A global OER movement?

Professor Andy Lane, Senior Fellow, SCORE

OER involves lots of groups and organisations around the world

• OER are explicitly funded by:– Foundations– Governments– NGOs– Institutions– Donations

• OER can be found in:– funded institutional repositories – funded and non-funded community based initiatives – proprietary channels

– websites of projects, groups and individuals • OER are being supported via

– International and national consortia– Commercial activities and organizations – Infrastructure activities and organizations

Collaborate or compete?

• Take 5 minutes to discuss with the person next to you when it might be better to collaborate or when it might be necessary to compete in higher education around teaching and learning

Online Learning Task Force

• Recommendation 6: Investment is needed for the development and exploitation of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality

• There is no point duplicating effort to create content that is already available and has been proven to work. Institutions can build on the existing open educational resources initiative (funded by HEFCE, managed by the JISC and the HEA) to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies. In addition they can pull in the best content and openly available learning resources from around the world and adapt them for particular courses. Students can then access a richer, wider range of material to enhance their learning experiences wherever they are studying, and leading experts can build a profile beyond their institution. There are also significant opportunities for partnership with private organisations to produce content that is interactive, responsive and pedagogically effective.

• Responsibility of the JISC, HEA and the Open University (as part of its national role) – suggested investment of £5 million per year for five years, awarded under broad direction from funding councils.

(Remember) For educational institutions OER offers up opportunities to:

• Showcase their teaching and research programmes to new audiences;

• Widen the pool of applicants for their courses and programmes;• Lower the lifetime costs of developing effective self study rich

media educational resources;• Collaborate with public and commercial organisations, including

educational publishers, in new ways;• Extend their outreach activities to community groups• In order to …• Collaborate for a common purpose but retain own identity

Open Sharing, Global BenefitsThe OpenCourseWare Consortium

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Presenter Name

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

I. The OCW Movement

II. The OCW Consortium

III. Benefits of Membership

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—What is OCW?

OCW is a type of Open Educational Resource (OER).

OER are a type of Open Content.

OpenEducationalResources

Open Content

OCW

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

What is OpenCourseWare?

• High quality educational materials organized as courses A package of educational materials starting a particular point in the knowledge

spectrum, leading to greater understanding of the issue or topic

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

What is OpenCourseWare?

• Materials organized as courses

• Generally includes course planning documents, thematic content, learning activities and evaluation instruments

lecture notes

syllabicourse calendarassignments, projects, testsvideos or recordings of lecturesdemonstrations and illustrations of concepts

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

What is OpenCourseWare?

• Materials organized as courses• Course planning documents, thematic content, learning activities and

evaluation instruments

• Openly licensed for distribution, re-use and modification

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

What is OpenCourseWare?

• Materials organized as courses• Course planning documents, thematic content, learning activities and

evaluation instruments• Openly licensed for distribution, re-use and modification

• Materials are a reflection of the education provided by the sponsoring institution, and from the authoring instructor(s)

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

What is OpenCourseWare?

• Materials organized as courses• Course planning documents, thematic content, learning activities and

evaluation instruments• Openly licensed for distribution, re-use and modification • Materials are a reflection of the sponsoring institution’s education

• Institutions are the decision makers for their contributions, so OpenCourseWare projects can be quite different

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

What is OpenCourseWare? Summary:

An opencourseware (ocw) is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners throughout the world.• An ocw is not a distance-learning initiative: there are no

degrees granted, no student/faculty interactions and no transcripts.

• An ocw is a collection of high-quality learning materials presented in the form of courses.

• OCW materials are there for using and re-purposing. Modifications welcome!

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—How it Started

Two Questions:

The OCW Movement—How it Started

MIT Administration posed two Questions to the Faculty Committee:

How is the internet going to change education?

What is MIT going to do about it?

Former MIT President Charles Vest

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—How it Started

The Report

•Focus on MIT’s Mission: “to advance knowledge in ways that will best serve the nation and the world”

•Use technology to openly share educational materials

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—Global Growth

As institutions and learners around the world began to realize the power of opening education to the world, the movement began on a global scale

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—What is the Value?• Meeting your organization’s desire to contribute to the

social welfare of the world by making course materials free on a global scale to educators, students, and self-learners

• Showcasing your organization’s instructional efforts by providing high quality, high visibility examples to the public, prospective students, and parents

• Creating a repository where faculty and researchers can have their work seen by the world

• Presenting potential funding agencies with attractive and useful opportunities for disseminating research results

