what we have introduced at our institution is the module as a metacourse. And we have so for each module shell, we are creating a course.
We call this a meta course. And inside this core this meta course, we link off to different courses. In the medical course, students who are in a module can communicate with one another. The module leader can communicate with the students and also the learning path is organized. From this meta course, student can pick, the courses that they want to take.
Here you have an example of one of the templates that we have had designed. We are working together with a dream. And I realized they're already also in the exhibition hall They are a company from the Netherlands, who help European institutions adapt canvas so that it works with our regulations and our systems. And, here you can see in German at bottom. Students have the option to choose, obligatory courses, and then also elective course versus right from this meta course, that they are, part of.
And we have set the settings in ways so that students can inscribe themselves. So once they are inside a module, they jump off the courses, that they can pick and choose. We have also, because of this changed the organizational system around our teaching a little bit. We introduced module leaders and they are at the same time subaccount managers. And the subaccount managers, they have, an overview of all of the courses that are part of their modules.
They are the ones who administer the teachers who come and teach courses, or administrative assistants. They can also modify standards, of course, order templates. And, they can create reports about their their modules that they, are liters off. Not everything is shiny and not everything is easy and this is something that that we are starting to try end, we already know that there are some hindering aspects. We now know that because of this structure, we do have a lot of sub accounts and that is a bit tricky to to administer.
It helps that at our university of we don't have or we have a certain number of people who are module leaders, and there we often a couple of modules are led by one person. So that makes it a bit easier. We also realize that it is really important to have a proper knowledge to be established across all institutions. And by institutions here, I mean, faculties and departments and centers. So that they all work, with the same standards.
Before that, we we had a learning management system where pretty much every department could do whatever they liked. And, that of course created, well, very individual ways of teaching. And, it made it very difficult for department and teaching staff to collaborate and work together. Now this is something of the past. And, yeah, one other hindering aspect is that with those meta courses, of course, you kind of create additional courses.
And this means you have more courses on your dashboards. That is true for students, but that is also true for members of staff. And, the one of the the drawbacks is also that the actual study track of a student is not, traceable through this. So we are hoping and we're working together within structure to find ways where, this is something, that we can also get to to to the way we're, study paths are more track traceable and, and, yeah, all get learning analytics out from that. But of course, there are some positive aspects about this as well.
And the very, very first is that, those many set accounts that are independent from the university's, or organizational structure is that we create or we have decentralization. And, we get rid of the hierarchies within the faculties. And we really foster collaboration within, or across department across faculties. By having a lot of subaccount managers and module leaders, we create synergies and we have lots of people who create best practices that they also like to share. And one interesting aspect is also that by reports, that allow evaluation on the singular modules.
We also know which modules are more attractive for students, students, and and which are less attractive, which have to be developed and redeveloped. And, yeah, last one would be that modules can be booked easily by several study tracks. So this is something that is a huge benefit fit for for smaller universities because, we do not need to, have academic writing five times offered by three different faculties or this business class offered by three different faculty where we are creating a module and, we are putting it in different curricular and students from the study programs, study one same course, one same module. And, therefore, we are also following one of the goals of our university, which is a transdisciplinary approach where we create teams and also student teams who come from different backgrounds and different study programs and who work together on similar topics and solve problems together eventually. Yeah.
The vision for us at our university is to get from the left, where it says all to the new. We used to have, a clear path for student where students would initially choose the study program, and they had a preset, a preset curriculum and preset set to timetable. And now we want to go, to to this right hand side We still allow for this preset, curriculum to be possible for students who who want to have it easy, who don't, want to have of choices because we also know that exists. People who are overwhelmed by by choice. But, we also want to have, the right hand side where we make it possible for students to start with individually bookable offers, modules, or micro credentials, those that are pretty much modules.
And, then a long dural learning they can choose, pick and choose and, decide on what they want to do next. They don't have to decide everything right from the beginning because sometimes you study your studies. And then after two years, your life changes completely and you need something that is completely different. And here they have the chance to to to also change their learning path accordingly. And, earned a degree as they go along, and put together the modules in micro credentials.
So this is our vision where we hope, to create interesting offers for students who are in the middle of of their lives, who want to reskill upskill at a later point. And, yeah, earn a degree eventually. We, of course, do know that there is future challenges or challenges to overcome. One of them will be the coordination and planning, of all of this. And we see that Canvas and Instructure and some other partners are really assisting us in this way because it seems that all of their vision really aligns with our vision of where we create more personalized and individualized learning paths.
