Brainstorm in Progress

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

UNESCO Chairs in OER Programme and International Network

Image via WikipediaSpeakers: Rory McGreal Fred Mulder Susan D\'Antoni
The UNESCO Chairs in OER explain their programme, goals and objectives in supporting an international network of OER users.

In Nov. 2006, ICDE launched its Global Task Force on OER at the UNESCO HQ in Paris with strong support from UNESCO. In March 2009 an OER Seminar was organised by the EADTU OER Task force and UNESCO, again at UNESCO HQ. It seemed a natural step for UNESCO to establish UNESCO OER Chairs, which were granted to Fred Mulder and Rory McGreal, both active in the OER community. The Canadian Chair is focusing on stimulating OER capacity building and awareness raising, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America and specifically with the world's Open Universities. The Dutch Chair embraces research to underpin and give guidance to the exploration, introduction, implementation and exploitation of OER in a variety of societies at the national level.
The aim of this Panel is to discuss the Activity plans of both Chairs and to amend them where necessary. This under explicit consideration of the continental and national differences and of the self-learning mode as a promising perspective in relation to OER.

Notes:
The goals of UNESCO include universal education. They are creating an international network of OER chairs for action.

There are chairs in Canada and the Netherlands.

They are building a collaborative mapping of OER initiatives world-wide.

Rory McGreal is the UNESCO chair from Athabasca University. They are supporting OER in Africa and they are partners with UNISA, Africa's online university. They are supporting gender equality. They are promoting OERs to educate youth. They are working on getting chairs in Oceania, Brazil and elsewhere for more chairs. They are active in policy research.

AU Press Open Access Book will be announced soon. They are looking for OER-relevant topics. The OER book will be in the Issues in Distance Education edited by Terry Anderson.

Fred Mulder described an global OER graduate school initiative. There is a substantial need for more research in OERs. Very broad research objectives. The key researchers are PhD candidates under joint supervision by three OER experts.

They want them to spend time doing research abroad but they want that virtually.

Open Ed Conference: From Shared to Open: The evolution of open education in Washington State

Image by textbookrebellion Speakers: Tom Caswell & Connie Broughton

Learn how Washington's colleges went from a few system shared courses in 1997 to developing 81 courses as part of the Open Course Library.

Washington's State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) is currently developing the Open Course Library, an ambitious 2-year project to design open educational resources for 81 high enrolling courses. In 1997 SBCTC began developing a way to share courses with a "pooled enrollments" model. For over a decade, SBCTC's system shared courses have allowed smaller colleges to provide a variety of "long tail" course offerings through a well-organized system of online course sharing. In this presentation we will explain how our system shared courses paved the way to the Open Course Library, providing a culture of sharing as well as the technical framework to allow Washington State's colleges to engage more fully in the Open Education movement.

Notes:
Their strategic plan included shared tools, ANGEL, Tegrity, Collaborate, NW eTutoring Consortium, Professional development, and the open course library.

More information at http://techplan.sbctc.edu

"We will cultivate the culture and practice of using and contributing to open education resources."

Internet + digital content + open license = lower cost, greater access, and greater quality.

Students were averaging $1000 for textbook costs.

WA legislation in SSHB1025 asks that faculty consider the lowest cost options (all things equal) that faculty will adopt open content where possible.

Saylor Foundation adopted their courses that did not use commercial textbooks. They also fixed the broken links and put much of the material into a consistent form.

The Open Course Library: Bridging the gap between the LMS and OCW

Speakers: Tom Caswell & Connie Broughton

We will share the Open Course Library project, including technical & professional development challenges faced as we developed phase 1.

The goal of the Open Course Library is for faculty to design digital, openly licensed materials for 81 high enrolling courses in Washington State community and technical colleges. During the development of the first 42 Open Course Library courses, faculty designed, piloted, and then revised their courses using the our system wide ANGEL LMS. We chose to use ANGEL as our primary development platform for because most of our faculty course designers were already familiar with that LMS. Using ANGEL also made sense because all faculty were required to pilot their OCL course, so initial development, piloting, and revisions could all be made with the same system.

In this presentation we will explain the workflow and roles of the Open Course Library staff. We will share some of the challenges we faced developing OER in an LMS. While new systems such as Canvas are removing many of the technical barriers to open sharing from an LMS, other challenges remain. Considerations for open content sharing include professional development for copyright and Creative Commons licensing, instructional design, and web accessibility.

Notes:
They had to make the case for open education.
Why is "open" important in education?

