WA Open Educational Resources

Open Teaching Multiplies the Benefit But Not the Effort

2009-07-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

It’s time to get radical in how we think about delivering education to the world’s population in a digital, networked world.

This Chronicle post by David Wiley is worth your time.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3884&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

When the costs of “open teaching” (freely allowing people outside the university to view course materials and informally participate in the course) 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? I believe the answer is yes. — David Wiley

Obama's "American Graduation Initiative" Online Skills Laboratory

2009-07-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

We now have a little more information about what the Obama administration’s “American Graduation Initiative” might mean for online learning.

It looks like, at this point, that the money could be used to create online, open courses and share them.

· A national “Online Skills Laboratory” would make grants for the development of open, free courses for high school and college career-oriented curricula.

· This program would be funded at $50 million per year over ten years.

Create a New Online Skills Laboratory: Online educational software has the potential to help students learn more in less time than they would with traditional classroom instruction alone. Interactive software can tailor instruction to individual students like human tutors do, while simulations and multimedia software offer experiential learning. Online instruction can also be a powerful tool for extending learning opportunities to rural areas or working adults who need to fit their coursework around families and jobs. New open online courses will create new routes for students to gain knowledge, skills and credentials. They will be developed by teams of experts in content knowledge, pedagogy, and technology and made available for modification, adaptation and sharing. The Departments of Defense, Education, and Labor will work together to make the courses freely available through one or more community colleges and the Defense Department’s distributed learning network, explore ways to award academic credit based upon achievement rather than class hours, and rigorously evaluate the results.

From Obama’s speech: Third, even as we repair brick and mortar buildings, we have an opportunity to build a new virtual infrastructure to complement the education and training community colleges can offer. We'll support the creation of a new online - and open-source - clearinghouse of courses so that community colleges across the country can offer more classes without building more classrooms. This will make a big difference for rural campuses that often struggle to attract students and faculty. This will make it possible for a professor to complement his lecture with an online exercise, or for a student who can't be away from her family to still keep up with her coursework. We do not know where this kind of an experiment will lead; but that is exactly why we ought to try it.

I’ll be monitoring this closely and will share details as they become available. The details of this initiative may change as it makes its way through the Congress.

David Wiley: Digital Textbooks Call for New Business Models

2009-07-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3870&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education

2009-07-07T14:21:00.001-07:00

OER Briefing Paper

Free: The New Price?

2009-07-07T14:12:00.001-07:00

The new book from Wired Magazines Editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson: Free: The Future of a Radical Price -- has already sparked many thoughtful discussions.

For a good overview and links to other blog posts and free copies of the new book, read this Read/Write article: Free: It Works, It Cries, It Bites

College Lectures Should Be Free Online, Argues 'Wired Magazine' Editor in New Book (Chronicle)

We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks?

2009-07-06T17:13:00.001-07:00

Open Textbooks and course packs made up of open educational resources and existing library materials are great solutions for reducing students' educational costs.

But when you want a commercial textbook, renting may be a good option:

Textbook Lending Grows in Popularity (Chronicle)
We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks? (New York Times)

(one) Textbook Rental Company (Chegg)

Others include: Campus Book Rentals, College Book Renter and Book Renter.com

Many college bookstores are also starting to get into the rental business too.

While disruptive digital, networked solutions will continue to upset existing business models…. we need to keep our eye on the ball and keep asking: “What is good for students?” “How do we increase student access to higher education and reduce student costs?”

Now in Session: The Library of Congress on iTunes U

2009-07-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Now in Session: The Library of Congress on iTunes U

In an ongoing effort to make its digital educational, historical and cultural resources available to web users across a broad spectrum of platforms, the Library of Congress today launched "The Library of Congress on iTunes U."

U.S. Push for Free Online Courses

2009-06-29T16:01:00.001-07:00

Read this: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/ccplan

WASHINGTON -- Community colleges and high schools would receive federal funds to create free, online courses in a program that is in the final stages of being drafted by the Obama administration. The program is part of a series of efforts to help community colleges reach more students and to link basic skills education to job training. The proposals are outlined in administration discussion drafts obtained by Inside Higher Ed. A formal announcement could come in the next few weeks. In addition to the free online courses, the plan would provide $9 billion over 10 years to help community colleges develop and improve programs related to preparing students for good jobs, and a $10 billion loan fund (at low or no interest) for community college facilities.

The funds envisioned for open courses -- $50 million a year…

This could be REALLY big for eLearning and Adult Basic Education.

