OpenEd

Dr. David Wiley's Introduction to Open Education course has been an amazing experience. I took the course as part of an Independent Study option in the last semester of my Master's Program in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University. I had no idea what "open education" was before the semester started and guessed that it was about openly licensing instructional content. While I later came to realize licensing is a significant consideration, the possibilities of open education reach far beyond content distribution.

Because of my involvement in the course, I also decided to attend the 2007 Open Education Conference hosted by Dr. Wiley and the great folks at Utah State University. This provided me the opportunity to work closely with a great Professor at Indiana University, Dr. Anne Leftwich, to develop a presentation on what evolved into our interpretation of an open learning environment, as highlighted in my week 13 blog post. That presentation has become far more than an assignment in a class or a discussion at a conference. I consider the concepts of openness (the removal of barriers to participation), connections (to peers, to facilitators, to the world), and support (the "someone", the "something", or the"network" there to help) to be a crucial part of the next iteration of my personal theory of learning and instruction.

The most valuable aspect of this experience is the connection to others that I have made through this journey, both within this class and at the conference. My blog roll now has over 50 new "voices" who share a common passion for openness, connection, and support in learning. Each person I have met (in person or virtually) is truly passionate about not only learning, but also the possibilities. We live in a very exciting time where openness, connection, and support in learning has never been easier. Yet, unfortunately, opportunities are being blocked, filtered, banned, or placed behind walled gardens. Sometimes out of greed. Sometimes out of the fear of the unknown. It is so inspiring to know that there are kindred spirits in the world who share my desire to plow though those walls and take advantage of the endless opportunities made possible through greater openness.

Beyond personal connections, I have been happily overwhelmed by the vetted content that was shared this semester. Certainly, on my own, I would never have stumbled upon the reports, presentations, and web sites that we have been exposed to this semester. Specifically, I found the following reports from the first weeks of the semester to provide excellent overviews of the open education movement. I consider them "must reads" for those dipping a toe into the open education waters:

• Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources   (OECD)
• Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012   (OLCOS)
• A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities   (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond)

As I noted in week 4, the themes within the OLCOS report resonate most with me as the authors get to the heart of the open education practices that I feel show the most promise. The recommended future actions consider not only the content, but also the open context in which the content is used to support learning. The authors extend the focus to contemplate the broader open educational practices to support learners, as well as need for more open participation within the learning process.  - see p.29:

 "OLCOS sees a critical lack of educational innovation for learner-centered and collaborative learning practices and processes in which ... individual and groups of learners (including teachers) will actively use tools and content to understand problems, discuss approaches and methods in problems solving, and share study resources and results." 

Further, they emphasize the importance of the role of the learner and learning communities within which the learners participate- see p. 24:

"A key problem of current open access educational repositories may be that despite their philosophy of sharing, they see teachers and learners as consumers of content who primarily want to download useful material. A better approach would be to support communities of interest around certain subjects."

In addition, the OLCOS report considers the possibilities of using freely available social software (social bookmarking, RSS feeds, wikis and blogs) to support open educational practices and to create personal learning environments controlled by the learner. Using open source software and Internet based technologies to support learning is something I have been covering with great interest on my personal blog for some time now. The report also provides a vivid picture of the differences between open education and closed (or canned) education. The examples of "canned" versus "open" education within the table on p. 46 contrast the practices within each system on such measures as:

• the roles of the teacher and learner (dispenser / receiver versus facilitator / active learner),
• services provided to learner (databases versus RSS feeds),
• content management (institutional LMS versus PLEs), and
  
• tools to support learning (desktop tools versus wikis, blogs).

I also gained an appreciation for the possibilities of a producer driven production model which runs contrary to the consumer driven production models touted within both my MBA and instructional design courses. I did not contemplate the value of a producer driven model when preparing my week 8 post for this course. I made the observation that a producer driven model (that does not contemplate the needs of the end user) cannot be sustained. However, after reading David Wiley's blog post Producers, Consumers and Reuse and Friedman's observations about how global communities work, I re-thought my observations. Contrary to my assertions in my week 8 post, a producer driven model is created for an important end user .... the producer. An "a-ha" moment came for me as I read David Wiley's suggestion that:

"... every good work of open source software begins life as a producer-driven work ... The secret sauce in both the cases of the good open source software and the good OER is an actual, bias-riddled, context-bound, historical person located squarely in a concrete place and time addressing their own specific instructional problem."

As I stated in my week 9 post, while not guaranteed, it is likely that those with common or shared interests will benefit, but not necessarily in the same manner, for the same purpose, or to fulfill the same need. That is the beauty of a flat and open world that I had not fully appreciated. While I may benefit from reading and interacting with another person's work, it may be for either the same or an entirely different reason. Contrary to my week 8 post, not being preoccupied with the needs and concerns of the broader audience may be a good thing for the sustainability of open education.

In terms of items we did not cover, I wish we had more time to delve into the issues surrounding the recent release of the Cape Town Declaration. Considering the concerns and rebuttals expressed by Stephen Downes, Martin Weller, Thomas Hoffman, David Wiley, and others who have added their voices to this discussion, is it good document? Does it express the ideas of the greater "community"? Is such a document needed? Will it change any hearts and minds? Does it need to? While I appreciate that the pesky devil always resides within the details and usually more debate is better than less, regarding this particular document, I am less in favor of loading it up with details that highlight points of community dissension (commercial vs. non-commercial licensing, formal or informal education, etc). Instead, I am in favor of an abridged mission statement that simply calls for greater openness, connections, and support in learning. Unfortunately, when we start parsing what "learning" and "open" means (formal / informal, commercial / non-commercial, etc.) within the context of a mission statement, we quickly lose the interest of the other 99.9% of the population who have no idea what we are talking about. Also, I agree with Martin Weller's sentiment that "there are more people aligned against open education than behind it, so the last thing we need to do is factionalise within our own camp."