Efficiency: You can build on content that is already created
Affordability
Quality: We tend to do our best work when we know our peers can see it.
Self-Interest: Increased faculty exposure, reputations, and opportunities

They built 80 top courses and created an open course library all built on open education resources and open textbooks. The state of WA has 75% adjunct teachers in the community and technical college system. This is a quick way for faculty to get course materials together quickly. They didn't slam the door on commercial publishers but limited the textbook costs to $30. This approach is different from an "open courseware site." The open course library workflow is more of a straightline workflow - teachers who built the courses are also the ones who have taught them.

The courses will be available on Connexioins.

Master & open course materials are linked

Faculty update both together
Older versions still available
Proprietary content is flagged and hidden from open course

They have a new RFP for an LMS that is requiring an open publishing feature.

Goals:

Design and share 81 high enrollment gatekeeper courses
Improve course completion rates
Lower textbook costs
Provide new resources
Fully engage our colleges in the global open educational resources discussion

Phase 1: 42 courses released this Monday

Phase 2: 39 courses available in Spring 2013

"Every faculty member works with an instructional designer and a librarian."

Q1= design, Q2= more design, Q3 Teach pilot course, Q4 review

Process: 81 courses built by our own faculty:

Define learning objectives
Go to OER library for materials
Fill in missing content with created content

How does OER help teach more students and teach them better?

No-rivalrous, scalable, searchable
Allow for preview

Results?

81 courses with 411,133 enrollments
Textbook savings of 41 million a year
Completion rates may also increase if students can afford to actually buy the text

Phase 1 Faculty Concerns

Many were unfamiliar with the particular LMS
No way to compare work between course teams
Too many websites to keep in track of

Phase 2

Using Google Docs to collaborate and share as we go
All project management information in one Google Site

They are also using Tegrity.

More information on http://opencourselibrary.org

Open Ed Conference: Are commercial publishers friend or foe of open education?

Image by matthileo via FlickrSpeakers: Eric Frank and Nicole Allen

Are commercial publishers friend or foe of open education? This session will challenge five common assumptions about the role of commercial publishers in the open education movement. The presenter will share lessons learned from the frontlines of the $8 billion college textbook industry, and demonstrate why profit motives and financial incentives can be critical elements in fostering a healthy open education ecosystem that helps increase the mainstream popularity, usage and long-term financial sustainability of OER.

This session will begin with a brief overview of the disruptive business model of Flat World Knowledge, a commercial publisher of free and open textbooks. The presenter will then challenge five common assumptions about the private sector and open textbooks.

Specifically:

1. Commercial activity is counter to the goals of the open education movement. Widespread use of high-quality OER is a shared goal within the open community. The presenter will discuss how a commercial publisher can play a central role in the creation, distribution and usage of OER that helps move it from the fringes to the center of the national conversation on higher education.

2. If you build open content they will come. While a few open content sites attract thousands of users, most do not. For many faculty, open educational content is regarded as ancillary to their primary textbook. The presenter will walk through the adoption process to illustrate why it takes a publisher with a demonstrated track record in developing and marketing textbooks, along with a significant investment, to compete with the vast commercial catalogs and sales and marketing operations of large academic publishers,

3. The non-commercial clause is not in the spirit of true openness.Copyright holders have different objectives for their creations. While the non-commercial clause isn't suitable for all, for a professional publisher to reach scale and build a sustainable model around open, the non-commercial clause may be not only appropriate, but necessary for long-term survival.

4. There's already more than enough open content out there. Supply, not demand, remains a hurdle for the mainstream adoption of OER. There is a distinction between open content and adoptable open content. The presenter will provide examples of the kind of support and supplemental teaching materials faculty expect from a textbook publisher, and the resources required to change the perception, among many faculty, that free comes at the expense of quality.

5. Authors shouldn't profit from writing openly-licensed textbooks. There are many motivations for writing open textbooks. For academic authors seeking to do the right thing for students and be fairly compensated for their work, the commercial open textbook model makes sense. The presenter will share examples of both first-time and market-leading authors who have embraced the commercial open textbook model as a way to improve textbook affordability and enjoy a more sustainable income stream for years to come.

Notes:
Eric Frank is a founder of Flat World Knowledge and begins with a discussion of what FWK is all about - commercial publication of open texts. They want to create great textbooks, give faculty and students control, give students choices, and ultimately to dramatically lower the cost. They choose authors, the books are professionally developed, and developed a platform for distributing texts. They give electronic access to students for free and charge for POD versions of the book and for learning supplements. He is solving the issues around maintaining the "original" in a sea of derivatives and formats. 44% of the students take advantage of the free versions. The students, according to Frank, are saving about $80 using FWK. Large media companies like Random House are investing in FWK. He is saying that users of Flatworld textbooks are showing increases in course completion and grades. He says that they are not just a repository but that they do a lot of marketing around their books including conferences, direct mail, and review copies. They also provide support for students and teachers. They are 3% of the market share. He talked about the "stages of grief" that publishers and some institutions go through with open software or textbooks.

