Moving Beyond OER: USNH
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
5 likes•1,452 views
This document discusses moving beyond open educational resources (OER) to broader open education strategies. It defines OER and reviews studies showing OER are of similar or better quality than traditional resources and have similar or better learning outcomes. The document advocates for integrating OER into ongoing course design rather than as a special project. It discusses open pedagogy, policy support for open education, and creating global change through alignment and planting seeds for an open future. The goal is to reconsider approaches to teaching and learning through open education.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Moving Beyond OER: USNH
Similar to Moving Beyond OER: USNH (20)
More from The Open Education Consortium
More from The Open Education Consortium (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Moving Beyond OER: USNH
- 1. Moving Beyond OER: Open Education Strategies for Change Mary Lou Forward Executive Director Open Education Consortium mlforward@oeconsortium.org Unless otherwise indicated, this presentation is licensed CC-BY 4.0
- 2. WE NEED TO KNOW WHERE WE ARE If we’re moving beyond
- 5. What are Open Educational Resources? Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or repurposing by others.
- 7. Why do you use OER?
- 9. Source: Opening the Textbook, Babson group, 2016
- 10. Are OER any good?
- 11. 12 Peer Reviewed Studies of Perceptions of OER Quality http://openedgroup.org/
- 12. 5,201 Professors and Students http://openedgroup.org/
- 14. Babson OER survey Source: Opening the Curriculum, Babson Group, 2014
- 15. 13 Peer Reviewed Studies of Efficacy http://openedgroup.org/
- 17. 95% Same or Better Outcomes http://openedgroup.org/
- 18. Are OER any good? 85% Same or better quality 95% Same or better outcomes Yes.
- 19. Let’s not forget cost.
- 24. BIGGER PICTURE Yay OER! Yay USNH!
- 25. http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ISS042&roll=E&frame=294940 Public Domain You are here
- 26. Open Education Allows Higher Education to reconsider approaches to teaching and learning
- 28. Internal Inputs Institutional characteristics • Policies supporting OER • Training and PD • Course redesign support • Librarian/IT capacity • Institutional culture Instructor characteristics • OER experience • Attitudes toward OER • Experience teaching and with the course • Comfort with technology • Time spent on course redesign and in training • Status at the institution Student characteristics • Demographics • Finances and employment status • Comfort with technology • Access to technology • Prior achievement • Academic engagement Program Activities & Implementation • Course pathway planning • Collaborative course (re)design • Selecting and vetting OER content • Developing and adapting OER course content • Marketing to students and advisors • Communications with faculty and other stakeholders • Certifying courses as OER • Greater institutional emphasis on pedagogy and collaboration • Increased OER degree availability and sustainability • Changed faculty perceptions of OER • Changed faculty teaching practices • Greater availability of certified OER courses • *Reduction in student debt • *Increased certificate and degree attainment • *Increased rate of transfer to a 4- year college Long-term Outcomes Logic Model – OER Degree Initiative Intermediate Outcomes • Impact on bookstore revenue • Impact on tuition and fee revenue • Recurring costs for OER course design and maintenance • More faculty teaching OER courses • More faculty participating in OER course design and content creation • Students attempting more credits • Improved course outcomes • Improved student retention and degree progression • Student cost savings External Inputs • OER course content • Technical assistance (Lumen) • Community of practice (CCCOER) Student Actions & Behavior • Use of OER course materials • Consumption patterns (on/off line) * - these outcomes are likely outside the timeframe of the study
- 29. eResources at UMUC Goal Every course will use electronic resources that are of no cost to the student. Milestones • By fall 2014, 50% of all undergrad courses have been through the eResources revision process. • By fall 2015, 100% of all undergrad courses will have been through the process (974 courses) • By fall 2016, 100% of all graduate courses will have been through the process.
