How Digital Technologies & Open

Educational Resources are Disrupting Higher

Education

The “Iron Triangle” suggests institutions are constrained in their ability to adapt

Source: The Iron Triangle: College Presidents Talk About Costs, Access, and Quality, Public Agenda, October 2008.

“In the view of many college and university presidents, the three main factors in higher education—cost, quality, and access—exist in what we call an iron triangle. These factors are linked in an unbreakable reciprocal relationship, such that any change in one will inevitably impact the others.”

- Public Agenda research on opinions of higher education

presidentsSource: The Iron Triangle: College Presidents Talk About Costs, Access, and Quality, Public Agenda, October 2008.

The Iron Triangle• Three concepts dominate the concerns

presidents: – increasing cost of higher education– challenge of providing access– need to maintain and improve educational quality

• Three missions in tension:– Access up = quality down and/or costs up– Quality up = access down and/or costs up– Costs down = quality down and/or access down

Rivalrous vs. Non-Rivalrous Resources

Vs.

Affordances of Digital Things

How do we currently attempt to harness digital

networked technologies?

• Old: “Distance Education” as delivery mechanism.

• New: eLearning as learning effectiveness strategy.

Shifting our Thinking…

• Almost 2/3 of for-profit institutions now say that online learning is a critical part of their long term strategy.

• The 21% growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 2% growth in the overall higher education student population.

• Nearly 1/2 of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for face-to-face courses and programs.

• 3/4 of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for online courses and programs.

SLOAN-C Online Stats

Source: Class Differences: Online Education in the United States, 2010

Why does this growth matter?

Educate More CitizensI. Raise educational attainment

to create prosperity, opportunity

Policy Goal: Increase the total number of degrees and certificates…

National / State Education Plans

eLearning

… but what about sharing digital, non-rivalrous educational resources?

We have…

a problem...

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Global Trends

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• More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010

• 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day

• Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day

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• Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others.

DOE: Definition of OER

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials that are freely available under an open license that allows them to be:• Reused – you can reuse the content in its

unaltered / verbatim form • Revised – you can adapt, adjust, modify,

or alter the content itself • Remixed – you can combine the original

or revised content with other content to create something new

• Redistributed – you can make and share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others

• Cooperate & share = We all Win– Faculty have new choices when building

learning spaces.– …the more eyes on a problem, the greater

chance for a solution.• Affordability: students can’t afford

textbooks• Self-interest: good things happen

when I share• It’s a social justice issue: everyone

should have the right to access digital knowledge.

Why is “Open” Important?

A simple, standardizedway to grant copyright permissions to your creative work.

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Attribution

Non-Commercial No Derivative Works

Share Alike

Step 1: Choose Conditions

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Step 2: Receive a License

Human Readable Deed

Lawyer Readable Legal Code

Machine Readable Metadata

<span xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"><span rel="dc:type" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dc:title">My Photo</span> by <a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" href="http://joi.ito.com/my_photo">Joi Ito</a> is licensed under a

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.

<span rel="dc:source" href="http://fredbenenson.com/photo"/>Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a rel="cc:morePermissions" href="http://ozmo.com/revenue_sharing_agreement">OZMO</a>.</span>

</span>

most free

least free

55 Jurisdictions Ported

Over 400 million items

175+ Million CC Licensed Photos on Flickr

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Flickr: Francisco Diez38

Higher Ed

Education grant making

Search & Discovery

Translations & Accessibility

Customization & Affordability

http://techplan.sbctc.edu

“We will cultivate the culture and practice of using and contributing to open educational resources.”

The high cost of textbooks has reduced Washington citizens’ access to higher education.

Full-time students spend approximately $1,000 on textbooks every year.

College Board Report: Trends in College Pricing (2007)

English Composition I

• 50,000+ enrollments / year

• x $100 textbook

• = $5+ Million every year

• …the current Higher Education textbook market is estimated at $8.2 billion, and is expected to reach in excess of $9 billion by 2014.

Total market size based on Eduventures Textbook Market Study and the National Association of College Stores, 2009.

Print, warehouse, and ship a new book for every student

The Old Economics

= Rivalrous

Upload one copy, and everyone uses it simultaneously

Making copies, storage, distribution of digital stuff = “Free”

The New Economics

= Non-Rivalrous

Textbook RFP?1. Higher Education

– Textbooks for top 100 highest enrolled courses

2. K-12– Textbooks for 24 “Common

Core” courses

Legislative Strategy

• Open Course Library– designing and sharing 81 high

enrollment, gatekeeper courses– for face-to-face, hybrid and/or online

delivery– to improve course completion rates– lower textbook costs for students (<$30)– provide new resources for faculty to use

in their courses– for our college system to fully engage the

global open educational resources discussion.

Open Education

• 81 courses = 411,133 enrollments / year• 411,133 enrollments x $100 textbook =

$41M+ in textbook costs / student debt per year

• Limit on textbook costs in redesigned courses is $30. 

• If courses are adopted by 25% of the sections in the system (faculty decision), the savings to students will be $7.2M per year.

• Savings increase with increased adoptions and/or when courses use free, open textbooks.

Open Education

• All digital software, educational resources and knowledge produced through competitive grants, offered through and/or managed by the SBCTC, will carry a Creative Commons Attribution License.

New State Board “Open” PolicyOpen Policy

Partner with Legislators who care about:

(a) efficient use of state tax dollars &

(b) saving students money.

Legislative Strategy

• SSHB1025• Faculty consider the least costly

practices in assigning course materials, such as adopting the least expensive edition available, adopting free, open textbooks when available, and working with college librarians to put together collections of free online web and library resources, when educational content is comparable as determined by the faculty…

WA Legislation

• SSHB1946 – two big ideas – share technology and share content.

• (v) Methods and open licensing options for effectively sharing digital content including but not limited to: Open courseware, open textbooks, open journals, and open learning objects…

WA Legislation

WA CTC Student Voice Academy

• (1) CUTTING TEXTBOOK COSTS–“The high cost of textbooks is a burden to students….”•Top Issue three years running….

Student Advocacy

• We must get rid of our “not invented here” attitude regarding others’ content–move to: "proudly borrowed from

there"

• Which textbook one uses is not a strategic advantage

• Nor can we (or our students) afford it

Hey Public K-20 Education!

Google, A

mazo

n, Open S

ource,

Open Conte

nt, Open Te

xtbooks

…

Higher Education

Fu

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on

al P

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ilit

ies

Time

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catch

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NEW HE Models are En Route

• What if all publicly funded educational content was open access? 

• What kind of efficiencies could higher education yield?

• Simple idea: public access to publicly funded educational materials.

Questions

• $2 Billion Department of Labor Grant

• All $2B of programs / courses produced must be openly licensed (CC BY)–YOUR Systems / Colleges can

download, modify and use any of it!

• Simple idea: public access to publicly funded educational materials.

Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College andCareer Training Grants Program

• Efficient use of public funds to increase student success and access to quality educational materials.

• Everything else (including all existing business models) is secondary.–Read: “Disrupting College…”

Only ONE thing Matters:

Punch Line?

• We can break the “Iron Triangle” IF we:

–Ask “what is best for students”–Drop old business models–Openly license and share our educational and scientific resources

–Get humble, recognize common need, and use each others’ works• $1.5B+ en route

Dr. Cable GreenDirector of Global Learning

cable@creativecommons.orgtwitter: cgreen