It is 2:30, where is Nicole Allen!?

Okay, Nicole Allen did not speak here today, quel dommage. I would have liked to see this as a debate.

Open Ed Conference: Cognitive and Cultural Barriers to Openness

Speaker: Steve Hargadon

Image by jdlasica via FlickrWhat are the cognitive and cultural barriers to openness, and how does understanding them help to promote broader openness?

A conversation with the desire to identify the core ways in which people are naturally or culturally conditioned to be suspicious of or opposed to openness; then to use that information to think about ways to build bridges to individuals or institutions locked into closed mindsets.

Notes:
He open talking about all the open projects that he has participated have folded up due to lack of interest, funding, and institutional support. His favorite quote is Jefferson's "My sharing my light does not diminish my own." Why do we close off when we feel that there is no trust? He feels that on some level that he failed with open source software.

He used the example of an online Facebook study group in Chemistry who was busted by the instructor for starting an online study group.

What are the cognitive biases around how people feel about open eductation?

Competition compensation
Cowboy culture
Cultural influences (vs. Rationhality)
Narrative driven

Possible Examples of Solutions

What has OCW done

Conclusions/Ideas to Encourage Understanding and Adoption

Acknowledge and address proprietary concerns (OCW)

More at http://opencognitive.wikispaces.com

There are also selfless acts, cooperation, and sharing as motivations. There are also those who use seemingly altruistic acts as self-promotion.

Open Ed Conference: Towards an aggregated profile of the Global OER and OCW audience

Speakers Mary Lou Forward, Meena Hwang and Una Daly

Developing a profile of our global audience through aggregated surveys of OER and OCW users worldwide.

What are the demographics of those looking of open education resources and open courses? based on their surveys, most of the people visiting http://www.educationportal.com are mostly over 40. They are getting mostly life-long learners. Only a third of the visitors are there to support their studies. The most popular answer to their survey was "to update my job skills."

People were visiting from 57 different countries.

All of this points out the importance of translations.,

Survey data is up at http://www.ocwconsortium.org

There was then examples of a wide variety of users who provided comments about how folks are using OCW. There are huge communities being built around open content around the world. One site in China that hosts ed videos and a microblogging has 1.4 million followers. One study group has 3000 members.

Una Daly got up to talk about who is using the open repositories. She discussed the OER advocate training programs, online communities of practice, and adopter communities. She mentioned the grant around adoption of OERs and the Hoopa Tribe Reader.

Open Ed Conference: A Case Study of OER from within the LMS

Steam locomotive 6233 Duchess of Sutherland tender

Image via WikipediaSpeakers: John Rinderle, Bill Jerome
Can we increase OER uptake with seamless LMS integration?: Realizing opportunities for OER discoverability and data exchange in the LMS.

A key factor in OER uptake is the ability of resources to be easily accessed, combined with other course materials, and presented in an appropriate context for learning. For many instructors, the learning management system (LMS) is the information hub of their course. To extend the reach of OER we feel it is critical for resources to be made easily accessible from within the LMS. This need is greater than providing a simple link. From the LMS, OERs should be discoverable to students and instructors who want to use, support a single sign on interface, provide coherent navigation between LMS and OER, and seamlessly exchange key data (e.g. roster, grades, learning analytics).
In this presentation, we will share the Open Learning Initiative's approach to learning management system integration. We will survey current open standards for learning tools with the LMS and discuss our decision to implement Basic LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability). We will share our usability research on the user interface affordances required to drive a productive experience. We will also discuss the technical, user support, process and policy challenges we encountered while bringing OLI to the LMS.

Looking beyond OLI, we will make the case for improved methods and standards for integrating OER with LMS. While today's standards allow learning environment to report simple score outcomes to the LMS, the more robust measures of learning required to drive learning analytics remain locked up in individual tools. The result is that it is difficult to mix resources and achieve a unified view of how learning is progressing and the overall effectiveness of the learning design. We feel this is a missed opportunity. The next generation of standards and LMS systems will need to simplify the discovery and adoption of OER and facilitate finer grained data exchange.

Notes:
They are part of the Open Learning Initiative. They feel that the LMS is all about ease of access. Increasing access to education is part of their core mission. The LMS can make things easier to find. Without standards there are too many platforms to target otherwise. They did a survey and found that the LMS use is more complicated than they thought. Basic LTI is available in all LMSs. They have a two-click to course content design. They are using Blackboard.

