Breaking the Waves Dynamic framework

In the first 32 months after its publication in 2021, the *Coastal Dynamics Open Textbook (CDOT) was downloaded 15,500 times by users from at least 41 countries. At TU Delft, it supports the MSc course Coastal and Estuarine Systems at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. Despite its success, two challenges remained in maximizing the (re)usability of the textbook and embedding Open Educational Resources in teaching. 

“We wanted to provide interaction functionality to the textbook, so that students can reinforce their skills and knowledge in an active learning by-doing process,” says Judith Bosboom, senior lecturer and one of the two authors of the textbook. “We also wanted to keep our teaching materials up-to-date and establish a strong link between Open Research, Open Data and Open Education.”   

Interactive content 

Co-funded by the Open Education Stimulation Fund, a team of lecturers, assistant professors, and PhD candidates set out to develop the Coastal Dynamics Open Codebook. “The Coastal Codebook uses open-source software to provide interactive tutorials that help the students reflect on the textbook material,” says José Antolínez, Assistant Professor and co-developer of the open codebook. “It provides coding examples, example datasets, and knowledge sources the students can use for doing their own exercises. It then is their task to reach the objectives we set.” 

The funding was used to hire additional development support staff; a student and a graduate from the Hydraulic Engineering MSc track that the Coastal Systems course is part of. They developed much of the content of the Coastal Codebook – together with the PhD candidates, who also contribute as teaching assistants to the Coastal Systems course. Students of the course have been essential too, by providing feedback on a preliminary release of the Codebook. “The new version is being released this year, sequentially, from January onwards,” Bosboom says. “In this way we can continue to use the experiences of the students of our Coastal Systems course, running in Q3, to improve the Codebook.”  

Dynamic framework 

The idea was for the Coastal Codebook to gradually evolve over time – staying up to date, rather than having it edited only every now and then. “The content can quickly be adjusted to absorb new research findings and data in a transparent way,” says PhD Candidate Floris Calkoen, who was responsible for the back-end development of the Codebook. “We therefore leverage tools from the Jupyter ecosystem, a new and emerging educational technology that is dynamic.” 

The Coastal Codebook has also been built to function across all operating systems, maximising its functionality and reach. Bosboom: “It can eventually also be run on remote servers, solving any software challenges students may have on personal devices.” 

Transforming education 

The development of the Coastal Dynamics Open Codebook served as a pilot for the current transformation of the Hydraulic Engineering MSc track within the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. “The Coastal Systems course with its Coastal Dynamics Open Textbook already was a quite complete and well-developed course,” Antolínez says. “Even so, there still was the ambition to further improve it. We thought this was a good basis for developing the Coastal Codebook.” 

The pilot was well received by the department and a similar transformation initiative has been started for other courses, such as the Dredging for Sustainable Infrastructure course. “It will also feature an open codebook, created using our development platform,” Antolínez says. Bosboom: “We hope that, in time, the platform can serve as an example for dynamic educational course material well beyond the boundaries of TU Delft.” 

Contributors: 

• Judith Bosboom, Senior lecturer, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty     
• José A. Á. Antolínez, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty 
• Floris Calkoen, PhD Candidate, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty   
• Stuart Pearson, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty   
• Chris Hoogervorst, Education Development Officer, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty   
• Mia Pupić Vurilj, PhD Candidate, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty      
• Jakob Christiaanse, PhD Candidate, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty    
• Mario van den Berg, PhD Candidate, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty     
• Kevin de Bruijn, MSc student, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty    
• Dani Guerra Medina, MSc student, Civil Engineering and Geosciences faculty