OER university: Feb 16-Mar 2, 2011

1. Institutions like ESC are well prepared to respond to PLA needs from OER learners. Therefore from an OER university perspective -- We need to look and see if there are ways to use OER models to enhance the efficiency and reduce costs of PLA for participating institutions. I don't want to be too ESC specific but we may be one of the few institutions in the world that have literally been doing this for forty years. From the OER U perspective I think that we should offer some kind of guidance for students wanting to go this route. This should include a list of "OER friendly" institutions made available to students and the kind of mentoring/advising I described earlier.I do think that these advisors would need to be paid a reasonable amount of money as it is labor intensive work. I do not think volunteers would be able to do it well.
2. It would probably be wise for students to choose one or more target institutions from the very beginning so liaisons could be made early in the process. I think that in many cases there could be articulation agreements with the "receiving colleges" so students coming from OER-U would be expected and easily managed. Many four year colleges including ESC in the US have such agreements with two year community colleges. I think that at first we may want to work mostly with PLA friendly colleges (although I do not want to be exclusive or be seen as trying to create business for ESC or Athabasca etc). Once we have clear processes for working with two or three receptive universities/colleges, these models will be more easily transferred to other institutions...who will be more easily convinced once they see it works.
   
3. What mechanisms and processes can the OER university implement for pre-evaluated courses within a broader curriculum framework. After a try way back in the 1980's at having some kind of pre-evaluated courses that would fit a multitude of colleges (a process I likened at the time to "mating 18 dinosaurs) I think the best route would be to work with each receiving institution to have them pre-evaluate courses and/or degree programs. Alternatively, we could develop our own accreditation scheme like the US military has...but that would take longer...I would like to see us have a prototype available soon and then we could do formative evaluation as needed. The easiest way to do that would be to work with a few friendly institutions.
   
4. As an aside, many of the OER courses already available like those from MIT and other "big guys" would be fairly easy to pre-evaluate except that OER-U and/or the receiving institution would probably need to have some way of testing the students' knowledge...because presumably someone could enter the OER courses and really have little or no understanding of their content. ESC handles this through our essay and interview process or I suppose OER-U could develop exams. ESC is not big on exams especially multiple choice or short answer...we like reflective writing and talking sometimes including case studies, videos of performance etc....and so are probably quite different from the British model. Hope this helps some.
   

Good morning from the Eastern US. I received this response from Leo Wong in China on wikieducator...I am not sure he is on SCoPE so I am posting it here with my reflections.
hey joyce , thank you for the explanation and case study very helpful
but still , let us play the role playing game , if i were a future student ( namely joseph ) jerry is not a real person .
jerry want to go to university in US , however jerry is from asia , so if he want to do that , he can go to university who have the working connections with schools in US , so he doesnot have to go to US , so he can still get US or UK degree but he can study in china or other places which is near to his home country , do you think it is even saving more cost ??

and for other people , say a girl names Mary ( sorry this is not a Xmas story ) , she is from US , she would like to come to china , however she would also like to go to china not only for travelling , but also getting a degree at the same time , so if a chinese school can offer a place so that Mary can come to china to study , she can get the credit , meanwhile she is also get the internatoinal experience of studying aborad .

For me , the OER university should be a concept which is based on so called web2.0 technology , like wikieducator , which is just the time to help people who canot afford the costs , but in a lower cost , however also getting the good quality of teaching and support from schools . i think the next step , is we should not only thinking less about technology , but start to look for more of the good people and university and even good bussiness model or non-bussiness model as well .

and instead of just looking at the credit regonization , but also looking at , where are the future students ?

Joyce , you are making such a good point abt self -direct learning , which from my work , i found very important and practical as well

let WE work together to move this forward !