Also, I would like to explore where the foundation money should be headed (or is likely headed) in the future. So far, it seems firmly planted in building and maintaining open content repositories and directories. However, I wonder the extent of plans to support open learning networks ... dare I say open online learning ... supported by open educational resources and practices. I was so disappointed to sense (maybe due to my over-sensitivity) the lingering negative stereotypes about online learning during the Open Education conference. Even within this group of "open" minded educators (I couldn't resist), online learning still is discussed as the "alternative" to "real" face to face learning. Also, as I mentioned in my week 9 post, I heard suggestions to hire students (cheap labor) to sit and "convert" a professor's lecture content and other face to face course materials into a digital formats. Why? Will learners or teachers use this digitized material? As I have questioned before, isn't this the same mistake made when online courses first came into being? Will "converted" face to face content support user's needs in online contexts? I think anyone who has attempted to listen to a recording of a 90 minute lecture captured from a small microphone in a lecture hall may agree with me when I say, "I don't think so." Instead of trying to recreate face to face experiences for an online audience by capturing the artifacts of the face to face experience, I suggest we consider a completely separate exploration of how to create and foster new forms of open online education. I wonder if I am a lone wolf in this regard?

On the process side, I loved using my personal blog (my Drupal based PLE ) to conduct the reflective writing assignments for this course. It allowed me to maintain my writings in an open and connected format on a platform that I control. Further, the course wiki provided a great way to present the syllabus. The OPML file of blogs made it very easy to track the writings of others. However, I am not certain all students were familiar with using an OPML file and may not have taken advantage of it. Therefore, in the future, it may make more sense to also offer an aggregation of the blogs on a sharable feed reader such as a link to Netvibes page of blogs or to a link to public Google Reader page. In addition, I think an expanded social networking platform might help to expand and extend the conversation. An asynchronous discussion board or an "always on" IM chat room would be a nice feature for an aggregation of "side bar" discussions. Also, even with time zone differences, an attempt at a synchronous Skypecast or two might be interesting. Yet, I really appreciated the simplicity and "openness" of the current set up!

I want to thank David Wiley, Anne Leftwich, and all those who participated in the discussion ... both inside and outside of the "class ... for making this a wonderful learning experience! Please keep in touch - or at the least ... keep me in your RSS aggregator ... I'll keep you in mine :)

What will the future of education look like? What impact will the open education movement have? How will we get there from here?

To answer these questions, I decided to circle back to a presentation Dr. Anne Leftwich and I delivered at the 2007 Open Education Conference. We didn't have much time for audience reaction and feedback during the presentation, so I encourage everyone to please add text and / or voice comments to the presentation below. Click on the arrow in the center of the screen to begin the presentation and click on a picture icon to see text comments. Please let me know if you have any troubles with this VoiceThread.

Some people believe that open educational resources "fix" many of the problems experienced by those who work with learning objects. Why do you think they would say this? Do you agree? Why or why not?

I don't have a lot of personal history with learning objects, so I am not coming at this answer from personal experience. However, from what I have read and viewed this week, it seems that open education is the next iteration of the quest to design and deliver reusable educational resources. In this light, as a next iteration, there is a shift in the general characteristics and focus. Likely, in the process, elements were "fixed", but it is unclear to me if the desire to fix problems with learning objects led to the open education movement. Rather, it seems more likely that advances in technology and experiences with what is possible have helped to foster the changes in the characteristics between learning objections and open education.

The following highlights my take on the characteristics of the two iterations:


As noted by David Wiley, "learning object" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The chart above provides my interpretation of the general characteristics of both Learning Objects and Open Educational Resources. Again, OERs seem the next iteration toward an original goal of reusable educational resources. While some may see the differences as "fixes", others may not. Here is my take:

What seems "fixed" - or at least seems to work better: In this iteration, OERs expand the notion of reusable educational resources to include adaptation and sharing by the learner. This is accomplished through more liberal licensing (diriviative works / share alike), as well as expanded access outside of traditional proprietary walled gardens. By moving reusable educational resources out of proprietary systems and formats into the realm of the Internet, both producers and users can take advantage of common Internet search and sharing functions, including RSS, which allows learners to pull the content versus having it pushed to them in canned packages of learning content.

What still seems "broken" - or at least requires further evaluation: As we have discussed all semester, there are still uncertain or potentially "broken" aspects of OERs. Even though costs associated with elaborate proprietary systems may be eliminated, OERs are not cost free. Therefore, sustainability continues to be a concern. In addition, availability does not equal use. I'm not sure we have a good handle on either the extent of OER use (by teachers or learners) or the best ways to facilitate use of OERs by users. Further, I think there is a lot to be learned from an instructional design perspective about both open educational practices, as well as OERs as instructional content - see my earlier post for more on that topic (down at the bottom).

Technorati Tags: open ed

Questions for Week 9 of the Introduction to Open Education Course for the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman:

What can the open education movement learn from the book you chose to read?

