 Good afternoon everyone thanks for having me so today on the summit we have talked about Python in education and it seems to be that I'm in the other end of the spectrum here because this is university education so my name is Anna Sleeman and this is a compact view of my 20 years as a electronics engineer so I have had the luck and honor to have a very diverse career I think but now I work for the University of Ohus where I am teaching bachelor students in electronic engineering so the talk that I'm going to present to you today I'll go through these items here just short of what what we are doing now what kind of education we have now and what a little bit about how the Danish university education look a brief introduction to the online education landscape if you can call that and then I'll go into more about what are the challenges for for education for online education mainly what what can we foresee as challenges and and how should we address those challenges and I'll present what we are trying to do in our transformation of the existing education and lastly how Python can fit into to this online education of the university education so the existing education that we have today is we call it electronic design engineer it's an accredited bachelor education it takes three and a half years where there is a six months internship included we have a very good cooperation with the local industry so we are able to place almost all our students in companies for these six months and it tends to be that that after they have been six months at a company most of them will write their bachelor thesis at that company from tasks that these companies give them and a large percentage of those who have solved problems for the companies will continue in employment in these companies the education is located in herning which is in the best part of of Denmark it's not a large city but we are lucky to have a quite large number of industries and some of them are quite big the most the largest one is probably Siemens wind power which is located less than 20 miles from from the from the education and of course there's a lot of wind power related companies that support Vestas and and Siemens which are the largest wind power factories or industries we have so it's a kind of exclusive education we are we have we will only accept 40 students each year so it's kind of it's a small education so a little bit about University of Ouse so University of Ouse is the largest University in Denmark even though that Ouse is only the second largest city in Denmark but over the last five years there's been a lot of mergers in the Danish University sector so and actually well Ouse has swallowed up a large number of smaller campuses among them campus in herning so in Denmark the tuition is free on the University educations and the students will get an allowance while doing the studies and they can apply for as low interest student loans the the allowance is almost enough for the students to live off from it it's around 800 800 euros a month but they are also allowed to to work that there's a limit for how much they can earn in these student jobs but sometimes when when our students go abroad and talk about their conditions as a student people won't believe them but it's actually true and but I actually think it's a good idea I'm happy with this system because it it allows people to focus on their education and that's a good thing so of course we have all heard about these online these new guys in the in the education sector of course there are can University open medias and Stanford how to everyone and their mother seems to to have have offerings in in online education and and and I think that the traditional University education are slowly coming around to seeing that that there's a need for it there's a demand for for under online education efforts or offerings so but what we have seen in in herning of what we were trying to do in her we try to we're not going to emulate these offerings we are trying to take the best out of them and then provided in our setting we want to we want our education to still be accredited we want our students to be able to obtain this allowance so they that should be the same level of quality and control in order for for the education to still be accredited that's very important for us because that's how the university gets paid if the education loses its accreditation we cannot be reimbursed for the work that we are doing so it's extremely important that we don't lose that accreditation so the as we see it the online offerings that we we see is mostly focused on single subject single topics a single course eventually maybe a kind of certification that that can be used for to document your skills the way that they are taught is through short videos explaining the topic and then there will be some problems that the student can solve and after each larger section section there will be some tests either that the student will score themselves to to to see how they are doing or there will be if there are also offerings where the there will be a teacher or a system that grades the problem-solving skills of the students so this this is what we see that the way that the online education is going and of course it there's a lot of good thing is in this it's it's nice for for the students to be able to to study when they have the time and the the drive for it and it's and they can do it at home and in their own pace but we also see that there are some challenges to this approach especially if you want to have a full-time education based on on online offerings we we see a possible challenge in how how can we keep the online students focused how can we avoid that they spend too much time on everything else that you can do when you sit in front of a computer if we if we have full-time students that only doing their study through online offerings we there is a real danger then that the people get isolated that they won't they won't feel as as if they are part of a larger group or that they are all alone and stuff like that we we are actually we are fighting these things about isolation even though that we have a camp and we have people coming to classes even in those situations we actually see that there are some students that that for one or another reason gets isolated or feel alone so I think that's a real issue here also when when you are when you are when you're doing online learning you you are the driver for the motivation and it's of course so so online learning will to some its extent favorize people who are good at motivating themselves of course the people who are good at motivating themselves also have an advantage in traditional education but but I don't think that the motivation part is going to be smaller in online offerings and finally there's also some some challenges for for the teaching faculty we we need to put to plan differently we need to be better to anticipate questions but because if there's no the direct interaction with the students we have to prepare in a different way so I'll briefly go this is not a talk about learning theory but I would want to emphasize a few things that in the way that we look at teaching and learning of course if we talk about teaching then the important actor is the teacher so if we if we look at education as something that we have to teach then we will focus on the teacher and maybe that's not the