One of my research projects that I proposed relating to open source considered how to know if an OSS project was a success. You can refer to comments that he wrote at the end of the post I created proposing research projects for my Open Ed Researcher badge see post here).
On Tuesday Dr. Wiley shared this slashdot link to an "ask slashdot" posting in April 2003 where someone asked what makes an OSS project successful. I believe that the question and responses include some interesting metrics regarding what success is.
I think this same consideration identifies with the issues that arise when you are trying to “evaluate” the success of social
welfare programs. Some see funding in its role
as the allocation of scarce resources that might be more effectively spent on
other programs or needs or in other ways. If this is the nature
of the evaluator, then success would be defined through some kind of an
effectiveness (benefit) vs funding (cost) analysis. The determination of effective is in the eye of the beholder.
Others might have an “evaluation
eye” that sees the fact that the program “helped” a
person/organization/community so it was successful. But the determination of what “help” is may
be in the eye of the beholder as well.
The fact is that we all have different ways of determining whether
things are successes and one man’s success is another man’s failure, or at least
insignificant in their considerations.
This class has been interesting to
me in so many ways. I have appreciated
the review of the open source movement, its motivations and its history. But I am reminded of the review of journal
issues project that we did in Rick West’s foundations class in IP&T here at BYU. That project had us review 10 years worth of issues in one academic journal related to distance education. I found it interesting how certain
topics in the journal Distance Education appeared, flamed very hot, cooled, and almost
became yesterday’s news in the course of the decade we reviewed. Some things that were important in years two through five were almost refuted by the issues that were developing in years nine and ten.
Perhaps this is always the cycle of research
and discovery. I believe it probably
is. At some point our hot new idea will
likely encounter a circumstance where it does not work and which we did not
anticipate or suspect. Now our great new
thing has to die, or at least becomes dormant, because it may not be great enough to endure.
I guess that is what I was trying
to assess when I was thinking of a project to evaluate Sourceforge projects and
see what their patterns of contributions were, as well as its duration. If something lives and breathes through all
it encounters, gaining life and being sustained by others who become its
companions, then perhaps it is a more “successful” OSS project. But the Slashdot link makes perhaps the most
pertinent point about defining success.
You had an itch and what you did scratched it. Even if no one else (including yourself) ever
contributes again, that project was a success because it solved the problem it
was intended to solve when it was created.
I have chosen to complete A Lead Scholar Badge that Erin proposed as part of her quest to complete the Open Assessment Designer badge. She defined the requirements for the badge as:
The rationale behind the design of it is that this badge provides an opportunity for us to be knowledgeable in a topic and to inspire other students to learn more and think deeply about that topic.
In order to fulfill this badge, you follow the step:
2) Let our teacher, David Wiley, know about your decision and get approval
3) Become knowledgeable in that topic by carefully reading all required readings
4) Present main points of readings in class or in your organization
5) Lead a class discussion on that topic by posing meaningful questions or hold an introductory meeting in your organization
I will be leading the discussion on March 23rd in our class meeting on the topic of Open Business Models. The points from the readings assigned are outlined below. After presenting in the class of Friday I believe that I will have met the requirements for the badge. The main concept of the business models is that of sustainability. As Downes (2007) notes in his paper (not assigned for the topic) there are economic and non-economic definitions of sustainable. The economic definition of sustainable involves finding a mechanism that will provide the funds that at least equal the costs of the provision of OER. The costs to provide are ". . . calculations . . . often expressed in terms of 'total cost of ownership' (the make-up of which varies, depending on who is asked)." (p. 33).
Downes also writes that there are non-economic sustainability concerns that some organizations may view as more important than the funding. These may include the the actual sustainability of the OER itself in terms of lifetime, or objectives that the organization might view OER achieving that otherwise not have been available without the resources used. Because of these varied considerations of what sustainability means, Downes writes:
What constitutes 'sustainable' is unlikely to be reducible to a single metric or calculation. It will ultimately depend on the economies and the objectives of the provider. This may well explain why there are many models for sustainable OERs. This indeterminacy, though it may raise difficulties for economists, may nonetheless be a good thing. It may allow many organizations in many ways to see OERs as 'sustainable' even in cases where a broad social consensus does not exist. (p. 34)
The articles provided in the topic readings discuss different business model considerations associated with providing resources to sustain the OER on an ongoing basis. I will discuss the main points in each article and some of the considerations related to business models discussed in each; however, I thought it important to first consider what Downes had to say about definitions of sustainable because I think his point is important to consider. Reading 1: Johansen and Wiley (2010) - A Sustainable Model for OpenCourseWare Development This study considered the development of OpenCourseWare (OCW) at BYU Independent Study and asked three research questions:
How much does it cost to “open” an existing BYU IS course?
How does opening a BYU IS course affect paid enrollments in the course?
If the impact on paid enrollments is positive, is it enough to sustain an ongoing open publishing initiative at BYU IS?
The last question describes how the study defined sustainability. The study reveals that there have been documented concerns that institutions offering online courses for credit would suffer a decline in enrollments (and revenue) if they provide an OCW version of the same courses. So the study attempted to determine if there was a significant discernible impact on expected enrollments when an open version of the course is made available. The second aspect to be addressed was the flow of funds that might be generated by the OCW version to offset its conversion costs. The study decided to place a button in the OCW pages that would allow the viewer to register and pay for the for-credit version of the course. This funding source was described by Downes (2007) as a Conversion Model which he says is summarized by Sterne and Herring (2005):
“In the Conversion model, you give something away for free and then convert the consumer of the freebie to a paying customer.”
The conversion of an OCW user to a paying enrolled student generates funding that can be used to cover the costs to convert the course to the OCW format. Johansen notes that other studies have indicated a conversion rate of approximately 2%. So there are approximately 2 enrollments for every 100 visitors to the OCW version of the course. BYU Independent Study courses were converted to OCW with minimal conversion costs because the courses were already fully delivered and available to user in an online format and were largely self-contained with limited use of copyrighted materials. The study points out that there would be considerably more costs to be covered to sustain the courses if there were development costs from the initiation of the course that needed to be allocated to the open version of the course as well as use of copyrighted materials.
Johansen notes that the University owns the product of the authoring work done by the faculty developing the course so the copyright for the course belongs to BYU. He also notes that BYU Independent Study purposely limits the use of copyrighted content, including required texts for the course. Most of the text materials are contained within the course itself and copyrighted by BYU.
Due to these ownership considerations, and the fact that the courses were already developed for enrollment by paying students in a near to OCW format, the conversion costs were minimal in these regards. The most significant costs incurred were for what Johansen calls the transform. This was the process to take the existing XML formatted content and transform it to a format for OCW use. This meant that the costs to develop the first course was considerably higher than that of the subsequent courses which did not require the transform development.
Johansen reported the costs to convert as follows:
University Courses
first course: $3,485.07
second course: $284.12
third course $284.142
High School Courses
first course: $5,204.34
second course: $1,172.71
third course $
1,172.71
The process to convert the high school courses was slightly different and required more labor than that university courses accounting for the difference.
Statistical analysis was used to determine if there was a possible effect of the open courses on enrollments in the paid courses. This analysis seemed to indicate that there were no significant discernible effects on paid enrollments in the courses.
