From where I sit - Everyone wins in this free-for-all
The term open educational resources (OER) encapsulates the simple but powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good. The internet offers unprecedented opportunities to share, use and reuse knowledge. Sadly, most of the planet is underserved when it comes to post-secondary education.
The notion of sharing-to-learn underpins the scholarly pursuit of knowledge. Researchers know that a rigorous literature review of existing knowledge is the natural starting point in tackling a research question. But while in our research we have no problem with sharing and building on the ideas of others, in education the perception is that we must lock teaching materials behind restrictive copyright barriers that minimise sharing.
Sometimes universities justify this position on the grounds that the open licensing of courses will damage their advantage in the student recruitment market. These publicly funded institutions expect taxpayers to pay twice for learning materials.
But let's consider the facts. The marginal cost of replicating digital knowledge is near zero. Furthermore, sharing the costs of developing high-quality learning materials among post-secondary institutions is cheaper and more effective than doing it alone.
Individuals are free to learn from OER hosted on the open web. It is, therefore, plausible that we can design and develop an "OER university" that will provide free learning for all students worldwide. The problem is that learners who currently access digital OERs on the web and acquire knowledge and skills cannot readily have their learning assessed or receive credible certification and academic recognition for their efforts. But with the help of the formal education sector, the OER Foundation aims to resolve this problem.
The OER Foundation is an independent charity that provides leadership, international networking and support for educational institutions to achieve their objectives through open education approaches, and is leading the collaborative design of the OER university concept. Working with Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, the University of Southern Queensland in Australia and Athabasca University in Canada as founding anchor partners, we aim to help provide flexible pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credentials and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit services under the community service mission of modern universities.
This does not necessarily require new money. A reallocation of existing resources and staff time to collaborating on the implementation of the "OER university" will go a long way in realising the vision of free learning for all. The OER Foundation will host an open planning meeting on 23 February to lay the foundations for this significant intervention. With support from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the meeting will be streamed on the web, and we invite all educational leaders to join us at this meeting in planning for the mainstream adoption of OER in post-secondary institutions.
The OER for assessment and credit for students project will create a parallel learning universe to augment, complement and add value to traditional delivery models. We hope that you will join us on this journey. When years from now we look back at the development of OER, will we wonder why it took so long?
Postscript:
Wayne Mackintosh is director of the OER Foundation, director of the International Centre for Open Education at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand and founder of WikiEducator.
Readers' comments (3)
11 Feb 2011 5:34am
Event web page: http://wikieducator.org/OER_for_Assessment_and_Credit_for_Students/Meetings#Virtual_participants
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15 Feb 2011 1:11pm
Anyone interested should check out JORUM in the UK http://www.jorum.ac.uk/
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24 Feb 2011 4:24am
Unfortunately, there is in that short post a lot of simplifications and misrepresentations to defend the usefulness of a new project instead of contributing to existing ones. http://www.academicearth.org/ - Online degrees and video courses from leading universities. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page - learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university "The marginal cost of replicating digital knowledge is near zero." Persons with experience in digital technologies know that the cost of project really starts to ramp up once you make something available to the public. You then have to face the cost of support and maintenance. "sharing the costs of developing high-quality learning materials among post-secondary institutions is cheaper and more effective than doing it alone." Persons with experience in team management know that adding new persons to the team makes it more likely to fail. "One of the reasons is the inter-communication factor: it becomes harder and harder to keep large groups of people aligned, and allow their pieces of work to link up." http://smartprocessdesign.com/mythical-man-month-why-large-projects-fail/ "It is, therefore, plausible that we can design and develop an "OER university" that will provide free learning for all students worldwide." You cannot claim to have any learning happen outside of any process that provides confirmation that learning effectively happened. What you do is publish information on the internet that can be viewed without login and payment. That's all. This doesn't necessarily per se create any value to the end user. There are many examples where free in fact brings negative value... wasting time, making it more difficult to locate quality resources. The truth is that there is very poor scholarship displayed in this sales pitch, with bold claims unsubstantiated and in contradiction with industry knowledge. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the nature of my experience when attending an Open Courses recently contributed by Athabasca University LACK (Learning Analytics). As none of them has actual expertise, they more or less made it up along as the course went, mispresentations, false claims. When a student ask what are the models of knowledge representations to use as reference for learning analytics, the course organizer replies with a link to his self-published book, presenting ideas that have received very poor support in the industry, without any word of caution. I confess, I am not their typical audience. I have no doubt that it wouldn't be too difficult to get people with no prior knowledge in the area call these courses "fantastic resources" and express their gratefulness profusely. Yet, the existing open courses have been characterized by high levels of drop outs, that have been left uninvestigated. Seriously! There is a serious issue with promoting a model of teaching were a small group of persons can start putting a course on the internet without any of the system set in place in other institutions to guarantee a minimum level of quality. Without being ready to assume a minimum of responsibility towards the recipients/audience (assumed to be "leaners"). Adding to the discomfort, some of these Open/Free courses" like the one by Athabasca university could be understood as being run with far less altruistic considerations than claimed. In the business sector, it is quite common to make something available for free in order to assess demand. Such open courses then present opportunities for persons affiliated with universities, not on the full time staff roll, paid for a specific course, to use the reach of the internet to suggest that there is a demand for a specific course. Then they try and convince their university to offer it for credits (i.e., to pay them to teach it). Yes, wikieducator created a wiki for the edu community. However, at the same time, they use the expertise to try and sell consultancy : http://174.129.230.250/OERF:Membership_categories Fair enough. Sustainability of such a project requires a source of income (but then why claim that "The marginal cost of replicating digital knowledge is near zero" when it clearly isn't?). The question then is, what is the primary purpose of this project. Is it to contribute to the community, as stated. Or is it to use the interest of the community to artificially boost the reputation of the persons and institutions involved? Is it a service to the community or is it a marketing effort? Well, even if it is the case, what's the problem. They get paid. The general public gets a free resource. Win-win, isn't it? Not necessarily! What is completely brushed aside, in the post above is the idea that when you put content online, you take an extra responsibility. We do something, clash it on the web... pat in the back, we are great guys aren't we? No. This has to be managed, carefully. Once you put something on the internet, you become responsible for the consequences of what you present as an insignificant act but really is not. Please do enroll into one of these courses, do check the specifics of how they run before promoting them as good models of OER. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/10/10/disaggregate-people-not-power-part-two-now-with-more-manifesto/ admin says: Yo HHG [...] it’s a long post, i don’t want to read it :-) Moderation by the book! Another great example: http://scope.bccampus.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=16235 Tutor / Moderator says that well, he really doesn't know much about learning analytics. So he will give himself a special role to make up. Ombudsman... and then will avoid to reply to any query that followed to make the material available in alternative formats, possibly to accommodate the needs of persons with disabilities. Please, do have researchers start to enroll in these courses as witnesses and contribute a report back to the community. An initiative like http://www.academicearth.org/ is a great way to share with the greater community resources freely shared by academics. OER University is something very different. It really is not about an initiative to try and encourage university lecturers to share. It is about using the outreach of the web to provide services that compete with the ones of the universities. Weak competition for now. But expect it to grow stronger. Free for now, but there is no reason $5 dollar syllabi wouldn't appear on Lulu (https://www.lulu.com/). The example of the app store showed us that if you can use the internet to create channels that will multiply your reach by a factor or 1,000, value can be created with a small tag price. Let's share for free! I am all for that (provided that you take the time to ponder on your responsibility towards the person who get access to that free content). Let's support OER University because it's all about encouraging free sharing within higher ed. Again, it is essential to deeply reflect and ponder on the likely short and long-term consequences of supporting this type of model.
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