Scheduled Seminar Discussions

Alannah Fitzgerald wrote,

I think the Stanford AI course with the OER component and Google fellows is a good example of valuable learning and teaching content being shared worldwide and translated by volunteers into other languages like Thai, German etc https://www.ai-class.com/overview

 I agree, the Standord AI course is an interesting model, however it is problematic for a number of reasons:

1. The course relies on an all rights reserved textbook which students must purchase
2. The majority of resources (videos, transcript notes etc.) are also all rights reserved which does not allow others to adapt and modify the materials.
3. It is not clear what licensing arrangements are used for the translations. As the source materials are all rights reserved, I guessing that it is a custom license which assigns copyright of the translated works to the original copyright holders (and not the translators.) 

Steve Foerster wrote,

Plagiarism and copyright infringement are completely unrelated!

Steve -- I agree with the underlying rationale referring to the ethics of acknowledging and appropriating sources as an issue of academic honesty. However. I don't agree that plagiarism and copyright infringement are completely unrelated.

Unauthorised copying of all rights reserved content outside of the legal parameters of fair use or fair dealing is plagiarism. So there is a relationship.

Similarly, your Hamlet public domain example does not require legal attribution (which in this sense is "authorised" copying) in common law countries, but in civil law countries there is some debate on the duration of moral rights (i.e. a legal imperative for attribution once copyright has expired.) Nonetheless appropriation of a public domain work as your own in Hamlet example is copyright fraud,-- but we agree that this is an issue of integrity and academic honesty. This is an example of a work in the public domain because copyright has expired.

However, in the case of an author who dedicates works to the public domain with a very clear statement that the author intentionally wants to waive all claims to economic and moral benefits. In other words this is not in PD because copyright has expired and the author has expressed a clear wish that they do not wish to have moral rights or appropriations -- if the original author is attributed by the re-mixer, is this potentially an absurd example where attribution is not honouring the requests of the original author. Fortunately we don't have to worry too much about this exception - -there are so few of us who would be prepared to waive moral rights and benefits.

The satire of the concept "legal plagiarism" is having the desired effect of allowing us to explore the issues :-)

There must be charges for the use of OER for several reasons:

1. As you mentioned, people do not value free services. The no-show rate for free classes and seminars is very high.
2. The grant-funders want to provide funds for new development, not for day-to-day operations.
3. OER that are not maintained and improved do not remain useful.
4. Large OER (classes, textbooks) require a whole team of people, not just authors. Authors receive other benefits (prestige, career advancement); others on the team (editors, copy editors, fact-checkers, illustrators, etc.) typically need to receive payments.
   

Of course, we want OER to be very affordable so sliding scales and scholarships are appropriate.

Mary Burgess wrote,

If a candidate sent me a link to an e-portfolio that included learning through OER and was able to demonstrate all the competencies of someone with a credential

This is a very pertinent and relevant line of reasoning.

Hypothetical question -- as a University employer, let's assume the position announcement advertised the role requiring a PhD. A candidate submits an e-portfolio and demonstrated competencies etc. You employ the candidate. What salary scale would RRU HR department pay for the position. PhD equivalent or other scale?

In theory the candidate should receive the same remuneration and benefits as someone with the PhD & experience as advertised. I'm curious to know if the average university HR department is geared up for this yet.

W

Nellie you may be interested in Three-tiered funding model for OER we are researching at the Educational Development Centre at Otago Polytechnic.

• Open access to all learning materials for no fee.
• Access to course facilitation for a limited fee for service
• Assessment and accreditation for a full fee.

Having some kind of fee is regarded necessary to keep the 'bread and butter' work going. It fits with the open source model of fee for service as opposed to charging a fee for content or tools.

I ask the group, is it philosophically impossible to charge any kind of fee in an OERu? In many situations, people do not value 'something for nothing'. The savings made on collaborating to create learning materials could be transferred to keeping the fee for service as low as possible. Somehow the OERu has to pay the bills doesn't it?

You may be interested to hear that I originally facilitated the Facilitating Online course when it was closed and could only take participants who were enrolled. And along with Leigh I pioneered the open version. Initially, facilitation was provided to everyone who participated, enrolled or not, and the spin off was that some very experienced facilitators like yourself supported that facilitation which provided huge benefits to all concerned.

However, Sarah has been told as a result of budgetary constraints that facilitation services can only be provided to people who pay some sort of fee or who are enrolled. Consequently, informal participation has almost totally disappeared. This has occurred because the pedagogy of the course sits upon the provision of facilitation - after all there is little benefit in blogging about your experiences in the course or tweeting etc if no-one is responding or giving you feedback. This illustrates a flaw in a learning system where the emphasis put on content open or not.