Of course, the assessment methods that have to be adapted per module, are are a challenge, also the integration with the crease. And I think in general, probably all institutions, the promotion of lifelong learning, the continuation of learning, and to making to make to make learning, really accessible for everybody, also at an academic level, at universities. And, yeah, this is already my last slide. It's a kind University, we know that we'll continue learning, within structure through the exchange with others. So thank you for being here.
Thank you for listening. I look forward to any questions you might have. And, stay connected, keep in touch. If you are in continuing education, if individualized learning's stackable learning is something that your institutions are focusing on. I'd be super happy to to connect and and get in touch.
And yeah, thank you very much. I see a hand up. Yeah. Sorry? I mean, because you haven't made four shelves. Yeah.
And then they have to that it's all linked to other course shells. Exactly. So, a student enrollment is in the module course shell. So, it is in the meta course. Yeah.
She also but they have access to Then they have from that, they have access to the, I call it, subcourses, and then they are enrolled in or they can describe themselves into the subcourses. But they are first first depicted module right. So if that's the case, doesn't mean that the, more shelves on public. No. They are sold or wrong.
Yeah. They sell people. Yeah. But they're not public. Yeah.
So I have a so you you're using these scores as a meta course, just basically as a Farfetch spot for Exactly. Floor the elementary thieving within Canvas? We we did explore many things. Yes. We also, tried out, or tried, we we were one of the first uses and testes of credentials and and pathways. Is, it changes the view at the subaccount level.
Yep. And it creates what is called a homeroom. It's meant for primary school -- Yep. -- students. But basically, what you are doing as the meta course.
You will probably need to manipulate the CSS so it won't look elementary. Maybe this is something we have never seen because we are not. Yeah. Because we are not is a homeroom, this medical course. Yeah.
And the subjects, the courses are attached to them. Okay. With the entry point, in instead of the dashboard. Yeah. This is basically what we created.
I'll show I'll show you. Yeah. Perfect. Meant for primary schools that a lot of easy boosters are using it to give about basically structures your subaccount. Okay.
Relate the subject for this unit. A new mechanic, you can actually change the CSS, so he won't lose. Yeah. Because he has, like, a phone painting and, you know, so things that look more for child and my children, but you can change that quite easily. And you work for I work for a few Okay.
Including instructor. Okay. Well, that that is great input. Thank you. It's not very similar to competencies.
It is yeah. Yeah. We are we are based basing everything on on on competencies. Yep. How many course might show up on a person's dashboard in this model.
It really depends on on what person we are talking about, whether you are. Look might they see on their dashboard in terms of the number of courses? Yeah. We have students who have about twenty or more different course overall. It is. Yeah.
And this is also I didn't know if this is a problem in in in the States as well because to most European institutions I have talked to. This is one of the biggest, things that everybody kind of complain about having a cluttered dashboard and having no chance to to kind of really declutter it in any simple and easy way. Would be a big usability issue for green desserts. And we had I don't work I work in a sort of a professional development setting. So it's on credit certificates.
And we want to log. Yeah. So that so that we're not, having our learners go to the dashboard. For that reason, Yeah. We also built an MVP with catalog.
Initially, we thought that we put our hopes in there. But in the end decided against stitch. So now we might use catalog just for our storefront to offer micro credentials. But not for the whole study programs that are still an option as well. Sorry.
I is there a term ending to the Not to, not to all of them. But we have, developed a, we call it roll over strategy. This is when when courses close and start up again. Because we do have courses that never end. And that is especially true for metacourses.
Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. So some sort of evaluation at the end of exam, like an a level of manual. So something that we're going to demonstrate on payments. Yes.
For for courses, definitely, and not for all modules. But some modules also have a final kind of, assessment, but it depends on on the type of module. Yes. And there's no way you're doing API codes to basically hide some of the for sharing the dashboard. So far, we Okay.
But you can, upload a JavaScript to do that? You you can't. We've we've done that where we actually pull it off. Oh, so you're basically taking the star out then will still be divorced without the document. Right. That that's what we do.
Yeah. For this particular case, would that be possible because you Exactly. And that makes it super tricky. But it is a question that we have as well and that we are not done exploring. So if anybody ever comes across an idea, to reach out, please.