- 31. Evolution of educational resources OLD • Adopt • Link • Insert Resources • Treat eResources as a special project New • Adapt and Build • Embed • Design around electronic resources • Integrate eResources into ongoing course design and development
- 33. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration: Open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning. Understanding and embracing innovations like these is critical to the long term vision of this movement. Source: http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration The Open Education Consortium: Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide. Source: http://www.oeconsortium.org/about-oec/ Opensource.com: Open education is a philosophy about the way people should produce, share, and build on knowledge. Proponents of open education believe everyone in the world should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources, and they work to eliminate barriers to this goal. Such barriers might include high monetary costs, outdated or obsolete materials, and legal mechanisms that prevent collaboration among scholars and educators. Source: https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-education
- 35. OPEN PEDAGOGY Creating impact through
- 42. Commitment 9 Map existing digitally available educational resources at the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport and its directly managed organizations and identify those that can be released under the Creative Commons Attribution open license. Responsible: Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport Deadline: June 30, 2015 Commitment 10 Map existing repositories at the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport and its directly managed organizations. Define what characteristics should be satisfied by the central repository for storing open educational resources. Determine which of the existing repositories can be used for publishing open educational resources, including estimated necessary adjustments and anticipated financial impacts. Responsible: Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport Deadline: June 30, 2015 It appears that the current procurement process of educational resources does give the contracting authority sufficient flexibility to release these resources under an open license. This process therefore needs to be revisited and adjusted. Also, considering that the process of purchasing learning resources also affects issues of copyright and public procurement, it is appropriate for the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport to cooperate with the Ministry of Culture (Copyright Act) and the Office for Public Procurement.
- 47. CREATING GLOBAL CHANGE Planting the seeds
- 55. ALIGNMENT Open
- 56. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=885 public domain Open Education is here
- 62. •15 years ago the term “Open Educational Resources” was created, the Budapest Open Access Initiative was launched, and the first Creative Commons licenses were released; •10 years ago the Cape Town Open Education Declaration was written; •5 years ago the first Open Education Week took place and the first OER World Congress was held, resulting in the Paris OER Declaration. The Year of Open is an opportunity for everyone working towards an open future to make some noise, to bring attention to what we're doing, why we do it, and what impacts it has. The Year of open is also a time for action: to invite others to join us in creating a collaborative, effective, engaging, and equitable future.
- 63. Source: Opening the Textbook, Babson group, 2016
- 69. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Starting with where we are, and for most of us it’s OER.
- And since we’re starting with OER, we’re pretty familiar with it. If someone came up and asked you “What are OER?”, you’d be able to answer
- Pretty standard definition of OER (this one from the US Dept of Education)
- One of the things that makes it fairly easy to define OER is that they’re tangible, open things. You can identify what resources are and discuss how they function in education. They’re familiar.
- Let’s say someone asks why you use OER
- To me, one of the biggest advantages is freedom. OER gives you choice and the ability to choose at different scales, from defining one concept to selecting an open textbook for the whole course. You can also choose, customize, adapt and change as you go along and see how students are responding to the course. You aren’t bound to a defined path, like a chapter-by-chapter rollout.
- Let’s ignore the awareness statistic on this slide for now (we’ll come back to it later). Focusing on the other topic here, faculty are primarily the decision makers for resources for their classes, so this freedom benefit of OER is available to most faculty. In selecting materials, no surprise, quality and efficacy are the most important criteria.
- So, if quality and efficacy are the most important criteria for selecting materials, how do OER measure up?