We have to be careful to design learning that is experiential, reflective and interactive - content should not be the emphasis. Another course I teach - Flexible learning is designed in this way, and has had a few informal participants over the years but again, the effectiveness of the course rests on the facilitation not the content, so people soon lose interest. I am interested to hear what people think are the solutions and if the three-tiered funding model is an option for OERu.
Bron

Joyce, I think what you say is perfectly reasonable. Who is anyone to judge you anyway?  I think the key thing I take from what you say is the idea of who determines the learning goals and the details of the activity.

For example, if I understand you correctly, you say that you are defining the structure and activities in your self-managed learning. So, on that basis would you agree that you are engaged in enquiry based learning that is under your own control, ownership etc.?

I guess it could be useful to have an overall framework provided for learners as a kind of orientation. Then within that 'shell' I suppose you might support learners to work under their own direction. SCoPE does that in my mind. They provide an environment and structure it with spaces to interact, resources and open sessions. Within that we are free to interpret and to exercise our interests broadly as we see fit.

One key point seems to be how people conceptualise their learning - either alone or together. For instance how do you understand or think about your use of those OER-U resources and how do you do that in relation to the use of this kind of setting? How we read opportunities and settings must surely influence how we act towards them.

Joyce, I guess from that OER perspective you are choosing the way you go about your learning. You have set the aims and resources to use as you see is appropriate. So, although the resources have set structures and *might* be regarded as quite closed for some applications they could equally be seen as very open if you work with them according to your own wider goals. To my mind that is indicative of characteristics of enquiry based learning. Would you see that as a fair view?

I would also say that the activity we are sharing at the moment is also enquiry based learning as we explore what it might mean together and to each of us individually.

So, I would think this might raise an additional question to all of us. That is, what issues and benefits do we see from engaging in enquiry based learning on our own and in collaboration with others?

Nick

Scotland

Hi all. As you know from discussions and plans today is the OERU face-to-face meeting happening in New Zealand. For instructions around virtual participation see:
http://wikieducator.org/OER_for_Assessment_and_Credit_for_Students/Virtual_participation

This SCoPE seminar has been planned to stimulate discussion in advance of todays meeting and to provide a forum for follow-on discussion after today's meeting. I promised Wayne I'd provide a short summary of our discussions and drop-in think tank web conference as an input into today's face to face meeting.

Here's what I submitted:

OER University - A Summary of SCoPE Seminar Inputs

The following notes are summarized from SCoPE OERu online discussions and an OERu drop-in think tank web conference session held over the period 4-21-Feb-2011. The summary has been distilled from contributions made by participants from Israel, United States, New Zealand, India, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Portugal, and Brazil.

OER University Model and Ideas

The OERu:

• is a a consortium of partner universities - a university of universities. Participating colleges/universities are given an OERu logo to post on their web-sites designating them as participants.
• un-bundles the package of services traditional universities provide: recommending (and selling) learning materials, forming learning groups, arranging learning experiences, supplying teachers, certifying
• provides a search service for OER materials and maintains a repository of credit based OER approved by the consortium
• brings together currently separate OER initiatives to generate collaboration between them for development and assemblage of OER into mutually credentialed outcomes.
• creates a framework within which existing OER can be assembled and new OER development positioned.
• establishes a world OER credit bank and trans-national qualifications framework. Institutions developing OER can register their OER with the credit bank specifying what credit they are willing to accord those who successfully complete the learning outcomes associated with it. OERu assembles or creates the transfer/articulation aspects of assembling OER into a credential. Each OERu university partner can link existing OER courses of other partner universities to its OER degree programmes
• facilitates creation of an OER learning path, learning plan, and/or PLAR documentation template for students ideally through consultation with advisor or mentor
• helps learners systematically pursue learning plan and create a portfolio that can be assessed
• provides student support resources to help students navigate their learning paths and compile portfolios. Partners with institutions who provide options for student support possibly on a fee for service basis. A 24x7 call center for assisting students.
• creates a social learning context for OER reinserting or applying pedagogy to OER. Utilizes mass collaboration approaches combined with social networking to establish peer-to-peer and tutor-student support potentially with senior students receiving credit for tutoring juniour students. Provides a brokering/marketplace where those who want to facilitate learning can meet those who want to learn. Emphasizes peer-to-peer social learning over teacher/student traditional learning. Students as teachers solidifies learning.
• prioritizes low-cost / low-bandwidth solutions for learner support and uses mobile technologies for these interactive components
• provides continuous entry points throughout the year with entry by exams rather than prerequisite courses or degrees. A 365 days online registration and evaluation process.
• supports individual pace of learning, multiple exit points, including instant certification by testing
• removes affiliation requirements, residency or citizenship requirements, age restrictions (make OERu undergraduate and graduate programs open to children)
• provides certification or links to colleges and universities who do a PLAR like assessment of the portfolio
• ­awards the degree with logos of universities who participated in the validation process displayed on the certificate or alternatively the universities themselves confer the credentials
• maintains a registry of graduates