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Movement—What is the Value?• Increasing traffic to the institution’s website• Providing a preview of the institution’s education to

prospective students, donors, employers, officials• Providing a cost- and time-efficient vehicle for staff and

faculty training and development• Attracting independent funding for public service projects• Promoting the incorporation of high-quality educational

materials produced elsewhere• Providing entree to a world-wide community of dedicated

educators

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

I. The OCW Movement

II. The OCW Consortium

III. Benefits of Membership

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Our mission is to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Who we are

The OCW Consortium

• ~100 live OCW sites

• ~8600 courses

http://ocwconsortium.org

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

The OCW Consortium—Growth

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

I. The OCW Movement

II. The OCW Consortium

III. Benefits of Membership

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Benefits of Membership:Consultation

with experts in the Consortium

Collective Visibility through international exposure

Collaboration

and networking with members from all

over the world

Sustainability

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Benefits of Membership:Consultation• For new and existing OCW projects, OCWC staff and

members are available to support you • OCWC conferences and ongoing forums provide

members the opportunity to share solutions and best practices

• Webinars and newsletters address common issues and new developments

• The OCWC site and Toolkit provide tools for OCW development.

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Benefits of Membership: Collaboration• The OCWC provides administrative support and space

for Working Groups gathered around areas of common interest, such as Evaluation, Accessibility or Intellectual Property

• The OCWC encourages members to report on nascent projects to allow time and opportunities for collaboration

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Benefits of Membership: Collective Visibility

• The OCWC website provides direct links to the sites of its members

• The OCW Course Finder allows users to search across OCWC member sites

• The OCWC helps develop e-visibility guidelines for its members

• OCWC members share media exposure

advancing formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials organized as courses.

April 8, 2023 Name—OCW Consortium

Benefits of Membership: Sustainability• Sharing of best practices among OCWC members

promotes quality and efficiency within individual projects

• Resource-sharing across OCWC members cuts down on duplication of cost, effort and expertise

• OCWC discussions assist members in articulating the value of OCW to their home institutions

• Estimated 4 million additional teachers to meet EFA Goals• Substantial proportion of existing teachers are under

qualified or unqualified• Concern over quality of current teacher education • Limited capacity and resources in existing institutions and

systems • Poor working and learning conditions for teachers • Multitude of languages • Issues of status, morale and HIV/ AIDS

Sub Saharan Africa: The challenges for teacher education

French

Arabic

Kiswahili

Some examples: • National Teachers Institute (Nigeria): Nigeria Certificate in Education

(NCE) – In-service (distance) 102,000 students• Kyambogo University (Uganda): Diploma in Education Primary

External (distance) 1,500 students• Open University of Tanzania (Tanzania): Diploma in Primary

Education 700 students• Open University of Sudan (Sudan): B Ed ( distance) 45,000 students • Kigali Institute of Education (Rwanda): National Retraining

Programme for Primary School Teachers – endorsed by Ministry for Education (Apr-08) 12,000 teachers

‘To train quality teachers who can impact positively on pupils’/students’ learning.’

TESSA in Use

• Evidence of improved teaching practices

• More reflective thinking after lessons

• Teacher and pupil enjoyment

• Flexibility of OER allowed use in range of programmes

‘I have enjoyed using the materials because they make classroom

activities simple and easy. Pupils are now improving in their

performance and it has helped me to improve my teaching skills.’

Student Teacher, Nigeria

Emerging Findings

TESSA Model of intervention

• Starting point = classroom

• Practical, activity based teacher learning

• Valuing of school practitioner agency

• Implementation dispersed and decentralised

• Alignment and interaction with existing communities of practice

• Local autonomy: importance TESSA coordinators

The TESSA Resources

• Highly structured study units - template • Core set of 75 study units• Teachers’ learning located in their own classrooms • Developing the professional knowledge (both subject

and pedagogic) and practices of teachers • Contextualised to reflect the environment of the teacher

Materials creation and adaptation

Localisation of study units by consortium

partners

Sharing in the Tessa OER

resource bank

Quality Assurance and Editing and

User Testing

Creation of original study units by

consortium partners

4

56

2

Quality Assurance, Editing and

User Testing

1

3

Lots of activity but what is the impact?

• Evidence of impact comes from:– Stories from stakeholders– Surveys of users– Observations of behaviours– Web traffic through Analytics

• Evidence of viability/sustainability comes from:– Actual and perceived strategic value to organisation

– New business models

Business models and sustainability

• Mainstream and/or embedded within existing business model practices and processes

• Provide additional paid for services – the Freemium model

• Donations from supporters

• Grants from funding bodies

• Free labour of volunteers