Open-Content

There are some very exciting things happening in my life right now. 1. I’m extremely humbled and excited to have been awarded a Shuttleworth Fellowship. These Fellowships provide a year’s salary replacement, allowing each Fellow to focus completely on creating a particular kind of social change - without other distractions. In my application, I characterized the change I want to create this way: I want to push the field over the tipping point and create a world where OER are used pervasively throughout secondary schools, community colleges, and universities. In my vision of the world, OER supplant traditional textbooks for all high school, associates degree, and undergraduate general education courses. Organizations, faculty, and students at all three levels collaborate to create and improve an openly licensed content infrastructure that dramatically reduces the cost of education, increases student success, and supports rapid experimentation and innovation. ...

In fall of 2011, I took a new approach to the Project Management course I teach each year. I wanted my students to gain hands on experience managing a project, I wanted them to feel the pressure of hitting deliverables, I wanted them to feel the nausea of having things fall through, I wanted them to learn to navigate managing people, and most of all I wanted them to feel the joy of completing a piece of work that blesses people lives. So I asked my students to engage in a very large scale revise / remix project that would benefit them and many others. ...

More response to the interesting discussion happening on the (closed) oer-community list. Brian Lamb asks: Finally, can somebody tell me if an NC license forbids reuse by non-profit public education institutions that charge tuition? Seems like a fairly simple question, but I’ve heard authoritative responses that wholly contradict each other on that point. The extremely misguided thinking Brian is referring to (and not personally guilty of) goes, “If someone is charges tuition for a course that uses a NC textbook, that violates the terms of the license.” This line of thinking is completely wrong. Full stop. Here’s why. ...

Stop the presses. I’m going to agree with Stephen here. In a recent email to the (closed) oer-community mailing list, Stephen argued that perspective plays a significant role in this debate. He couldn’t be more correct. Just as there is not One True License, there is not One True Perspective on the free, nonfree, open, libre, etc., debate. A few examples: - Some people look at OER issues from the perspective of the content, and some see them from the perspective of the people who use the content. Content-p drives people to favor SA licenses, to insure that derivatives of the content always remain free. People-p drives people to reject SA, so that derivers always remain free to license their derivatives as they choose. Which is the One True Perspective? ...

Cable Green sent a frustrated email today to the Educause Openness Constituent Group. Here’s the key point: The Babson Survey Research Group has released a new report: Growing the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education. This sentence is of particular concern to me: “One concept very important to many in the OER field was rarely mentioned at all – licensing terms such as creative commons that permit free use or re-purposing by others.” ...

If you’re wondering what the impact of MOOCs will be on formal higher education, one answer came in the form of two interesting stories about the upcoming holiday season: Thousands of shoppers headed to Target to shop last holiday season. Some made purchases at Target; others pulled out their smartphones, scanned product barcodes and made purchases online instead. To prevent that practice, commonly known as “showrooming,” Target has pledged to match prices with select online retailers – including Amazon.com. Mashable ...

The topic of OER quality standards came up at #OpenEd12 today. It makes me a little crazy. Why, why why, do we continue to focus on indirect proxies for quality when we’re capable of measuring quality directly? Direct Measure of OER Quality Indirect Proxies for Quality - Degree to which the OER facilitates student learning - Academic credentials of the author / creator - Degree of interactivity - Amount of multimedia - Amount of editorial effort put into materials - Length / number of words / rigor - DPI of embedded artwork - &c. At the end of the day, would you rather have (1) an OER that successfully facilitates student learning, or (2) an OER written by a top author that is 700 pages long and chock full or gorgeous artwork, simulations, and video? OER can be everything in the indirect column and fail on the direct column. So why do we continue to care and focus on indirect proxies for quality when we could go straight for the direct measures of quality? And why do we continue to think about quality as “static” when we have the capability to engage in continuous quality improvement? Why are we willing to work with materials that aren’t constantly getting better, as OER can when used in a principled way?

20 Million Minds today released an infographic summarizing costs of textbooks and cost savings associated with open textbooks. Click the thumbnail for the full-size version.

Found this great OER metaphor and image today via Dana West. Milk Role **OERs ** Cow Primary producer/Creator Teacher/Author Calf Primary consumer Enrolled student Farmer Secondary producer/repurposer Learning technologist/Course leader Milk bottlers Primary supplier Learning technologist Shop Secondary supplier deposit in institutional repository or open deposit Human family Secondary consumer Teacher within or outside institution Human family and pets Sharers and re-users Enroled students of that teacher Person with milk, Person with cocoa powder, Person with sugar - can make chocolate Exchange and repurposers other teachers within or outside institution Chocolate in shop fridge repository deposit in different open repositories Chocolate eaten re-users/maybe sharing; ) potentially global learners Chocolate added to cake mixture further re-purposing potentially global teachers ...

For several months now I’ve been working with a great group of people on Degreed. Today we launched the public beta at the HASTAC/MacArthur grantees meeting (the Mozilla open badges functionality in Degreed is supported by a DML grant). So what does it do? Degreed eliminates the distinction between formal and informal learning by jailbreaking your college transcript and interweaving Mozilla open badges and other informal credentials together with your college courses. We help you categorize these formal and informal credentials in order to create a credential remix that allows you to showcase everything you know - not just what you learned in school. Unlike your college transcript, your Degreed profile continues to grow as you continue to learn throughout life. ...