Harnessing the Power of Communities: Friedman lists bottom-up and self-organized community development as his "Flattener #4". He uses open source software development to describe the notion of "Community-Developed Answers" (see page112). This bottom-up and self-organized community development process parallels the open education movement. In addition, it helps to explain how an open educational model can be sustained.

Open educational content is often described in terms of pieces of information created by an author (or group of authors) for an audience. However, in a flat and open world, it is important to think about how these pieces fit together, how the users contribute, and how the loose pieces influence each other. Instead of thinking of a global community "collaborating" on an "answer", Friedman describes a network of individuals connecting around common interests. In contrast, collaboration implies members of a group working toward a single goal. However, in the communities Friedman describes, each person brings individual contributions to the network based on individual needs and interests. While they may interact and in turn support each other, they are not necessarily focused on achievement of the same goal or for a specific outside audience.

This last point is an important one with respect to the open education movement and something I did not fully appreciate when preparing last week's post for this course. I made the observation that a producer driven model (that does not contemplate the needs of the end user) cannot be sustained. However, after reading David Wiley's blog post Producers, Consumers and Reuse and Friedman's observations about how global communities work, I have re-thought my observations about producer driven open education models. Contrary to my assertions last week, a producer driven model is created for an important end user .... the producer. As David Wiley notes:

"... every good work of open source software begins life as a producer-driven work ... The secret sauce in both the cases of the good open source software and the good OER is an actual, bias-riddled, context-bound, historical person located squarely in a concrete place and time addressing their own specific instructional problem."

Therefore, while not guaranteed, it is likely that those with common or shared interests will benefit, but not necessarily in the same manner, for the same purpose, or to fulfill the same need. That is the beauty of a flat and open world that I had not fully appreciated. While I may benefit from reading and interacting with another person's work, it may be for either the same or an entirely different reason. Contrary to my post from last week, not being preoccupied with the needs and concerns of the broader audience may be a good thing for the sustainability of open education. Go figure?!

Who owns What?: As part of what Friedman calls "The Great Sorting Out", "ownership" of intellectual property is going to get messier as the world get flatter. On page 253, he asks the following questions about intellectual property rights which are equally applicable to the copyright issues involving open educational content that we covered during Weeks 6 and 7:

"How do we build legal barriers to protect an innovator's intellectual property so he or she can reap its financial benefits and apply those profits into a new invention? And from the other side, how do we keep walls low enough so that we encourage the sharing of intellectual property, which is required more and more to do cutting-edge innovations?

As I noted during my reflection in Week 6, licensing of open educational content involves this trade-off between the needs of the individual and the needs of society to use and build off the original works. This sentiment was echoed in a quote on page 253 from IBM's chairman in which he states his belief that there needs to be a "new path forward" with regard to intellectual property rights; one that both protects the interests of creators, but also protects the communities who use and add to the innovation. While issues of copyright and ownership seem on the surface to be nuisance issues, they are unfortunately very critical to the openness of our ever more connected world and Friedman drives this point home.

Unfortunately, Friedman doesn't offer an answer to these complex questions. At the end of this section of the book, he begs, "Somebody, please, sort all this out." This is the same feeling I was left with after reading through the materials for Weeks 6 and 7. While Creative Commons is typically held up as the answer, it is not a silver bullet solution. Incompatibility across the various licenses and author imposed restrictions prevent a completely free flow of information. While Creative Commons licensing may help us get more works into the pipeline, I wonder if it provides the ultimate solution that Friedman seeks?

The Quiet Crisis  - Friedman speaks of the gaps in education, infrastructure, and ambitions as America's "Dirty Little Secret" within Chapter 8. Friedman's answer is "compassionate flatism" which he describes on page 364. He assumes that the world will continue to get flatter, so we should capitalize on it rather than to fight it or keep on doing what we've been doing. Of the five prongs to his compassionate flatism approach, the following are the most applicable to open education:

• Leadership: Friedman suggests that we need to acknowledge that the noted gaps exist and foster a sense of urgency in order to fix the problems. This relates to open education in two ways. First, open education must be viewed as part of a broader educational solution; as a means of bringing educational opportunities to the masses and as a means of facilitating and sharing innovation. Secondly, it is necessary to demonstrate to our educational leaders that open education is not a threat, but rather a means to a better end that should be supported, not prevented. That said, open education is not an easy sell. It is threat to the proprietary walled gardens that most institutions fight to maintain. It is hard enough to get people behind something new, but it is even harder when that something new threatens the established ways of doing things.
  

• Muscle building: Friedman asserts on page 369 that the social contract in a flat world can no longer be lifetime employment, but rather lifetime employability. Friedman describes the new social contract on page 369:

"We cannot guarantee you any lifetime employment. But we can guarantee you that we will concentrate on giving you the tools to make yourself more lifetime employable ... more able to acquire the knowledge or the experience needed to be a good adapter, synthesizer collaborator, etc."

Which of the ideas presented in the book did you find hardest to believe or agree with? Why?

I found it ironic that Friedman's book is about recognizing and embracing the factors and technologies that have created a flat world, yet he falls back on stereotypes and tired educational traditions in discussing how to prepare students for this new flat world. While I appreciate and share many of the sentiments presented in the passage about "Parenting" beginning on page 385, I feel he is missing the mark on the solution.