most beneficial way to look at education or learning because maybe the outcome of the teaching should be that the student learns something also when when we as teachers feel that that our students didn't learn what we have had hoped or planned then we could very easily fall into this trap that that we could just say okay I did everything that I should I planned I had all these nice problems I had I made a very good lecture so if they didn't understand it they must be stupid so and that's that's a very dangerous thing to do I think to begin to look at your the student body and divided into groups the good students and the bad students because the good students that they're going to to well they're going to thrive anyways and if we kind of give up on the bad students we shouldn't call them bad students because they they don't exist I think that we we we have to accept that there are no good student or bad student there are only different ways of learning and and if we instead of focusing on the teacher focusing on the learning so that the outcome of of our teaching then we will focus on the student and we will begin asking questions like how would you prefer to learn how would you prefer to read or listen or look to videos do problem-solving or what is the best way for you to learn this this topic this subject other sometimes that are better than other and are there some places where you would prefer to to be learning these questions we can't really ask today because how is is really determined by the teacher when is determined by the classroom schedule and where is that's the on campus we can't really change that in the traditional settings but we have the possibility in the online situation we have to make we can make more allowances for for people to choose their learning environment so as a teacher in this in this setting our job it will be more to provide the tools and the curriculum to allow for the students to to have a learning process so what we're going to do in the new education is that we will we will offer this as an online this bachelor study as an online an online study but we will we will kind of we will try to mix it so there will be both on campus students and online students and they can mix and match as they want some on campus student can choose to to stay at home some days or week or whatever and some online students can choose to come to to the campus to to engage with the other students so but we want we want the start of the study to start with a week long boot camp where we gather all the students either or both the online and on campus students should come to this to campus so that we can set up the computers and form the teams that we will need during the study and well introduce them to the teachers and and get a relationship going between the students internally but also between the students and faculty the semester we will use this we call it's not an it's not our invention but the idea of the flipped classroom that will be the main way that we will go into teach so we will have the students will prepare for for the sessions which we all also will have they will plan by looking at videos at home doing small problems and so there will be video lectures and they have to read stuff and and think that so that they're prepared for the session the the online sessions or on campus station where where the where there will be discussion about what was what was the important part of the lessons for today and there will be problem-solving and stuff like that and there's a there's something that we haven't tried yet we don't know if it's going to work but we want to gather people both online and on campus on this in the same time so that people on campus can interact with the online students via via the internet so a little more about the flip classroom room in the top we have the traditional class the teacher is going through the topic for the today and the the students are listening and then they go home one by one and and study the primarily the text for for the class in the flip classroom there will be a preparation part where the students are prepared for the lessons at home and then when they come to the lesson the teacher will be more a facilitator than a lecturer and the students will engage with the topics and with each other so that they they use the preparation in the classroom and they can use the discussions between the students to to further improve their learning that's the idea will as I said it's not our invention and it seems that they have been quite successful stories about it so we are going to use a dope connect for the collaboration part and life size for streaming it's not really important this is in electronics study so we will we have made this box with all this stuff that the engineer will need so there will be a breadboard PC oscilloscope and embed computer and all the tools that they need so that they can do exercises at home we will they will get this the first week and they will take that home so they can use it by themselves the on campus campus to students of course will be able to use laboratories facilities that we have on the campus so final topic and I think I'm almost out of time so how can we use Python in online education well of course you can use Python for teaching program that's that's no not really any news but I think it's actually a very good way of teaching computer science also but since this is a case in which focus on embedded systems we need to supplement it with some C so that that they can that the students will have that on the CVE as well I want to use the ipython notebook as a MATLAB replacement and I think that's perfectly reasonable but we'll see I'm not the only teacher on my education so okay so when this is just an observation that when we have these internships we go and and well we talk with the students while they are at the internship to see if they are all right and then we actually more times and not discover that Python actually is used in the industries for different things so I don't think it's necessarily a downside to be able to write in your on your CV that you have used Python during your education I think that's that's perfectly valid to have that so I'm at the end you can read this I have spent all my time so thank you thank you Anders any questions hi thanks for the talk you mentioned students potentially becoming disengaged and isolated if they're online only students how do you know if that's happening do you do any analysis of of their usage and if you do see someone who's gone like that what you do about it so what I didn't discuss here was how we are going to follow up throughout the semester but we will have one-to-one Skype sessions with with the online students we do that already with the on campus students we talk to them more times throughout the semester to see how they are how they work if the curriculum is suitable for them or if they are the teamwork is okay and stuff like so we try to to interview our students in order to to make sure that they are they are okay but that's something that we value that there should be a very close closeness between the students and the faculty we want to have that and we want to be approachable as well so and that's also why we want this bootcamp to to actually show ourselves as well we are teachers but we are also human beings and we are not dangerous any more questions no thank you