- (slide from the Open Ed group) In terms of student and teacher perceptions of OER, 2,717 students and 2,484 faculty members were surveyed across the nine peer-reviewed studies. Approximately 50% said that the OER resources were as good as traditional resources, 35% said the OER were superior and 15% said they were inferior. Allen, I., Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014. Bliss, T., Robinson, T. J., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). An OER COUP: College teacher and student perceptions of Open Educational Resources. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1–25. Bliss, T., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Thanos, K. (2013). The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. First Monday, 18:1. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint). Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Lindshield, B., & Adhikari, K. (2013). Online and campus college students like using an open educational resource instead of a traditional textbook. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(1), 1–7. Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton‐Detzner, C., Walling, J., & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: Implications for teachers and learners. Open learning, 26(1), 39-49, Pitt, R., Ebrahimi, N., McAndrew, P., & Coughlan, T. (2013). Assessing OER impact across organisations and learners: experiences from the Bridge to Success project. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(3). Jhangiani, R. S., Pitt, R., Hendricks, C., Key, J., & Lalonde, C. (2016). Exploring faculty use of open educational resources at British Columbia post-secondary institutions. BCcampus Research Report. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. https://bccampus.ca/files/2016/01/BCFacultyUseOfOER_final.pdf, Pitt, R. (2015). Mainstreaming Open Textbooks: Educator Perspectives on the Impact of OpenStax College open textbooks. The International Review of Research in Open And Distributed Learning, 16(4). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2381/3497 and CA OER Whitepaper
- In terms of student and teacher perceptions of OER, 2,717 students and 2,484 faculty members were surveyed across the nine peer-reviewed studies. Approximately 50% said that the OER resources were as good as traditional resources, 35% said the OER were superior and 15% said they were inferior. Allen, I., Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014. Bliss, T., Robinson, T. J., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). An OER COUP: College teacher and student perceptions of Open Educational Resources. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1–25. Bliss, T., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Thanos, K. (2013). The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. First Monday, 18:1. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint). Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Lindshield, B., & Adhikari, K. (2013). Online and campus college students like using an open educational resource instead of a traditional textbook. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(1), 1–7. Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton‐Detzner, C., Walling, J., & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: Implications for teachers and learners. Open learning, 26(1), 39-49, Pitt, R., Ebrahimi, N., McAndrew, P., & Coughlan, T. (2013). Assessing OER impact across organisations and learners: experiences from the Bridge to Success project. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(3). Jhangiani, R. S., Pitt, R., Hendricks, C., Key, J., & Lalonde, C. (2016). Exploring faculty use of open educational resources at British Columbia post-secondary institutions. BCcampus Research Report. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. https://bccampus.ca/files/2016/01/BCFacultyUseOfOER_final.pdf, Pitt, R. (2015). Mainstreaming Open Textbooks: Educator Perspectives on the Impact of OpenStax College open textbooks. The International Review of Research in Open And Distributed Learning, 16(4). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2381/3497 and CA OER Whitepaper
- (Slide from the Open Ed Group) Result from the meta-study is that 85% of professors and students found OER as good as or better than traditional materials. The perception of the quality of OER is very high.
- Similar results found by the Babson Group in their 2014 survey.
- (slide from the Open Ed Group) Across 13 academic studies that attempted to measure results pertaining to student learning (higher ed: 15784 treatment, 99,692 control, k12: 1805 treatment 2439 control) none showed results in which students who utilized OER performed worse than their peers who used traditional textbooks. Allen, G., Guzman-Alvarez, A., Molinaro, M., Larsen, D. (2015). Assessing the Impact and Efficacy of the Open-Access ChemWiki Textbook Project. Educause Learning Initiative Brief, January 2015. See also this newsletter. Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., Lack, K. A., & Nygren, T. I. (2012). Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials. Ithaka S+R. Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., Lack, K. A., & Nygren, T. I. (2014). Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from a Six‐Campus Randomized Trial. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), 94-111. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint) Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Hilton, J., & Laman, C. (2012). One college’s use of an open psychology textbook. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 27(3), 201–217. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02680513.2012.716657. (Open Repository Preprint). Lovett, M., Meyer, O., & Thille, C. (2008). The open learning initiative: Measuring the effectiveness of the OLI statistics course in accelerating student learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2008 (1). Pawlyshyn, Braddlee, Casper and Miller (2013). Adopting OER: A Case Study of Cross-Institutional Collaboration and Innovation. Educause Review. Robinson, T.J. (2015). Open Textbooks: The Effects of Open Educational Resource Adoption on Measures of Post-secondary Student Success (Doctoral dissertation). Robinson T. J., Fischer, L., Wiley, D. A., & Hilton, J. (2014). The impact of open textbooks on secondary science learning outcomes. Educational Researcher, 43(7): 341-351. Wiley, D., Hilton, J. Ellington, S., and Hall, T. (2012). “A preliminary examination of the cost savings and learning impacts of using open textbooks in middle and high school science classes.” International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. 13 (3), pp. 261-276. This also includes Fischer et al (2015), Wiley et al. (EPAA) (2016), and Hilton et al. (IRRODL) (in press)
- (slide from the Open Ed Group)
- (slide from the Open Ed Group) Meta study showed that 95% of students performed as well or better with OER than they did with traditional materials.
- So, when you’re asked if OER are any good, you can confidently say yes. The concern that OER is of lower quality than traditional materials has been solidly shown to be unfounded. OER are effective and high quality.
