Wayne Mackintosh

Hi Paul,

You're doing a sterling job of facilitating the seminar - -thank you.

My question:

• What mechanisms or processes should the OER university use for articulation of course credits?

Scenario

A learner decides to commence study towards a Bachelors degree in Commerce. She accesses the Introduction to Economics course at the "OER univeristy" which is based solely on OERs. No cost for learning. As an independent learner and given the high quality of the learning resources she chooses not to make use of the open assessment services for formative assessment and feedback. However, she applies for credit for her learning (perhaps a challenge exam or other PLA version of formal assessment) at Athabasca University (Canada) and is granted credit for the course. She decides to continue with a course in Accountancy and Commercial law. She chooses to acquire credit for the Accountancy paper at Otago Polytechic (New Zealand) and the Commercial law course at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia.) She has selected the Commercial law OER course because this has been localised for the Australian legal framework as she resides in Australia. How does the "OER university" facilitate that all her course credits will be recognised by the relevant institutions?

Hi Gene,

I concur that credible credentials are mission critical for the success of an OER university concept.

I agree with your observation that all course materials should be available as OER and not restricted. I suspect different organisations are at different points of their capability maturity on the OER journey, and if some institutions only want to commit some of their courses as OER that's fine. Within an open ecosystem as courses are donated or developed, pretty soon we have full degrees. If every institution were to commit one paper / course and we remix available OERs -- how long will it take to implement the first degree for the OER university concept?

At Otago Polytechnic, there is no policy restriction to having the course materials for full degrees available as OER. Otago Polytechic has implemented an intellectual property policy which defaults to a CC-BY license.

I think we're off to a good start - -as organisations begin to understand how this works, I suspect they won't want to be left out :-).

Hi Joyce,

We're very pleased that UNESCO has provided support to stream the meeting. So already the OER Foundation is helping institutions to save travel costs ;-) It will be our first attempt to run an open international planning meeting - -so I hope we don't make too many mistakes.

The experience of Empire State College will be invaluable in planning the "OER equivalent" model -- Empire State College were leaders in pioneering open curricula in distance education -- looks like you're well positioned to do the same in an OER world.

Hi Joyce,

A learner-centred approach based on well-founded "open pedagogy" will be paramount for success.

mmm -- I like the idea of OER student support resources to help students navigate their learning paths and compile portfolios where components are based on PLA.

W

Hi Maria,

I think you're right -- there are many Professors who utilise materials hosted on the open web in their teaching. Learners without question ;-). That said, OER is far from being mainstream in our education systems. For example, how many post-secondary teaching institutions have intellectual property policies which default to open content licenses?

The analogy of "unbundling" services within an open ecosystem is a good one. The detail surrounding how this might work is the prime purpose of the meeting. and the outcomes of this process should contribute to the development of a logic model for how the OER university might work and function.

Professor Jim Taylor from the University of Southern Queensland suggests we should think about the OER university concept as a "parallel learning universe" which augments and adds value to the formal system.

Exciting times!

Cheers
W