The study used web-analytics and cookies to count the conversions to the paid course. The count of conversions was 512 paid enrollments from 20,148 visits for a rate of 2.54%. The study then assumed the second and third course conversion costs would be representative of future conversions. This assumption was then used to calculate the costs to convert and then the 2.54% conversion rate was used to estimate the revenue that might be available from conversions. The analysis used a four-year period for analysis since it is anticipated that the lifetime of the course before needing significant rewrite is four years.
The four year revenues that were estimated for the OCW versions of the courses provided sufficient funds at the 2.5% conversion rate to require an 11% margin on sales of courses in order to sustain the OCW efforts.
Reading #2: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - Free: Why Authors are Giving Books Away on the Internet This article states:
Anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to both authors and books increases when books are available as free downloads, and that print sales are not negatively affected.
The authors read past materials written by 10 authors who openly publish their books. They also surveyed the authors and analyzed the sales of books written by one of the authors. The most frequent responses given by the authors when asked why they openly publish were:
they had a desire to increase the exposure of the book, and
open publishing is, morally speaking, the right thing to do.
One of the authors said, “I reach new audiences that I couldn’t have imagined [and] I think I’ll sell more books.” Another author said he was persuaded to openly publish Free Culture because he felt it would increase the dissemination of his ideas. One of the authors, Lawrence Lessig said, “The number of people who tell me they would never have seen the book had it not been freely licensed is extraordinary.” Another author, Cory Doctorow, wrote:
Most people who download [a book I wrote] don’t end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience…After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.
The authors note that the offering of the books in the open formats has attracted attention to their writings. One indicates that it actually has "extended the long tail" of the book leading to longer period of ongoing sales because of the good will that the open publication has engendered. The authors note that there are benefits that they derive personally from the open publications that they may not have received without being open. These are not sales but the satisfaction of "doing the right thing" or the ego strokes that come when they hear from readers all over the world. There is also the satisfaction that their books are being translated into other languages and readable formats so that those who may not have had access to the books otherwise can be readers because of the open licenses that allowed these modifications. When it comes to the sacrifice of financial benefit to them personally that most would assume would be part of the decision to openly publish, Doctorow wrote:
A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free ebook as a substitute for the printed book — those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the ebook as an enticement to buy the printed book. They’re gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I’m ahead of the game…The number of people who wrote to me to tell me about how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper book far exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, “Ha, ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I’m not gonna buy it."
Other authors indicated that they had books whose sales far exceeded the publishers estimates and that they thought that was because of the interest generated by the open version of the book. Another author expressed that he viewed the open version of the book to be a sampler that allowed readers to assess their interest in the book and then make a decision to buy it. This author believed that some people bought the book who otherwise would never have considered it because they were able to sample it. The article concludes with a study that tracked the sales of two books be Lessig immediately before and after one of the books that was in print only, was released in an open version. The conclusion was that there was a possible effect observed that the decision to "go open" may have lessened the slide in sales that might otherwise have been expected for a publication that was aging in the marketplace. Reading #3: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales This paper again looks at the effect of publishing a book in an online open format on the print sales of that book. The authors make this very important point:
The question of how freely distributing an electronic version of a work affects print sales is difficult, if not impossible, to answer experimentally because there is no way to simultaneously release and not release free versions of a book. It is not possible to determine causation; nevertheless, the effect of free distribution on print sales is an important issue to examine.
This paper was a follow-on study to the last paper in which the authors performed the bookscan analysis that they used for the Lessig books in the last study, expanded to 41 books by different authors in different genres. They analyzed scanned sales for these 41 books in the eight weeks prior and the eight weeks following the release as an open publication. The results were mixed and may have been influenced by one of the publishers that had a more restrictive method for accessing the titles. The authors conclude:
The present study indicates that there is a moderate correlation between free digital books being made permanently available and short-term print sales increases. However, free digital books did not always equal increased sales. This result may be surprising, both to those who claim that when a free version is available fewer people will pay to purchase copies, as well as those who claim that free access will not harm sales.
The authors also note that it will be hard to make general conclusions from this data regarding the effects of open publishing on book sales. Reading #4: Hilton (2010) - ―Freely Ye Have Received, Freely Give‖ (Matthew 10:8): How Giving Away Religious Digital Books Influences the Print Sales of Those Books - Dissertation
This dissertation documents the significant research done by Hilton in this genre of open publishing and it effect on sales of printed books. Hilton was able to work with Deseret Book and several of their published authors to release eight books in an open version and assess the impact on the sales of those books. Hilton's Abstract states:
This study examined the financial viability of a religious publisher‘s putting free digital versions of eight of its books on the Internet. The total cost of putting these books online was $940.00. Over a 10-week period these books were downloaded 102,256 times and print sales of these books increased 26%. Comparisons with historical book sales and sales of comparable titles suggest a positive but modest connection between this increase and the online availability of the free books.
It is apparent from all of these last three publications that Hilton is seeking to provide evidence that this open publishing approach will not negatively impact authors and their livelihood and thus make OER a more attractive way to spread influence and learning opportunities. He has done a good job documenting these possibilities and this dissertation reports research that serves as evidence. This evidence is played up against opposition and the fear that publishers and authors have that openly publishing books will hurt sales. One publisher feels strongly about this:
A spokesperson for the Penguin Publishing stated that Penguin Publishing believes that books are too valuable to be given away for free.
Hilton reports the experience of Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, with open publishing. He notes that he openly published one of his older books in hopes that it would promote sales of his new book. He said:
My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel [which was newly available in hard copy]. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they e-mailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops. (Adams 2007, p. A19)
Hilton makes the observation that:
Until authors and publishers can be assured that turning their books into open educational resources will not negatively affect sales of those books, it seems unlikely that authors and publishers will be willing to make them freely available. If research could demonstrate that providing free electronic copies of books did not diminish a printed book‘s profitability, then making books available as open educational resources could become widespread, thus greatly expanding access to information.
This dissertation documents this result for the books that he was able to make open for this study, as the abstract suggests. The dissertation reports the detail that is summarized in the abstract quote above. The study uses the same approach that Johansen used in his OCW study from Reading #1. The margins that were required for Deseret Book under the different volume assumptions ranged from 17% to 95%. The study noted a positive correlation coefficient of r = .42 between downloads of the open book and total sales of the print book through all channels. The same correlation was performed again but limiting the count of print book sold to only those sales through the same medium as the open book, the internet. The correlation coefficient in this analysis changed to r = .65. This is a stronger correlation. The overall increase in book sales of 26% indicates that there was not a negative effect of making the books available in the open format and suggests that there may have been a positive effect. Reading #5: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story
In this article the authors talk about the business model governing Flat World Knowledge (FWK), a provider of on-line open textbooks and related supplemental materials. The efforts of FWK (and other open text providers) are in response to the tactics used by publishers of traditional text books in pricing, packaging, and issuing of new editions. Such tactics are feared to greatly increase the cost of education and therefore the financial burdens on students and families. These higher costs price many out of the possibility of higher education. The FWK model is aligned with what the authors referred to as the Gillette model,
which can be summarized as “give away the razor and sell the blades.” This model has been successful for a number of open source businesses.