OERu Users and Use Cases

• a student using OER could literally study anywhere in the world for free and transfer his/her learning to a "receiving institution" for conversion to transfer credit
• personally designed pick and choose model where students formulate their own learning pathway (likely favoured by working professionals)
• structured degree model where templates of predefined OER are assembled into a curriculum leading to a credential (younger students looking for qualifications to move into professional area in labour market)
• OER-U could also work in K-12 sector to establish elementary and secondary programs leading to post-secondary so someone could presumably begin at the primary/elementary level and progress seemlessly to undergraduate or even graduate degrees

OERu Questions & Challenges

How to develop the course materials for learners globally?

Providing not only free education but free authentic, valid and reliable certification too. Leaners may need to pay for credential services unless national governments provide grants to cover these costs through the state education system.

Finding a free online platform or specifying that learning materials for the OER university be developed (or converted) into open file formats that are equally accessible by a variety of Learning Management Systems (LMSs).

OER have to be available or at least readily convertible to low tech, pencil and paper, or print-based materials.

Institutions will not move toward an OERu strategy unless they see a clear benefit for themselves. Does OERu need to be a parallel higher education universe?

Develop low-overhead quality and accreditation systems building an entirely new model rather than adapting the old one.

The concept of an OER-university is an innovation and a major one for the education globally. Individual and organisational adoption will depend on the current concerns and benefits of this innovation for them.

Be more creative. Start without thinking about existing systems and courses. Rethink units of learning.

OERu needs to be younger and bolder. We need to get our heads into being 15 to 25 again.

We already have a critical mass to at least get one degree operational.

This summary is available for the New Zealand participants and anyone else as a .pdf download in the OERU Meeting Agenda.

Its always a challenge to distill and coalesce the rich discussions we've been having but I'm hoping you all find this a reasonable representation. Thank you all for your insights and suggestions, I think this summary is a great start to defining an OERU. Feel free to post a reply here with anything you'd like to add. I'll be briefing the New Zealand participants on our activities and this summary via phone later today.

Paul

Hi Niki,

I must echo your advice ...

Niki wrote:

This alludes to the importance of the OER university concept to be clear about the value proposition for engagement. We will need to work this into the logic model.

Similarly corporate research is also clear that it is very hard to achieve transformation within existing organisations where disruptive technologies are concerned. This is why the OER Foundation was established as an independent charitable organisation. It provides the flexibility, agility and autonomy to move quickly in building the new value proposition. However, its articles of association commit the Foundation to helping education institutions to achieve their objectives through selected adoption of open education approaches. (Most notably -- the OER Foundation is not a teaching institution -- so we're not competing for students ;-). We want to help organisations widen access to learning in more sustainable ways, so they become more effective.

With the calibre of foresight and experience in this group -- I think we have a good chance of getting this right!

Well said Joyce, and I'm adding a reflection on why in my view this is so to take us beyond your intuition:

"As a long time community organizer, my intuition is that we should not push reluctant institutions into joining us as much as concentrate on finding willing participants who are already mostly on board with our particular quiet revolution."

First let us recognise that the concept of an OER-university is an innovation and a major one for the educational globally (maybe society too).

Therefore, we can apply the literature on the adoption of innovations,  which is pretty clear that individual and organisational adoption must depend on the current concerns and benefits of this innovation for them (as well as the systems that they inhabit, including the world as a global bio-educational ecosystem (I can provide citations and readings on change with digital technologies in education and teach a class on the topic, see Davis(2011, under construction) ). Essentially we all cannot help but be constrained by the behaviour and rules that surround us all, and the closest is the most influential.

So as part of our work in helping the OER-university come to life, if possible, is to provide examples of situations in which it can be possible with the help of early adopters who come forward. Those with community-centred missions, including global outreach, are good examples of people and organisations who are less constrained than some with more inward looking visions and aspirations. Naturally we should be listening to and involving colleagues in regions that have most to gain (a point made by Wayne yesterday in one of his postings).

