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)’
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.
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.
The quest for sustainability in open courseware
Created by Paul Trafford (University of Oxford) on July 15, 2007
I’ve been reflecting recently on the subject of open courseware and, more specifically, OpenCourseWare following the keynote for the Sakai conference in Amsterdam delivered confidently and enthusiastically by Hal Abelson (a podcast is available). In this post I’ll briefly recap some of the core aspects as I understand them and then go on to explore this area, based on personal experiences and ideas I’ve been formulating at Oxford.
Abelson took a broad view, inviting the audience to go back 25 years and defined programming as a “novel formal medium for expressing ideas.” Against that, he got us to consider the aspirations and expectations that we might have had then, encapsulating this in 3 predictions for 25 years thence (i.e. today):
- a global encyclopaedia
- TCP/IP global
- collaborative educational resources
It’s the third that has yet to be properly delivered. Starting from consideration of why not, he then developed the rationale leading to the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative and the more recent Creative Commons Learn (ccLearn). Continue reading ‘The Quest for Sustainability in OpenCourseWare’
The University of Southern Queensland in Australia has recently published a new OpenCourseWare site.
The content is quite remarkable. In addition — the entire OCW site is Moodle-based, which is encouraging as well.
Check it out if you get the chance!
Information World Review
06/12/07 4:00 AM PT
Perhaps it is the global reach of the open courseware movement that offers the most radical challenge to the traditional localized method of delivering education. Some of the OpenCourseware Consortium’s members are experimenting with new models. Universia, for example, is a collaboration between a number of Spanish and Latin American universities, funded by the Bank of Santander.
In the late 1990s, when everybody wanted to take advantage of the moneymaking opportunities offered by the Internet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
(MIT) decided that it too wanted a slice of the action. MIT was, and still is, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Couldn’t it use some of the intellectual property it was creating on its campus to generate some additional revenue?
Continue reading ‘Setting Learning Free’
From Brendan Barrett of United Nations University
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The UNU Media Studio has recently launched two new web sites that showcase the online educational materials developed by the UNU.
Please take a look at http://www.onlinelearning.unu.edu/
You can see from this site that we produce courses, e-case studies, video documentaries and web applications. The main thematic focus is the environment. We hope to add more and more content in the future.
We also have another site - http://www.mediastudio.unu.edu/
On this website, we will explain how we collaborate with people and institutions to build and share these open educational resources. This includes discussion of the types of tools we use, the challenges we face and the solutions we come up with. We hope that you will subscribe to our RSS feed and comment from time to time.
Continue reading ‘New Websites from United Nations University’
Stephen Downes always gives interesting presentations.
Here’s his latest on OERs and OCW.
Check it out.
This is definitely a good framework for thinking about sustainable OERs.
Nice work, Stephen!
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