OER’s & A good educational system
Terry Anderson, PhD Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education
“Canada is a great country, much too cold for common sense, inhabited by compassionate and intelligent people with bad haircuts”. Yann Martel, Life of Pi, 2002.
Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada
* Athabasca University
Fastest growing university in Canada
34,000 students, 700 courses
100% distance education
Graduate and Undergraduate programs
Master & Doctorate – Distance Education
Only USA Regionally Accredited University in
Canada
Athabasca University
Presentation Overview 1. Traditional Opening Joke 2. Components of a Good Educational
System 3. A way to conceptualize Net Tools –
Taxonomy of the Many 4. Interaction Theory revisited 5. Your Comments and questions
Why is E-learning so Popular?
Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning Allen and Seaman 2007
E-Learning is Better Than Sex !
• You can finish early without feeling guilty. • You can get rid of any viruses you catch with a $50
program from McAfee • If you get tired, you can stop, bookmark your place
and pick up where you left off. • With a little coffee you can do it all night. • You don’t usually get divorced if your spouse
interrupts you in the middle of it. • And If you're not sure what you are doing, you can
always ask your teacher.
A good educational system should have three purposes:
it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives;
empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them;
furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. (Illich I.,1970)
Full text available: http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/deschooling.htm
1. Access to resources at anytime
Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. –
Terry Foote, Wikipedia
Open Education Resources (OER) Vision + Affordance
“At the heart of the open educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that; the world’s knowledge is a public good in general the World Wide Web provides an extraordinary
opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge.”
Hewlett Foundation Smith, & Casserly. The promise of open educational resources. Change 38(5): 8–17, 2006
OER Granularity
Diagrams, photos Articles (Open access publications) Games, simulations, activities Units of learning (IMS LD) Units and courses Programs
OER’s are Open (Mostly) Meaning they can be:
Augmented Edited Customized Aggregated and Mashups Reformatted Returned
But they need to be licensed – not just put online
See Scott Leslie’s 10 minute video at http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/opened.htm
Ownership and Licensing
Familiar problems Who owns resource - educators or the institution? inflated expectations
New problems OER’s are not just journal articles
Articles are not “reworked” Is attribution critical? What defines commercial exploitation?
4 Ownership Models Institutional ownership
Default under most ‘work for hire’ law Shared institutional and Academic
Often unworkable Tragedy of the anti-commons
Individual (academic ownership) Rights of succession? Multiple authors?
Produsage Assume that each producer does not enforce their rights, all
can treat product as a private good (copyleft, public domain, no tragedy of the anti-commons)
A Tale of 3 books
Open Access
100,000 downloads plus
indiv. Chapters
500 hardcopies sold @ $50.00
Free at aupress.org
Commercial publisher
934 copies sold at $52.00
Buy at Amazon!!
E-Learning for the 21st Century Commercial Pub. 1200 sold @ $135.00 2,000 copies in Arabic
A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement Achievements, Challenges, and New … DE Atkins, JS Brown, AL Hammond, William and Flora … - 2007
Major Problems with OER
Little take up by conventional teachers Too little reward and recognition for authors Too few learners actually engage with the content Undeveloped business case Too few teachers remix and repost content Too difficult to upload, tag and share
Solution?? Vibrant communities of Produsers??
Challenges and Solutions Wrong timetabling/chunking
Cultural constraints
Not invented here
Wrong technical format
Wrong Language
Lack of Accreditation/authority
Modularized units
Tools Distributed with content
Transparency and objective display
Dogged adherence to standards
Produser translation
Consumer and peer review Challenge for credit
Our own Experiment: Course development based on OER’s
4 courses: Nursing, Communications (Theatre) English for Business, & Educ. Tech
Vastly different results Critical variable was the attitude of the developer(s)
Christiansen, J., & Anderson, T. (2004). Feasibility of course development based on learning objects: Research analysis of three case studies. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Education,
What is missing? Culture of development,
sharing and remix ‘Community of Practice
Solution Social Software
affordances Easy to use Tools Harnessing student energy
to create OERs
The Political Economy of Peer Production: Michael Bauwens
“produce use-value through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital
a 'third mode of production' different from for-profit or public production by state-owned enterprises.
Its product is not exchange value for a market, but but use-value for a community of users
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499
Prod-Users - From production to produsage - Axel Bruns (2008)
Users become active participants in the production of artifacts:
Examples: Open source movement Wikipedia Citizen journalism (blogs) Immersive worlds Distributed creativity - music, video, Flickr
Produsage Principles produsage.org Community-Based –the community as a whole can
contribute more than a closed team of producers. Fluid Heterarcy – produsers participate as is
appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledge, and may form loose sub-groups to focus on specific issues, topics, or problems
Unfinished Artifacts –projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished;
Common Property, Individual Rewards – contributors permit (non-commercial) community use, adaptation, and further development of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital they gain through this process
Case study: Open University UKʼs Development of Open Learn openlearn.open.ac.uk Rationale Opportunity:
The risk of doing nothing when technology and globalization issues need to be addressed.
