David Wiley revisits his “4 R” framework (Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute) for understanding the spectrum of permissions that define an open education resource (OER). Wiley discusses an access compromise to ownership of learning resources in which “programs like textbook buyback, textbook rental, digital subscription programs, and DRM-laden ebook programs, each of which results in students completely losing access to their required textbooks at the end of term.” Wiley suggests that the open education community should advance the idea of ownership and asks, “For all of their willingness to share access to open educational resources, how many OER publishers go out of their way to make it easy for you to grab a copy of their OER that you can own and control forever?” To this end, he has introduced a fifth “R” into his OER framework: Retain–the right to make, own, and control copies of the content.
Category Archives: News
UC Berkeley’s Wikipedian-in-Residence Is a First
Kevin Gorman is the first Wikipedian-in-residence at a U.S. college or university and will be providing University of California Berkeley undergraduates with guidance on publishing their academic work on Wikipedia. Gorman had previously helped to design and facilitate a Wikipedia-based assignment for a Berkeley course on prisons, and in his new role, he intends to write guidelines on designing and implementing Wikipedia-based class assignments and post these how-to’s online for instructors everywhere to use. There have been more than 50 previous Wikipedians-in-residence assigned to cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, and the U.S. National Archives.
Link: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/02/25/berkeleys-wikipedian-in-residence-is-a-first/
The Future Of Online Education
Forbes recently published an interview with Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions, a repository of open educational resources (OER) maintained by Rice University. In 2012, Connexions launched OpenStax College, a repository of peer-reviewed, professional grade open textbooks, which have been adopted by more than 400 institutions. According to Baraniuk, the biggest impacts of OER will be found in learning outcomes as OER becomes integrated with adaptive learning technologies that utilize machine learning algorithms. In Baraniuk’s vision of the future of education, “access to quality content and educational technology would be unfettered, the community would continuously improve and add to the knowledge base, and an ecosystem of products and services would provide an array of options and sustainability for the whole effort.”
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2014/02/13/the-future-of-online-education/
UBC Announces Upcoming MOOCs
UBC recently announced the development of four new MOOCs. The faculty authors and titles of the MOOCs are:
- Karen Bakker, Professor, Department of Geography – The Global Water Crisis
- Jan Hare, Associate Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education – Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education
- Edward Slingerland, Professor, Department of Asian Studies – Foundations of Chinese Thought
- Joleen Timko, Managing Director, AFRICAD, Department of Wood Science – Forests, Poverty, and Livelihoods: Current Topics From Across The Developing World
These topics expand the disciplinary base of UBC’s MOOC offerings and highlight UBC’s strategic strength in areas of sustainability, Aboriginal understanding, Asian Studies, and the natural resources sector. Development of these MOOCs will involve a range of people from faculty and centrally positioned units, and it is expected that these new MOOCs will launch in Fall 2014.
Link: http://flexible.learning.ubc.ca/implementation/four-ubc-moocs-to-be-developed-in-2014/
The Tricky Task of Figuring Out What Makes a MOOC Successful
A new paper found that in the first year of HarvardX and MITx, only 5 percent of people who registered for a MOOC went on to earn a certificate of completion these courses. However, two authors from the report argue that “completion rates are a measure that threatens the goals of educational access that motivated the creation of MOOCs”. The authors argue that there is a wide variety of learning practices emerging in open online learning environments that may be obscured by a focus on completion rates. For example, they highlight a case of how exposure from the Colbert Report, a popular television show, lead to tripling a registration rates but only doubling certification rates. One of the reasons completion rates were lower is that “nearly half of registrants were joining courses that were already closed for certification.” While closing those courses to new registrants would have increased certification rates, it would lead to a minimization of students learning something new.
BCcampus Launches Phase Three of the Open Textbook Project: Creation of New Texts
The BC Open Textbook Program, which is coordinated by BCcampus, has announced a new call for proposals from British Columbia faculty interesting in creating new open textbooks to round out their list of 40 highest-enrolled subject areas. Criteria for successful applications include: addressing one of the specific eligible subject areas, documenting any existing open educational resources to be used, exhibiting the characteristics of quality teaching and learning, and more. The deadline for proposals in February 28, 2014 and the deadline for completed projects is September 5, 2014. The goal of the BC Open Textbook Program is “to provide flexible and affordable access to higher education resources in B.C. by making available 40 openly licensed textbooks in the first and second year most highly enrolled undergraduate subject areas.”
Link: http://bccampus.ca/open-textbook-project/open-textbooks-call-for-proposals-phase-3/
The End of MOOCs and the Future of Education
The Ubyssey, UBC’s student newspaper, provides an in-depth examination and explores various perspectives on UBC’s initial Coursera-based MOOCs, the broader flexible learning initiative, and the future of education. According to Gregor Kiczales, a UBC professor of computer science and a MOOC instructor, “All of higher education is going to be dramatically influenced by the emergence of the Internet as a channel between educators and learners. Exactly how that’s going to play out, nobody knows.” Jon Beasley-Murray, a UBC professor of professor of Latin American studies and open education advocate reminds that “a university is not meant to be a profit-making institution. A university is — it’s in the name — universal. It’s for all. It’s for the common good.”
Link: http://ubyssey.ca/features/information-driveway-moocs-462/
Open Textbook Project Saves B.C. Students Over $40,000 in Initial Fall 2013 Phase
According to a BC Ministry of Advanced Education news release, BC’s Open Textbook Project “already has helped almost 300 post-secondary students, who saved an average of $146 each on their textbook costs for the fall 2013 semester.” In the first phase of the project, 15 existing open textbooks were peer-reviewed by BC faculty and made available for free download in September 2013. Individual instructors at Capilano University, Douglas College, the Justice Institute of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Langara College, and Northwest Community College used open textbooks in the Fall 2013 semester, bringing collective savings of over $43,000 to students.
Link: http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2014/01/students-saving-money-with-open-textbooks.html
The Launch of the TOOC (Truly Open Online Course) at the University of Saskatchewan
The University of Saskatchewan will launch its first open online course, Introduction to Learning Technologies, on January 21, 2014. The course was developed by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness for faculty and instructors who wish to learn more about effective uses of learning technologies. Participants will explore pedagogically informed learning technologies, in addition to considering the implications of copyright and Creative Commons (CC), digital citizenship, and digital literacy for their teaching practice. The course is described as being truly open–it is being offered on an open platform and all resources will be available for perpetual reuse under CC licenses.
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: The Battle for Open
As part of her Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2013 Series, Audrey Watters provides a summary of ongoing developments for “open” in higher education including that, in 2013, 71 percent of college students said they have used open educational resources, the Open University turned 40, and that a “running total calculated at the 10th annual Open Education conference estimates that openly licensed textbooks have saved students over $100 million.”
Link: http://www.hackeducation.com/2013/12/16/top-ed-tech-trends-2013-open/