Challenges:
Technology issues

Some LMSs need extensions
Some implementations are buggy
Basic LTI has few required fields

Processes a Policy

Security
Audit and control - knowing what tools faculty are using
Support - helping instructors

User Experience

Using complex systems is difficult for faculty and students
Bad experience = unhappy students
Roster management - there are two grade books
Single sign-on
Bookmarking - basic LTI does not allow it
Desktop support
Where do users have accounts in OLI or in Blackboard?

Opportunities

Learning analytics

Feedback Loops for Learning

Student learning data is at the heart of their solutions - an outcomes centered approach to teaching. They are creating tools for learning analytics. LMS interoperability and learning analytics should be automatic, not an afterthought.

How do we build a better user expereince?

An OER app store?

Pearson is moving in this direction using commercial and open content.

The use experience needs to be focused on the educators and learners consuming OER.

Questions:

How does OER make greater in-roads to the LMS?

Do you agree with the app store approach?

What should an OER app store offer?

Does the app model extend or replace the content package?

Open and "closed," free and commercial. side by side?

The speaker is wondering why OERs are not moving like Web 2.0 projects - skunk works a project, release the API, then everyone uses it.

Open Ed Conference: "Which License for OER?"

Image by kool_skatkat via FlickrSpeakers: Ahrash Bissell, Gary Lopez, Philipp Schmidt

Tired of the never-ending debate about "Which license for OER?" We agree! Perhaps we should talk about "Which assets" instead.

For too many projects, and for too long, the OER community has grappled with the proper interpretation of open-content licenses, their use, and possible sustainability strategies built around them. The Creative Commons licensing suite has emerged as the global standard for OER licensing, yet it has not lessened, let alone solved, this debate. The problem can be distilled to three key issues: 1) there is more than one CC license, 2) interpretation of some licensing terms (such as the non-commercial term) is subjective, and 3) the license chosen is widely perceived to be a key factor in determining workable sustainability models for OER use and production.

In this session, we will examine each of these issues, paying particular attention to their effects on people's perceptions of OER, the different ways in which licenses are justified and used, and the overall impact on the progress (or lack thereof) of the field.

We will also discuss whether it could be helpful to shift the frame of the debate, from "Which license?" to "Which assets?" In brief, the contention here is that the persistent focus on licensing has stifled the emergence of creative new production, use, and delivery models and reduced the impact of OER accordingly. One option is to embrace hybrid production models, where all "OER" are released with as few restrictions possible (e.g., under CC BY), but not all resources (from a given producer) need be released as OER. We are hoping that the discussion will reveal other options as well.

We are anticipating that we will be able to integrate the insights gained from this discussion into helpful resources for both existing practitioners and newcomers to the OER field.

Notes: There was no presentation here but this was a question and answer session. How do we produce OERs in a way that schools can use them. The speaker claims that copyright issues are not really an issue in the classroom. He is a proponent of the "CC by" license. He discussed the OER decision tree for organizations seeking to be involved in OER production. He thinks that a dual publication model might be a good idea. If you have some materials that are aligned by standards or that they were put together with scaffolded learning in mind. Can we publish a restricted version for the purposes of standards AND then break that up into open modules.

What do you do with faculty who want to release their materials for free but then they get picked up by someone who wants to put a license on it that will allow them to make money?

Two reasons licenses are important is that they can protect the author and to foster more reuse. There is now no "blessed sources" for texts in the open environment. We do not know enough about the sustainability issues around the licenses to know what the effects will be - we need more research.

Jaroslav made the point that BSD used to be an open source operating system that was made commercial. We e need more consensus on licenses.

Open Education Conf. Keynote Speakers Martha Kanter & Jim Shelton

Seal of the United States Department of Education

Image via WikipediaMartha Kanter, Under Secretary of Education, U.S. Dept. of Ed, started off the conference with a keynote address. She is the former chancellor of the De Anza Community College where she was a strong advocate for open education. Kanter and Jim Shelton drafted the educational technology plan. She was appointed by Obama to the dept of education. She says that we are getting out competed by other countries (we are 16th in the world). She sees open education as a way to make us more competitive. The goal is to get knowledge in the hands of everyone. She discussed some of the research around OERs in k-12. She described some projects in k-12 where the students had access to the learning content 24/7 and not just 40 minutes per class. She hopes that we can become champions for the dept. of ed's research into what is working and why. We will have 10 million students graduating from high school in 2020. We lose a kid every 22 seconds though. If they have open textbooks, we have an opportunity to change the culture of education. China and India are also embracing open universities. She emphasized that there is a role here for businesses as well. She discussed the 440 requirements for someone to become a teacher and she asked us to let her know what kinds of things we can get rid of: regulations and other things that get in the way. She talked about ENTER, a free online platform for online teaching and learning. She quoted Obama who said he wants to build more online open resources instead of brick & mortar classrooms.

