Research

Our latest article on open texts has been published! The Cost and Quality of Open Textbooks: Perceptions of Community College Faculty and Students (CC BY open access). Abstract: Proponents of open educational resources (OER) claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the college classroom. We investigated student and faculty perceptions of OER used in a community college context. Over 125 students and 11 faculty from seven colleges responded to an online questionnaire about the cost and quality of the open textbooks used in their classrooms. Results showed that the majority of students and faculty had a positive experience using the open textbooks, appreciated the lower costs, and perceived the texts as being of high quality. The potential implications for OER initiatives at the college level seem large. If primary instructional materials can in fact be made available to students at no or very low cost, without harming learning outcomes, there appears to be a significant opportunity for disruption and innovation in higher education. ...

I really, really want to encourage you to take this suggestion. Reading what you have written all over the internet, and listening to you at public hearings, it appears that you have a crystal clear idea of what should happen in schools to make them places that best support student learning and growth. In all seriousness and sincerity, I want to invite you to start a charter school that fully implements your instructional approaches and other philosophies. I encourage you to do this because you can only gain so much credibility from the sidelines. If you really want to drive ed reform in this state, start your own school and demonstrate how much more effective your way of doing things is. People are much more likely to listen to results than rhetoric. It’s easy for policy makers to ignore an armchair quarterback / critic with no academic credentials in education, but when your school’s CRT results top every other public school in the state, no one can ignore you any longer. And if charter schools aren’t your cup of tea, then start a private school. That process is even simpler. ...

Here are the things that stood out to me most during the three day meeting. Sorry for the brain dump format. Moorseville, NC moved graduation rates 68% to 90% since the move to devices and all digital content Two professional development release days PER MONTH for faculty to skill up on digital and using data Small group differentiated instruction, almost no whole-class instruction Superintendent visits every classroom in the district multiple times each year, primarily to say thank you to the teachers. Funding model - $1 / day / student ($200/year) pays for devices and content. Average cost for online content was $35/student across all subjects. ...

Our new article is out in IRRODL! Abstract below; read the whole article here: A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in Middle and High School Science Classes. Proponents of open educational resources claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the classroom. Over a period of two years, we worked with 20 middle and high school science teachers (collectively teaching approximately 3,900 students) who adopted open textbooks to understand the process and determine the overall cost of such an adoption. The teachers deployed open textbooks in multiple ways. Some of these methods cost more than traditional textbooks; however, we did identify and implement a successful model of open textbook adoption that reduces costs by over 50% compared to the cost of adopting traditional textbooks. In addition, we examined the standardized test scores of students using the open textbooks and found no apparent differences in the results of students who used open textbooks compared with previous years when the same teachers’ students used traditional textbooks. However, given the limited sample of participating teachers, further investigation is needed.

According to Reuters: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers Inc has reached a deal with more than 70 percent of its creditors to cut $3.1 billion in debt as it faces a lagging textbook market due to drops in educational funding. The publisher said it plans to restructure through a pre-packaged, court-supervised Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The HMH bankruptcy is not just about decreases in education funding, of course. We must give some credit to Kaleidoscope, Open Course Library, the Utah Open Textbook Project, Flat World Knowledge, and others around the world for showing that freely available OER and open textbooks can completely replace breathtakingly overpriced publisher textbooks - and that students learn the same amount regardless. If you could get the same grade using a $175 commercial textbook or a free online (and $30 or less to print) textbook, which would you choose? ...

One of the philosophical underpinnings of MOOCs as practiced by Siemens, Downes, et al. has been the rejection of the idea of pre-defined learning outcomes. For example, the LAK12 syllabus reads in part: “You are NOT expected to read and watch everything. Even we, the facilitators, cannot do that. Instead, what you should do is PICK AND CHOOSE content that looks interesting to you and is appropriate for you. If it looks too complicated, don’t read it. If it looks boring, move on to the next item.” The learning outcomes will, consequently, “be different for each person.” ...

I recently blogged about the Apple announcement and how it amounted to publishers ceding the “traditional” textbook market (whether print or digital) to OER makers. One way to interpret that concession is as a win for open education. And it is a win - temporarily. Another way to interpret the concession by publishers is to see it as electronics companies ending production of VCRs and doubling down on DVD players. In my previous post I asked, “If video-based, multimedia-rich, interactive textbooks are only worth $14.99 to the big publishers, what are relatively static, text-based books with a few photos worth to them?” Think about that for a minute. Sure, there are “traditional” OER textbooks available for free. But when you could have video, multimedia, simulations, and interactive assessments for $15, why would you take a traditional book (whether print or video) even if it is free? ...

I’m humbled and very excited to announce that, as of today, I am the Senior Fellow for Open Education at the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, also known as Digital Promise. I’ll post more detail on exactly what this means later this week. FAQ: No, I’m not leaving BYU; I’ll be acting in this role in addition to my responsibilities at BYU. In the meantime, here’s the SL Tribune story and the text of the article from the McKay School News: ...

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I have a long standing interest in self-organization in informal online learning communities (e.g., the 2002 paper on Online Self-Organizing Social Systems, the 2003 paper OSOSS - Crisis / Response, the 2004 paper Sociability and Scalability in Online Learning Environments, etc.). This is an area which I continue to watch with interest. So I was extremely interested in this new article, Transport Layer Identification of P2P Super nodes: ...

Because I have pointed out what I believe to be some limitations of MOOCs, some seem to have leapt to the conclusion that I strongly dislike the idea. Not at all. However, some of the Chronicle discussion seemed to be setting up the format as the salvation of higher education - which clearly MOOCs are not. But it’s not insulting to proclaim that you can’t turn a screw with a hammer, or that you can’t sweeten cookie dough by adding flour. Hammers and flour are imminently useful; they’re just not appropriate for every single situation. This is my only point about MOOCs - to me they seem imminently useful; they’re just not appropriate for every single situation. ...