Thoughts: Leo, all of your scenarios are exactly what I am talking about. 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. If s/he were taking credit-bearing courses at an established college or university, these would "come in" directly as transfer credit, if s/he were studying independently using a self-directed learning plan, learning and credit to be awarded would be done through a prior learning assessment process, if the person took non-formal training type courses from a recognized provider those would be pre-evaluated for credit, and if the person had a license or other credential recognized by the receiving institution as "creditable" that could be used as well. All of this prior college level learning would then be used by the student guided by their mentor to create a coherent degree plan. At ESC the student would still have to take and pay for 32 credits with us and that could be done completely online from anywhere in the world that is computer accessible. Thirty-two credits plus $400 US for any individualized PLA evaluations is a major savings over 128 credits. Although state university tuition has been rising, state tuitions are still quite a bit less than those for private universities. This scenario could already be played out at Empire State...in fact, it is played out daily for the US military.

What the OER-U could offer is guidance to students on how to the self-directed learning plans for the PLA they desire and information on the various colleges from which they could choose.

I see it as a win-win. Colleges and universities would be fulfilling their community service missions on a worldwide scale. They would receive valuable publicity and credibility and probably at least some tuition. The tuition would not necessarily have to be borne by individuals. It could be paid for by governments, businesses, NGO's, scholarships etc.

Empire State could probably do it now with little trouble. I am sure that there are other places that might do it too...but I am not really familiar with other models. The future is already here...until now ESC hasn't really had a chance to share it...we have been too busy working with students. :-)

Do you have age restrictions, Joyce? I started a separate topic about children, but I want to ask specifically about ESC policies.

Capable New Zealand...what a great idea and very much what I was talking about! We don't need to invent this really...among us we already know how to do it and do it well!

Your model is very interesting.  I took the liberty to pass the web-site on to a couple of my colleagues who are working in the public health area...already this university idea is working.  J. :-)

I really like the Lego metaphor. In fact, I use a similar one (taking packages off a shelf and filling a grocery cart) when I work with students. Cheers. J.

Maria Droujkova wrote,

There is an inverse relationship between specificity and adaptability of curricula. The more specific materials are, the harder it is too adapt them in different circumstances. However, more specific materials (arguably) have higher pedagogical efficiency. At one end of this spectrum are homeschoolers who create custom curricula from scratch or from components for each child. At the other end are various "standards movements."

You're right -- David Wiley calls this the "reusability paradox" . This is a challenge for both closed and open learning materials. However, OER has an advantage above closed materials when it comes to reusability -- namely the legal right to adapt and modify OERs (which incidentally is why the OER Foundation subscribes to Free Cultural Works Licensing which has a requirement that OER must be stored in open and editable file formats.)

Maria, your point is well made -- in the "Open Design and Development" initiative of the logic model, we will need a focused activity on designing for reuse. I suspect there are also related aspects under the "Open Curriculum" initiative.

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 :-).

This one is a little easier because the PLA process used by Empire State College and probably other institutions would make room for indigenous learning because we do not require that our college level learning be equivalent to a course cognate (although many are). If there is indication that the students' learning has involved high level thinking skills especially critical analysis, synthesis of complex ideas or skills, creative applications, problem solving etc. we will readily find a name for it that sounds academic and award credit. In fact, I have something of a reputation at the college for being able to find college level learning, draw a boundary around it, and help the student name it...This process could rather easily be done at the OER-U level before the student comes to what I have been calling "the receiving institution".

Both of your points are well-taken. We should keep them in mind, but they can be mastered because they are being mastered.

Joyce, good point about commodities. Young people are hungry for credentials because they have so few. Being cynical here, but learning opportunities and credentials can be simply bought if you are able to pass, whereas job experience requires much more complicated processes to acquire. So, a test or a course credit is seen as an accessible way to boost your resume. This is hugely problematic and breeds a lot of social ills, starting from degree inflation.

I think it is a brilliant idea to have students of multiple demographics participate in this panel. Maybe we should recruit some. Though we filled in the sign-up task for our learning, I think most people here think of themselves more as organizers and facilitators.