Jim Shelton is the Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Dept. of Education. He spoke on "Enabling Better 'Teaching and Learning': A Status Check." He says that he role is to create an ecosystem that will let talented people make the changes that need to happen. We are also interested in growing opportunities internationally. He said that this is about teaching and learning, not just "free" - if we do the same thing that we have been doing but just cheaper - then sham on use.

Step 1: Shift the dialog
Make the OER value proposition "better" not just "free."

Step 2: More and Better OER about Creating Effective ER
How people learn
How to

Identify and describe what is to be learned
Demonstrate what is to be learned
Design and implement experiences
Optimize and select deliver methods
Maximize motivation and engagement

Best -in-Class Examples

Step 3: Provide better Tools to Reduce Barriers to Quaility

Step 4: Create a Better Context / Align Incentives
Reduce regulatory barriers
make performance matter
Until then make "the science" matter
Ease and inform access

Moving Forward

What's missing?
What's in the way?
Who's steping up?

What is inhibiting the progress?

NB: These are merely my raw notes and impressions for the benefit of our team at College of the Redwoods. Your results may vary and contents may have settled during shipping.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Connectivism and Agile Software Development

Image by sjcockell via FlickrAs a director of distance education, I often have multiple projects going on: some with the in-house team or with others at a distance in grant projects. I have been researching how projects get done for a while now. I read about "agile" software development. I in no way would like to imply that our team is at that level of efficiency - but we are also in a place where my tiny dept. needs to look at our mission and values and the "Agile Manifesto" or at least items from it will make it in there. The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 but typical education work environments focus on the work week, the semester, and very broad time lines. Education institutions often work in terms of specializations. Outside of pure academic research, IT departments are driven by job descriptions, not inspiration, passion, or vision. What I am finding is that just as we need a new theory of learning for the networked era, the digital age (i.e. Connectivism), we need a new theory of project management for the digital age. The idea that we are going to make significant progress on projects with folks who only meet once a week or month, have little stake in the outcome (besides a paycheck) is just wrong. I don't think that model ever worked. Maybe not all of the principles are applicable to an education environment. It goes like this:

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
This first principle implies not just delivery, but communication with the customer. "Early and continuous" in my mind speaks to customer expectations and continuously checking in to understand the possible changing needs.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
This principle is important because one problem with project management is that half way through a project, a team can find out that the deliverable will not meet the customer's needs. One has to be committed to those needs and not just focused on finishing a deliverable.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.Again, in an education environment, this is about expectations and communication. Faculty we have worked with expect us to take their requests for learning objects and take them to the next level, even after we have moved a "final" version forward.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
When I worked at Tacoma Community College as an instructional designer, our Fearless Leader, Andy Duckworth, hooked up the whole elearning dept. with instant messaging. At first, it was just for us in the dept. but as faculty found out that we could be instantly available, some of them joined in too. There were fears of "over-connectedness" but that never happened. What did happen was that small problems could be quickly solved in a timely fashion before they developed into big problems. Small problems become big problems when they are not solved in a timely way,
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
How do you know you have motivated people working on education projects? The right people for my teams are those that not only have proficiency in their skill area (like graphic design or coding) but have a driving curiosity about how we learn, education, and communication.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
This flies in the face with how we often have to work. This is especially true, I find, with workers who are not used to communicating efficiently and effectively online. I value face-to-face conversations - I know why they work, but this was more true in 2001 than it is today because of the advances in networks and the software used to negotiate them (e.g. Elluminate Live).
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
This is often completely alien to the education workplace - deliverables and outcomes often take a back seat to process or politics.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers should be required reading for any design team.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.This is something that I learned from George Siemens and Stephen Downes. I was in one of their MOOCs (massively open online classes) where the students were encouraged to self-organize into groups using the tools they were most interested in or comfortable with for communicating and working together. We learned as much or more from those teams than from any "sage on the stage" and that is how the class was designed.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjustsits behavior accordingly.
I would like to see more of this in instructional design. Those paradigms can be a starting point for some designers, but we need to knock instructional designers out of their comfortable paradigms (e.g. ADDIE) and listen to the needs of the students, faculty, and the production team.