A testbed for new technology and new ways of working way to work with external funders who share similar aims and
ideals A chance to learn how to draw on the world as a resource.
Brand Promotion A route for outreach beyond our student body Demonstration of the quality of Open University materials in new
regions.
Social Learn: to devise means to put ourselves out of business - before our competitors do!!
Open Learn Example http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
490 units
Next evolution to Social Learn “For 3000 years education has made the learner adapt to
the system. SocialLearn [1] aims to reverse this and make the education system adapt to the learner.”
Make the formal informal, and the informal formal. Web 2.0 tools, attitudes, learning designs
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn/ Martin Weller
Why Don’t we Use and contribute OERs??
2. A Good education system: “empowers all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn”
Creative Literacies:
“The ability to experiment with technology in order to create and manipulate content that serves social goals rather than merely retrieving and absorbing information”
p. 107 Burgess, J. (2006) Learning to Blog. Uses of Blogs Bruns &Jacobs
Need to insure that our use of the Web actually results in increased access and not just more expensive access for those with existing high quality access to educational opportunity
JimFarmer,2006
Two-Way Use 65,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day Facebook and Myspace over 100 million
profiles Facebook 24 million photos uploaded daily 50 million blogs, 50% written by under 19 year
olds Scientific America 229(3) 2008 & FaceBook Home
Example
My presentation at ECEL 2007 in Copenhagen - maybe 200 in attendance F2F
On Slideshare: 2322 views | 4 comments | 6 favorites | 91 downloads |
5 embeds
3. A Good Education: Furnishes all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
“One month after a virtual protest staged in Second Life with almost 2,000 avatars demonstrating on IBM islands, a new contract with IBM Italy has been signed” Labour news from UNI global union, 2007
Ethan Zuckerman (Global Voices) 2008
From a Deschooled society to a Learning Society that includes new models of formal and informal learning
Steven Warburton, 2007
Taxonomy of the Many
Dron & Anderson, 2007
Collectives
Groups NETWORKS
Social Learning 2.0 3.0 3.5 Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and Collectives. Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of all three
sources of social learning. Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities arise at all
three levels of granularity. Tools are optimized for each level of granularity Formalize the formal Informalize the formal (Martin Weller)
Choosing the right tool?
http://www.go2web20.net 2770 logos as of Oct 31, 2008
Your Institutions LMS
OR
Formal Education and Groups:
Classes and cohort Increases:
completion rates, achievement satisfaction
Same logistic challenges as for institutional, campus -based learning
Can operate ‘behind the garden wall” to allow freedom for expression and development
refuge for scholarship
Formal Learning and Groups Long history of research and study Need to optimize:
Social presence Cognitive presence Teaching presence (Communitiesofinquiry.com)
Established sets of tools – Classrooms, Learning Management Systems Synchronous (video & net conferencing) Email
Problems with Groups
Restrictions in time, space pace, & relationship
Often overly confined by teacher expectation and institutional curriculum control
Isolated from the authentic world of practice
Poor preparation for Lifelong Learning
Paulsen (1993) Law of Cooperative Freedom
Relationships
Challenges of using informal social software tools for formal tasks
Control Support Privacy Assessment Ownership and perseverance
Group Example: The Educational Blog Structural characteristics:
Multimedia Chronological order Web based, easy to edit
Networked Characteristics Linked to other sites Syndicated (RSS, Atom etc) Comments and Trackbacks– spammed
Pedagogical Reflective, personal, archival, communicative, public
How are Blogs used today in Groups? “You are required to post at least two messages to your blog
and respond to the postings of at least two other enrolled students.
Please use your postings to address the issue discussed on pages 34-38 of your text.
Your post and responses will be assessed for 10% of your final grade
To protect your privacy, your blog is not accessible outside of the LMS and postings will be destroyed at the end of the course.”
Paraphrased from major UK university graduate school requirements
2. Formal Learning with Networks
46
Networks create and sustain links between individuals creating communication and information spaces
Each of us may belong to many networks Network use creates social capital Networks can connect self-paced and independent
learners to cooperative study activities Network leadership arises in multiple formats
47
Networks combine personalization with socialization creating transparency (Dalsgaard 2008)
Focus is on the individual’s spaces and the way they share and expose their space to others Reflections (blog) Resources (photos, links, tasks) Accomplishments (portfolio, artifacts) Sharing sand growing interests and skills
2. Networks
48
Provide resources from which students’ extract and contribute information
In school one should learn to build, contribute to and manage one’s networks
Transparency provides application and validation of information and skills developed in formal learning
Provides models for new students Networks last beyond the course - basis for
ongoing support and advise from alumni and professional communities
Network Tools
49
Most web 2.0 apps including: Profiles: Finding significant others Blogging - outside the garden wall Resource recommendations finding highest quality content
(Slashdot, Diig, Cite-u-like) Scheduling meet-ups for study, debate, collaboration WIKIs, Google docs and other open collaboration tools Commercial Social Networking sites- Facebook etc.
Network Tool Set (example)
50
Text Text
Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007
Network Pedagogy
51
Connectivism Learning is network formation: adding new nodes, creating new
neural paths “It is not what you know, but who you know to ask.”
