Brainstorm in Progress: OpenCourseWare

Showing posts with label OpenCourseWare. Show all posts

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Opening Up Assessment: Open tools and item banks

"One of the defining characteristics of Open Education has been the widespread sharing of course materials from OpenCourseWare to Open Textbooks to more generally open educational resources (OERs). Unfortunately many OERs are primarily content or course materials and do not include sufficient quizzes or other activities that students can use to check for understanding and that instructors can use to track engagement and performance. Research shows that embedding assessments in texts increases student completion rates and learning. Open Assessment complements existing OER efforts with tools to allow instructors to embed assessments in any OER, and to create shared collections of assessment items.

MIT and Open Tapestry are developing tools and services to allow instructors and authors to embed assessments directly in any content (e.g., in any OpenCourseWare course) thereby providing a richer learning experience. And BYU will be developing validated item banks of open assessments that can be shared (which will be developed by domain experts and psychometricians). Our approach differs from current practice because existing tools require one of two things: either a system that presents both content and assessments together as part of a dedicated system or the the learner is required to leave the content to take an assessment in a separate quiz system breaking the flow of learning. To be able to embed an assessment of your choosing in any existing OER wherever it might be presented will be truly powerful.

This panel presentation will provide conference participants the opportunity to understand how to use the tools, existing and forthcoming open assessment item banks, and how to use open assessment in their OER content regardless of where it's located right away."

http://openassessments.com

Content and assessment are always separate. Typically, you look at content and then go out and take an assessment. This might not be the best way to learn.

These assessments can be embedded anywhere. Focusing on formative assessment. Self-check of their own understanding and eliminates issues around cheating. - there are self-assessments in the materials - a "hide the answer" approach.

Examples are in Saylor.org of static tests. OCW Scholar focuses on self-learners has .pdf questions.

OpenAssessments.com has each item with an embed code much like the embed code that you will find in YouTube.

It will import test questions using QTI format.

Integrated with Open Tapestry. http://opentapestry.com

Open Tapestry lets you edit versions of websites.

David Wiley talked about the creation of item banks. Faculty are sometimes loathe to adopt open textbooks because the commercial textbooks often come with testbanks. A Hewlett grant has funded the creation of openly licensed textbooks.

Open Ed 13: OER and Solving th Textbook Crisis

Textbook Stack (Photo credit: greenasian)

"The average U.S. college student spends more than $1,000 per year on textbooks and supplies, a significant expense on top of already burdensome college costs. Textbook prices continue to soar four times faster than inflation, and many commonly-used texts cost over $200 a piece. The U.S. market is estimated at $8.8 billion, with just five publishers in control of the vast majority of sales.

Open textbooks and OER offer a compelling and common-sense solution to these challenges, and for the last six years, the Student PIRGs and other advocacy groups have worked to win support for OER through this lens.

The potential is huge: With today's rapidly changing student preferences, open textbooks could revolutionize the way textbooks are bought and sold - the full text is offered free online, low-cost hard copies can be sold in the bookstore, and a wide range of print and digital formats are available online. This virtually eliminates affordability concerns while enabling all students to have unfettered access to the text starting the first day of the course.

This session will provide a campaign update from the front lines of the textbook affordability front, focusing on how much progress OER has made as a solution. This will include the latest developments in the public debate around textbook costs, new research quantifying OER savings, analysis of how the publishers are responding, and specific recommendations for how audience members can join or further the cause."

Nicole Allen, OER Program Director, SPARC
nicole@sparc.arl.org
@txtbks
http://sparc.arl.org/issues/oer/join

I am excited to be at this presentation because when I first got involved with open textbooks and when Nicole worked for PIRGs I would call her up and ask LOTS of questions. She is an extremely helpful person.

SPARC is promoting open access to scholarly research but they are interested open textbooks as well.

The Problem
Student loan debt tops a trillion dollars. Default rates rise for the sixth year in a row. Students often run out of financial aide before

Average student budget for books is $1200 a year. for some students, this is the difference between going to school and dropping out.

Textbook prices are up 82% - 3 x the rate of inflation. It is an 8.8 billion $ market. A broken market model - the professor chooses for the student and companies set the price.

The most popular calculus textbook from Cengage is $250. The digital version of an Economics textbook is $144 and you only get it for 189 days. The printed textbook comes with a passcode that expires - this eliminates the used book market.

Rentals can save 61%

As prices continue to rise, the cheaper alternatives are also becoming expensive.

1 out of 3 students are using pirated textbooks online.
2 in 5 share textbooks, 7 in 10 undergrads forgoe bying a textbook because of cost.

Open Textbooks
The savings are about 80%
Studies show that use of open textbooks are correlated with higher grades and retention rates.

What Needs to Happen
Textbooks need to be improved.
More support for adoption and more awareness.

Policy
Resources to fund development
Open licensing for grants as a requirement.
FDHA Policy (2004) is a great example of a college policy.

Campus Advocacy
Students need to be engaged
Libraries - SPARC is a library membership inst.
Faculty and administrators

Student PIRGs has created a faculty awareness toolkit.

University of Mass, Amherst Libraries have saved $750,000 in two years through their work on OER.
U of Minn has created an open textbook catalog and is creating a review process.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Utah State's Open Courseware

Image via WikipediaUtah State University has an excellent collection of open courseware. This is a really exciting time to be involved in education because more and more institutions and instructors are making their teaching materials available to a wider audience. I was particularly interested in their instructional design course (I am a director of instructional design). I am working with staff who are new to the instructional design world and have been looking for materials to introduce them to the arcane and mysterious world of ID. Dr. Joanne Bently is the instructor and author of this course. It is from 2005 and based on the ADDIE model of instructional design. Though there is criticism out there of the ADDIE model as sometimes to rigid and formulaic, I think it is a good foundation to help new instructional designers to think about design as a process and teaching and learning as a collaborative project. The course is open for anyone to use, explore, or download.