- Sometimes faculty don’t want to mention cost as a reason to embrace OER, but cost savings are very real to administrators, students and their families
- The Maricopa Millions project of the Maricopa Community College District in Arizona, one of the largest community college districts in the country, set out with the explicit goal to save students $5 Million over 5 years. This is how they created and justified the project, and how they got administrators and faculty on board. Students who can’t afford materials are disadvantaged in learning. Providing open materials gives everyone access. The response by faculty participating in substituting paid materials for free or open materials has been great. In three years the savings is already more than $7.5 million.
- (image in the public domain) I have a son in college. This semester his textbooks and access codes needed to submit his homework cost $751. We sometimes hear the rationale that if students didn’t spend their money on books, they would spend it on pizza and beer. This is ridiculous. Students don’t have $751 to spend on pizza and beer in one semester. And the cost of textbooks are born by many families, not just the students themselves. And families aren’t spending $751 a semester on pizza and beer either. $751 is the cost of a tank of heating oil where I live. $751 is about the average expense of owning our dog for a year. So, do we turn the heat off or stop feeding the dog?
- For community college students the choices can be even worse. Many community college students are working lower paying jobs while going to school. Their choices may be paying rent or food vs buying textbooks. Some community colleges are being very proactive about this, for example, Northern VA CC has a suite of courses that are digital open courses, with no textbook costs. They put this right in the catalog so students can select courses that use OER if textbook cost is a big concern for them.
- UNH also touts the benefits of cost savings. This is a common and compelling rationale for an institutional OER project, and a clear way to measure impact.
- So, now that we know where we are with OER, let’s venture beyond
- First, a look at the landscape of Open Education
- This is something I say a lot as a big benefit of embracing Open Education. But what does it mean?
- You have probably heard of the OER Degree Initiative for which 38 colleges across the US were awarded grants to develop full degree pathways using OER in place of paid materials. The description of the project says: he initiative—which involves 38 community colleges in 13 states —is designed to help remove financial roadblocks that can derail students’ progress and to spur other changes in teaching and learning and course design that will increase the likelihood of degree and certificate completion. http://achievingthedream.org/resources/initiatives/open-educational-resources-oer-degree-initiative
- This is the logic model of the OER Degree Initiative. You can see that the success of the OER initiative depends on some internal inputs, like the Institutional readiness to embrace OER, and has a immediate goals that more faculty will use OER and there will be cost savings – goals that are often stated for OER projects. However, the long term objectives are really interesting, including changed teaching practices, changed institutional culture, increased degree attainment. This is not to say that by using OER, all teaching practices will improve or retention will magically rise. But OER adoption becomes the vehicle that allows these other things to happen. Deliberate consideration of course goals, student outcomes, alignment of materials to these goals and content and openness to pedagogy that involves students in the course delivery more deliberately leads to these goals, and OER is the catalyst for these things to happen.
- The next 3 slides are from the University of Maryland University College. UMUC embraced a zero materials cost policy for their students, most of whom are adult students participating at great distance online, making buying materials even more complicated.Their description of this process follows. In Maryland, students spent an average of $1300 on textbooks and supplies in the 2012-2013 academic year. Nearly three dozen states, including Maryland (e.g., the Maryland College Textbook Competition and Affordability Act of 2009), have passed legislation in an attempt to rein in costs to students. Our President, Javier Miyares, has clearly articulated the vision for UMUC to continue to be the quality, low cost educational solution for adult students. In order to help UMUC do its part to bring textbook costs under control, Provost Marie Cini commissioned a University-wide effort called “eResources.” The long term goal is to drive the cost for learning resources for UMUC courses, paid by the student, to zero. For the undergraduate school, this means replacing the textbook in every course by a set of quality, electronic resources that support learning. These resources will cost the student nothing. In order to achieve this goal, the we established three important milestones: By Fall 2014, 50% of all TUS courses will have been through the eResources revision process By Fall 2015, 100% of all TUS courses will have been through the process By Fall 2016, 100% of all TGS courses will have been through the process
- UMUC put together a team of people to take this on, including faculty, librarians and instructional designers working in partnership to identify course goals and align the materials and delivery of content to these goals. Adoption of open resources became the vehicle driving course redesign and deliberate reconsideration of all academic offerings at UMUC.
