Openness as a catalyst for innovation in educationR. John Robertson, JISC CETISSPU Symposium, Seattle 2011
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
1
Context: JISC• Established in 1993, JISC
is an advisory committee to the HE and FE funding bodies across the UK.
• Its mission is: “to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support education, research and institutional effectiveness”.
2
Context: JISC CETIS• JISC CETIS is a JISC
Innovation Support Centre.
• We provide advice to the UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors on the development and use of educational technology and standards.
33
To return to the beginning • "Out of every ten
innovations attempted, all very splendid, nine will end up in silliness" Antonio Machado
• “Make lots of mistakes and make them quickly”
4
Distributed Learning Environments Timeline
5
Briefing Papers
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/6/6c/Distributed_Learning.pdf6
Introduction: UKOER Programmes• The Open Educational Resources
Programme is a collaboration between the JISC and the Higher Education Academy in the UK.
• The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) provided an initial £5.7 million of funding, for a pilot programme (April 2009 to March 2010) and a subsequent £5 million of funding (August 2010- August 2011) for a follow-up programme both of which explore how to expand the open availability and use of free, high quality online educational resources.
7
What effect does openness have?
• Reflections on innovation seen through the programme
Photo credit and license:‘Open’ Flickr user: mag3737 CC: BY NC SAhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/1914076277/8
Open content as a catalyst for innovation
“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”
William Gibson Interview with NPR 1993
• I’d contend that we know lots of ways to innovate and improve education – making any of them happen is a different question
9
Defining Open• thinking about
licensing can actually make it simpler
• Creative Commons– BY– SA or ND– NC
http://creativecommons.org/
10
What is an OER?• From this
11
Image: screenshot MIT OCW http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-environmental-engineering/1-018j-ecology-i-the-earth-system-fall-2009/ 11
What is an OER?• To this
12
Image: screenshothttp://www.flickr.com/photos/core-materials/4599222126/
12
An Open proposition• Value proposition that
sharing content openly can provide a greater return than strict control
• Discussing this as a catalyst not necessarily a cause
13
education is not primarily about transfer of information content...
• High quality educational resources widely available – a given academic is no longer the provider of knowledge
• Are you a content provider or provider of learning experience?
Photo credit and license: ‘Doors Open Toronto’Flickr user hyfen CC: BY NC SAhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/hyfen/3562200168/in/set-72157618755740828 14
Social responsibility
• If publicly funded, should the public have access?
15
Managing your educational content
• Where do you find it?• Who owns it?• Who can use it?• If you want to reuse
your colleagues lecture materials - can you find them?
16
Increasing recruitment• How much do you
spend on recruiting students and staff?
• How do you help students decide what they should study?
17
Open Textbooks• WA SBCTC funding
creation of ~80 openly licensed textbooks for most popular topics
• Free / Open license• Innovation
– Updatable– Adaptable– Lower barriers to student
enrolment/ completion
18
Changes in student expectations?• Does providing more
flexible access to your resources support student learning?
• It may be cheaper and easier to give content to the world than manage access to limited student body.
19
Changes in pedagogy?• If instructor time and peer interaction are key
components of high impact learning experiences (Kuh) – why are we spending so much contact time on lectures?
20
The wider conversation• How do we draw
students into wider academic and public conversations as part of becoming self-regulated learners?
21
There are different approaches to open
• In the wider OER community there are two distinct approaches to sharing open content for education.
• Martin Weller characterises these as Big and Little OER (http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/12/the-politics-of-oer.html)
22
Questions
23