Therefore, as you read this you may only be becoming aware that you are one of the 'participants who are already mostly on board with our particular quiet revolution' and also keen to be an 'early adopter' (Everett Rogers' term (2003)). 

For those of us who are constrained to move forward more cautiously, these 'early adopters'  will help to open the path and hopefully point to benefits that we can use to draw more individuals and institutions forward.

Great to see this thread developing so well, and I'm happy to support it to develop more! Responses and questions for clarification will support that, so please use Reply.

Niki

Hi Erik,

Very valuable discussions and interactions -- I hope you will be joining the "Open Business Models" workgroup to help us refine the business model for the OER university.

Apology for the long email -- but these are very important issues.

Eric Kluijfhout wrote,

From my experience in a number of developing countries however, students may not have access to the 'players' to consume these e-age learning materials (computers with internet access, smartphones/tablets). I would therefore like to ask attention for relatively 'low tech' carriers and distribution channels as well, like DVDs to distribute OERs to play on a DVD player together with a television set, or just copied/printed paper

Absolutely! I couldn't agree more. I spent the majority of my career working in ICTs for Development (I was born, raised and started my academic career in Africa.) The reality for the majority of learners in Sub-Sarahan Africa is that they will not have reliable and/or affordable access to the Internet. So one of the first projects we tackled in the early days of WikiEducator was to develop wiki-to-print technology in collaboration with the Wikimedia foundation and PediaPress. Effectively we made it possible for every person on the planet to get a free print copy of the worlds largest free encyclopaedia. Using the create-a-book feature on WikiEducator it is possible to download a pdf master of any collection of OER pages. So in effect it would possible for a local business entrepreneur in a rural village of Uganda to produce print-based study guides from WikiEducator for local distribution -- This model will also contribute to local income generation

There is also an option to download the same content collection in open document text format which educators can then edit locally off-line using a word processor. We have also built conversion features for educators to develop materials offline and upload and share when they have access to an internet connection.

Eric Kluijfhout wrote,

Experiece from one of the oldest university associations, the EADTU, shows that the shared development of materials does not necessarily lead to cost savings.

Not sure that I agree with this one -- The experience of the single mode distance education providers does suggest that the team approach produced high quality materials, but granted it is more expensive. The distance education model is to scale usage across high numbers of learners. So we use the same approach for the OER university. Team design of high quality materials. Fact: The direct cost shared across multiple institutions is cheaper. (Cost of development) divided by 10 results in a smaller number than (Cost of development) divided by 1 ;-). Clearly project management will be an important facet in achieving savings benefits.

Eric Kluijfhout wrote,

Salaries form by far the biggest part of HE budgets. And these are under pressure everywhere ...... Could we not follow the same model as industry - 'outsourcing' to low-cost countries?

Agreed -- and that's the huge advantage of the OER model. A percentage of salary time is spent on course development. The solution is simple, change institutional policy which requires that course materials will be released under open content licenses. Win-win scenario for all involved. The OER university will be an educational charity - -therefore, surplus funding generated will be reinvested back into course development and maintenance. So yes, I think there will be opportunities for "outsourcing" and paying academics to develop OER course materials.

Eric Kluijfhout wrote,

I also think that many educators joined the profession as a vocation -- with the intention and commitment to share knowledge freely, so both politicians and educators will help the cause in my view. You're right, many institutions will be reluctant to open up their course materials. That's unfortunate, but not an insurmountable barrier. We already have the nexus of a critical mass of institutions who are committed to making the OER university concept work. For example, Otago Polytechnic (one of the anchor partners) has a default Creative Commons Attribution intellectual property policy -- its only a matter of time before all course materials are available under open content licenses. I believe that Athabasca Univeristy (also an anchor partner) has implemented a course development policy where all course revisions and developments are required to first find OER materials before they are permitted to use close source materials. The OER Foundation will be lobbying governments around the world to allocate a small portion of earmarked funding for OER course development. So for example, BCcampus administer a sizable government fund for the development of OER course materials for the Government of British Columbia. The University of the Western Cape in South Africa as a Free and Open Resources for Education policy prioritising OER development. Institutions are free to join us in making these futures happen (or they can sit on the fence while watching and join us later.) Moreover, I'm confident that that the vision of providing free learning to all students worldwide, is sufficiently compelling to acquire philanthropic bridging funding to achieve this goal.

The OER university is going to happen - -and everyone is free to help us in returning to the core values of the academy -- i.e. to share the world's knowledge as a public good.

Exciting times :-).