With a little luck, this could mean (1) new resources for college eLearning programs and (2) a good start in moving toward open educational resources.

A Theory of Change for Open Education Resources (OER)

2009-06-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

OER Africa, an initiative of SAIDE, has been established to play a leading role in driving the development and use of OER in higher education systems on the African continent. This article reflects the central thinking of Catherine Ngugi, the OER Africa Programme Director, and Neil Butcher, the OER Africa Strategist.

Webinar (slides and archive): Textbook Affordability: A Discussion About Skyrocketing Costs and Emerging Solutions

2009-06-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

Slides on Slideshare

Session Archive

National Student Organizations call for Open Access to Research

2009-06-14T19:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/09-0610.shtml

http://www.righttoresearch.org

National Student Organizations call for Open Access to Research

Washington, DC -- A coalition of national and regional college student associations today issued a "Student Statement on the Right to Research," calling on universities, research funders, and researchers to take action in support of Open Access to research. The American Medical Student Association, the Student PIRGs, Students for Free Culture, and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, as well as the Trinity University Association of Student Representatives and the California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council have signed the statement.

Students rely on access to academic journal literature for their research and education. However, even before the recent economic crisis many colleges have struggled with the high costs of journal subscriptions, restricting access for students and scientists alike. The statement reads, in part: "Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers' work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them.

At the same time, digital technologies have opened new opportunities for research. New tools facilitate faster discoveries, speed the development of new technologies, and accelerate the progress of science. Patients could have access to the latest medical research, citizens could evaluate scientific information on environmental impacts, and developing countries could apply the most recent scholarship to public health and development efforts. But access barriers leave these opportunities under-explored.

Open Access is an alternative to the traditional closed, subscription-access system of scholarly communication. Open Access makes the results of scholarly research available online for free, immediately upon publication, and removes barriers for scholarly and educational re-use. Entire journals can be open-access, or an author can provide

Open Access to an individual article by posting a copy on an openly accessible Web site. All forms of open-access publication depend on rigorous methods of quality control, including peer review."

The full text of the statement is online at http://www.righttoresearch.org

Webinar (free): Textbook Affordability: A Discussion About Skyrocketing Costs and Emerging Solutions

2009-06-12T20:03:00.001-07:00

Title: Textbook Affordability: A Discussion About Skyrocketing Costs and Emerging Solutions

Time/Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET

Webinar link: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008170&password=M.0DEEEB8B6C0EAFD7993367D2D9948A

Textbook prices have risen more than twice the rate of inflation for the past 25 years, and now cost the average student $900 per year.

Publishers continue to exacerbate the problem by pumping out new editions every few years and packaging books with costly extras like CDs and pass codes.

Students, instructors, colleges and parents share frustration with the high cost of textbooks, but what can be done?

This webinar will present information about a forthcoming solution to the textbook affordability crisis: open textbooks. These books are similar to traditional texts, except that they are offered free online and sold for lower prices in print. If open textbooks gain traction in the marketplace, they could drive textbook costs down for good.

Come learn from these speakers, who provide a variety of perspectives on textbook affordability and open textbooks as a solution:

· Nicole Allen, a consumer advocate from the Student Public Interest Research Groups and director of Make Textbooks Affordable.

· Levi Menovske, a junior at UC-Davis and leader of the student open textbooks campaign in California.

· Eric Frank, co-founder of an open textbook publishing company and veteran of the traditional publishing industry.

· Joining this group will be a professor and a student to share their experiences with using an open textbook in a college course.

· Introduction by Dr. Cable Green from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

Open Government: Berners-Lee and the UK to Show Obama How It's Done

2009-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Read / Write article.

Think of what's possible when anyone can mix open government data with open tools like: http://www.gapminder.org

Schwarzenegger: Digital textbooks can save money, improve learning

2009-06-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

By Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Special to the Mercury News

Excerpts:

"That's why I am so excited about the digital textbooks initiative California just launched. Starting with high school math and science books, this initiative paves the way for easier access to free digital texts in California's schools. By frequently updating texts as they are developed, rather than continuing to teach from outdated textbooks, we will better prepare our students.

California must take the lead on using 21st century technology to expand learning and serve our students, parents, teachers and schools better. Even in good economic times, state government should always strive to use taxpayer dollars to the greatest effect. But especially now, it is imperative that we find ways to do more with less.

Last year, the state earmarked $350 million for school books and other instructional materials. Imagine the savings schools could realize by using these high-quality, free resources. Even if teachers have to print out some of the material, it will be far cheaper than regularly buying updated textbooks.

