Openness as a catalyst for innovation in educationR. John Robertson, JISC CETISSPU Symposium, Seattle 2011

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

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Context: JISC• Established in 1993, JISC

is an advisory committee to the HE and FE funding bodies across the UK.

• Its mission is: “to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support education, research and institutional effectiveness”.

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Context: JISC CETIS• JISC CETIS is a JISC

Innovation Support Centre.

• We provide advice to the UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors on the development and use of educational technology and standards.

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To return to the beginning • "Out of every ten

innovations attempted, all very splendid, nine will end up in silliness" Antonio Machado

• “Make lots of mistakes and make them quickly”

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Distributed Learning Environments Timeline

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Briefing Papers

http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/6/6c/Distributed_Learning.pdf6

Introduction: UKOER Programmes• The Open Educational Resources

Programme is a collaboration between the JISC and the Higher Education Academy in the UK.

• The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) provided an initial £5.7 million of funding, for a pilot programme (April 2009 to March 2010) and a subsequent £5 million of funding (August 2010- August 2011) for a follow-up programme both of which explore how to expand the open availability and use of free, high quality online educational resources.

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What effect does openness have?

• Reflections on innovation seen through the programme

Photo credit and license:‘Open’ Flickr user: mag3737 CC: BY NC SAhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/1914076277/8

Open content as a catalyst for innovation

“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”

William Gibson Interview with NPR 1993

• I’d contend that we know lots of ways to innovate and improve education – making any of them happen is a different question

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Defining Open• thinking about

licensing can actually make it simpler

• Creative Commons– BY– SA or ND– NC

http://creativecommons.org/

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What is an OER?• From this

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Image: screenshot MIT OCW http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-environmental-engineering/1-018j-ecology-i-the-earth-system-fall-2009/ 11

What is an OER?• To this

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Image: screenshothttp://www.flickr.com/photos/core-materials/4599222126/

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An Open proposition• Value proposition that

sharing content openly can provide a greater return than strict control

• Discussing this as a catalyst not necessarily a cause

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education is not primarily about transfer of information content...

• High quality educational resources widely available – a given academic is no longer the provider of knowledge

• Are you a content provider or provider of learning experience?

Photo credit and license: ‘Doors Open Toronto’Flickr user hyfen CC: BY NC SAhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/hyfen/3562200168/in/set-72157618755740828 14

Social responsibility

• If publicly funded, should the public have access?

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Managing your educational content

• Where do you find it?• Who owns it?• Who can use it?• If you want to reuse

your colleagues lecture materials - can you find them?

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Increasing recruitment• How much do you

spend on recruiting students and staff?

• How do you help students decide what they should study?

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Open Textbooks• WA SBCTC funding

creation of ~80 openly licensed textbooks for most popular topics

• Free / Open license• Innovation

– Updatable– Adaptable– Lower barriers to student

enrolment/ completion

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Changes in student expectations?• Does providing more

flexible access to your resources support student learning?

• It may be cheaper and easier to give content to the world than manage access to limited student body.

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Changes in pedagogy?• If instructor time and peer interaction are key

components of high impact learning experiences (Kuh) – why are we spending so much contact time on lectures?

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The wider conversation• How do we draw

students into wider academic and public conversations as part of becoming self-regulated learners?

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There are different approaches to open

• In the wider OER community there are two distinct approaches to sharing open content for education.

• Martin Weller characterises these as Big and Little OER (http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/12/the-politics-of-oer.html)

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Questions

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