In this section of the book he begins by discussing the need for "a new generation of parents ready to administer tough love." His assertion that kids need to appreciate that learning is their responsibility and that it often involves hard work is very much in line with my views that I expressed in a blog post titled, "Be a good girl, have a good time, and learn a lot." These words were my marching orders from my mom every time I left the house as a child. They were more than words. They were expectations about my behavior, my attitude, and my responsibility and a lifelong learner. 

However, instead of embracing the same connective processes and technologies that create and foster this new flat world we live in, Friedman says we must "shut off the iPod" and avoid the "instant gratification" that technology has to offer in order to prepare students for this new flat world. He spends an entire book describing countless examples of how connective technologies are flattening the world, but then recommends that students put away these technologies when they learn. Given that the thrust of Friedman's book is about embracing the factors and technologies that have created and now foster this flat world, I find it troubling that Friedman does not make the connection that these same connective processes and technologies can (and should) support education.

Instead, Friedman cites a tired example of how kids are using technology to cheat in school. In an example on page 458, a student uses a cell phone to take pictures of a test. Friedman focuses on the fact that schools are now in the position of banning cell phones to prevent cheating. However, he misses a golden opportunity to consider the broader and far more important impact that technology can have on eduction in this new world he describes - a far more interesting discussion than an assessment of how technology is providing new ways to cheat. Could it be that in this new flat world, instead of banning technologies, teachers should embrace them as new means to educate and assess students? Instead of finding ways to prevent cheating on a test (which has been going on long before cell phones), let us instead focus on developing assignments and assessments which embrace this new flat world - just as we are doing in our global reflective writing project in this class. I would like to know how Friedman thinks we can prepare students for this new flat world by not encouraging them to participate in it.

QUESTIONS: How can you build a sustainable business around giving away educational materials? How can you build a sustainable business model around giving away credentialed degrees? Should governments fund open education?

Sustainable business model - start with a customer need: As I learned early on in my business courses, successful business models are based on fulfilling customer needs. I found the same to be true in my early instructional design courses. You need to figure out the "needs" in the A = Analysis. Rarely do you see successful examples of effective businesses or instruction that aren't driven by customer needs. This begs the question - who are the customers. As David Wiley notes, a common perception is that customers are educators building courses, but most use is from learners themselves.

However, I fear that some existing OER efforts are driven by some other motivations than learner need. As we read early on and I discussed in Week 2, some of those "other" reasons include:

• altruism,
• public relations,
• publicity,
• collaboration on shared interest projects, and
• survival (don't miss the OER train).

 
While likely valid drivers, these are supply side only drivers. While it is hard to criticize altruism, altruism for the sake of altruism does not guarantee need by the recipient. Further, availability does not guarantee need by the recipient. Some OER models are comparable to all you can eat food buffets. The supply is plentiful, but there is only so much one can consume, only certain things that you want to consume, and much of the time you would prefer to order what you actually want a la carte. Do we really know if learners want to consume large quantities of content (an entire course)? Is it possible that the learner really only wants certain items when s/he wants them? If so, are learners more likely to want the "special order" items such as specific research reports vs. the plentiful belly buster items that make you full, but a little queasy (like 90 minutes of audio captured from a lecture hall)? 

I don't have any research or learner analysis to support my sustainable business model assumptions. However, I have crafted the matrix below to help me illustrate my interpretation of the various types of OER projects and to describe sustainable business models to support them. The matrix is based on two factors 1) the degree of supply side effort, 2) the degree of learner involvement. Supply side effort includes the time and effort to supply the OER, while learner side involvement addresses the degree to which a learner will spend time and energy interacting with the OER. Hang with me, because I think I may have something here ...

• Upper Left: The upper left hand corner is a lonely place. It includes projects where there is a lot of supply side effort, but very little learner involvement. These are full blown OER course offerings and course ware repositories that learners may find, but never fully engage in. If they do, they never commit to "completing" them as intended by the supplier.
• Upper Right: The upper right hand corner is a better place, but I'm not sure many OER projects live here. I consider this to be where "credentialed" OER courses would reside. There is a high degree of supplier involvement and learners are motivated to be there.
• Bottom Left: The bottom left is a decent enough place, too. I consider this to be "quick hit" central. Millions of small bits of information are quickly searched and digested. While there isn't a lot of learner involvement, there is also not a lot of supplier involvement required. I envision a flurry of seek and find activity going on here.
• Bottom Right: The bottom right is a very cool place. Learners rock here. Suppliers are here to foster activities, but not direct them. Therefore, learner engagement is high, but supplier effort is far less than a full blown class. This is a places where bits of content flow in like water and learners can't get enough. I think this is where open education learning networks reside ... or would reside if they existed. Unfortunately, outside of a few informal learning examples, I don't think we have seen many of examples of this state of bliss ... or at least I haven't.

Based on the readings and assignment for week 7 in the Introduction to Open Education ...

As I noted at the end of my post last week, it is likely that most supporters of the OER movement feel the more "open" the work, the greater the value. Further, I agree with Brian Lamb's observation during his 2007 Open Ed keynote that when a person sees a CC at the bottom of a page, he or she likely thinks ... "oh, that guy is not a jerk" and considers the work freely available to use, modify and re-use as he or she sees fit. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation can lead to potential nasty repercussions. However, how often does this misinterpretation come into play? Do the variations in license provisions impact how users actually use content? To answer these questions, it is necessary to consider how open content is used and how this use is affected by open content licensing.

