Open-Education

Photo by AntonioViva. I had an absolutely brilliant time at TEDxNYED over the weekend, reconnecting with old friends like Larry Lessig, George Siemens, Neeru Khosla, and Dan Cohen, and making new friends like Michael Wesch, Gina Bianchini, Amy Bruckman, Chris Lehmann, and Dan Meyer. The videos of our talks will be online in a few weeks. In the mean time, I’m posting the final version of the notes I wrote before creating slides for the talk. This is the fifth or sixth version of the notes, and due to time constraints not even all of this version got in - but much of it did. My words on stage didn’t mirror these rough notes directly, but the notes capture the spirit of the talk. You can view the slides for the talk on Slideshare. ...

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. ...

Just heard from my friend Bobbi Kurshan, the Executive Director of Curriki, that she will be leaving that post on March 1st. I wish her well. Curriki will be looking for a new ED shortly and will very much continue to stay active in the OER space (much like Hewlett has continued to do after Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix left). So, unless I’m missing someone, the list of OER leaders who have moved on in the last few years now includes: ...

In Lorna’s review of the OER presentations at CETIS 2008, I read this bit about the new OLNet program: The OU and Carnegie Mellon University have now received additional funding from the Hewlett Foundation for OLNet - a network to support sharing methodologies and evidence on the effectiveness of OERs. This next wave is about impact, evidence and effectiveness. I realize that when blogging summaries of conference presentations you seldom quote the presenters with complete accuracy. So I mean neither disrespect for Lorna or Patrick, but something about this characterization of the “next wave” work rubbed me the wrong way. About once a year I have a student burst into my office and announce they have found their dissertation topic - comparing the effectiveness of OERs with traditionally copyrighted learning materials. I now have a well rehearsed shtick about how such a study would be the most pointless dissertation ever conducted (and if you read many dissertations, that’s really saying something!). Please join me in the following thought experiment: ...

Here are my slides from the Dean’s Lecture at University of Saskatchawan on Thursday. Had a great crowd out for the talk and a great time giving it. Regular readers will recognize material in the second half of the talk, but the first half contains a photo-only version of the Trucker Tale followed by some historical analysis ranging from roughly 1000-1600. This new historical analysis looks at lessons learned by the early church in its struggle to control access to the scriptures. I’m still building and expanding this argument, but I think there are many useful things for publishers (who try to control access to research) and university faculty (who try to control access to teaching and learning materials) to learn from the church’s encounter with the people’s demand for information and a new technology called the printing press. Comments welcome. ...

The Brigham Young University David O. McKay School of Education’s Open Learning project has joined the OCW Consortium! We’ve only published two courses to date, but more are coming. We’re still in pilot mode, so if you find anything not working or looking out of sorts, please let me know!

Lots more great discussion on the open education accreditation front! Including posts from Steve Carson (Borderlines) about the interface between the various functioning pieces of higher ed, Antonio writing about why we shouldn’t view the homemade certificate as a “sacrilegious contamination between two worlds, formal and informal” education, and Tannis wondering about how a few historical models of accreditation might inform our current thinking. I hope all this interesting thinking and writing continues… We’re right at the tipping point (you might say precipice). =)

Being at Brigham Young University now, I have many more opportunities to think about the relationships between my personal beliefs and my professional interests. This year’s Annual University Conference theme has focused on light, and during his address this morning, McKay School of Education Dean Richard Young quoted Matthew 5:14-16: Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. ...

People love to analogize / equate open education to open source. There are huge problems with this way of thinking… The one that comes first to mind is that many changes to an open source program can be empirically tested to objectively determine whether or not they improve the program (by increasing its speed, decreasing its file size, etc.) at almost no cost (by recompiling the programs and running automated tests), but many changes to an open educational resource cannot be judged objectively (did changing these words really engage learners more? do these new examples communicate the educational content better?) and even when they can be meaningfully tested, this can only happen at rather high costs in time and resources (e.g., setting up and running usability tests or “horse race” research studies involving enough students to produce statistically meaningful results). Of course, this one difference in the community’s ability to judge whether adaptations should be kept or rejected makes a mountain of difference in our ability to collaboratively develop educational resources rationally and objectively. I could go on about the differences, but they aren’t actually the point of the post. ...

Martin has a great post up about the debate between Stephen and I over the Cape Town Declaration written in terms of a comparison between Cato and Cicero. I enjoyed it; I expect Stephen did as well.