Sustainability

The Open High School of Utah has released a new batch of openly licensed curriculum on the Open High School of Utah Opencourseware site. They now offer 20 fully online courses’ worth of content, constituting a complete 9th and 10th grade curriculum. The catalog now includes: Language Arts English 9 (A) English 9 (B) English 10 (A) English 10 (B) English Composition Mathematics Algebra A (A) Algebra A (B) Algebra B (A) Algebra B (B) Algebra 1 (A) Algebra 1 (B) Geometry (A) Geometry (B) Algebra 2 (A) Algebra 2 (B) Science Earth Systems (A) Earth Systems (B) Biology (A) Biology (B) Social Studies Current Issues Geography World Civilizations (A) World Civilizations (B) Electives Digital Photography Music Appreciation Graphic Design Health Fitness for Life Computer Technology Advanced Computer Technology Some interesting notes about the OHSU collection: ...

Mike responded to my recent toothbrush analogy with a thoughtful response which included this tidbit: The most elegant defense of what I’ll call the input theory of OER is “We just publish by-products of of work, which is sustainable (we have to do the work anyway) and useful (after all, we’re using it).” I’m sympathetic to this view — the best view of the input theory lot. In a lot of disciplines, it’s pretty close to the truth. So let’s discuss why the input theory works in some applications, but tends to fail in education. ...

I frequently hear people attempt to equate the open education movement with socialism. After all, the logic goes, what could possibly be more socialist than freely sharing things with everyone? The attempt to characterize the entire movement in a single assertion assumes a uniformity within the movement that anyone working in OER knows does not exist. I will neither agree or disagree with broad, general assertion in this post. Instead, I want to disagree with the statement in a very specific context, and carve out a specific and concrete space in the discourse about the motivations that underlie OER. ...

I’m simply ecstatic to say that this deal is finally done! Rather than write up my own announcement, I’ll reuse Timothy Vollmer’s. Today Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the solicitation for grant applications under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT). Over the course of 4 years, the program will invest $2 billion “to provide community colleges and other eligible institutions of higher education with funds to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs.” The program supports President Obama’s goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 by helping to increase the number of workers who attain degrees, certificates and other industry recognized credentials. The first round of funding will be $500 million over the next year. Applications to the solicitation are now open, and will be due April 21, 2011. ...

About a year and a half ago I began writing about OCW 2.0 - OCWs whose long-term sustainability is tied to business models that include “up-selling” some OCW visitors the opportunity to earn university credit. Specifically, I predicted that: Every OCW initiative at a university that does not offer distance courses for credit will be dead by the end of calendar 2012. Many assumed that I was really only talking about every OCW initiative except MIT’s. But I really did mean every OCW initiative. Today, the Chronicle’s article MIT Looks to Make Money Online reports: ...

David Porter asks for research about the sustainability of open educational resources. Here is a list of our articles that appeared in peer-reviewed journals last year on the topic of sustainability of OER (with links to publicly available versions in the BYU Institutional Repository): A Sustainable Model for OpenCourseWare Development Johansen, Justin and Wiley, David http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/2353 Keywords: OpenCourseWare; sustainability; open educational resources; development; cost Description/Abstract: The purposes of this study were to (a) determine the cost of converting BYU Independent Study’s e-learning courses into OpenCourseWare, (b) assess the impact of opening those courses on paid enrollment in the credit-bearing versions of the courses, and (c) use these data to judge whether or not an OpenCourseWare program could be financially self-sustaining over the long-term without grant monies or other subsidies. The findings strongly suggest that the BYU Independent Study model of publishing OpenCourseWare is financially self-sustaining, allowing the institution to provide a significant public good while generating new revenue and meeting its ongoing financial obligations. ...

I sent the following letter to the editor of the Washington Post, who reported on the MCPS / Pearson deal. It looks like they’re not running it, so I share it here. Montgomery County Public Schools’ shortsighted decision to sell its nationally recognized and taxpayer-funded curriculum to an education publishing company (Re: Global firm to pay Montgomery, Md., schools millions for elementary curriculum; June 9, 2010) will only further exacerbate the education budget crises in the region and throughout the nation. ...

I’ve recently heard some conversation trying to sully or tarnish the idea of openness by associating it with socialism. (Of course, if there’s anything you don’t like in the US today the standard response is to label it “socialist,” despite the fact that many labelers can neither define nor spell the term properly.) However, from my perspective some of the most important forms of openness are simply about obeying one of the standard laws of capitalism: if I pay for a good or service, I am entitled to the good or service. Could the market (or society) survive if we didn’t obey this rule? ...

Dr. John Hilton, who until just recently was a doctoral student of mine, has written a great dissertation on the impact giving away free ebooks has on sales of printed books. The findings may surprise you. Here’s a repost of the description from his blog: I’ve posted on my dissertation before. The full version is now available here. Here’s a little summary of what the dissertation is all about. What Deseret Book placed eight books online for free download. All of these were “backlist” titles. This study tracked what happened as a result of those books being available. ...

With two months of data in the door, the numbers keep getting better and better for our pilot at BYU Independent Study OCW. To date 7559 people have visited BYU IS OCW, and 232 of those people have enrolled in at least one course (they may have enrolled in more than one course, but we don’t have that data yet). That’s a conversion rate of just over 3%! Things continue to look very sustainable…