The authors also refer to this model as the open source business model (based on its accepted use by providers of Linux) and a "freemium"model where the seller gives away a product or service and then sells related merchandise or services. The FWK model provides the on-line version of the text and then charges for premium add-ons such as a printed copy, audio version, flash cards and so on. Two significant parts of the business model are that the authors are paid a 20% royalty rate on the sales of the books and supplemental materials rather than the standard 15% royalty of the traditional publishers. One of the FWK authors stated:
“Flat World has a great business model. One of the things … that I don’t like about the current marketplace is that the books are $150 or more … So the commitment to make [textbooks] downloadable for free has several advantages for both the professor and for the students. For the student of course it makes sure that if the book is too expensive, well they will just read it online … for the professor it means that if the bookstore didn’t order enough books it’s okay the students can read it online until they can actually their physical copy. The importance of free was really driven home to me when I received an e–mail from an Indian student who said that he had studied my book, and that in his opinion it had helped him gain entrance to an MBA program in India, and that he wouldn’t have been able to do it without the free material. That was one of the most heartwarming things that I have had in my career.”
So in addition to the higher royalty percentage, this author also derives some non-monetary satisfaction from his text published openly. The second significant fact is that the alpha and beta testing shows that the faculty and the students support the FWK approach as long as the text quality is of the highest caliber. The article reports that 442 of the 750 students (59%) enrolled in courses using FWK texts (the beta test) purchased add on materials and spent an average of $28.20 each. 294 of the students paid for a printed copy of the text in addition to the free copy available to them online. The authors write,
Data from this beta test suggest that in addition to purchasing textbooks, many students are interested in purchasing a variety of course materials, particularly flashcards and audio versions of the text.
The authors conclude, noting:
From the viewpoint of students and faculty, free online textbooks of acceptable quality may be particularly attractive. Data from the FWK beta test suggest that even when free online textbooks are available many students will still purchase printed versions of the books. Results from the beta test also indicate that students are interested in supplementary products such as flashcards.
Reading #6: Hilton and Wiley (2011) - Open Access Textbooks and Financial Sustainability: A Case Study on Flat World Knowledge This article reports on the first year of operations of FWK. It captured the following key statistics for that year of operation (fall 2009 through summer 2010):
57,690 students were enrolled in 1,153 different classes which used FWK textbooks
16,461 print textbooks were purchased generating $479,259 in revenues.
10,970 (67%) if these texts were purchased through a campus bookstore.
29% of students purchased a print copy of the text.
65.7% of the students using FWK texts registered at the FWK website
Approximately 25% made a purchase from the FWK website
Average buyer made 1.3 purchases
Average purchase was $30.89
Costs to FWK to publish the first 10 textbooks: $150,000 each
Costs estimated for additional textbooks: $120,000 each
Costs to recruit faculty to use FWK texts:
2009-2010 $2,500 on average with $225 in gross profit
2010-2011 $ 900 on average with $300 in gross profit (three year payback)
500 faculty adopters summer 2009 - 9% referred by colleague
1,200 faculty adopters summer/fall 2010 - 27% referred by colleague
2009-2010 average revenue per text: $48,00 - 3 year cost recovery
This report shows that the business model has promise. There is concern that the percentage of students purchasing a text declined in the first full year to 29% from the beta test level of 39%. This trend could affect sustainability if further percentage declines occur while the number of adoptions increases. Supplemental Reading: Downes (2007) - Models for sustainable open educational resources
I have included this reading only to list the eight methods for funding OER that Downes lists in his article. These eight models are not limited to OER. This is the same set of models considered for most non-profit public institutions or resources (museums, libraries, parks, cemetaries, schools, colleges/universities, arts organizations, etc.) These are not unique to OER which has two implications to my mind:
Those who will be involved in supporting the efforts will be very familiar with these models. This applies to the fundraisers, patrons, and donors.
Because there are so many of these institutions and resources competing for these funds, there is competition for them.
Some of these eight models have been discussed in the readings provided for the business model topic. But many were not. All are available in some form to support the expansion of support and strengthen possibilities for sustainability of OER.
The eight models are:
Endowment Model - money is raised from sources and invested. The fund administrator dispenses the interest each year which sustains the efforts for which the endowment was established.
Membership Model - Interested organizations and individuals are invited to contribute certain sums to generate operating revenues. Members are granted privileges in return for their fees.
Donations Model - Donations are requested from the wider community and are used for operations or building an endowment.
Conversion Model - See Reading #1 above. You give something away for free and then convert the consumer of the freebie to a paying customer. This is a try and buy, sampler, or add-on such as Linux sellers use. Includes the "freemium" approach described for FWK.
Contributor-Pay Model - In this model the contributor pays the cost of maintaining the contribution where the provider thereafter makes the contribution available for free. This is the open choice option offered by publishers where the author pays the journal accepting the article, who then provides the article in an open access format.
Sponsorship Model - Includes advertising in the form of commercials, banners, etc. or indicating sponsorship by another entity (brought to you by Microsoft, Apple, etc).
Institutional Model - Institution itself assumes responsibility for the OER and funds its development, support, and maintenance from institutional budgets.
Governmental Model - The government supports the OER through direct funding and grants.
Additional References
Downes S. (2007). Models for sustainable open educational resources [Electronic version]. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 29–44. Retrieved from http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf
This is the post in which I propose that I have completed the requirements for the Open Ed Researcher Badge. In accordance with the requirements I am linking the posts that were required to earn this badge.
First, I affirm that I carefully read and viewed all of the materials provided for the topics Open Source, OpenCourseWare, and Open Educational Resources.
Secondly, I am providing the links to my previous blog posts about these three topics with the research materials that I found and reported.
Overall I found the research interesting and I learned a great deal about current issues in each of these three topic areas. The research studies I have proposed may be redundant with existing research but a more thorough literature review would reveal that if I were actually pursuing these studies as part of my program.
The final step that I need to complete for the open ed researcher badges is to outline research studies for each of the three topics that I selected for research. In previous posts I have fulfilled the requirements to identify scholarly literature and other available resources relevant to the topic. Those posts were on the topics of:
This post will outline research studies for each of these three topics per the requirements to earn the Open Ed Researcher badge.
Research Project #1 - OpenCoursWare
A prevalent issue confronting proponents of Open CourseWare is the financial sustainability of efforts to produce and maintain open courses. Previous studies identified or proposed different approaches to addressing this sustainability concern. OpenCourseWare fits with the traditional pattern of initiatives needing funding at institutions of higher education and other organizations seeking to provide a public benefit at minimal cost. Traditional sources of funding for such initiatives and organizations include: government taxpayer support through appropriations and grants, sponsoring institution support, endowments, philanthropic grants, foundation grants, patron donations, add-on sales, and licensing. Some of these sources feed the parent institution sponsoring which then allocates funding from institutional budgets to fund these efforts.
MIT OpenCoursWare has experienced funding from the institution, philanthropists, foundations, and is now soliciting patron support on its website. Other initiatives to provide open courses (particularly outside of the U.S.) rely on government support for their efforts through institutions established for open learning and as open universities. Some institutions that have entered the OpenCoursWare space have exited due to the lack of ongoing funding.
My proposed research project is to explore an approach that may demonstrate a strategic reason for higher education institutions to consider funding open courses from their regular budgets. Policies are emerging from governments and accrediting bodies that are attempting to hold institutions more accountable for the achievement of specific learning outcomes by their students. These policies and standards require an emphasis on measurement and reporting.
