David Wiley, a chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, adjunct faculty at Brigham Young University, and pioneer in open learning, discusses the impacts that MOOCs have had on the idea of “open” in higher education. “Despite all the hyperbole, it has become clear that MOOCs are nothing more than traditional online courses enhanced by open entry, and not the innovation so many had hoped for.” He suggests that MOOC providers should support open licenses to allow for reuse, revision, and redistribution. Dr. Wiley also poses the question, “If MOOC providers changed from ‘open means open entry’ to ‘open means open licenses’ what would the impact be? In fact, it would drastically expand the access enjoyed by people around the world, as learners everywhere would be free to download, translate, and redistribute the MOOC content. MOOCs could become part of the innovation conversation.” Dr. Wiley also suggests that an open education infrastructure that consists of open credentials, assessments, competencies, and resources would “provide a foundation that will greatly decrease the time, cost, and complexity of the search for more effective models of education.”
Tag Archives: David Wiley
On Quality and Open Educational Resources
David Wily argues that “because quality is not necessarily a function of copyright status, neither traditionally copyrighted educational materials nor openly licensed educational materials can exclusively claim to be high quality.” He suggests that traditional textbooks publishers often use the term quality to mean presentation and graphic design of the resource but that the only true measure of quality is how much students learn when using the materials.