Siemens, G. (2007)
Learning as a means to develop social capital Social capital and social relationships “enlarge the concept of
individualism to include the ability and obligation to work with others when the task demands it.” Edgar H. Schein, 1995
Groups are Managed - Networks Emerge!
52
Cannot be controlled like a group - requires new types of learning activities
Need to both amplify and extinguish interaction Facilitate quality knowledge and artifact construction Emergent behaviours, complexity, and adaption
3. Collectives: Harvesting the Wisdom of Crowds
53
3. Formal Education and Collectives
54
Collectives aggregate, then filter, compare, contrast and recommend. Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources – human and
learning objects Need to develop and practice skills and interest to easily contribute to
collectives (tagging, sharing whenever possible, leaving traces) only 16% of users are taggers (Pew, 2005)
Allows discovery and validation of norms, values, opinion and “ways of understanding”
Hive mind? Borgs? Group consciousness?
55
Collectively managing planet Earth What does it mean to be aware of each other?
Collectives operate as mirrors to monitor and learn from our collective selves (Spivack, 2006)
Collective Tools
56
Example: Determining our Effect?
57
Analysis of blog postings using semantic and matching techniques Potential uses:
uncover suicidal ideation mental health of the community understand evolving communication genres
measure impact of popular memes
Collective Example: Terry’s Store at Amazon
58
Explicit
59
Explicit recommender systems:
Digg Monitoring collective recommendations in real time
60 http://labs.digg.com/swarm/
Collective Examples for Educational Application
Artifact Ranking systems: Google Search; CitULike; Tag Clouds Recommendation Systems: Wikis: Contributions from the crowd Folksonomies: Bottom up classification systems Voting and auction Prediction Markets
Is DE Better than Classroom Instruction? Project 1: 2000 – 2004
62
Question: How does distance education compare to classroom instruction? (inclusive dates 1985-2002)
Total number of effect sizes: k = 232
Measures: Achievement, Attitudes and Retention (opposite of drop-out)
Divided into Asynchronous and Synchronous DE
63
Primary findings DE and CI are essentially equal (g+ ≈ 0.0 to low
average effect) on all measures Effect size distributions are heterogeneous; some
DE >> CI, some DE << CI Generally poor methodological quality Pedagogical study features account for more
variation than media study features (Clark, 1994) Interactive DE an important variable*
*Lou, Y., Bernard, R.M., & Abrami, P.C. (2006). Media and pedagogy in undergraduate distance education: A theory-based meta-analysis of empirical literature. Educational Technology Research & Development, 54(2), 141-176.
Summary of results: Achievement
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Achievement Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous average effect
Summary of results: Attitudes
65
Attitude Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous average effect
Summary of results: Retention
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Retention Outcomes
*Significantly heterogeneous effect sizes
Equivalency: Are all types of Interaction necessary?
Anderson, 2003 IRRODL
Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem (2003)
68
Moore (1989) distinctions are: Three types of interaction
o student-student interaction o student-teacher interaction o Student-content interaction
Anderson (2003) hypotheses state:
High levels of one out of 3 interactions will produce satisfying educational experience
Increasing satisfaction through teacher and learner interaction interaction may not be as time or cost-effective as student-content interactive learning sequences
Do the three types of interaction differ? Moore’s distinctions
69
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes
Achievement Attitudes Interaction Categories k g+adj. k g+adj. Student-Student 10 0.342 6 0.358 Student-Teacher 44 0.254 30 0.052 Student-Content 20 0.339 8 0.136 Total 74 0.291 44 0.090 Between-class 2.437 6.892*
Moore’s distinctions seem to apply for achievement (equal importance), but not for attitudes (however, samples are low for SS and SC)
Does strengthening interaction improve achievement and attitudes? Anderson’s hypotheses
70
Anderson’s first hypothesis about achievement appears to be supported
Anderson’s second hypothesis about satisfaction (attitude) appears to be supported, but only to an extent (i.e., only 5 studies in High Category)
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes Achievement Attitudes Interaction
Strength k g+adj. SE k g+adj. SE Low Strength 30 0.163 0.043 21 0.071 0.042 Med Strength 29 0.418 0.044 18 0.170 0.043 High Strength 15 0.305 0.062 5 -0.173 0.091 Total 74 0.291 0.027 44 0.090 0.029 (Q) Between-class 17.582* 12.060*
Bernard, Abrami, Borokhovski, Wade, Tamin, & Surkes, (in press). Examining Three Forms of Interaction in Distance Education: A Meta-Analysis of Between-DE Studies. Review of Research in Education
Conclusions The Net provides means to drastically improve education
effectiveness, efficiency and engagement by providing access to learn, to teach and to speak one’s truth.
Equally useful (and disruptive) to distance and campus education
Our challenge, as educators, is to insure that our students and our world benefit from these Net affordances
Illich tells us to search for and build “educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring” Illich, 1970
"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”
Chinese Proverb
Terry Anderson [email protected]
Blog: terrya.edubogs.org
Your comments and questions most welcomed!
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