I contend that OpenCourseWare can be a valuable tool to insure that the design of instruction is tied to specific learning outcomes and covers the entire scope of curriculum in the academic period in which it is to be delivered. The design of online courses can enforce discipline in the design of instruction to meet all learning objectives. Such completeness of coverage may be sacrificed when limited to the contact hours in the classroom as faculty often need to adjust due to the limits of time. Having a well-designed curriculum available online promotes thorough coverage of learning objectives, even if the students have to be referred to the online materials for some of the instruction that could not be delivered in the classroom due to time constraints. This is one advantage of creating an identical version of the course materials and instruction that can be provided through OpenCourseWare.
Another benefit that could make OpenCourseWare an institutional strategy priority is the possibility that open courses could be an always-available supplement to the instruction provided in the classroom. The research study I am proposing attempts to document if such a benefit exists, as indicated by a correlation between accessing the open course and the grades students achieve when using the open course as a supplement to classroom instruction.
Research Setting
The ideal research setting for the project would be a University that offers sections of a specific course taught in the classroom to admitted students, and also provides the same course (equivalent or same artifacts, lectures, media, etc.) as an OpenCoursWare option. Ideally the same professor who designed the course would be the instructor in the classroom, and the principal involved in developing (or supporting) the OCW version of the course. The purpose of the study is to use the open version of the course as a supplement to classroom instruction and see if there is a correlation between student performance on critical assessments and the time students spent interacting with the open course.
Participants
The participants in the study would be the faculty member teaching the course and all of the students enrolled in at least one section of the course in at least one semester. Two or more periods may provide more robust data that could lead to better analysis.
Data Collection
The professor would include reference to the open version of the course in the syllabus and class discussion with the students the first day of class. The students would be told that the course materials match those that would be used in the instruction in the classroom and that they can refer to the open course as often as they would like for supplement to their learning of the materials. The professor would regularly mention the open course supplement throughout the semester.
The students would be asked to keep a record of the amount of time, or the number of times, that they use the open course to aid them in their learning. The raw test scores students achieve on critical assessments throughout the course would be recorded for data analysis. At the completion of the course the students will complete a short, non-anonymous survey, that collects qualitative and quantitative data. The data will include the hours, or number of times, that the student accessed the open course during the semester.
Another piece of data that might be interesting would be to consider the possibility that some students will use the open course as a substitute for class attendance. Asking about the number of times students actually attended class might also interact with the open course access in considering effects on grade achievement.
Analysis Methodologies
The data would be analyzed by correlating the raw scores on the assessments with the amount of engagement with the open course. I would see if there is a significant correlation between the use of the open course and the scores students achieved.
If I include the classroom replacement data, we would run multiple regression to determine if there was a significant interaction between class attendance, open course as a replacement, and the accesses to the open course on the achievement of the students.
The report would indicate whether a practice of providing an open version of the course would enhance student performance as measured on critical assessments. We would also review any qualitative data in hopes that such data that would convey information about the open course itself, the student experience with the open course, and information about the strategies that the students used.
The report would provide analysis for an institution to consider as it's leadership evaluates a possible strategic priority for funding open courses.
Research Project #2 - Open Source Software
Me research on the open source topic revealed numerous studies that considered the motivations for those who participate in open source projects. One of the basic tenets of the open source movement is stipulated by Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar as what he calls Linus' Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
One of the critical benefits of open source projects that is required is to have a large enough base of interested developers that there is a sustainable life for the development project. Raymond comments that one of the critical principles for success of an open source project is that there is a hand-off when a developer moves away from a project that he or she has been shepherding. If that happens, there needs to be a new developer who will assume ownership when the incumbent moves on or the project will die.
This challenge prompts me to consider just how effective the community is at developing and sustaining projects once the initial developer has "scratched his/her itch" by proposing (and programming) a project that satisfies their individual need in the open source community. Do these projects receive life and vibrancy once that proposer of the project leaves? That is not to say that the project may not be useful in the form at which its continued development stops. But it would be interesting to know how many of the projects take on an ongoing life with support for upgrades and updates from an interested and organized effort by developers in the open source community.
I propose a research project to find out how the community may respond and support efforts when there is a limited gateway to meter the flow of projects and channel them appropriately. Who will take up the charge to keep a project current and recruit assistance as needed to update the application?
Research Setting
My proposal is to use the data available at the open source project site sourceforge.net. This site accepts projects for open development and interested developers can create logins and then participate in projects. The site has hosted more than 300,000 projects and has more than 2 million registered users. I propose that we set our research in an analysis of data from that web site.
Participants
The participants who would be included in the project would be those who are associated with the sourcefourge projects. There would be minimal involvement of these participants, limited to the possibility of outreach by survey to a sample of contributors.
Data Collection
The data collection would be to access data on projects by mining the data available at the site. The main data to be analyzed would be collected through this mining effort. A possible addendum to the data collection would be a survey of participants (perhaps voluntary from a notice posted to the site or a random sample to which we reach out).
Analysis Methodologies
The mined data would be used to calculate the number of participants per project and any other useful information that might show how active the community is in support of the projects on the site. It is assumed that those with very few participants would be in danger of extinction without more developers participating in the project. We could also look for indications of long lapses of time since the last contribution, or between contributions. The output would be a profile of projects in the sourceforge database to include duration, participant developers, and any other metrics that might be meaningful in looking at the health and sustainability of the projects.
If we could accumulate survey data we would focus on projects with few developers per project, or long lapses of time between contributions, to determine the reasons that the project that they are developing was suggested, if that need has been fulfilled, if that need continues to exist in a significant installed base, and if there are reasons to update and maintain the code that has been developed? The intent would be to understand the genesis and life of a project and propose why the observed data about the project are what they are.
Ultimately, we would want to identify a meaningful report structure that would verify the health of open source projects as a movement, or if the movement is restricted to a few superstar projects and then tens of thousands of others that fill a small niche or are not actively developed. There may be some follow-on research that will tie the motivation research to the data from this study. Perhaps this can be used to inform those proposing projects on ways to encourage greater and more frequent participation.
Research Project #3 - Open Educational Resources (OER)
One of the most important characteristics of OER is the reduction in the costs to provide educational opportunities to impoverished or less-developed communities. There have been projects that have opened content and shared copyrighted products using Creative Commons and other open licenses. Some projects have been undertaken to experiment with the production of open textbooks and schools have been created where the entire curriculum uses OER. Such efforts have focused on the applying the lower costs of these resources to save education budgets and re-direct funds to other priorities.
My research on this topic led to several studies that were case analyses of the use of OER in different settings. The research project I would propose for OER is to actually work with educators in less-developed countries where they can participate in an OER-based curriculum and determine whether the suppositions about lower-cost opportunities can be realized. I would also use the findings as a basis for communicating with interested parties proposals about how an effective implementation of OER could be structured in realizing these benefits.
Research Setting
I would work with international organizations interested in improving educational opportunities for less-developed communities to identify a handful of sites where we might engage the educators, administrators, and the government education agencies to design and implement curriculum using OER.
Study Participants
The teachers, administrators, and government agencies would participate in the study.
Data Collection
The first step in the collection of the data would be to collect information on the costs currently incurred to provide materials, training, ongoing inservice and support, procurement, and general administrative costs associated with the curriculum and instruction. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
Once that cost data is accumulated, the next step would be to consider the curriculum design that would be the ideal aspirations of the participants that best fit the culture and infrastructure in the community. The same costs that were captured in the first step would be estimated using existing materials and services that would be required without an aggressive OER implementation. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
The final cost analysis would be to work on an aggressive OER based plan to restructure the curriculum according to the ideal aspirations. All of the costs would be accumulated, with the appropriate substitutions of the current costs from step one and the traditional education model from step two with the equivalent costs that would replace them in step three. For example the procurement costs and overhead may be replaced with identification of OER appropriate for instruction and production of the media that would be used.
