Presenters: Una Daly, Community College Outreach Manager at Open Courseware Consortium, Tom Caswell, Western Governor's University, Mrs. Frances Ferreira, Education Specialist for Open Schooling Initiative at Commonwealth of Learning.
Summary:
The unanimous adoption of the 2012 Paris OER Declaration at the UNESCO World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress heralds a profound change to how publicly funded educational resources may be openly licensed and shared in the coming years.
A small number of large-scale publicly funded OER projects are in process, many more are anticipated worldwide, and effective strategies for managing this policy shift are needed. In this session we will examine two case studies to learn which strategies are currently being used to support publicly funded OER projects, and discuss what support will be needed to ensure the success of future large OER projects as more governments adopt open policies to require publicly funded resources be openly licensed resources.
Case Study 1: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) created the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program to encourage community colleges to create open education and vocational programs for unemployed workers. It represents one effort to introduce open policies into publicly funded projects by requiring that all materials created or modified with grant / public funds carry a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license to guarantee the resources can be reused, revised, remixed and redistributed.
Recognizing the need for grantees to fully understand these requirements, a private foundation is providing support for an OPEN Consortium (http://open4us.org) to provide consulting and direct technical assistance on open licensing, leveraging existing OER, universal design, accessibility, meta-data tagging, learning analytics, and developing open courseware. The TAConnecT program is another support mechanism that matches grantees with organizations that have expertise in many areas including faculty development of OER, measuring learning outcomes, developmental adult education, career workforce education, and open eLearning platforms.
Case Study 2: The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning / distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL has a decade-long history of helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training and the Open Schooling Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa represents a multi-country project to use OER and technology to implement universal access to secondary school education.
Using professional development workshops, educators and policymakers have received training on development and operation of open schools. Topics have included OER development, instructional design, radio broadcasting, learner suppor
Effective Strategies for Large Government OER Projects
1. Effective Strategies to Support
Large-scale Government OER
Programs:
African & Caribbean Open Schooling
Initiative
U.S. Department of Labor TAACCCT Grant
Frances Ferreira, Commonwealth of Learning
Tom Caswell, Western Governor’s University
Una Daly, OCW Consortium
OPEN ED 2012
3. 2012 Paris OER Declaration
• Large-scale publicly-funded government
projects creating and using OER
– What has been learned …
– How to apply to new projects …
– Sharing the lessons learned …
Image: cc-by Moyan_Brenn
4. Open Schooling Initiative
• Mrs Frances J. Ferreira
– Commonwealth of Learning
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Caribbean Nations
6. Key Problem the Project is Trying to
Address
While the world average
for secondary school
enrolment is 65%, the
GER in SSA is 30%,
which is up from 19% in
1990/91 (At the
Crossroads: Choices for
secondary education and
training in SSA, World
Bank: Africa Human
Development Department, 2007,
p.4).
7. What Choices do Policymakers
Have?
Access remains inequitable, especially in
rural areas with girls being particularly
disadvantaged. As governments stretch
their resources to make progress towards
the Millennium Development Goal of
Universal Primary Education by 2015, it is
unlikely that the expansion of secondary
provision will be a priority.
9. Open schooling is an
appropriate response
to the rapidly
increasing demand
for secondary
education, it can be
conducted at scale
and cost-effectively.
It has the potential for
complementing the
conventional school
system and using
ICTs to scale up
education.
10. Theory for Change
• COL/WFHF
• Policy Shift
• Assistance – Ministries of Education / Teachers
• Agreements – Priority for Implementing and
Using OER
11. What have we learned?????
While teachers are interested in using technology to improve the learning
experience, lack of professional development and access to
resources impede the effective use of technology and concomitant
development of OERs.
12. Enabling Environment
• Ignorance re OER/CC
• Instructional Design
• Culture and work habits
• Additional workload
• Connectivity
• Bandwidth
Images from
Images - Clipart Clipart
17. Learning materials are available as OERs in
multiple formats to suit as wide a range of users as
possible
www.col.org
www.col.org/resources/crsMaterials/osoer/Pages/default.aspx
19. TAACCCT U.S. Dept of Labor
• Tom Caswell and Cable Green
– Open Consortium for Community College
Grantees
• Licensing
• Accessibility
• Learning
• Content
• Policies
21. “…as a condition of the receipt of a Trade Adjustment
Assistance Community College and Career Training
Grant (“Grant”), the Grantee will be required to
license to the public (not including the Federal
Government) all work created with the support of the
grant (“Work”) under a Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 License (“License”).”
23. Areas Supported By The
“OPEN” Consortium Include:
• Open licensing (CC-BY requirement)
• Effective course and learning design
• Universal design for learning and
accessibility
• Best practices in open policy and OER
adoption
• Increasing access to existing OER
24. Lessons Learned:
• Many grantees and projects are new to “open”
• Clear language in legislation / policy re: open policy
requirements – no “wiggle room”
• Partner with government leaders where possible
• Meet f2f with grantees early – build relationships
• Advertise early – so projects think about and plan
for your technical assistance from the beginning
More info at open4us.org
Contact: taa@creativecommons.org
25. Commonalities
• Open Licensing Confusion
• Early Interventions & Incentives
• Partnering with Regulators/Govt.
• Ongoing Monitoring & Evaluation
26. Discussion/Questions
• Contact Info
– Una Daly,
unatdaly@ocwconsortiumorg
– Frances J. Ferreira
Fferreira@col.org
– Tom Caswell & Cable Green
taa@creativecommons.org
27. Photo credits:
Share
http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/4424154829/in/photostream/
IMG_4591 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bionicteaching/4700979984/ cc-by-sa
La belle tzigane http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyoflife/21063837 cc-by-sa
Asian Library Interior 5 http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubclibrary/453351638/ cc-by-nc-sa
Petru http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyoflife/23724427/ cc-by-nc-sa
Opensourceways http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/4371000710/ cc-by-sa
Hinweis der Redaktion
Frances Ferreira joined COL as Education Specialist, Basic Education and Open Schooling, on 22 January 2007. Mrs. Ferreira, who is a teacher by profession, was Director of the state-owned Namibian College of Open Learning. Previously, Mrs. Ferreira served the Namibian community as a teacher and school principal and was also the first female Mayor of Grootfontein in 1994 and, in 1995, was elected as Vice-President of the Association of Local Authorities in Namibia. She has also served as Chair of the Namibian Open Learning Network Trust and Chair of the Distance Education Association of Southern Africa (DEASA).
On September 19, 2012 a US Department of Labor news release announced 27 awards to community college and university consortia and 27 awards to individual institutions as the 2nd installment of a $2 billion, 4-year initiative call the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant, or TAACCCT. The Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created free services aligned with the U.S. Department of Labor’s TAACCCT grant requirements. Our partners’ long-standing experience in several important areas is designed to help grantees and meet DOL requirements and achieve their project goals.
As mentioned in the solicitation and news release “All education materials developed through the grants will be available for use by the public and other education providers through a Creative Commons license.” This requirement will allow everyone to benefit from the learning resources created and shared by TAACCCT grantees. It will lead to a host of new OERs we can all enjoy.
The OPEN Consortia is made up of 4 partners led by Creative Commons. The other partners are CAST, Harvard’s Universal Design for Learning center, Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
The major areas supported by OPEN include open licensing, effective course and learning design, universal design for learning and accessibility, best practices in open policy and OER adoption, and increasing access to existing OER.