6. Regional
• http://k12oercollaborative.org/
• 11 states creating OER supporting K–12 subjects
aligned with state learning standards.
• Washington state can afford to update two books a
year.
• For same money the open approach could create
open textbooks for ALL subjects for all of US.
• In the US K12 textbook spend = $8 billion
K12 OER project estimates = $30 million
7. Removing barriers
Leicester City Council - blanket permission
to 84 schools to create open educational
resources (OER), by sharing the learning
materials they create under an open licence
http://www.josiefraser.com/2016/03/oer-
resources/
8. BCCampus
• BC Ministry of Advanced Education funded –
create openly-licensed textbooks in the highest-
enrolled academic subject areas.
• Open textbooks licensed using a Creative
Commons license
• e-book formats free of charge, or print on demand
books available at cost.
• Student savings $1,431,100 – $1,801,806
• 14,311 students using open textbooks
• 143 textbooks
9. Evidence
• As good if not better performance
• Increased retention
• Savings for students
• Pedagogical change
10. “We already have
lots of money in
education. We’re
just really bad at
spending it”
Cable Green
11. National
• TAACCCT
• US Department of Labor grant fund of $2
billion to expand and improve education
programs for employment.
• All content produced released under CC
license
17. Open data
• Open Data Initiative –
theodi.org/
• Government data
data.gov.uk/
• RCUK -
http://www.rcuk.ac.u
k/Publications/policy/
OpenData/
• Mandates following
open access
21. The Open Flip
Costs move from purchasing copyrighted
content to producing openly licensed content
22. What does it require for a policy to
be successful?
• Champions
• Evidence
• Money!
• Lobbyists
• A specific problem
23. Where can policy be useful?
• Creating sustainable
OER
• An OER critical mass
• Establishing new OA
models
• Recognising OA/OER
impact
• Encouraging innovation
Will look at three areas of policy relating to open education: open educational resources, open access, and what I’ve termed indirect, ie those policies that can affect open education but are nt explicily about open education
Will look at some factors affecting policy and end with discussion on why policy is significant
But can apply to other areas as well eg digital innovation, so even if openness is not your focus, can see how it might be relevant
An area where different movements and approaches have coalesced over recent years, therefore useful to look at
Starting with OER policies will look at 3 levels: institutional, regional and national
Started with funding from Hewlett, which enabled the project to get off the ground, but now self-sustaining
Celebrate our 10th anniversary this year.
Made business case that it is effective form of marketing and outreach and can therefore be justified within normal expenditure
In US started in Washington State by Cable Green of Creative Commons.
Highlights wasteful manner in which money is currently spent
Put tender out for $1million to create a textbook in a subject. Book is then openly licensed, so free to download and cheap to print.
Most big publishers not interested but smaller ones are - $1m is still worth having for them.
Worked with schools in council area to raise awareness of open licences and make CC by the default licence for sharing content. About removing default barriers to sharing
BC targeted key HE subjects eg Stats and developed books. Paid authors, used book sprints, adapted existing works,
Saving is for students and tecahers can adapt
Tidewater College
OER Community College
BC Campus
In US, after much lobbying and persuasion got the outputs of a significant $2b grant to be made OER.
Why not? They’re spending the money, simply make it a requirement
OER project in an institution on its own is rarely enough to lead to a policy – bottom up drive is not sufficient
Open access – the free access to scholarly works
ROARMap
Finch report in the UK
Resarch councils mandate
Seems like a big success but evidence that publishers are making more money now out of OA. Maybe that isn’t our concern
Double dipping – charhing for subscription and OA
What Finch report missed was opportunity to promote new models.
Open Library Humanities – libraries pay a fee to support non-profit, OA journals
Ubiquity Press – open acecss publishers, charges £300 per article. I run JIME and we cover these costs. An affordable and manageable model for societies and unis
Knowledge Unlatched – making textbooks open access by getting libraries to pay to free up certain texts
Shows that money can be diverted more successfully
Open Data Initiative has a roadmap to make all forms of data open
Government signed G8 agreement on opening up data and has good guidelines on what and how data is made open
RCUK – open data mandates
Need to understand this better as data is potentially more significant and more problematic than open access
There are a lot of policies that influence the direction of open education without explicitly mentioning it
Changing Pedagogic landscape project – looked at impact of quality, funding and technology on innovation. For example how students are funded and how that is measured can have significant impact on te risks unis will take
IT policies – increasingly about control and locking down systems, when open education, open pedagogy is about exploring and operaring in the open. It is no good having all these wonderful plans to teahc in the open using OER if you are immediately told ‘you have to use the VLE and we won’t open that up’
Reward and promotion is a big issue – if you are promoted for publishing in the right journals you may not try OA. Despair at how quickly we surrender our rights here. Similalry won’t try innovation in teaching if job is based on student satisfaction scores
REF says it doesn’t look at journal impact factor, and for new REF all articles must be in a repository or OA, so has started pushing OA now
Fees – makes students more conservative and unis more risk averse.
Tables and TEF – student completion is factor therefore don’t take on studnets who are at risk of not completing, so the opening up of education is unlikely
There are external factors pushing all of this regardless of policy
For example the icanhazpdf hashtag where people will request an article using that hashtag
Sci-Hub a repository of 1000s of scholarly articles that have been liberated/pirated – this is like thunder at a picnic for publishers.
Social media drives openness since there is no point linking to something that people can’t see
Citation advantage
Online identity is increasingly important for academics and this is constituted from the reputation you gain in online spaces – blogs, social media, wbinars, etc. All this has to be in the open
I think we’re just at the beginning of this, and it will be hugely significant for education
People who say “I’m like you and this stuff really worked”
Research evidence of impact
It takes money – we are often competing with vested interests who have multi million pound marketing budgets
Lobbyists – good in the US with this,
Targeting a specific problem and addressing with open education solution – eg retention, I estimate could save £165M per year with 10% increase in retention. Evdience that learner are using OER.