- This process lead the university to think of course materials differently. Previously, materials were an add-on, now they are one of the key building blocks of the course. This culture change also included a reconsideration of non-faculty educators, including librarians and instructional designers, as moving from external support to integral partners in helping faculty achieve their vision for the course and helping students succeed.
- You are probably familiar with the SAMR model of educational technology adoption. When just starting with technology in education, educators generally substitute one technology for another with no real change to the course or content, for example, substituting online calendars for paper syllabi. As the educator becomes more familiar and more comfortable with technology, and begins to see how it can be used to improve course delivery, they move through the other stages until the course has been transformed. This same model applies very well to Open Education. Educators may start with substitution of openly licensed photos in their slide presentations, move to adopting OER or an open textbook with annotations, and eventually embrace a new pedagogy that is more satisfying and more effective for student learning.
- Let’s take a look, then at definitions of Open Education. We started with where we are – OER – which is tangible and fairly easy to define. Open Education is much less easy to define. You see in these definitions that Open Education is more than just open resources, but what that more is can be harder to concretize. We see just from these three definitions that Open Education is defined as tools, resources and practices; a philosophy; technology and sharing.
- This is a visual we produced to try to encompass these various aspects of Open Education. We’ll take a closer look at a couple of them.
- This is the blog of Tony Bates, a prolific writer about open, distance and online education. To him, Open Pedagogy is one that turns traditional, lecture based pedagogy on its head. Instead of knowledge management being the exclusive domain of the instructor, we need to give power to the students to shape their own learning and their courses. The role of the instructor then really becomes one of a facilitator of learning, not a provider of knowledge.
- Another big thinker in open pedagogy is one of USNH’s own: Robin DeRosa. She presented to this group a couple years ago when she talked about the need to stop thinking of students as empty heads into which the instructor pours education, and start thinking of students as full collaborators in the educational experience, active contributors to shaping what they learn and how they learn it. Read Robin’s blog for how she has been putting this into practice. https://robinderosa.net/
- Someone else you should pay attention to used to also be part of USNH. Mike Caulfield was at Keene State, and now is at Washington State. He has been writing about Choral Expressions that can be made possible through open education. He means that everyone can contribute their perspectives to a topic to help others learn, and it creates a harmony of explanations and viewpoints that lend a depth of understanding to that topic. He uses the example of a student reading about mitosis in an open biology textbook. If they don’t understand that, they can click on a link that might take them to a pinterest-like page of examples, explanations, videos, simulations, etc that explain or demonstrate the concept. One of these examples may be exactly what the student needs to “get it”, or could deepen their understanding by showing the concept in action. Take something perhaps more controversial as an example – say, free trade – and these examples, viewpoints, illustrations, projections could really help learners understand both the complexity of an issue and the range of viewpoints, presented in an educational manner (that is, free from nasty comments and rhetoric, unlike what they might see in the comments section of an online article or blog post). Read Mike’s blog for more: Mike Caulfield https://hapgood.us/2016/10
- This transformational evolution coming from open education is not just happening in the US. The European project Open Education Europa has recently transformed from focusing on OER and MOOCs to open pedagogy.
- Let’s consider another part of the open education ecosystem: policy
- You may be familiar with the Open Government Partnership. This is an initiative to make governments more transparent and responsive to its citizens. 75 governments around the world have signed on to make commitments to becoming more Open. These are binding commitments to which the government must allocate resources.
- The government of Slovakia was the first to include Open Education in its Open Government Partnership commitments. They committed to opening up resources and repositories, and creating national repositories that would include OER. Of particular note is that they recognized, in their binding commitment to the program, that the current system for buying educational resources did not serve this desire to make national resources open, and put in their commitment that the process for selecting educational resources, which are all are paid by the government in Slovakia, should be revised.
- The US has also made commitments to open education. This commitment is to expanding access to educational materials by investing in OER, including a commitment to openly license the products of federally licensed grants.
- One outcome of this is the newly released Open Licensing Playbook, a collaboration between many organizations involved in open education and several US government agencies, convened by the US Department of State.
- This is the table of contents for the playbook. Although written for government agencies, the considerations, examples and key questions are useful for any organization considering a open licensing policy and/or practice.