Open Content Use: To this point, almost everything I have read about the open education movement is written from the perspective of the content producers - the ones putting out content for others to use. Just as they consider what repository will be best, they consider what license will be best. However, the questions this week begin to shift the focus to what license is best for users of the content. More specifically, what license provisions best support the users of open content? What follows is based on my assumption of how open content is used and how the various license provisions impact that use. These assumptions are based solely on how I image how open content is used based on my experience and the stories that were shared in hallway chats with content producers at the OpenEd conference - obviously a biased and unscientifically derived viewpoint. However, at this point, I am not aware of any other measures of use.


It appears to me that producers of open content may be off the mark in their assumptions of how learners use their content. It is my interpretation that most producers of content think users will approach the material in the same manner as students in a class ... digest all of the material in a syllabus, read all of the content, take the exercises, etc. Further, many people envision the possibilities of mash-ups that create amazing new derivative works. However, I am not convinced that is how users actually use these works. In hallway chats with the good folks at the UK Open University, they noted that the vast majority of hits to their Open Ed site come from Google searches where people are searching for content and find the Open University course material. Users spend a few minutes on the site and then are off to other places.

It appears to me (from my admittedly biased and unscientific "research") that users gather the content like squirrels gather nuts. The content is taken back to the learners own environment (whether it be an informal or formal one) where it is digested or stored. I doubt that the learner spends much time on the content producer's site. They get what they want and they are gone  - back to the den ... er ... learning environment to chew on what they gathered. Further, I haven't seen much evidence that suggests much slicing / dicing or derivative works are created from the open content. Instead, I feel the most likely use of open content is "read only" access. Therefore, it appears that users are primarily concerned with access to high quality freely available information.

The Key Licensing Provisions: If my assumptions are correct and access is the primary concern of users, then how do the key Creative Commons provisions affect them? The following chart highlights four key provisions under the various Creative Commons and GFDL licenses. Through a review of various works and publications listed in the syllabus, as well as from recent blog posts from Stephen Downes and David Wiley, I have summarized the following: 1) the paper napkin definitions of the Creative Commons provisions from the perspective of both the producer and user, 2) possible talking points in support of the provisions, and 3) possible talking points against the provisions.



Implications for open content: As we found in this week's reading and in the summary above, some view these provisions as protections of the openness of the work, while others see them as restrictions on use. This disconnect may be due to the difference in perspective between content producers and content users. However, this disconnect may also be due to different assumptions about how open content is actually used - which to me is the most important, yet largely unexamined, consideration.

The consideration of use also leads to my reflection on the major question of the week - Can a work that incorporates these Creative Commons licensing restrictions support "open" education? Based on my assumptions about use, as well as my appreciation of the need for licensing trade-offs, I think so. As I mentioned in last week's reflection, making content freely available to users involves practical trade-offs to support the needs of content producers and the needs of the content users. I fully understand why some content producers would want restrictions to control how their work is used. As I touched on last week, the restrictions can serve as an incentive to producers by protecting those who have invested time and money in creating the work. By accepting these provisions as part of a trade-off, content users gain far greater access to works which would otherwise be hidden away or available only for a fee. Like all trade-offs, you win some things, but so does the other side. Here is my take on some of the key trade-offs and the implications for open education:

• Derivative works / Share alike: Clearly, full support for remixing and derivative works does not exist under the current mix of licenses. As shown in the chart below from the Creative Commons.org web site, there are substantial license incompatibility issues when works of different licenses are re-mixed. If most licenses are incompatible with each other, how can Creative Commons be considered "supportive" of the open education movement? My answer lies not in an assessment of the licenses, but in my assessment of the actual needs of the user.

	by	by-nc	by-nc-nd	by-nc-sa	by-nd	by-sa
by
by-nc
by-nc-nd
by-nc-sa
by-nd
by-sa

• Commercial vs Non-Commercial: Regarding the non-commercial provisions, I also don't think this is a major issue to the vast majority of users. Commercial users can access the content (for information purposes), but they are just restricted on how they re-use it. Again, I don't see this being a problem for most users. If it is, these users certainly have the ability to ask for extended permission for their specific use. While it is an added step, it seems a fair trade-off in order to give access to content that would otherwise (under traditional copyright provisions) be locked down from view and non-commercial use.

This give and take with regard to the various content licensing provisions seems to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of content producers and users. It appears to me (from my admittedly biased and unscientific "research") that users primarily want access to high quality freely available information. I do not disagree that the trade-offs associated with derivative works, share-alike provisions, and non-commercial use are barriers to unrestricted use. However, as I don't feel that unrestricted use is the goal of the vast majority of users, the Creative Commons provisions seem a fair trade-off. For most users, accepting restrictions in areas that don't usually stand in the way of their use of the material seems a fair trade-off to freely access open content.

Based on the readings for week 6 in the Introduction to Open Education Course, here are the questions we are pondering:

QUESTIONS: Understanding the importance and value of the public domain, how much (what percentage) of this value would you estimate is realized when works are licensed with a Creative Commons or GFDL license? To what degree would the open educational resources movement (and therefore the world) be additionally benefited if OERs were simply placed in the public domain? Please explain.

Question 1:

Understanding the importance and value of the public domain, how much (what percentage) of this value would you estimate is realized when works are licensed with a Creative Commons or GFDL license?


