| Dear colleagues, Here in SIAT we are very excited to partner with Kadenze. In the pilot project, we will be offering a SIAT course through their platform worldwide. It is a rather complicated agreement that took a long time to negotiate with all the FIPPA and other requirements. Let me try to explain: 1. Kadenze is a platform through which universities can offer their courses to world wide audience, similar to EdX or Coursera. 2. The new feature of Kadenze is that it offers three different ways of taking courses: i) browsing content for free, ii) membership model (approx $7/months) gives students full access to course material AND ability to participate in course activities, and iii) for some courses students can take the course for credit issued by the institution that offers the course (with fee per credit). 3. Kadenze shares the membership revenue and credit revenue with the university offering the course. How does this work for SFU students? We made an agreement to pilot one course via Kadenze. SIAT will be offering a course Introduction to Generative Arts and Computational Creativity by Dr. Philippe Pasquier (https://www.kadenze.com/courses/introduction-to-generative-arts-and-computational-creativity/info). It will be scheduled as SIAT special topics course, and students at SFU will be able to sign up for it. All the materials will be available via Kadenze platform, rather than via Canvas. SFU students will be using Kadenze’s membership model, with the membership fee waived (actually, deducted from SFU’s portion of the revenue). SFU students will pay they regular SFU fees and will receive SFU grades. There are two differences against ‘regular’ SFU courses: 1) it uses other learning management system (not that uncommon), 2) students will be able to interact with other students worldwide (read on). Can non-SFU students get SFU credit? These students enrol via Kadenze directly. If they decide to do the course for credit then they will pay the tuition to Kadenze (shared with SFU), and their work will be assessed using the same standards as for SFU students taking the course. The instructor will give each student the grade. We have to still work out technical aspects with issuing credits to these students for a single course, only then we can offer the course “for credit”. However, SFU is technically ready for this: http://bccampus.ca/2014/02/12/bctranscriptsbc-transfers-10000-electronic-records/, there are other minor issues such as security of electronic proctoring, etc. What about other courses offered via Kadenze? Any student, SFU or non-SFU, can take a course from any other institution. If they take it for credit, and receive the grade, then they can ask SFU to accept and count this credit towards their degree requirements. It is no different than the process we use for students transferring to SFU, only before it was nearly impossible to go and take one course at Princeton U. or Stanford U. and get actual transcript for it. It is up to the department to decide if they will count such a course as a general elective, a course towards degree, etc. What’s next? There were many aspects that needed to be sorted out and it took several months of work to prepare the agreement. The agreement was signed earlier this month. Now the work on the course content and video/media material begins , as well as technical work on remaining unresolved infrastructure issues. We are hoping to have all things in place for Summer 2016 offering, we will make sure that you find out about it from us first. Regards, Marek Dr. Marek Hatala :: Professor and Director :: School of Interactive Arts and Technology :: SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, 250-13450 102 Ave., Surrey, BC V3T 0A3, Canada :: Email: mhatala@sfu.ca, Web: www.siat.sfu.ca, www.sfu.ca/~mhatala/ :: Phone: 1.778.782.7431, Fax: 1.778.782.9422 On Jul 27, 2015, at 11:05 AM, Ronda Arab <ronda_arab@sfu.ca> wrote:
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