Analysis Methodologies
The analysis of the data would consider the first two calculations against the actual expenditures experienced in step three. This analysis would compare the costs of the OER strategy against the existing strategy and the implementation of a new strategy using traditional educational resources. The study would inform the experience of these communities in the use of OER. There may be evidence that the cost reduction can allow additional opportunity that would not otherwise be available without the costs savings that the OER strategy delivered.
The purpose would be to align the findings against the proposition that use of OER may provide better educational opportunities for impoverished or developing communities. I could also formulate proposals for implementing an OER strategy that learns from this research, identifying ways that the expenditures in step three of the project could be modified or eliminated to decrease the funding required.
I reviewed the materials provided on the topic link for open assessment. I reviewed all of the materials provided (OK, I did not watch the full two hours of the first video) and found myself trying to relate the concepts of badges to the paradigm of the world in which I live. I have made a formal study of effective assessment both as part of my academic endeavors and as part of my current professional assignment. I am also closely engaged in our regular accreditation reviews at the University.
I was trying to reconcile this concept of open badges (particularly the different assessment approaches) with the recent emergence of more restrictive and formal assessment efforts proscribed for accreditation standards, which also seem to be the prevailing view of governmental thinking about accountability. It seems that a rigorous outcomes-oriented approach is the foundation for every new proposed evaluation of effective education, at least here in the United States. Not only are these outcomes-based approaches being centered in accountability and accreditation, there are also movements for instructional objectives, and assessments, to be common to all institutions. While these trends have become the norm in K-12 public education, they are bleeding over to higher education, particularly in the accreditation process.
The thing I wondered as I read through the white paper at the Mozilla badge wiki was how the varied approaches to assessment and recognition for achievement (or learning, if you will) through the issuing of badges aligns with the current emphasis on formalized, standardized, outcomes-based evaluation of education in accreditation and accountability processes. The white paper notes that the badge concept is an appropriate response to the change in learning brought about by the Web in our day. The paper states:
Learning is not just ‘seat time’ within schools, but extends across multiple contexts, experiences and interactions. It is no longer just an isolated or individual concept, but is inclusive, social, informal, participatory, creative and lifelong. And it is not sufficient to think of learning simply as consumption, but instead learners are active participants and producers in an interest-driven, lifelong learning process. The concept of a 'learning environment' no longer means just a single classroom or online space, but instead encompasses many spaces in broader, networked, distributed and extensible environments that span time and space. And across these learning environments, learners are offered multiple pathways to gain competencies and refine skills through open, remixable and transparent tools, resources and processes. In this connected learning ecology, the boundaries are broken and the walls are down — now we just need to help it reach its full potential.
Much of this shift is due to the fact that our world is very different than the one when the current education system was developed and standardized. With the Web and its core principles of openness, universality and transparency, the ways that knowledge is made, shared and valued have been transformed and the opportunities for deeper and relevant learning have been vastly expanded. The open Web has enabled increasing access to information and each other, as well as provided the platform for many new ways to learn and new skills to achieve. We no longer must rely on the expert authority or professionally-produced artifact to provide us with the information or experience we seek, instead we can find it from peers or make it ourselves online
I believe that the concept of badges is running into a headwind of accountability standards that are counter to its acceptance by academics and businesses, at least in these early years. Of course it cannot hurt to have champions in the technology industry behind your efforts, but our societal understanding of education and credentialing is not aligned with the concept of badges. Particularly when assessments proposed to grant the recognition that comes with the badges can be viewed as 'squishy.' Again quoting from the white paper:
In order for any badge system to accumulate value and for badges to carry or contend with the weight of formal grades or degrees, quality and vetted assessments will be critical. However, the rigor may differ based on the use case, community or intended audience, and badges give us the flexibility to have multiple levels of assessment. Many badges will be associated with distinct pre-defined assessment exercises and success criteria, whereas others may be more loosely defined and require learner reflection or peer recommendations. The level, or rigor, of the assessment may differ based on the skill. Most hard skills may have fairly standard or rigid rubrics to compare learner work against, whereas social or 21st Century skills will be more fluid and may require more open and social assessments, such as peer reviews or endorsements.
The intended audience may also determine the assessment level. If badges are simply intended to build community or reward immediate behaviors, as with motivation badges, simple assessments or in some cases, no predefined assessment, may be used. For certification badges meant for audiences such as hiring managers or admission boards, more rigorous assessments may be required to demonstrate critical competencies. Each learner may collect a wide range of badges across many different levels of assessment.
In addition to levels of assessment, badges give us the ability to support open innovation around new or relevant types of assessments, provide more personalized assessments for learners and move away from isolated or irrelevant testing practices. Instead of being forced to take an exam at a pre-determined time, in many cases learners will seek out the assessment on their own, thus encouraging reflection on their learning and competency development.
In other cases, assessment and badge awarding could happen automatically and provide immediate formative feedback, and capitalize on the benefits of 'stealth assessment', which is difficult to achieve in a formal classroom. The badge system also fits well with the increasingly popular portfolio assessment, and in fact creates a distributed portfolio by using the badges as markers or entry points to specific skills and achievements, and each earned badge could then be linked directly to the relevant artifacts in the portfolio.
I wonder how receptive institutions of higher education will be to badges as indications of achieved learning when they have a difficult time coming to grips with effective and fair evaluation of transfer credits from one institution to another. Accreditation is intended to facilitate cooperative recognition of the quality of the education offered at an institution. Most accrediting agencies require schools they accredit to accept credits from other accredited schools as a part of maintaining their own accreditation. The first step to acceptance of these badges will probably require their introduction into accreditation conversations, perhaps through an accreditation of the individual badges, or establishing a process where badges become a required part of the offerings of accredited institutions. But this concept may require a departure from the more rigorous standards-based and outcome-oriented accreditation standards that are being proposed and implemented now.
In graduate school we are responsible to form a committee of recognized experts in the field of our research who can guide us, evaluate our achievement, and insure that our efforts are sufficiently rigorous and that we make a valued addition to our discipline through our work. Once they have considered our contribution, and accepted our defense of our efforts, they acknowledge our accomplishment as adequate by issuing a piece of paper that serves as a credential when we represent the adequacy of our achievement to others. I ponder how badges would serve as a proxy for that credential and process at a graduate level. As a student I would be in favor of a more open approach to these learning and publishing activities. As a member of the faculty and as the institution granting the degree, I may be more controlling and traditional.
There is no doubt that there will be (there may already be) progressive institutions of higher ed that are evaluating badge-based assessments and achievement as sufficient for "transfer-credit." There may even be traditional institutions that have adopted badges as part of their transcript. But the conservative higher education field and the uncertainty of the real quality of the badges may lead to slow acceptance and adoption.
