Oer

I’m very happy to announce that BYU has just received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The pilot project will examine the deeper learning and cost savings that can be achieved when open textbooks replace traditional, expensive textbooks in public high school science classrooms. 15-20 public high school science teachers in Utah will replace their expensive, traditional textbooks with open textbooks from CK12.org for the 2010-2011 school year. Approximately 2,000 students will be impacted by the changes. Most will use printed versions of the books, while a few hundred students in one-to-one schools will use the online versions of the books on netbooks or iPads. Teachers will continue to supplement the CK12 books with additional resources and activities just as they have historically supplemented expensive, traditional textbooks. ...

Diana Oblinger, the President of EDUCAUSE, today announced the Next Gen Learning Challenges program. Information about the program, including the involvement of the Gates and Hewlett Foundations, is included in Diane’s announcement letter below. I’m humbled to serve on the Advisory Panel for the program, and am deeply interested in the topics of the first set of challenges identified for grant-making: Challenge 1: Open Core Courseware Expand access to high-quality, openly licensed courseware for developmental and general education. Challenge 2: Web 2.0 Engagement Integrate interactive Web 2.0 approaches to stimulate deeper learning and ultimately improve college readiness and completion. Challenge 3: Blended Learning Expand the use of established, effective online and face-to-face learning models on a cost-effective basis. Challenge 4: Learning Analytics Foster the development and implementation of easily accessible learning analytics for those directly involved in student success. The announcement reads: ...

Here’s one of the proposals I submitted for Open Ed 2010: The most naïve kind of hype around open educational resources (OER) says that OER are more effective pedagogically than proprietary educational resources (PER). Can we justify this claim? First, it is critically important that we understand that “effectiveness” is not characteristic of an educational resource. Without a proper conception of the origin of “effectiveness” we cannot ask meaningful questions about the comparative effectiveness of OER and PER – because we will not know where to look. ...

As pointed out in a post on the Brookings Institution blog, large-scale federally-funded OER won’t be coming this year: Buried beneath the much-deserved hullaballoo over the passage of health care reform were big changes that the reconciliation bill makes to the federal student loan program… Less noticed, however, is a provision that was in the House-passed Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) this fall, but dropped from the final version that passed last night…. [W]ith Pell Grant spending up due to the poor state of the economy, and the pressure to keep the total cost of the bill down while achieving expanded health insurance coverage and deficit reduction, the AGI got left on the cutting-room floor. ...

I can hear Stephen now… eSchoolNews reports on a speech given today by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which they summarize with the byline, “Secretary calls federal investment in open courseware an ‘opportunity’ for education publishers.” From the article: To support technological innovation in learning, President Obama has proposed investing $500 million over ten years in an Online Skills Initiative designed to produce free and open online courses that contribute to post-secondary success, Duncan said. These courses can be used by students, schools, and self-directed learners, and they also will be freely available to commercial publishers. ...

I’m happy to point to this comment by Vic Vuchic from the Hewlett Foundation on a previous post I wrote about what seems to be happening with OER. It’s a great perspective (that he is uniquely qualified to provide) that warmed my heart a bit. Some highlights: Hewlett made over $16 million in grants last year that were 100% OER focused… In 2009 alone, foundations such as Gates, Lumina, MacArthur and many others pumped over $10 million of investments into OER focused projects. VCs made a couple of forays into OER… And a number of governments made their first investments in OER. In all 2009 was a record year both in the amount and diversity of OER funding, which is amazing considering most other things in the world collapse financially. ...

Our good friend Cathy Casserly, former Director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative of the Hewlett Foundation, as just been elected to the Creative Commons Board of Directors. While there were already people on the CC board who cared about OER, the addition of Cathy means that the Board now has one of the most articulate OER champions around in their ranks. This is great news! Congrats to Cathy, CC, and anyone who cares about OER! ...

With apologies to Pasteur’s Quadrant, here’s another take on the Golden Ration of OER from earlier in the week. Mary made several points in the comments on that post about the interpretability of the measure. So, how about asking the same question visually? I think you could still measure the vertical axis in standard deviations and the horizontal as change in budget (with savings being positive and additional costs being negative). To be clear, we would not expect to see learning gains simply because a piece of content has an open license. We’d hope to establish (a) at a minimum, no impact on student learning and some cost savings, or (b) more hopefully a positive impact on student learning and cost savings. ...

Last year I began having conversations with Utah public school educators about sharing their educational materials as open educational resources. The conversation generally went like this: Me: Would you be willing to share the lesson plans and other materials you create with others for them to reuse? Teacher: Sure! Me: Great! The best way to do that is by applying this Creative Commons license to your work. Teacher: A copyright license? ...

I appreciate the usefulness of open educational resources in supporting informal learning as much as anyone. I also care very deeply about the adoption and use of open educational resources in formal education settings. The kinds of things I lay awake at night worrying about differ depending on which of the two I’m thinking about when I go to bed. The more people I talk to, the more convinced I am that OER has failed to establish a digestible value proposition for formal education. For better or worse, many people caught up in the day-to-day vortex of teaching, advising, mentoring, and grading don’t have the spare time to problematize publisher-school power relations, realize the virtue of local control of curriculum materials, or fully appreciate the transformative benefits of transparency. ...