Yes. So, are you explaining where the subaccounts come in? Is that the modules? Yes. The modules of subaccounts? Yes. Okay. Within the module, then you have the course.
Exactly. Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm curious. I think I'm not completely understanding the structure within the meta course. So each of the modules contains courses itself.
Like logistically, are those individual courses within the module within the meta course, all are are are those all contained within this same meta course? Like, within the same canvas course? So Or they redirect it somewhere else. They they are actual, actually all canvas courses. So the meta course is a canvas course, and the regular course is also canvas Otherwise, it would have been our perfect solution. But, it it doesn't work like that. So we had to to create this, this kind of system.
Gotcha. Sorry. I have one more question. Yeah. Go ahead.
So because they self enroll in the sub wash shelves, how do you have to be graded? How were actually, the data to whatever system you have in terms of, they completed this process because it's a continuous Yeah. The good thing about our other system is that it is super enclosed and you cannot automatically upload anything. So that has. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Yes. The meta course, how does the self enrollment work from the meta course? Simple as a what's that process like? It is fairly simple because once a student is in part of of the medical course, they see what you could see so this template.
And then we have, is where they can click on it, they are kind of transferred to the actual course where they can then self describe. But the administration of who gets into which module is done on this meta course and then what also makes what we then have is we have a certain number of of students who all want into this first course, which is part of the module, and then we know, okay, we open up the second course with the same content. Or we have a course that nobody feels like taking and then we can also push that and say okay we make this course a special course is offered as a single micro credential and have people from other areas come into that course, for example. Yes. But is your student getting enrolled? Is there any integration that enrolls the student in the meta course, or does the student pick the meta course in your campus Is that also manual? Or is it are they So that happens before, but we have, we have a learning agreement.
And, student advisors that were where students on which modules, they want to be enrolled in and then that is done manually. Maybe you said this, and I missed it. So are are the courses that they select, like self pay where there's no start and end date is just sort of a rolling notice. There's a fix. All of the so so it's different from module to module there are some self paced, modules and courses.
But there are others as well. And, the important thing here is communication, communication, communication. So make sure or communicate students when it's possible to enroll which, modules and courses and, also when modules and courses close because of course, the self paced courses, they also have assessment, in certain weeks. Would you have a start and end date, or would it just be leggard? Like, when do you when do you close of course if it's very self paced. So we have different rollover models for different modules that are part of different study programs.
So we have this one distance learning, program, which is an MBA program. That works slightly differently to in terms of timing throughout the year. And we do have an overlap. So for example, the first one starts in October and it will be open an entire year. And then the second one already starts when the year is not over and past, but yeah.
Yep. Sorry. I think you were first Sorry? How do you actually pay taxes? What do you mean? Some of these developments. Yes. It's self paced.
So, you are actually paying for the development of the not the facilitation side. We pay pay for both. Our faculty, they developed and student enrolled in the course. Is that how you work? Partly. So, there is different elements, but our financial team has a very complex system similar to what we have, for the European credit credit transfer system where we have the workload for students.
We also came up with a system for a workload for fatty or teaching staff. And, then of course, it depends on on how many students there enrolled per for a course, especially if it's a self paced course. But then there are other courses where, we know that we won't get that many students but, they are important courses because, there are certain social topics that are important, like Chanda diversity or certain STG topics, and then those courses, they are fully funded by the university, no matter how, how many students there in the course. Yeah. Is that, metacourse and sub course structure very templatized now where when you roll out new modules, it's easy to duplicate that on an administrative level? Or is it all, like, individual everything's kind of manual, new structure, new sub courses.
I think we're not there yet because, that that that that will be a good question to think about and answer in the future, but yeah, we've we are really at the beginning, this hole. Yeah. So for now, we know that we want to have certain things automated, but we know that right now. We also have a lot of staff who who have been used to to doing a lot of stuff manually and this is something we also want to keep for a while because if we automate everything like that, we would also have a problem on that side. Does, like, each sub account have its own medical course, like, business, and here's all the options, and then, like, an English major It's it's the other way around.
So each module has a subaccount. So we have lots of of subaccounts, actually. And then there is, for example, one person can be the owner of multiple subaccounts and modules. But it is it is not organized according to subjects, but according competences. Yeah, and and skills. Any other questions? If not, thank you very much. Thanks for staying with me.