Wednesday, November 09, 2005

UNESCO Virtual Conference--Two Visions of OER More comments about what constitutes an Open Educational Resource; this comment is from Boris Vukovic of McGill and Carleton Universities. ______JH _________ This is a reply to recent forum exchanges about the commitment of faculty to OER, the "quality" of OER, and the state of higher education today. Once again the discussion develops as a result of what seem to be two distinct visions of the function and purpose of OER: 1. OER as distance education 2. OER as course publication John Petroff's position exemplifies the first one. The expectation of complete courses that can on their own educate the user, faculty who are fully committed to scholarly OER production, and centralized OER consortia, all fit the model of distance education. In contrast, Steve Carson's arguments support the second vision, OER models that focus on opening course content to the public for the purposes of individualized mix-and-match learning, academic exchange and comparison, and modeling institutional OER practices for developing nations or projects. Rather than thinking the two visions are incompatible, I see them positioned at different points on the OER development continuum. I believe we are currently at a stage of gaining momentum and recruiting support for OER, at the start of the development continuum. This is where I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve Carson. John Petroff is standing miles down the road on this continuum, when OER becomes another standard for academic excellence, when faculty culture transforms to accept technology as the means to promote education for all, and when the Internet use and infrastructure the world-over become sustainable. I want to stand with John Petroff eventually, but I don't think we're there yet. To use Steven Lerman's metaphor, at this point in time we need to gain critical mass in the OER movement. This will lead to the development of standards of practice, which should result in the establishment of the practice itself. We cannot gain this critical mass if we set the bar too high. If you were to approach me as a university instructor and tell me that my OER should be as comprehensive and self-sufficient as a textbook, I would turn away because I don't have time to put together a textbook, I want to protect my intellectual property, and I put more pedagogical emphasis on in-class collaboration and constructivist meaning-making ("I" here is a hypothetical professor). We do not want faculty turning away from OER right now. So, OER should not be perceived as giving away complete courses for free, but rather as cultural showcasing and exchange of academic course content, where "culture" refers to countries, institutions, or departments. If you were to approach me and tell me that my OER will serve to exemplify the teaching of Psychology 101 at McGill University, offering course content for comparison and adaptation to other Psychology 101 professors around the world, I would definitely sign up for it. Different visions notwithstanding, it is important that we are all traveling down the same road and will eventually reach the same milestones in the OER development. 10:07:51 AM    COMMENT []

UNESCO Virtual Conference--Criteria for Fully Open Educational Resources One of the issues discussed at the UNESCO Conference is what constitutes an Open Educational Resource (OER). John Petroff of the Professional Education Organization International put forth one set of criteria. ________JH Greetings to all, In my opinion, there is fundamental problem with almost all OER now available: it is not fully open. This has to do with the fact that almost all OER is produced as teacher or course or institution centered (or even centered on a province as in the case of BC). The OER may be auxiliary to class lectures, or purchase of a book or CD, or enrolment in a formal course. This follows directly from Martin Weller's observation that OER is used as a promotional tool by institutions (e.g. open courseware at MIT) to attract new students. Don't get me wrong. It is wonderful that such OER, even partly open, is available. But, unless and until a concerted effort is made to develop OER that is complete, the OER movement will only be a useful but auxiliary teaching resource. What is  needed for an OER to be complete is that a course - has no strings or conditions attached, - requires nothing to buy, - contains an entire body of knowledge on a particular subject, comparable a textbook, - has sufficient assignments, examples, exercises, readings, proper citations and references, - provides for adequate (non-trivial) knowledge assessment, - does not rely of methods of delivery that require advanced technology or extensive bandwidth. An OER that is not complete is like the picture of a big mac, but not the real thing. There is no doubt that advertising has its useful aspects. But, when we discuss the benefits that OER brings, I suppose that we agree that we are talking about benefits to users. Then the deceptive aspect of advertising is hurtful not beneficial. For failing to deliver the essential course content shortchanges the user, no matter whether it a self-learner or a teacher using OER in a course. A whole range of problems derive from OER not being complete, such as those mentioned about reading lists that are useless if libraries are not close at hand, or the need for categorization and tagging because the OER is only partial, and must be assembled from diverse sources. It is clear that universities may fear to put themselves out of business (as some have indicated), and are not eager to produce courses for which students do not need to pay or come to class. (Although the fear may be just fear, because, in my opinion, online OER will never replace the physical interaction with an instructor, the motivational peer support of classmate or the exchange of faculty research ideas that the atmosphere of an institution provides. A different economic model for OER production is needed. Such model as that of some faculty (e.g. young ones, or those close to retirement) that will ignore their institution's fear, and start publishing their entire courses for the prestige that it brings. Such model may take some form of consortium such as Sofia or at BC, or many others. Or an organization not affiliated with any institution, government or commercial interest, such as PEOI may be the answer. Or, maybe you have better models to propose. But, the choice of model is a different issue from the one of OER not being fully open which of crucial importance in the context of what can be done to promote the OER movement. In any case, for OER to deliver what it promises, it can't be just a few crumbs or pieces, but an entire cake. John Petroff PEOI 9:56:04 AM    COMMENT []