Promoting public policies and multinational organizations for distance education (to enhance Social Justice and Innovation)

The International Conference UNED-ICDE 2013 7 – 9 March 2013

Gard TitlestadSecretary General

ICDE

• The leading global membership organization for open, distance and online education

• An NGO official partner of UNESCO, and shares that agency’s key aim – the attainment of quality education for all

• ICDE believes that in pursuing education as a universal right, the needs of the learner must be central.

• Members in all regions of the world

Paradox• While governments world wide celebrate

the success of higher education, governmental policies are outdated and are not capable of grasping the benefits from the most constructive and disruptive factor in the higher education sector: open and online education

6 months ago – the EADTU conference - Cyprus

Since then, important progress – in particular in Europe.

Congratulation to the European Commission with the initiative to

Opening up education!

Open Educational Resources

A key component in reinventing eucation

The vision… At the heart of the movement toward Open

Educational Resources is the simple and powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good

… and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse it.

Hewlett Foundation

”For the first time in human history we have the tools to enable everyone to attain all the education they desire.”

(Wiley, Green, & Soares, 2012)

Dramatically bringing down the cost of education with OER: How open education resources unlock the door to

free learning.

Expectations to OER

“OERs have the potential to solve the global education crisis and contribute to sustainable economic growth”

Sir John Daniel, former CEO for Commonwealth of Learning and David Killion, US ambassador to UNESCO said in Guardian in July 2012

From the UNESCO OER Declaration

• Foster awareness and use of OER• Encourage the development and adaptation of

OER in a variety of languages and cultural contexts• Encourage the open licensing of educational

materials produced with public funds.ICDE work shouder to shoulder with UNESCO and other stakeholders to have this implementet

OER and Open and Distance Learning can increase the impact of

investments in knowledge

OER &ODL

Open Access – open scienceResearch based OERResearch based teaching

Innovation in education – open innovationInnovate the learning system – flip the classroomKnowledge supply for innovation

High quality educationResearch based educationResource based educationOpen education

High Quality higher education

available

• Affordable• Accessible• Inclusive• The needs of the learner in the center• For jobs

Are we talking about MOOCS?

• Take the World's Best Courses, Online, For Free.

• The Future of Online Education– for anyone, anywhere, anytime

• Learn. Think. Do.– Invent your future through free interactive college

classes.

• All slogans from Coursera, edX and Udacity

The expectations to MOOCs is obviously great out there

To Fix Its Education System, India Should Look to MOOCs

February 20, 2013, 10:09 am

By Guest Writer

MOOC Mania

The Chronicle's special report on Online Learning 2012

MOOCs have not only created a discussion on disruptive changes in HEI, but also increased the momentum of OER.

MOOCs”A massive open online course (MOOC) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in the area of distance education, and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOC

MOOCsA massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education which sometimes use open educational resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOC

Alan Bassindale, Open University

Could MOOCs fix it?(enhance Social Justice and Innovation)

Coursera

and more!Experimental p

hase

Mobilising the workforce:

Mobication

• Tomorrow’s employment policies must create conditions to facilitate labour mobility through the lifelong learning of the individual.

• Coordination between the labour market and education policy is crucial for business competitiveness and future welfare.

Education

WorkWelfare

• ”Coordination between the labour market and education policy is crucial for business competitiveness and future welfare. The need for partnership between higher education and the private and public sectors to ensure knowledge supply for the workforce becomes a critical and central issue. This need is further enhanced by the current financial crisis, which creates a requirement for innovative methods to strengthen learning as an employability factor for the future.”

The context

The ICDE Strategic Plan 2013 - 2016

To harvest the benefits from a more Open and Online world

To be adressed:

Governments (wake up): • Optimal regulatory and

policy framework for ODL, incentives for OER

• Sector overarching policies for mobilising the workforce

• Initiatives for research, new knowledge on effect and impact of ODL on delivering high quality ODL

Universities (shake up): • Strategies and leadership• Partnership Open and

Conventional universities• Build competencies• Faculty training, student

training for ODL• Flip the classroom for

student-oriented and personalised learning

HEI, private and public sector: Build partnerships and agreements for knowledge supply, mobilising the workforce

Expectations

• Key stakeholders from governments, private and public sector, educatiors to co-operate, on the ground, to

• strengthen learning as an employability factor

• Collaborate for social justice and for innovation – in education and learning, in society

Thank you!titlestad@icde.org

www.icde.org

• Globalization has continued to increase, followed by strengthened internationalization, and a greater emphasis on partnerships, in turn giving rise to international collaboration in many formats. Globalization and global megatrends lead to increased demand for a workforce permanently acquiring new competencies. Increased globalization and global competition, in combination with rapid innovation, are increasingly challenging the workforce to adapt to future needs. Tomorrow’s policies must create conditions to facilitate labour mobility through individual lifelong learning. Coordination between the labour market and education policy is crucial for business competitiveness and future welfare. The need for partnership between higher education and the private and public sectors to ensure knowledge supply for the workforce becomes a critical and central issue. This need is further enhanced by the current financial crisis, which creates a requirement for innovative methods to strengthen learning as an employability factor for the future.