- Another way the US produced on its commitment to open education is through the GoOpen initiative for K12. This initiative is aimed at states to develop state-wide policies supporting OER and to share best practices and impacts.
- We’ve been discussing some pretty big things, but these things all started small. I want to talk now about some projects that started small and are now creating big changes on the national, regional and international levels.
- This is the recently launched OER Lebanon site. This site is dedicated to promoting OER adoption and creation in Lebanon and across the Middle East and North Africa. It started when one administrator from one university came to the US on a State Department sponsored exchange to learn more about Open Education and Open Educational Resources. The group spent 3 weeks in the US visiting universities, meeting people and seeing the positive outcomes. Fawzi Baroud, the VP of Technology at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, went back home, considered how OER could positively impact his university, started talking with his colleagues, making presentations, collaborating on projects, and soon the OER Lebanon group was formed and OER has a visible place in higher ed in the region.
- From that same professional development exchange program, a professor at Jordan University of Science and Technology became energized by the possibilities of OER. JUST is now in the process of forming a national center for the promotion of Open Education, including examination of how open education can serve the 2 million+ refugees that are in camps 20 miles from JUST’s campus. The head of the National eLearning Center of Saudi Arabia has seen the importance of open education for his country, and is spearheading the creation of a national policy on open education. And ALECSO, the educational, scientific and cultural organization for the Middle East and North Africa has also embraced the promotion and use of OER as a key to increasing access and effectiveness in the region. They have held workshops, incubated projects, supported national and international efforts and developed an organizational plan. All this from a small group and a professional exchange.
- UNESCO has also embraced the importance of open education, particularly in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable Development Goal #4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. UNESCO held a meeting at the World Education forum to deliver clear targets in support of Sustainable Development goal 4. This roadmap, called the Framework for Action, guides UN member states to create programs to reach this goal. Included in this is explicit support for OER.
- Text of the Education 2030 Framework for Action, #43 in support of educational technology, distance education and OER. This is a major international educational document, guiding the actions of UN member states for the next dozen years or more.
- Some scholars are looking at ways that Open Education supports other sustainable development goals, such as goal 5: to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls. Aligning open education to sustainable development goals shows their potential to bring about positive change.
- And next Fall, UNESCO is sponsoring the second world OER congress. The process of gathering input from UN member states is happening now.
- Mitja Jermol is one of the hosts. He holds a UNESCO chair in Open Educational Resources and Open Learning. Did you know there were UNESCO chairs for OER?
- We aren’t alone.
- If we look at the world of Open, open education is but one part of the landscape.
- Back to the Open Government Partnership. Look at the vision. If you substitute “education” and “student” for government and citizen, it pretty much reflects the vision of Open Education.
- Here’s Open Science, with a mission of increasing openness, integrity and reproducibility of research, which are presumed to increase the efficiency of acquiring knowledge. That’s also aligned with open education.
- BOAI’s definition of Open Access – completely aligned with our descriptions and views of OER.
- Finally, Open Data, Look at the definition and the most important details. Could be a description of Open Education.
- This was one of the motivations for the Year of Open. We have a lot of open movements out there, but we haven’t yet cooperated enough to really make an impact across sectors. We need to collaborate to get the message that openness is strength.
- Another key motivation for the Year of Open is the suite of anniversaries that this year brings.
- We go back to this slide and we look at the statistic that only 1/3 of faculty are even aware of OER. We need to change this.
- It may seem like a statistic that’s very hard to change, but remember what we just discussed, from starting where we are now with OER Ambassadors to creating global change through national and international committments.
- You can start with promoting the year of open. Use the banner, use the logo, write blog posts, write an op-ed, reach out to someone working on another area of openness, like open access or open source software.
- Plan to participate in Open Education Week. This is your chance to show off. Host a webinar or meeting about what you’ve been doing and its impacts. Hold awareness raising workshops on your campus. Make Noise! Celebrate!
- Delft University of technology has put their commitments right onto their website so everyone in their community can see what they’re doing and why. This is their Open Education manifesto.
- I encourage you to make your own manifesto. Get it up on your door, on your departmental website, or on your institutional website. And if you run into resistance, create a collections jar to support your open habits.