poster presented at onderwijsdag uhasselt

Facts & Figures • International Master (2 years; 120 ECTS) • Four specializations:

• Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, Epidemiology and Public Health Methodology , and International Course Programme Biostatistics

• Educational design: • Lectures, compulsory readings & homeworks, practice sessions, PBL, projects

• Assessment: • Written and oral exams, essays, projects, presentations, MA Thesis, Internship

Challenges • Living in Belgium is very expensive for participants from

economically developing coutries • Limited number of participants receive a scholarship • Current educational design not optimal for working students

Blended and Distance Programme: Master of Statistics

Transition from a regular Face2Face Master to Blended Education.

Possible solution: Offer the MA as

Blended Education: Online delivery of content, online

interations with teachers and peers and some F2F components in the

educational design.

1. Current situation

2. Scenario of the transition

3. Considerations

Educational design • Macro level: educational concept

• Specific learning outcomes, consistency with UHasselt’s vision on teaching and learning • Meso level: the curriculum as a whole

• Curriculummapping • Micro level: each of the individual courses and their teachers

Every described step implies conducting research • Scientific educational research: e.g. learning efficiency, educational development, educational

technologies,… • Desk research: e.g. study guides UHasselt, comparison of educational tools,… • Consulting teachers and staff at CenStat to gain insights in their (support) needs, to assess their

openness to innovation, their implicit ideas about their course and its innovations,…

• Assessment: different possible scenarios: • Students move to Hasselt once or twice a year to do their exams? • Satellite institutions (local universities?) conduct exams and send them to Hasselt? • Online examination forms?

• Technology: bandwith connection in developing countries? • Interaction:

• peer-to-peer: facilitate contact and group work with local Hasselt students? How to let students feel part of the group?

• Teacher–student: how to facilitate this contact? • Course setup: teacher centred? student centred? content and learning materials centred? • Tryout of the blended program? Ethical issue: can’t mess with someone’s chance of success • Motivation: how to avoid high dropout rates? (Currently big challenge in open and online

education)

CenStat/I-Biostat

Stephanie Verbeken; Prof. Dr. Marc Aerts

Contact CenStat, Centre For Statistics

Agoralaan Building D, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium [email protected]; +32 (0)11 26 8257

[email protected]; +32 (0)11 26 8247