The context

The context• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) has documented significant added value from higher education for individuals and society; for individuals in relation to employment and as a return on their own investments; for society the net return from investments in higher education simply represents good business. And higher education is a key factor for economic growth. In Europe – even during the crisis – income growth among tertiary graduates increased in the majority of European Union countries which record this data. (Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2012).

• At the same time, the World Bank has documented that more than 620 million young people are neither working nor studying. Just to keep employment rates constant, the worldwide number of jobs will have to increase by around 600 million over a 15-year period.

Key global trends• 1. Access to higher education

– Worldwide growth and increasing demand for access to higher education– Increasing restrictions on open learning to ensure both national standards

and controlled growth

• 2. The learning workforce – Demand and need for capacity building to provide society with a more

mobile workforce– Continued globalization and internationalization– Financial crisis and unemployment

• 3. Access to Information and communications technology (ICT) – Rapid worldwide growth of ICT– Continuing disparity of access to ICT

• 4. The use of technology in learning– Mobile learning– eBooks – The rapid growth of e-learning– Personalization – Social and Virtual Learning– Learning Analytic

• 5. The economics of higher education– Changes in cost, affordability, and economic models for higher education, particularly that

based on ICT– Diversity of education providers

• 6. Institutional developments and impact – Proliferation of traditional educational institutions with open and distance education offerings;

notable institutions are piloting MOOCs– Growth and impact of open and distance universities– Demand for faculty training in Open and Distance Learning (ODL)– Increasing competition among higher education institutions to improve their position in

rankings

Key global trends

• 7. Quality– Increasing focus on accountability, quality, and performance – Demand for benchmarks, standards and accreditation– Accreditation, rankings and government regulations are interrelated

aspects of quality

• 8. Open Educational Resources (OER)– Development of online repositories – Development of OER-based institutions

• 9. The learner – Changing learner demographics and culture, experience, and demands– The growth of resource-based learning

Key global trends

• 10. Policies and strategies– The trends identified above, many of which demonstrate rapid and

diverse global growth, increase the pressure of demand for relevant, clear policies, strategies and leadership at governmental and institutional level to facilitate the further development of high quality open, distance, flexible, blended and online education, including e-learning.

ICDE Strategic Plan 2013 - 2016 specific objective:

1.2. ICDE together with key partners and stakeholders to facilitate policy discussions among a selection of representatives from governments, universities and private and public sector , on the topic of the current and future development of open, distance, flexible and online education, including e-learning by the end of 2015.

Key global trends

System failure

One of five don´t complete”Drop outs”Or ”Push outs” (Hal Plotkin)

School failure – system failure

University drop-outs (or push outs?) cost 660 million Euros per year in Spain alone

Norway – 2005 - 2010

Total drop outs/push outs in higher education: 12% (Health educations)- 37 % (Management and Economy)

Only health educations have lower drop out rate than 20%

System failure or not?

In my nightmares: ”Why not? Drop outs are fine. It filters for the talent pool – it filters for

the recruitment to the elite.”Anonymous

Open Educational Resources

“... are digital learning resources offered online freely and openly to teachers, educators, students and independent learners in order to be used, shared, combined, adapted,

and expanded in teaching, learning and research.” (OECD 2011)

“... are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain and have been

released under an open licence that permits access, use, repurposing, reuse and redistribution by others with

no or limited restrictions.”(UNESCO 2011)

Drivers for OER

• The benefits from Higher Education – a gold mine• Demand for access to Higher Education• Financial problems, costs• Failure of the current educational system, drop

outs/push outs• The need for innovation in HEI – innovation in education• Students

Reinventing education: OER an important building block

EDUCAUSE: ECAR STUDY OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, 2012

EDUCAUSE: ECAR STUDY OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, 2012

19% 57%

United States

California Institute of the ArtsCase Western Reserve UniversityCurtis Institute of MusicNorthwestern UniversityPenn State UniversityRutgers UniversityUC San DiegoUC Santa CruzUniversity of Colorado, BoulderUniversity of RochesterUniversity of Minnesota, Twin CitiesUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel HillUniversity of Wisconsin, MadisonLatin America

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoTecnológico de MonterreyEurope

Ecole Polytechnique, FranceIE Business School, SpainLeiden University, NetherlandsLudwig-Maximilians-Universitat Muenchen, GermanySapienza, University of Rome, ItalyTechnical University Munich, GermanyTechnical University of DenmarkUniversity of Copenhagen, DenmarkUniversity of Geneva, Switzerland Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain Asia

The Chinese University of Hong Kong National Taiwan University National University of SingaporeUniversity of Tokyo, Japan

Conclusion

• We are confronted with a gigantic market failure on an area of public interest.

• I believe we are at the beginning of a big debate about the future learning system.

• We need a professional, policy-oriented debate, in Europe, and throughout the world, on the opportunities and challenges coming from a more open and online world.

• Educational systems will be decided nationally, but the direction will also be a global issue.

• ICDE will be a visible and eager player in this debate.