A good summary of this process could come out of "Emergent Design" which Wikipedia says "emerges in the creative design process, rather than being a blueprint that exists eternally in the ether like the Platonic source Forms and also that the artifact that is designed has emergent properties that are more than the sum of its parts."

This just in: The Electric Educator posted an interesting take on this in September:
http://electriceducator.blogspot.com/2011/09/agile-development-meet-online-learning.html

Thursday, October 20, 2011

OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability

Image via CrunchBaseJoin us for a webinar on October 31 hosted by SoftChalk.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962111696

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Title: OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability
Date: Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Friday, October 14, 2011

Six Factors Driving Online Enrollments

Image by proper dave via FlickrThis was the article that I wrote for the Times-Standard's Tech Beat:

Many students are taking online classes at College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. Even though online learning is called “distance learning,” the majority of our online students are from here on the North Coast. Research, and our experience at College of the Redwood's Distance Education department, has shown us that despite the fact that online learning takes more motivation and commitment on the part of the student, online learning is an increasingly popular option. Why is becoming a more popular option? Here are six reasons that we believe are driving student online enrollment:

1. Flexibility
Online students can work on their courses and listen to lectures between jobs, appointments and other classes. They can access their course materials 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Course work can be done around family schedules, and students can study on their phone, laptop or anywhere else they have an Internet connection.

2. Accessibility
For some students, such as those in wheelchairs or the blind, attending courses on campus can be challenging. Some students use adaptive technology, like screen readers, to assist them in class. In an online environment, the other students and the teacher may not even know that the online student has a disability. In turn, that can make online classes more attractive to students with special needs. In addition, students who are non-native English speakers also get the benefit of being able to review an online lecture multiple times or review complex concepts at their own pace.

3. Reduced cost
Attending courses online saves the students money by eliminating the expenses of gasoline, bus fares, and parking fees. Some instructors use online, free text books (such as College of the Redwood's Math Department) to further reduce the cost of attendance. If instructors are accepting papers online, students and schools alike save money in printing costs.

4. Engagement
Students in online classes tend to communicate more thoughtfully. Some students find it difficult to speak in class. Posting to an online discussion forum allows students to take their time and formulate their thoughts in ways that the face-to-face classroom environment may not allow. In our experiences with teaching online, we have found that we actually know our online students better than many of our face-to-face students because of the social dimension of online learning. Students often find that online classes provide more personalized attention.

5. Networking and technology skills
Online classes give students real world skills. Students who take online classes become more proficient and comfortable with using computers. Through assignments, discussion forums and group projects, students can learn to connect with one another online and with information in meaningful and useful ways. These 21st century skills are increasingly in demand by the workplace. Some students prefer to learn in the same medium they are using for managing information and communication in their life outside of school.

6. Online learning creates options
Students who take online classes know they have options. If a student needs to take a class that they need to graduate, they will be able to take it online if they have to. Students who take online classes are more likely to take classes in order to update their professional skills further into their careers. They will have the ability to take advantage of online training and “webinars” their future employers or universities may offer.

One of the problems with online learning is that students have spent 12 years or more learning how to be face-to-face students and never learn about the time management skills needed to be an online student. Fortunately, more students at College of the Redwoods are taking advantage of the free, two-week, fully online orientation to distance education called “DE 101.” If you are interested in learning more about online learning, or a CR student interested in DE 101, email Geoff Cain at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu.

Geoff Cain is the Director of Distance Learning at College of the Redwoods. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Redwood Technology Consortium. Want to know more about technology and education? See Geoff's blog at http://www.geoffcain.com.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Bridging the Digital Divide with the Aakash Tablet

India's new tablet computer, the Aakash, is the world's cheapest tablet computer. It will be known commercially in the West as the UbiSlate. The Aakash tablet computer is a project, much like Negroponte's OLPC project, that is meant to bridge the digital divide - that gulf that separates the technological wealthy and the electronically disenfranchised poor. It will sell in India for $50 and elsewhere for $60. Many in the West may ask why such a poor country like India would be interested in computers for their citizenry when there are pressing problems such as starvation and a lack of medical care. Well, those are two really good reasons. Unlike the West, these tablets are not designed just to consume videos, music and status updates on Facebook. With a wifi network across India, users will be able to access agricultural data to help them grow crops, or provide health care workers access to medical consultations with experts from the urban centers. India's National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology plans to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities on the subcontinent in their e-learning program using the Aakash. India will subsidize half the cost of the tablet for it's students. The tablet is meant to support video and web conferencing. It is ironic how much poverty can drive innovation. From what I have read, these tablets are designed for durability and harsh conditions; perfect for Junior High in the West!

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Stay hungry; stay foolish...

