Open-Content

I’ve received lots of feedback since I published the problem with cost framing, some online and some in person at #OpenEd16. My main takeaway from that feedback is that, as ever, I continue to struggle to express myself clearly in writing. Let me try again, make some additional points along the way, and assign some additional blame to myself. Perhaps if I criticize myself rather than “the field” the criticism will be easier for people to hear and accept. ...

UPDATE: See this follow-up post. There seems to be an emerging concern among those who work in open education that we need to be careful not to “oversell” open. I understand the sentiment and appreciate the concern. However, I think the field is in far more danger from its systematic “underselling” of open. This has been worrying me for quite a while now, and I’ve been as guilty of it as anyone else. ...

The good folks at Florida Virtual Campus have released the latest version of their Student Textbook Survey. There’s already been some great coverage (e.g., Phil Hill). However, I’ve also read people saying that the results are essentially unchanged from the 2012 survey to the 2016 survey. A quick look at Table 1 on page 11 seems to justify that claim: However, inter-occular speculation is failing us here. An analysis of these data demonstrate that there are in fact some statistically significant differences in student responses from 2012 to 2016. The proportion of students who were impacted by the high costs of textbooks changed across the two surveys as follows: ...

Having students grade each other’s work is a time-honored tradition among faculty looking to save themselves some time and headache. In addition to appreciating the time savings, many faculty argue that participation in the peer assessment process can actually promote deeper student learning. This is absolutely true when faculty take the time necessary to design the peer assessment experience and supporting artifacts (like rubrics) well. (Though you may not experience a net savings in time after you do all this preparatory work!) ...

We recently installed solar panels on our home. The benefits of adding them were immediate and obvious - the very first month they were on the roof our electric bill dropped to $9 (the fee required to stay connected to the grid) and we generated more power than we used, pushing the excess back out to the grid. Because I can’t stop thinking about open, I’ve been pondering the relationship between solar power and OER. ...

Although this was written as a critique of physics, truer words were never spoken about educational research: Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are. (Smolin and Unger) Oh, how I wish more people would embrace this way of thinking about educational research…

For some time now I’ve been critical of “disposable assessments.” An assessment can be characterized as “disposable” if everyone understands that its ultimate destiny is the garbage can. Take an all-too-typical example: Faculty member assigns student to write a two page compare and contrast essay Student writes the paper and submits it to faculty Faculty grades the paper and returns it to student Student checks what grade they received, briefly peruses any written comments, and then throws the paper away (This example assumes physical paper, but the principles are exactly the same in the context of assessments submitted, graded, and returned electronically.) ...

Fifteen years ago MIT announced its OpenCourseWare project. Above all else, this groundbreaking project demonstrated that an institution can openly share it’s core instructional resources without materially harming itself. Inspired by MIT’s example, hundreds of other institutions around the world began openly publishing the resources they created in support of their courses. Of critical importance is the fact that neither MIT nor any of the hundreds of other schools that launched OCW initiatives has ever reported suffering a decrease in enrollments because of its program of open sharing. Creating and sharing OER did not harm their ability to succeed in accomplishing their core missions - the education of their students. And there are many reasons to believe that their efforts in creating and sharing OER actually advanced their core missions. However, by the end of the decade growth of new programs had slowed and I haven’t heard of any new OCW initiatives launching in the last several years. ...

This began as a comment on Heather’s post, but grew unwieldy and so ended up here. Heather’s post is reacting to this quote from an article she read recently: “There is one additional requirement for widespread OER adoption. Incentives need to discourage ‘free-riders’.” This statement is demonstrably false. Of the 50 colleges in the US today with widespread OER adoption initiatives underway (by “widespread” here I mean that so many faculty across the institutions are adopting OER that it is - or will soon be - possible for students to earn complete degrees using only OER), literally none of them have discouraging incentives like those Annand describes. I could have ended this post here, but there’s more to say. ...

In case you didn’t see it elsewhere, I’m republishing the press release from Achieving the Dream about the incredibly exciting OER Degrees work that launched today. It’s really happening! Achieving the Dream Launches Major National Initiative to Help 38 Community Colleges in 13 States Develop New Degree Programs Using Open Educational Resources OER Degree Initiative will accelerate use of openly licensed learning materials in higher education and cut costs to students while improving degree and certificate completion ...