However, there are those who ardently defend the status quo, claiming our vision of providing learning materials to students for free would risk a high-quality education. That's nonsense. As the music and newspaper industries will attest, those who adapt quickly to changing consumer and business demands will thrive in our increasingly digital society and worldwide economy. Digital textbooks can help us achieve those goals and ensure that California's students continue to thrive in the global marketplace."

10 University-Press Directors Back Free Access to Scholarly Articles

2009-06-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Chronicle Article

In a move that puts them at odds with the official stance of the Association of American University Presses, a group of university-press directors yesterday issued a position statement that endorses “the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication.”

;)

OpenEd

2009-05-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

Creative Commons ccLearn has launched OpenEd in support of the open education community.

OER goes to the next level: UN first tuition-free, online university

2009-05-30T15:41:00.001-07:00

http://openeducationnews.org/2009/05/29/oer-goes-to-the-next-level-un-first-tuition-free-online-university/

Where Is the Open Education Movement Going?

2009-05-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

Where Is the Open Education Movement Going? (from Educause Live)

Linked Data is Blooming: Why You Should Care

2009-05-22T12:47:00.001-07:00

this Read/Write article (and TED video) are well worth your time...

Vancouver, BC Wants to be an Open City

2009-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

What Vancouver Hopes to Accomplish (Read/Write)

The motion that was submitted to the city council points out several reasons why endorsing open data, open standards and open source policies is an good idea and city councillors has resolved to:

* Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;
* Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;
* Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large
* Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;
* Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations;
* License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

===================

Appropriate that the Open Education Conference conference is in Vancouver, BC this year ;)

Amazon plans big screen Kindle: Textbook margins are the real aim not saving newspapers

2009-05-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

Bezos and his Kindle are going after the inefficiencies here. (ZDNet Article)

How a Student-Friendly Kindle Could Change the Textbook Market (Chronicle)

Google Begins to Make Public Data Searchable

2009-04-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

Access to and visualizing public data is about to be democratized.

“Just like blogging democratized publishing, we hope that Google and other services will make enough data sets available for anyone to cross reference and visualize that analysis of public data will also become something that anyone can do. That means that a whole lot more of it will be done.” (Read / Write Web)

Gapminder (mentioned in the article) is another good example of opening up data for easy manipulation:

Watch this TED video.

What if we put higher education data into:

http://www.gapminder.org/ Upload here.

Want to see the power? Click here to try. (be sure to play with manipulating the multiple variables – video tutorial)

Think of how much more useful and accessible our system data would be to us, our students, the colleges, the legislature and the public … if it could be easily visualized and manipulated.

…. not to mention all of the unexpected mixing and creation of new tools and analyses others will do with our data if it was open and available.

Risky – sure. But remember – closed systems will slowly but surely die in the 21^st century.

The Open Forum (Dec 08 archives)

2009-04-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

http://open-paths.ning.com/

Brilliant UK Policy on OSS

2009-04-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

Penn State World Campus Blog:

Wow. It is not so often that you can point to truly enlightened legislation and national policy, but here is one such case. Pat Masson, just posted some links on the Educause Openness Constituency Group to a fantastic little article titled Government promotes open source for public sector, whose content strikes me as remarkable. The article provides a very cursory description of a UK government policy that promotes Open Source Software, Open Technology Standards, and Re-Use. What could be smarter? Very little, that’s what.

If you find that intriguing, you will certainly find it worthwhile to check out the government’s Action Plan on the Chief Information Officer Council web site. The CIO Council Office has published a 10-item action plan that outlines everything from educational support and standards for re-use to international benchmarking services to help ensure that the UK policy is staying relevant. Now, support of Open Source is not new to the UK government, who launched the Open Source Academy a few years ago, so perhaps I should not be so surprised, but still I am incredibly impressed with the CIO Council’s vision and resistance to taking a more reactive and “closed” approach to capacity sharing that seems increasingly endemic to government and in public higher education.

United Nations Opens World Digital Library

2009-04-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

Great news for open educational resources!

Washington Post: U.N. Launches Library Of World's Knowledge

“A globe-spanning U.N. digital library seeking to display and explain the wealth of all human cultures has gone into operation on the Internet, serving up mankind's accumulated knowledge in seven languages for students around the world.”

Chronicle

“In the latest and perhaps broadest effort to provide instant access to scholarly resources, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization today inaugurated its World Digital Library, a Web site that allows visitors to browse through a trove of artifacts spanning the history of civilization.”

World Digital Library