One final note, in her paper Adrianna Kezar (see Kezar, A. J. (2004). Obtaining Integrity?: Reviewing and Examining the Charter between Higher Education and Society. Review Of Higher Education27(4), 429-459) talks about how our society is evolving its views of the purposes of higher education. She laments the changes that are moving higher education from its traditional:
role and contribution to the public good [that] has included educating citizens for democratic engagement, supporting local and regional communities, preserving knowledge and making it available to the community, working in concert with other social institutions such as government or health-care agencies to foster their missions, advancing knowledge through research, developing the arts and humanities, broadening access to ensure a diverse democracy, developing the intellectual talents of students, and creating leaders for various areas of the public sector.
Rather she notes that some critics are concerned that, "higher education is foregoing its role as a social institution and is functioning increasingly as an industry with fluctuating, predominantly economic goals and market-oriented values. Increasingly, the production of workers is the primary or singular goal of higher education." She goes on to write that one of the concerns about this approach is the "subsum[ing of] the academic functions of the university into its corporate identity." Kezar quotes Patricia Gumport as writing:
I am concerned that technical, market imperatives run wild, urging colleges and universities to adapt to short term market demands, to redeploy resources, in an effort to reposition themselves with an increasingly competitive context at the expense of long-term goals and commitments.
While there are concerns about this "corporatization" of institutions of higher education, such a definition of higher education as a resource for the marketplace (at least in term of producing professionals for industry) seems to play into the concept of badges. The marketplace has traditionally relied on the credential represented by a university degree as an indication of achievement and the related major of the graduate as the specific area of skills or discipline in which they have demonstrated sufficient achievement. However, the emergence of a more need-specific credential may be in line with meeting the exact needs of a company in the marketplace. There needs to be some deliberation about what these badges mean, who valued issuers are, and the specific achievement that each represents, but it is evident that the separation of the role of the academy in its traditional role for society, and the credentialing for the marketplace, may leave a place for degrees AND badges that may be more aligned with a unique and desired role for each.
When the costs of “open teaching” are so low, I ask myself a question. Do we professors, who live
rather privileged lives relative to the vast majority of the planet’s
population, have a moral obligation to make our teaching efforts as
broadly impactful as possible, reaching out to bless the lives of as
many people as we can? Especially when participatory technologies make
it so inexpensive (almost free) for us to do so?
He then provides his view, "I believe the answer is yes. "
One research effort in which I am currently engaged is to survey institutions of higher education in the United States to determine the level of saturation of online courses, or online learning objects in the teaching activities on campus. We are also attempting to gather information on policies related to faculty participation in online teaching for load calculations, evaluation for rank and status reviews, and compensation for participating in these on-line efforts. I am motivated to better understand these practices in consideration of my professional responsibilities in my current assignment. This information is critical to the formulation and defense of strategies that I believe are important to the future efforts of my organization.
The major costs associated with providing instruction online is in the creation of effective instructional design, development of the learning objects and instructional materials, and making them functional in online formats. Even the identification and integration of freely available OER requires human resources. There appears to be significant movement in institutional strategies to shift more to online instruction. Practices such as "flipping the classroom" or the using blended models of instruction are gaining acceptance at many colleges and Universities.
At my own institution we have participated in a recent investigation of the possibility of implementing more complete online course experiences for our on-campus students. The investigation was initiated by the highest levels of the administration and we were asked to spearhead the investigation, and subsequent development of this online instruction. As we met with the various colleges and departments on campus we found that some had already developed courses that were currently being offered entirely online. Others were heavily involved in developing courses in blended formats. This was a revelation to many at our institution.
As the institution prioritizes the teaching of courses through these technology rich formats, many of the costs incurred in developing these online resources and instructional objects change from an additional marginal additional cost of development, and become instead the primary initial development cost of the instruction. This change significantly reshapes the dynamics of the sustainability conversations for providing Open Courses and Open Teaching. The conversation aligns much more closely with Dr. Wiley's observation quoted above that "participatory technologies make
it so inexpensive (almost free) for us to do so?"
The marginal cost of providing open versions of courses when that course is already prepared and developed in online formats is minimal - some research suggests below $1,000 per course (see Johansen & Wiley http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/2353). The conversion cost be even lower when the development efforts are planned with the open delivery being considered as well as on-campus use. Such planning could further minimize the cost of conversion.
Other readings on this topic page concern the expansion of open courses and teaching into the MOOC format. Many of the readings describe MOOC experiences and describe the differences in learning objects, pedagogical designs, and tools for teaching these courses. It will be interesting to watch the evolution of MOOC in the future.
In my earlier post on Open CourseWare I included reference to the experience at Stanford in the fall of 2011 with the AI course taught as a MOOC http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/13/stanfords-open-courses-raise-questions-about-true-value-elite-education. This effort resulted in more than 23,000 participants around the world receiving some recognition for completing the course. The non-credit participants received a letter from the instructor (Sebastian Thrun) that documented their participation and included their class rank. Other participant who complied with certain policies were able to receive Stanford credit for completing the course.
Dr. Thrun has since left the employment at Stanford and is engaged in teaching MOOC through a new education venture named Udacity.
A visit to Thrun's home page http://robots.stanford.edu/ finds this pronouncement regarding his views of education and his motivation to reach out through the Udacity venture: He states:
You can take my latest class online and for free at
UDACITY.
Udacity stands for "we are audacious, for you, the student".
I am against education that is only available to the
top 1% of all students. I am against tens of
thousands of dollars of tuition expenses. I am
against the imbalance that the present system brings
to the world. I want to empower the 99%. I want to
democratize education. Education should be
free. Accessible for all, everywhere, and any time.
One of the most amazing things I've ever done in my life is to
teach a class to 160,000 students. In the Fall of 2011, Peter Norvig and
I decided to offer our class "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence"
to the world online, free of charge.
We spent endless nights recording ourselves on video, and
interacting with tens of thousands of students. Volunteer students
translated some of our classes into over 40 languages; and in the end we
graduated over 23,000 students from 190 countries. In fact, Peter and I
taught more students AI, than all AI professors in the world combined.
This one class had more educational impact than my entire career.
The motivations that Thrun lists here seem to be the most common element that must be present for an open movement to have sustained life. There must be a committed protagonist who champions the effort with these noble desires. While there may be some politically-charged vernacular in the words he has chosen to verbalize his motives, the nobility of intent is present. There is an ongoing theme of "to whom much is given much is expected."
The Hilton paper linked on the topic page for Open Teaching (http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/IR/id/983) makes reference to two issues regarding the experience in Dr. Wiley's 2009 Open Education course. One observation from the survey data is that the student-student interaction was valued but that the synchronicity of that interaction was important to student/participant engagement and sense of camaraderie amongst those engaged in the class. There was a desire on the part of some of the participants responding to the survey to have more immediate and synchronous interactions during the class sessions, even if they were distant from the classroom. If this is a common element of engagement in MOOC formatted courses, then there would be a tremendous logistical challenge (and possible human resource need) to offering this open teaching experience in a course with thousands of participants.
The second point of reference in the Hilton article is the amount of time that is required from the instructor to prepare, administer, and interact with the course. In the Hilton research, Dr. Wiley intentionally minimized the interaction to limited time each week. There were implications of this decision on the learning experiences of the students compared to earlier courses where his interaction was greater. Thrun noted that he and Peter Norvig (the other instructor teaching the course) spent "endless nights recording ourselves on video, and interacting with tens of thousands of students." They also depended on volunteers to develop the course for delivery. The course also offered actual University credit to those participating at a distance providing they complied with certain policies regarding the taking of assessments. Teaching large MOOC courses will require logistical and human resource overhead that will require funding.
