Here’s the latest presentation created by the University of Michigan OER team. Last week, I presented this slideshow in two sections of a UM undergraduate Sociology class. The goal was to explain the not only the history of open educational resources initiatives, but also to discuss the student-centric publication model we’re proposing for the University of Michigan called the dScribe model.
Much to my surprise, the students were quite excited to actually become dScribes - actually eager to help faculty prepare materials for publication on our forthcoming OER site. Many said it would be a worthwhile experience to work alongside (even if it were asynchronous) their instructor and with the OER team to assemble course materials for publication. Responding to a question about whether they would utilize resources generated by a school-wide OER initiative, many said it would allow them to “shop” for classes and also better plan out a curriculum. When asked about the benefit of creating an open educational environment for people around the world to access, many agreed that it was a really meaningful endeavor.
The largest concern, however, revolved around two familiar arguments. First, that an OER initiative like this would simply give away a UM education: “Why would I or my parents pay 40,000 a year when I could just get it for free?” Second, posting resources online for anyone to access would simply provide classmates with one more reason not to attend class: “If everything is available online, no one would show up.”
I guess it’s refreshing to know that these were the two central concerns. MIT OCW has been pretty successful at deflating these arguments, saying that MIT OCW is not an MIT education and that it is not meant to replace the classroom experience. I did my best to present versions of these arguments and after finishing, most seemed somewhat convinced that they had the upper hand by being the students who would actually receive a diploma. And, the fact that class materials would not be ready for public view until the end of the semester - or after - meant that not showing up to class (or relying on previous semester’s OER material) would not be a substitute for the in class experience. Overall, these presentations and positive reactions provide our team with an eagerness to finish up the back end work of software development, learn from our pilot initiatives, and get this student-centric model scaled-up across the University.
For now, download or view the presentation on slideshare.net: here
By Lisa Petrides, featured in Inside Higher Ed
The concept of aggregating, sharing, and collaboratively enriching free educational materials over the Internet has been emerging over the past several years. The movement has been led by faculty members and content specialists who believe that making lesson plans, training modules and full courses freely available can help improve teaching and make educational resources more dynamic through a cross-pollination of ideas and expertise. The Hewlett Foundation-funded OpenCourseWare initiative and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education’s OER Commons offer a glimpse of the potential for open content in higher education. Continue reading ‘Fulfilling the Promise of Open Content (Lisa Petrides)’
For those of you who are not aware, the next OpenCourseWare Consortium conference will be held in Dalian, China from April 24-27, 2008.
You can find out more information about the conference here.
Conference attendance is open — so we hope some of you will be able to join us!
Photo by mandj98 (CC BY:)
Who could have ever guessed that physics would play such a large role in drawing people toward open education resources? From the recent news story showcasing MIT Professor Walter Lewin and his highly entertaining Classical Physics video lectures to the featured Astrophysics course of Yale professor Charles Bailyn we can now add the work of University of Nebraska physics professor, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky. In today’s New York Times, Science Times article “Nascar’s Screech and Slam? It’s All Aerodynamics” John Tierney highlights Pelecky’s use of NASCAR and ‘the excitement of motorsports’ to get elementary and middle school students interested in science, math and engineering. If the thought of tailgating a car at 200mph has your middle schooler (or you) eager to learn more about computational fluid dynamics or static friction, then venture over to Pelecky’s website: Building SPEED (Science Participation: Education, Engagement and Diversity). The website, which is still in development, aims to create and share educational materials that use transportation as a way to teach the principles of the National Math and Science Education Standards. If physics professors can use NASCAR to attract people to open educational resources, I can’t wait to see the strategies educators might employ for, say, Media Studies.
In his latest Common Space post, Open vs. open vs. etc, telecentre.org Director Mark Surman mulls over a question that those of us involved in OCW projects might have some interest in: “why are so many people attracted to the word ‘open’?” A 30-minute thought experiment led Mark to create a chart comparing four common ‘domains of open’: open source software, open space meetings, open societies and open systems. In future iterations of the chart, Mark will compare other domains, including open content and open education. Have specific insight you feel might help Mark and others better understand the ‘meaning of open’? Send along your thoughts.
Students from the School of Information at the University of Michigan have been learning about the OCW publishing process and are working on piloting a course themselves. These digital scribes–”dScribes”– have chosen an interesting course they are currently enrolled in and are beginning to navigate the ins and outs of the OCW workflow. The students have been working with mentors from the OCW team, and eventually the course will be published on the Michigan OCW site. Here’s photos from the weekly dScribe workshop. This week’s topic–intellectual property (go figure!).
Here’s some basic information about the dScribe framework:
It’s been reported numerous places that United Nations University has ramped up their OpenCourseWare project. An interesting aspect of the UNU OCW initiative has been the release of course materials under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The majority of other OCW projects have chosen to publish their materials under a version of the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. The debate about open licensing options continues (and hopefully will prompt more discussion here). While the CC-BY license is in essence more “free” from the get-go, it lacks the viral nature of the ShareAlike clause, which ensures that downstream remixes of content also remain free and open.
Full disclosure: I am a part time employee of Creative Commons, but do not endorse or recommend any specific CC license here or in any of these postings.
Check out The Web Difference, the class blog for John Palfrey and David Weinberger’s fantastic class at Harvard Law. The site is an interesting take on dynamic open education–the instructors utilize lots of open content and encourage students to participate in class discussions publicly via the blog.
This is not entirely new–Wiley’s been doing this with his online course Introduction to Open Education by maintaining a wiki with content and input from students around the world. Eventually the wiki content is ported to the OCW site. This semester Chuck Severance is maintaining his own flavor of OCW for his undergraduate Python course at the University of Michigan.
These projects demonstrate the evolving nature of open education. Not only will open coursewares continue to provide and support open content, but will also begin to explore a more open, transparent, and collaborative teaching pedagogy.
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