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Bill Strips DOL Grants of OER Provisions

The Department of Health and Human Services he...

Image via WikipediaGot a note this morning from Cable Green via Kim Thanos. Kim says that if the Kaleidoscope grant was funded under these restrictions, we could not have proceeded with the course developments. The bill to be discussed appears to remove any support for OERs (open education resources).

DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will be hosting two web-chat sessions for the public to provide feedback on the first round of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program competition. This is the program that just announced the first investment of $500 million in community colleges with the OER requirement on new course/content development. The program is slated to invest $2 billion in total.

It is important that those in support of federal open investments participate in this event. Whether and how any further open investments are made in this program will be determined, in part, through public comment sessions such as these.

ETA invites interested individuals to participate in either of the TAACCCT Grant Program public comment sessions, scheduled for:

• Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT
• Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT

To join the public comment session, please use the following link to access the session you are attending: http://www.dol.gov/dol/chat.htm. Note that this link is for both sessions.

A transcript of the listening sessions will be available to the public at www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT after October 12, 2011

The TAACCCT program is designed to meet industry needs while accelerating individual learning and improving college retention and achievement rates. The overall goal is to increase industry-recognized credential or degree completion rates of participants. Projects were encouraged to use online or technology-enabled learning to achieve these objectives. DOL is implementing the TAACCCT program in partnership with the Department of Education.

For more information about the TAACCCT program, as well as a list of grantees awarded under the first round of grants, visit: www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT

Please attend both sessions. We need all voices on the table.

Thank you,
Cable

____________________________

The House Appropriations Committee just released the draft fiscal year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) funding bill. The legislation includes funding for programs within the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and other related agencies. Included in this bill is the following provision, which would appear to strip the ability of the DOL to support any further OER investments:

"SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act for the Department of Labor may be used to develop new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in carrying out education or career job training grant programs unless the Secretary of Labor certifies, after a comprehensive market-based analysis, that such courses, modules, learning materials, or projects are not otherwise available for purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under development for students who require them to participate in such education or career job training grant programs."

The text of the bill and accompanying announcement can be found online at:

http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=262231

The language can be found on page 37 of the bill.

There are several steps that Congress would have to take before this language would be approved, but first it has to move through the subcommittee and full committee. A subcommittee markup has not yet been scheduled.

Current subcommittee members include:

Republicans
• Denny Rehberg, Montana, Subcommittee Chair
• Jerry Lewis, California
• Rodney Alexander, Louisiana
• Jack Kingston, Georgia
• Kay Granger, Texas
• Michael K. Simpson, Idaho
• Jeff Flake, Arizona
• Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming

Democrats
• Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut
• Nita M. Lowey, New York
• Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Illinois
• Lucille Roybal-Allard, California
• Barbara Lee, California

==================

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
(e) cable@creativecommons.org / (m) +01 360-790-3114 / (s) cable.green
(t) @cgreen / (b) OER
(b) power of open

Saturday, October 01, 2011

Concept Mapping with Compendium

Image by ryan2point0 I do a lot with concept mapping. I use it in my work as an instructional designer and I use concept maps in writing fiction and technical work, and I am really interested in Compendium right now. What is Compendium? It is more than just concept mapping software. "Compendium is about sharing ideas, creating artifacts, making things together, and breaking down the boundaries between dialogue, artifact, knowledge, and data." Compendium is a free concept mapping software package by the Compendium Institute, a group formed by Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University of UK, Verizon, Center for Creative Leadership, and others to promote the compendium methodology. "Our own particular interest is in visualizing the connections between people, ideas and information at multiple levels, in mapping discussions and debates, and what skills are needed to do so in a participatory manner that engages all stakeholders." What is really exciting about this is the techniques they are exploring with collaborative concept mapping:

"Extending Compendium's support for personal sensemaking, we have a particular interest in what we term collective sensemaking, and have developed a technique called Dialogue Mapping, and its extension, Conversational Modelling. Our experiences with these techiques for capturing and managing -- often in real time and under pressure -- the perspectives in meetings that emerge in open discussion or in collaborative modelling, lead us to claim that Compendium offers innovative strategies for tackling some of the key challenges in managing knowledge and making meaning:

improving communication between disparate communities tackling ill-structured problems
real time capture and integration of hybrid material (both predictable/ formal, and unexpected/informal) into a reusable group memory
transforming the resulting resource into the right representational formats for different stakeholders.

There is a tremendous amount of useful tutorials, videos and articles on the method at the The Compendium Exchange.