One final note in this post. I shared the story of the Stanford AI course and the subsequent resignation by Dr. Thrun from his position at Stanford because he saw the potential to serve so many more students. One of the administrators at our University made the comment that he may be saying he left voluntarily, but that he (the administrator) heard that the University was not pleased because he initiated the MOOC without vetting and provided credit for some distance participants without curriculum approval. He also heard that Stanford was greatly concerned with the letters that he provided to participants who completed the course without the credit option. It was an illustration that the centuries-old traditions governing education, particularly higher education, will continue to be difficult to those espousing more openness in teaching and course provision.
This is the third posting of the three posts required to earn the Open Ed Researcher badge in the OER course at BYU in the winter of 2012. This last post links to articles and other materials related to the Open Educational Resources movement. The movement intends to increase the availability of educational resources to greater populations by making them available at little or no cost to the learner.
I selected this first article because the researchers do a great job clearly stating the justification and motivation that are important supporting the development and deployment of OER. The citation (APA format) is:
Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., Wiley, D. (2008). Open educational resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1), 1-11. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1009
The authors note that education has been deemed a critical human right. They write:
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has the right to education, and that "technical and professional education shall be made generally available (United Nations, 1948)."
This right is the motivation to find ways to make education generally available. But there are costs associated with educational resources. The authors address the role of the costs of education, particularly distance education in the abstract for the article. The abstract states:
Traditionally distance education was limited in the number of people served because of production, reproduction, and distribution costs. Today, while it still costs the university time and money to produce a course, technology has made it such that reproduction costs are almost non-existent. This shift has significant implications, and allows distance educators to play an important role in the fulfillment of the promise of the right to universal education. At little or no cost, universities can make their content available to millions. This content has the potential to substantially improve the quality of life of learners around the world. New distance education technologies . . . act as enablers to achieving the universal right to education.
The challenges with the development, production, and deployment of OER include costs, ownership, competition, and quality. As the OER community continues to expand and more participants engage in these development and deployment activities, creative solutions to the challenges are evolving.
The remainder of this article discusses OCW as a critical OER component. My last post covered OCW so I will not review the authors writing of the history and the state of OCW as an OER resource.
I think this article is an important conversation about OER. The motivations for creation and deployment are addressed as well as an acknowledgement that there are costs. This acknowledgement is an important part of the approach that we must take with institutions as they consider their role in supporting OER.
The second peer-reviewed article that I have linked is found in the Journalof Interactive Media in Education (JIME). This journal is an open access, peer-reviewed journal "that focuses on the implications and use of digital media in education." (JIME website at http://jime.open.ac.uk/jime/index). The citation (APA format) is:
This article talks about work done at the Open University in the U.K. The article reports some of the experiences encountered in the design of learning activities and courses using OER as content. The researcher was attempting to answer two questions:
How do we make it easier or more effective for adult learners of all abilities to engage with OER and gain from that experience?
How do we make it easier or more effective for teachers to use, re-use, rework and remix OER for their own purposes?
The author used an analysis that considered the stages in OER product development suggested by McAndrew (2010) [Ref: McAndrew, P. and Lane, A. (2010) The impact of OpenLearn: making The Open University more “open”, Association for Learning and Technology online newsletter, Issue 18, Friday 15th January 2010, ISSN 1748-3603, accessed 2nd September 2010 from http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/4ii7jyi4jnx.]
These stages are:
Legal: release of copyright through creative commons
Practical: provide access to content
Technical: develop an environment for open access
Pedagogic: understand the designs that work
Economic: devise a model for sustainable operation
Transformative: change ways of working and learning
The author cites specific instances from design efforts at the Open University that incorporated OER in these stages.
The author then proceeds to describe how the OpenLearn project aligned with the five principles of design developed by Kahle (2008) [Ref: Kahle, D. (2008) Designing Open Educational Technology, In Eds Ilyoshi, T. and Vijay Kumar, M.S., Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, pp 27-45, MIT Press. 2008. ISBN 0-262-03371-2, accessed 2nd September 2010 from http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11309.] that were considered as an approach to innovative instruction using OER. The author writes about these principles:
Kahle (2008) has written about the primacy of design for educational technologies and that for open educational technologies in particular he proposed five principles:
Design for access – who is the technology open for?
Design for agency – the degree of user action and control over the technology;
Design for ownership – allowing people to have a stake in the technology through open licensing;
Design for participation – encouraging community involvement in developing or extending the technology;
Design for experience – take note of the aesthetics of use as users will quickly make judgements on this.
Through all five principles there are elements that involve innovation pre the release of the technology
coupled with continued innovation post the release (the concept of perpetual beta . . .)
The author again gives specific examples of the implementation of the design project, categorizing an example within each of the five principles.
This was an interesting study and I learned about these important principles that are helpful in designing instruction using OER both by students and teachers.
The third peer-reviewed article that I have linked is found in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. I deemed this article important because of the observations made by the author about sustainability of OER efforts and lessons that might be drawn from his analysis.The citation (APA format) is:
Friesen, N. (2009). Open educational resources: New possibilities for change and sustainability.
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10
(5), 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/664/1391
This article reports research where the author investigated OER projects. The author writes that the article
presents the results of an informal survey of active and inactive collections of online educational resources, emphasizing data related to collection longevity and the project attributes associated with it.
The attempt of this survey was to see if OER collections could be sustained over the long term or if such repositories could be expected to become inactive or disappear after some time as had happened with other academic collection efforts across many institutions and organizations, and in many different fields. The author found that there have been some OER collection efforts that have been instituted, grown for a time, and then become inactive or discontinued. He writes,
There is little use in establishing a “universal educational resource” – however effective for human and educational development it may be – if it is neglected or goes offline after a few years.
The author prepared two tables of OER collections that he reviewed for this research. The first table showed a collection of projects that were still functional and could be considered sustainable at the time of his research. The second table showed OER efforts that he found to be discontinued and were not sustained. In his review of these efforts the author defined a sustainability crisis window of three years. This means that most products confront a substantial sustainability challenge at this time and there must be a solution to their challenge or it is likely that the collection will go inactive or be discontinued.
He lists lessons for sustainability that might be derived from the research. The first lesson is:
importance of ongoing, operational institutional or consortial funding for educational resource collections and the difficulty of realizing alternative funding models. Online educational resource initiatives of this kind, one can conclude, need to be seen as processes or services rather than as products that persist of their own accord.
Where a collection is part of the institutional mission then it appears that the strategies of the institution will incorporate support and funding for the sustenance of the OER effort.
The second lesson Friesen documents is "the importance of community." He writes that there are few broadly general collections that cross multiple categories and subject matter. There are many more however that are pertinent to certain smaller categories or topics and benefit from an interested community within that area of interest.
The author writes how these perceived lessons
are commensurate with a survey report recently released by UNESCO . . . the document ranked 15 of the top concerns of the “OER international community of interest”. The issue of sustainability of OER projects . . . was one of the top concerns (4th out of 15). The top three challenges or issues speak clearly to issues implied in the sustainability challenge:
awareness raising and promotion;
communities and networking of creators and users; and
capacity development, specifically as it relates to the development and pedagogical application of OERs.