To answer this question, one must first agree that there is inherent *value* in the public domain and that this value is greater than can be found in copyrighted works. While I agree there is value in society being able to access works in the public domain, especially for education uses as discussed further below, I cannot overlook the value of copyright to both society and individual copyright holders. I believe copyright protections play a role in innovation. Individuals receive protections which allow them to benefit (financially and otherwise) from their works. In turn, these innovations better society. However, I also appreciate the lost value associated with copyright protections. As Pollack proposes in the Value of Public Domain, reduced barriers can encourage more people to be creators of derivative works. Further, as Lessig lays out in "Against perpetual copyright", I agree that there is much public good to be derived from limiting an indefinite "monopoly" on a work.

This brings us to a notion of "trade-offs" between copyright protections and the public domain. Pollack describes this trade-off in Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright where he notes on page 17:

"The basic trade-off inherent in copyright is between increasing protection to promote the creation of more work and reducing protection from existing work."

It also brings me a step closer to an answer to the question at hand. I feel that it is possible that Creative Commons and GGDL are just that trade-off. While creators of content receive more limited projections, society benefits from the work that is made more freely available. I would argue that the value of this trade-off depends on which license is used (the subject of next week's reading). Yet, I feel that Creative Commons and GFDL licensing offer a very high percentage of the value associated with the public domain. The individual receives some degree of protection and control over his or her works. In turn, society benefits form the increased access, reduced restrictions on use, and likely greater numbers of created works.

Question 2: To what degree would the open educational resources movement (and therefore the world) be additionally benefited if OERs were simply
placed in the public domain?


With regard to the OER movement (and education, in general), I feel the more open the work, the greater the value to society. Therefore, I feel for educational purposes, the "openness" of the public domain offers greater benefits than from either Creative Commons or GFDL licensing. I think that most of us share Brian Lamb's observation during his 2007 Open Ed keynote that when you see a CC at the bottom of a page, most of us think ... "oh, that guy is not a jerk" and consider the work freely available. However, that is clearly not the reality. As Pollock notes on page 3 of the Value of the Public Domain, "... 'freely' must be loosely interpreted ..."

This is especially the case with regard to the potential for non-commerical restrictions imposed by some creators. A non-commercial restriction poses a barrier to anyone who may want to use the works in the scope of a commercial educational venture. In addition, restrictions regarding the licensing of derivative works can also pose a problem, especially when works of different licenses are combineg. Therefore, to meet the needs of "open" education, I feel that the public domain provisions offer a far greater opportunity for openness than either Creative Commons of GFDL licenses.

Week 5 - Introduction to Open Education - Comparison of Open Education Projects

QUESTIONS: What do these representative open education projects have in common? What differentiates them? In the context of open education projects, what does "quality" mean?

I completed the matrix above to help me understand what these sites provide, who is "behind" them, what steps are being taken to address "quality" ... all in order to try to get a sense for similarities and differences. Here are a few things that come to mind:

Repository / Directory: As noted above, some repository sites host content while other sites are directories (pointing to content). Some are a hybrid of the two. Obviously, online content needs to be housed "somewhere", but I question why (in this day of Google and other search engines) efforts aren't moving away from repositories - or specific OER directories for that matter? Wouldn't our efforts be better spent on properly categorizing and tagging the original content so that it can be "found" by the increasingly sophisticated search engines? Why should learners and teachers be forced to travel from one site to another to find content? Shouldn't they be able to pull in the content that is properly identified and tagged?

The back room: It amazes me the outside funding that has poured into these OER initiatives. As noted above, major foundations (including Hewlett which is listed on all but one of the sites) play a major role in building and sustaining these efforts. Tied to above, I wonder how these open education spaces would evolve if the funding sources shift focus? As noted several times during the recent Open Education conference, it costs thousands of dollars to put a single course up on these platforms. Apparently, this cost must be associated with back end digitization and formating of content and not with instructional design, as most schools (aside from the Open University and Carnegie Mellon) are not using THEIR OWN content to support their own blended or online programs. In fact, I asked several people during the conference if their institutions used THEIR open content to support THEIR own learning programs and each looked at me like I had two heads. I found this reaction fascinating. What a waste of effort? If you take the time and money (apparently thousands of dollars per course) to make an existing courses content "available", why on earth would you not design it to also support your own online or blended learning initiatives? Circling back to Brian Lamb's keynote, there is a hint of arrogance in originality, right?

Quality:In discussions with the awesome folks at the Open University, I found that their upcoming conference this month will have a major research focus. Their representatives told me that, in general, research is lacking in this area. If the focus is on putting out content (as information) versus education (as content + practices), I would agree. As Anne and I discussed in our presentation (and quoting D. Wiley), "content is necessary, but not sufficient" to support education. Therefore, I wonder what is the true educational value of some of these initiatives that do not fully consider how learners will use the content? Again, I found it strange that so few conversations at the Open Ed conference focused on learners and how teachers and learners would use the content in the support of learniing. My guess is that localization (in other words, how the content is used to support learning) will be the focus of future research into "quality".

Similarities and Differences: Getting back to the main point of this exercise ... the similarities tend to lie in the focus on open education as "content." Therefore, activities focus on what to "do" with the content (how to digitize it, how to store it, how to categorize it). While I am repeating myself, I see open education as much more than content. Therefore, I appreciate the institutions that are differentiating themselves by recognizing that learners need more. For example, the Open University also offers forums for peer support. Carnegie Mellon invites learners to bring their own institution and use the courses for credit at their own sponsoring institution. To me, these practices - that expand the conversation beyond content - are currently the exception, but with hope they will one day be the rule.

 p.s. I also noted the various licensing choices from various CC licenses to full on copyright. I guess we are tacking those issues in Week 6.