I am interested in seeing how this software holds up against CMaps which is what I currently use. I have used Gliffy and Inspiration occasionally for group projects but I am always on the look out for open source solutions. Especially one like this that asks the users to be thoughtful about what kinds of connections they are making to and with the information they are using.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Another reason textbooks are so expensive!

I came home from work today and going through the mail, I found an piece of mail from Bedford/St. Martin's. It is a full color brochure, printed on thick card stock advertising their book, Approaching Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. It says "Jump right in... the literature's fine!" I used to teach English and I have never seen a more expensively produced brochure for a textbook. I hope instructors are thinking about this very seriously. Every time they choose one of these commercial textbooks, they are choosing the high cost of direct mail advertising that gets passed along to the students. How can publishers justify this? I last taught at Hartnell College six years ago. I have sent notes to the textbook reps and they all still contact me. They are wasting time and money (the students' money) chasing down someone who is not teaching English at the moment. There are so many better models than this. There is Flatworld Knowledge, open textbooks from places like College Open Textbooks, there is Creative Commons, and Shakespeare has been free on the Internet since 1993!

I post alot about textbooks here and what I would like to do is to use this space to share some of my favorite open education resources and open texts for English. I will tag those postings as "English."

If you have some favorites, post them in a comment here or email me.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW

Join us as we continue the OER webinar series where experts are demystifying the world of open educational resources (OER). This month's session will feature OER development models and creation tools. Next month a panel of OER experts will discuss the sustainability of OER projects and the issues surrounding funding. Sign up for these sessions today!

If you missed one of the previous sessions, you can easily get up to speed by checking out the archives:

• OER Session 1 – Defining OER: The WHAT and the WHY
• OER Session 2 – Finding and Using OER: The WHERE and the WHEN

OER Session 3—Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW
Who is developing OERs? Who should be? How are they doing it? How can standards allow OER content interoperability? How can standards assure quality? How can I get started? How can I find the tools for creating OER content?

These questions, and more, will be answered by Rob Abel from IMS Global and others. In addition we will discuss different models for developing OER materials and demonstrate various authoring tools for creating OER content. Models for OER development will include work by the math department at the College of the Redwoods. You will also see how Jacqui Cain from Tacoma Community College, as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grant, re-purposed Sherlock Holmes stories to create a full online course in Remedial English.

Wednesday, September 21 3:00pm ET Register (Free)

OER Session 4—Funding OER: Sustainability
How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?
These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Monday, October 31 3:00pm ET Register (Free)

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk. Follow the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #OERseries.

Creative Commons Positions: Senior Project Manager & Senior Project Analyst

Image via CrunchBasehttp://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/29046

Creative Commons is seeking highly motivated and organized individuals to fill two positions: Senior Project Manager and Senior Project Analyst. Both positions are full-time with full benefits. Both positions will key members of the team supporting Department of Labor TAACCCT grantees.

Ideal candidates have contributed to open source, open education, open licensing, and/or other open content projects, are proficient in required technologies, and possess at lease two years of work experience. Joining CC means getting the chance to interact with motivated staff and a brilliant international network of affiliates and community members.

Please feel free to share these jobs descriptions as far and wide as possible. We will be accepting applications on a rolling basis until we find the right candidates. Please be sure to indicate the job title you are interested in applying for in the email subject line, and send to “jobs@creativecommons.org”

Application Deadline: Friday, 7 October.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Distance Ed: No Significant Difference (Even Fictionally)

Hermann Hesse, Nobel laureate in Literature 1946

Image via WikipediaI am reading Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" aka "Magister Ludi." The perfect novel to get my mind off of work. The novel is about a student who navigates the labyrinthine academic and quasi-spiritual institution of the glass bead game. Throughout the course of the novel, our maverick hero even rises to become the Game Master. What is the game? There is not really a lot of information in the book about the game, but it does talk about how themes in one discipline, such as astronomy, and another, like music, is proposed and the participants set about to make connections. (Is this the first Connectivist novel?) The more elegant the connections, the better. I think the novel is really about our hero's relationship to institutions. Well something interesting happens: there is instruction and lectures around the games each year that lead up to the big match. The hero of the novel gets sent to a Benedictine monastery for a while but asks his superiors if he can still listen to the lectures over the radio and send his completed game in via post. He does. And guess what? He wins. So in other words, there was no significant difference between the outcome of the contest between those who participated face-to-face and those who participated virtually. In this case, 100% of those who participated virtually did better than those who participated face-to-face.

Even though I am only half kidding around here, Hesse has always been a favorite novelist of mine, I could not have survived my teens without Steppenwolf, Journey to the East, or Siddartha. I like to think he would appreciate my playfulness.

Laborare est ludare...