These concerns share a number of characteristics in common: None are related to technology or to technological solutions . . . None raise issues such as ease of use or cost-savings – two concerns receiving considerable attention in the literature . . . Instead, these top concerns, as the report’s author explains, are of a “community focused” and “decentralized” nature. They underscore incompatibilities between pedagogical and community cultures, on the one hand, and the practices and priories associated with developing, sharing, and utilizing online instructional content, on the other.
The author concludes the report by discussing the MIT OCW collection and the benefits that the institution derives from their support for this initiative. The author summarizes the findings of a review of the project done at MIT which:
highlights a range of factors associated with the success of this project. Some of these factors and findings [are]
the fact that MIT courses and course contents are benefitting users globally. The majority of use takes place outside of the United States itself, with a substantial minority of users coming from outside of OECD-member (or developed) nations . . . in other words . . . the majority of its use is from nations with less developed university infrastructures than the USA.
the majority of the use of MIT courses is for self-directed, informal learning, namely to “improve” or “enhance personal knowledge” or to “explore areas outside [one’s] professional field” . . . In other words, the majority of the use of this material not only takes place outside of the USA, it also occurs outside in the context of reuse and adaptation by teachers or instructional designers.
A correlative finding is that the MIT resources . . . are actually being used and followed as courses, within the context of the syllabi and other course structures and conventions.
A fourth and final finding (or rather, set of findings) is connected to the relationship of the project to MIT itself as an institution. This finding provides clear evidence of multiple areas of significant benefit accruing to MIT the institution from the open courseware project, and it provides a positive illustration of important possibilities for change . . . Majorities of students and faculty at MIT . . . use the site to support their study and teaching, and 32% of faculty say that putting materials online has improved their teaching . . . Finally, the role of the project in student recruitment is significant: 16% of the student users employ the MIT courses to “plan a course of study,” and “35 percent of freshmen who were aware of OCW prior to deciding to attend MIT indicate the site was a significant or very significant influence on their choice of school” Therein lies one of the most powerful drivers of adoption of OERs . . . Simply put, this is enlightened institutional self-interest.
This paper addresses issues about sustainability that need to be considered beyond the monetary cost/benefit decision at institutions. There are benefits to the world, but there are also possible benefits to students and faculty on campus, improvements in teaching, and possible reputational and recruiting advantages by sustained presence of OER in institutional strategy.
This video is a report from Oxford University that looks at the creation, addition, and deployment of OER in extended learning efforts in continuing education activities at the University. In addition to explaining OER and describing its use, the report shows that the use improves the quality of teaching on and off of campus. The report also highlights the effect of OER blended in courses on the students trust and research of content on the internet.
This is a video clip of testimony by Reuven Carlyle, a legislator in the state of Washington, where he explains and recommends the use of OER in K-12 instruction in the state. He discusses the quality of the open texts and the money that will be saved through pursuing using these texts in K-12 in Washington. This links very nicely to a post in the OER class made within the last week of similar testimony given by the same legislator recently.
This video link reviews the Open High School of Utah and reports on the experience of students, families, and teachers in using OER in the instruction at the truly open high school. This documentary style video gives a real flavor for the experiences and motivations to improve learning with OER tools and strategies.
This article is a research report from the University of California that explores the attitudes of faculty towards the use of open textbooks in higher education. There were interviews and focus groups conducted with faculty to determine their attitudes about open textbooks and how that might effect strategies that an institution might want to follow to benefit students through the savings that might be realized through the use of open texts. The author writes:
Our results show that faculty want a diversity of choices. They are independent thinkers, exceptionally busy, suffer from extreme information overload, are generally dedicated to ensuring their students’ success, and do not take well to “one size fits all” solutions. It was clear from our focus groups and survey that any discussion about textbook affordability solutions must also take into account that most faculty are active and independent decision makers when it comes to choosing a textbook or other curricular materials for their courses; the top-down high-school model of textbook adoption is anathema to many professors and instructors.
Complicating the picture are the natural, heterogeneous needs among the institutions, disciplines, and courses encompassed by higher education; the type of institution and the level and content of the course will ultimately determine which curricular forms offer the best solutions. Faculty made clear that their students represent a plethora of learning backgrounds and goals, and desire flexibility and choice in textbook options. What is notable and cannot be ignored is that purely electronic solutions will not be universally embraced in the near term. Reasons for resistance included students’ need for the safety net of a printed textbook and the positive pedagogical practice of engaging with the text by “writing in the margins” (which is not a practical reality in current electronic platforms).
The author was generally positive towards the faculty and understanding of their concerns. The observations about the faculty attitudes align with my own experiences in conversation with faculty on my campus about open texts (and frankly all other open movements in education). There is suspicion of motives, questioning of quality, and a general reluctance to divert from the traditional models of instruction and resourcing prevalent in higher ed for lo these many years. This is an interesting read and creates opportunities to understand concerns that must be addressed if there is a desire to pursue adoption of these openness initiatives.
This final article is a report on the efforts to use OER in blended learning teaching strategies in situations where students might not have resources that would present opportunities to access OER outside of a classroom setting. The article reports on the BLOSSOMS project from MIT where the faculty created short learning objects that could be presented by the teachers in their classrooms and blended into instruction. The authors describe the project as follows:
The BLOSSOMS initiative is guided by eight major considerations:
Technology is changing education, allowing a much richer menu of learning opportunities than was available before. Some believe that historians—in the future—will cite education as one of the top three transformative effects of the Internet.
The Open Source movement is creating learning materials free of copyright restrictions.
The World is co-inventing major environments on the web (e.g., Wikipedia).
Many high school students, both young women and young men, are turned off to studying math and science, seeing it as hard work with little relevance in their lives.
Teachers in high schools need appropriate technology-enabled means to leverage their skills in order to further engage and excite the students.
For many teachers, a blended or hybrid model that combines traditional face-to-face with technology-enhanced teaching will be a less threatening way to leverage their effectiveness through technology.
Much teaching of mathematics in high schools is done formally, often in theorem and proof mode, and the style of student learning is too often rote memorization for an exam, and then forgetting.
New ways need to be developed to help students engage in creative critical thinking, often assembling in unusual ways concepts and facts learned in more traditional modes
Students need to be shown that mathematics and science can apply in exciting and useful ways in their lives, both professional and personal, thereby increasing the numbers who will select engineering, science and mathematics as career goals.
The BLOSSOMS video modules are not intended to replace an existing curriculum but rather to enhance the teaching of certain lessons, encouraging critical thinking and creating interest to pursue further math and science studies. Students in the classroom setting would watch a segment of a BLOSSOMS video, none lasting longer than about 5 minutes. Then after each segment, the in-class teacher would guide the students with an active learning exercise building from the video segment. After the learning objective is accomplished, the video is turned on again for another short segment. This iterative process continues until the exercise is over, usually lasting a full class session.
This explanation of the goals of the program and its operation was interesting. The rest of the paper outlines philosophies and addresses some of the issues that were raised in the other documents and videos that I have linked here.
In summary, the use of OER is driven by motives that could be considered admirable and that are intended to extend education under the assumption that it is a basic human right. There are design issues that need to be addressed when implementing OER in instruction. Sustainability is an issue with all OER collections and there need to be institutional strategies and benefits in order for OER to be sustained at institutions of higher ed. OER has many dynamic uses and can be a cost-effective way to extend the blessings of learning to students and to improve the teaching of faculty and academics.