The following is a reflection on the following readings from the Introduction to Open Education course:

Week 2: Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Week 3: Open Educational Practices and Resources - OLCOS Roadmap 2012 from the Open eLearning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS)
Week 4: A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities for the Hewlett Foundation

Questions for consideration: What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently? What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did? Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why?

Aims of Authors:

OECD Report - This May 2007 report summarizes a recent OECD study of the OER movement. Per the OECD website, "Work on education at OECD seeks to develop and review policies to enhance the efficiency and the effectiveness of education provisions and the equity with which their benefits are shared." The study's web site provides information about the project, including the case studies and site visits that were compiled during the study. In general, the aim of the project is to assess open educational resource (OER) initiatives in terms of their "purpose, content, and funding." The report includes an analysis of the incentives and barriers and suggests ways to improve the access to and usefulness of the resources.

OLCOS Report: Per the olcos.org web site, the OLCOS project (from 1/2006-12/2007) is funded under the European Union’s eLearning Program and "aims at building an (online) information and observation centre for promoting the concept, production and usage of open educational resources, in particular, open digital educational content in Europe." This Roadmap report, produced at the end of the first year of the project in January 2007, offers a status update of open education initiatives as well as recommendations for the future.

Hewlett Foundation Report: This report is billed as a review of the funded projects within the Education Program of the Hewlett Foundation (specifically, the "Using Information Technology to Increase Access to High-Quality Educational Content" initiate), but is ultimately a recommendation of future initiatives for the Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources Initiative.

Similarity in Themes:

All three reports share similar:

• definitions of Open Educational Resources (OERs),
  
• interpretations of the key benefits and incentives to participants, and
  
• observations about the current state of the open educational movement and its hurdles.

Definitions of Open Educational Resources (OER): All three reports share similar elements within their definitions of an OER, including:

• access to content and resources (most often digital),
  
• made available for free to the end user,
  
• for the benefit of educators and learners, and
  
• offered with an open license to use, remix, and share content.
  

Benefits / Incentives: Each report highlights reasons for participating in the OER movement. As noted in the OECD report, these reasons include "technological, economic, social and legal" incentives for participating as creators and supporters of content development. Some highlighted benefits include:

• for governments - promoting lifelong learning and social inclusion,
  

• for institutions - altruism, public relations, and collaboration across research and learning institutions,
  
• for individuals - altruism, publicity, feedback, collaboration, and recognition of ones work.
  

Current Status and Hurdles for OER Movement: Each report highlights numerous OER initiatives and notes the historical focus on: a) copyright issues, b) open content generation, and c) content storage considerations. Each report also observes similar hurdles facing the OER movement, including the need to:

• contemplate sustainability issues and develop economic models to fund Open Education initiatives,
  
• address intellectual property concerns and open content licensing efforts,
• provide incentives for researchers and educators to create and distribute content,
• improve access to content,
• increase the quality and usefulness of content being shared, and
  
• spread the word about the value and availability of Open Education beyond pockets within the developed world.
  

Differences in Emphasis:

While all three reports forward a similar view of the history and current status of open education movement, each has a slightly different take on the future. The reports differ on whether the priority should be on open educational resources, practices, or the entire learning infrastructure. This variation in emphasis is important as it is a sign that there is not consensus on what "Open Education" means, what efforts should be supported, and who (individuals, governments, or educational institutions) should be responsible for open education creation and access. Readers of all three reports are left to contemplate if future efforts should focus on creating and supporting 1) open repositories of content, 2) open communities of practice among content producers, 3) open communities of learners ... some combination of all three?

The OECD report focuses on open educational resources (as content), specifically the "chunks of learning" or learning objects. They emphasizes the importance of creating open digital educational resources and of supporting (funding and sustaining) open repositories. In contrast, the OLCOS stresses the importance of expanding the conversation beyond OERs as products - see p. 44 ...

"What partly hampers a stronger uptake of the open content philosophy is the notion that this is about content as products, whereas, basically, it is about learning practices and processes that among other things need openly shared content to thrive. A product-centric view is a barrier to innovation in the development of content services that can be used in constructive and collaborative forms of learning and knowledge creation."

The Hewlett report recommends a focus on the infrastructure to support open participatory learning. The authors recommend that the Hewlett Foundation play a leadership role in fostering a broad based Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure (OPLI), or "the platform for a culture of learning". While the authors leave the task of detailing and designing such an infrastructure to the future, they emphasize a set of general objectives as stated on p. 57:

"The proposed OPLI seeks to enable a decentralized learning environment that:

1. permits distributed participatory learning;
2. provides incentives for participation; and
   
3. encourages cross-boundary and cross cultural learning."
   

Report that Resonates:

All three reports provide many "aha" moments and helped me to understand the current state of the open education movement. However, I was most inspired by the views of the future within the OLCOS report. The recommended future actions consider not only the content, but also the context in which the content is used to support learning. This report focuses beyond static resources to open educational practices and open participation within the learning process.

While the OECD report touches on the sharing of static course content (syllabi, lecture notes), it falls short of contemplating broader open educational practices to support learners. In contrast, the OLCOS report extends the focus as noted on p.29 of the OLCOS report:

 "OLCOS sees a critical lack of educational innovation for learner-centered and collaborative learning practices and processes in which ... individual and groups of learners (including teachers) will actively use tools and content to understand problems, discuss approaches and methods in problems solving, and share study resources and results." 

