What is the initiative and where is it implemented (city or country, for example)?
Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (TU Delft) started an Open Educational Resource (OER) that includes courses on clean water technology for developing countries. These resources have been updated by universities in South Africa, Singapore, the Antilles and Indonesia to include information on water-treatment processes from their regions, making a collaborative resource on drinking-water engineering available online to anyone who wishes to learn more.
How was the initiative established? How was it implemented?
UNESCO defines open educational resources (OERs) as ‘teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions’ (UNESCO, 2019). They are a form of technology-enhanced learning which can mitigate the attendance requirements of full-time study at universities by allowing people to follow a formal course while working; enables easier delivery of materials from lecturers to students and vice versa; and connects learners to people and resources that can support their educational needs online.
Which stakeholders are involved in the design and/or implementation of the initiative? Which sectors do they represent?
Delft University of Technology has developed a range of massive open online courses (MOOCs) available through Delft OpenCourseWare on the university's website (TU Delft, n.d.). The programmes are categorized thematically and stretch across high school, Bachelor, Master’s, and in several cases, Doctoral levels of education. The themes include a wide diversity of topics covering sustainability and environmental issues, such as energy, water, infrastructure and mobility, and health.
The Watermanagement programme is offered at the Master’s level and comprises two courses:
- Introduction to drinking water treatment;
- Introduction to water and climate.
Introduction to drinking water treatment focuses on urban water services and conventional technologies for drinking-water treatment. The course emphasizes the effect of treatment on water quality and the dimensions of the unit processes in the treatment chain (TU Delft, 2021). The course was granted the Award for Open Education Excellence in 2014. In the same year it was shortlisted for the Wharton Award for offering the first online laboratory experiment in drinking-water treatment.
Introduction to water and climate is a six-module course focusing on global water cycles, water systems, water and climate change, interventions, water resource management and climate change challenges. Each module is led by experts in the field (TU Delft, 2021a).
What are the impacts of the initiative in terms of facilitating lifelong learning? Whom does it benefit and how?
OERs make an important contribution to opening up lifelong learning opportunities: they enable people of all ages to access tools to enrich their lives and find out more about the world (UNESCO, 2019).
Technology helps colleges and universities to extend their traditional campus-based services to distant (off-campus) and online modes, and has formed the basis of distance education for many years. A common approach is ‘blended learning’, whereby physical attendance and online learning complement each other, increasing the number of learning opportunities available to different communities.
References
TU Delft, n.d. Delft OpenCourseWare. [Online] Available at: https://ocw.tudelft.nl/ [Accessed 25 July 2021].
TU Delft, 2021a. Introduction to water and climate. [Online] Available at: https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/introduction-water-climate/#1498734511658-ca9ce5e3-eeb0 [Accessed 5 April 2021].
TU Delft, 2021. OpenCourseWire: Introduction to drinking water treatment. [Online] Available at: https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/introduction-to-drinking-water-treatment/ [Accessed 5 April 2021].
UNESCO, 2019. Open Educational Resources (OER). [Online] Available at: https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer [Accessed 5 April 2021].