Wayne Mackintosh

Hi David,

In response to your challenge for clarity ...

If Tidewater Community College, as one institution, can develop an associate of science degree in business administration based entirely on open textbooks by 2014 -  the performance of our OERu network as a collaboration of 29 international partners is embarrasing by comparison.

The game is on! 

I will place a call for courses to our OERu partners this week to see if we can match or improve on the leadership demonstrated by Lumen Learning and TCC. The courses we identify will be listed on the OERu launch website. With the leadership of BCcampus and the the Open Textbook projec, surely our OERu network can match or improve on the outputs of a single community college. One caveat -- we are not allowed to reinvent wheels as we will be able to reuse and remix the TCC associate of Science degree materials.

Lets make OER futures happen.  

Hi Kathleen,

I prefer the concept of "Active observer" -- far better description of the "lurkers" who are watching OERu developments and have been participating in our OERu mOOC prototypes.

Great to have one of our "Active observers" from the very first meeting still with us. A great example of the value of open philanthropy, open planning etc. As Paul Stacey mentioned - "Distinctively open". I think we should use that strap line in the OERu launch website. I'll see what we can do to incorporate this in the launch website.

Exciting times!

Hi Hadyn,

As far as my knowledge goes the two concepts are the same depending in which part of the world you're working. The philosophical debates are usually associated with institutions who do "so-called" RPL trying to map outcomes of individual courses to experience and calling this RPL. The PLAR/RPL purists don't like that stuff being called PLAR because its basically course assessment ;-).  Speaking personally, its not an issue for me -- the more ways learners can earn academic credit the better in my view. 

The beauty of PLAR/RPL is that is provides the flexibility for recognising both experiential learning and certified / assessed learning as a coherent system which leads to formal academic credit. We're very fortunate to have some of the world leaders in PLAR/RPL within our OERu network including the pioneer of individualised degrees SUNY ESC and institutions like Athabasca University, Thompson Rivers University and Otago Polytechnic and USW who all have progressive PLAR/RPL operations. We can definitely share notes and experiences to help us in using PLAR/RPL policy protocols for recognising OERu credits towards credentials.  For partners who don't have existing PLAR/RPL systems in place we can help them get started. For example, Otago Polytechnic's PLAR policy is available under a CC-BY license and can be adapted to suite local needs. 

Joyce,

The Scenario Planning for Educators (SP4Ed) course has helped us to refine a workable template for micro Open online courses. We also have the benefit of data and evaluations from the learners. With reference to your earlier post using the SP4Ed course as a practical example, we have valuable data to confirm the design metrics of the course.

From the open report:

The SP4Ed mOOC was designed for a total of 50 notional learning hours including the preparation time for the summative assessment assignment for offerings where the mOOC is embedded in a formal university course. The course was designed for 25 hours of teaching-learning interactions plus 25 hours for the final assignment preparation.

The SP4Ed 13.09 participants were asked to report the time they spent each day working through the course materials and activities. The weighted average was 2.3 hours for each of the 10 teaching days for the course, thus totalling an estimate average of 23 hours. The workload of the course falls within the specified design parameters.

Drawing on the data from our learners, the interaction-learning hours was in the ball park (aka 25 hours). Desiging a summative assessment assignment of +15 hours would bring us up to a total of 40 notional learning hours. The equivalent of 1 credit within a 3 credit course.

Joyce wrote:

in general US colleges and universities define a 3 credit course as 40 contact (i.e. seat time) hours with an additional hour or two of work for every "classroom" hour...reason I am mentioning this is that we could somehow use "hour estimates" to define the "worth" of various experiences.

Let's take the example of 40 contact hours plus 80 hours (say two hours for every classroom hour) that would total 120 hours for a 3 credit course. This is pretty consistent with similar calculations we have done at our Canadian partners.   So we could say, for example that 3 mOOCs could equate to 3 credits. So the math works ;-).

The closer we move to competency models, the mechanics of learning hours will become less important from an administration point of view. Eg in the US, programmes are funded / measured by "credit hours" and I know this is a topical subject in the US.

Competency based models versus credit learning hours is not an an "either or argument"  in my view -- just different ways of looking at the problem.

The mOOC model generates the flexibility the OERu will need to manage international articulation without compromising pedagogical value of the design because because the micro course does not go below the "minimum threshold" for meaningful assessement and the assessment itself provides wiggle room to get the numbers to stack up for articulation / adminstration purposes.

The value of prototyping mOOCs is that we've been able to tweak and refine as our experience has grown since the first open course we offered in the WikiEducator community in January 2007. 

The SP4Ed template is also pedagogically neutral - it doesnt attempt to dicate any pedagogical approach. Designers can use whatever flavour they want, behaviourism, constructivism, conectivism, free range learner - -whatever suits the purpose but the mOOC template can slot into existing credentialing models.

For those partners who want full courses -- that's fine because 3 mOOCs equals one North American course ;-)  

Hi John,

I share your reservations about the Bachelor of General Studies not necessarily neing the most attractive credential from the perspective of many employers -- but we need to start somewhere.

To be candid, many OERu partners are justifiably conservative when it comes to opening up courses under open licenses, let alone the complexities of international course articulation. The impact of open models in the university sector is untested and we are erring on the side of conservatism. Many are critical of the traditional conservatism and rational approach of the university sector, but it is a useful to remember that the university is one of a handful of organisations which survived the industrial revolution. I'm optimistic that the university will survive the "knowledge revolution" and I think that the critical reflective approach of the academy is going to contribute to our future success using open education approaches in a sustainable way.

Since the inception of the OERu concept at the meeting in February 2011, we have headed the advice cited by Sir John Daniel (see video recording) namely that for an institution to be credible, it should not innovate on too many fronts. We have taken this advice seriously and judging by our progress this was well-founded advice. We're fortunate that Sir John Daniel will officiate at the official launch of the OERu on 1 November 2013 at Thompson Rivers University.

Choosing a Bachelor of General Studies as the inaugural credential was a carefully considered decision because this credential offered a number of significant advantages for the OERu partnership to progress our work:

1. The credential exists on the books of a number of our partners – no need to delay implementation working through approval processes for “new” credentials which can take up to 2-years in some universities. 

2. The nature of a Bachelor of General studies provided greater flexibility to accommodate a wide range of subjects taking into account the reticence of faculty to open their courses. We get to work with organisational champions in taking the OERu forward. 

3. First year credit from recognised OERu courses can migrate easily into other credentials offered by our OERu partners. Thus creating advantages for OERu partner institutions for OERu learners to matriculate at their institution. (Remember the OERu does not confer degrees -- our anchor partners do.) 

A Bachelor of General Studies is not likely to attract millions of learners, but we will gain valuable knowledge and insights into refining the OERu model for scalable success in the future as we expand the credential base. We already have a 2nd credential donated by Otago Polytechnic, specifically the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education (This comprises the equivalent of a 3rd year of academic study.) So now it is possible for the OERu network to offer a Bachelor of General Studies (Vocational Education) offering a level of specialisation for many vocational educators who are aiming to achieve their first degree. Very often these are qualified trades people who have moved into tertiary education and needing to upgrade their qualifications. 

While progress can be frustrating slow -- we are making sure that what we tackle is practically implementable.