... and emphasizes the role of the learner and learning communities within which they participate- see p. 24:

"A key problem of current open access educational repositories may be that despite their philosophy of sharing, they see teachers and learners as consumers of content who primarily want to download useful material. A better approach would be to support communities of interest around certain subjects."

The OLCOS report provides a vivid picture of the differences between open education and closed (or canned) education. The examples of "canned" versus "open" education within the table on p. 46 contrast the practices within each system on such measures as:

• the roles of the teacher and learner (dispenser / receiver versus facilitator / active learner),
• services provided to learner (databases versus RSS feeds),
• content management (institutional LMS versus PLEs), and
  
• tools to support learning (desktop tools versus wikis, blogs).

In addition, OLCOS report considers the possibilities of using freely available social software (social bookmarking, RSS feeds, wikis and blogs) to support open educational practices and to create personal learning environments controlled by the learner. Using open source software and Internet based technologies to support learning is something I have been covering with great interest on my personal blog for some time now. While the Hewlett report also notes the explosion of social software as a driver for open participatory learning, I don't subscribe to the notion that there needs to be an "infrastructure" (as in their Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure) designed to support it. It already exists. It is called the Internet.

My Interest in the Open Education Movement:

The aspects of the Open Education movement that interest me the most focus on open dynamic educational practices, communities, and networks. Both practices and online networks to support learning are near and dear to my heart as a student in an online instructional systems technology program. While preparing for the Open Education Conference, Dr. Anne Leftwich and I have been working on a way to diagram our vision of open educational practices and the interaction between those practices and open educational resources. Our desire is to spark a conversation about:

• how open resources can be presented to and accessed by learners,
  
• how learners can openly use / remix / share resources, thoughts and ideas with fellow learners,
  
• how learners can receive support and feedback within an open learning environment, and
• how open resources can flow into and out of this process.
  

In terms of the last point above, we want to discuss ideas to sustain the resources that are created during this open learning process. As we see it, too often the learners efforts are locked up behind a walled LMS garden only to be blipped away when the semester is over. How can these thoughts, ideas and artifacts be preserved for not only the learners involved in the creation, but for those who come after? While still evolving, we attempted to diagram our vision as follows:



Open Educational Practices: As Greg notes, a focus on open educational practices "is where instructional design fits into the big picture of open educational resources." I agree and suggest that, as shown in the diagram above, the key open practices include learners:

1. accessing relevant content,
   
2. engaging in practice, and
3. receiving / giving feedback, guidance and support.
   

Linking these specific practices within an instructional process is hardly a new concept. Within his Instructional Transaction Theory (also published within Reigeluth's famous instructional design theory manual - "The Green Book" ), Dr. David Merrill summarizes Gange's assumptions about these practices:

"Information which does not include presentation, practice, and learner guidance is information but not instruction."

Within this same paper, Merrill shares his concern "with the current emphasis on information and the lack of emphasis on appropriate instructional strategies." I share this observation within the context of the open education movement. Yet, I am fully aware that any link back to instruction, instructional strategies, and instructional design will turn off some who cringe at the words instructional design for the implication of a top / down plan wherein an all knowing hand feeds knowledge to learners. However, I view instruction (and specifically instructional design) as a process that supports learning by contemplating the best possible opportunities and conditions for a learner to take control of his or her own learning destiny.

It is my belief that open educational practices not only connect learners to resources, they also link learners to other people within both formal and informal learning situations. Using myself as an example, as a student in a formal graduate program, as well as an informal learner within the edublogger community, I learn every day from this process of:

• Presentation - when the thoughts and ideas presented from over 300 edubloggers wind up in my feed reader, 
• Practice - when I reflect on the thoughts and ideas of others within my own blog (dare I say, my PLE), and
  
• Feedback - when I read, receive and participate in the back and forth comments and counter-posts among bloggers help guide my understanding.
  

No one at my university set up this process for me. I stumbled upon it myself, but it offers an open process that facilities my learning.

Open Resources: I consider open resources to include both the resources used to support learning and the bi-product of learning experience. In other words, the original source content, as well as new and re-mixed content generated from the learning process. While the reports we read discuss numerous efforts aimed at the creation, presentation and storage of original source content, there appears to be little focus on the artifacts of the learning experience. As Greg observes in his reflection: 

"... producers of open educational resources look at consumers as merely uses of the content. They do not see them as collaborators on the usefulness and effectiveness of resources, or as colleagues who re-share the resources that they have remixed."

How sad and how true. Learning Management Systems are filled with hours of thought and reflection, yet after each semester the content is blipped away or blocked from view when the learner is no longer a paying customer (I mean, student). Attention must be focused on how the bi-products of open education can be saved, categorized and openly stored for use by the learner and those who come after.


Technorati Tags: OER, OpenEd

Interested in following along and participating in the Open Ed conversation this week? Grab your PDF reader and download the file Open Educational Practices and Resources by the Open eLearning Content Observatory Services. Also, don't forget to update your feedreader with blogs of the class participants found in the latest OPML file located on the Intro to Open Education course syllabus. New folks are encouraged to add their names (and blogs) on the participant list. Lurkers are welcome, but participation is more fun!


Technorati Tags: OER, OpenEd