Measures of Central Tendency: Mean, Median and Mode
Engaging with Open Educational Resources
1. Engaging with
Open Educational Resources
Tom Caswell
Open Education Policy Associate
State Board for Community & Technical Colleges
Image credit: Marc Wathieu CC BY-NC-SA
2. The Internet changes everything
Anyone can create and
deliver almost anything to
anyone for almost no cost.
Internet + Digital
Resources +
Open License
3. September 2007
Cape Town Open Education
Declaration
“…we have an opportunity to dramatically improve
the lives of hundreds of millions of people around
the world through freely available, high-
quality, locally relevant educational and learning
opportunities.”
4. Where do we start?
Photo credit: loop_oh CC BY-ND
http://whyopenedmatters.org
5. Strategic Technology Plan
Strategy I:
Create a single, system-wide suite of online
teaching and learning tools that provides all
Washington students with easy access to
“anywhere, anytime” learning.
http://www.sbctc.edu/general/a_strategictechplan.aspx
6. June 2010
SBCTC Open Policy
All digital software, educational resources and
knowledge produced through competitive
grants, offered through and/or managed by the
SBCTC, will carry a Creative Commons
Attribution License.
http://www.sbctc.edu/general/admin/Tab_9_Open_
Licensing_Policy.pdf
7. Textbook Affordability
English Composition I
50,000+ enrollments / year
x $100 textbook
$5+ Million every year
8. Affordances of Open
OER allows you to:
• Reuse
• Redistribute
And sometimes:
• Revise
• Remix
Photo credit: mag3737 CC BY-NC-SA
12. The Open Course Library
Funded: $1.2 million
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Washington State Legislature
13. Goals of the Open Course Library
Design and share 81 high enrollment, gatekeeper courses
Improve course completion rates
Lower textbook costs for students (<$30)
Provide new resources for faculty to use in their courses
Fully engage our colleges in the global open educational
resources discussion.
14. Open Course Library
Phase 1: 42 courses
http://opencourselibrary.org
http://saylor.org
Phase 2 : 39 courses
Available Spring 2013
15. The first 42 courses were
released October 31, 2011
Over 80 media mentions worldwide
Over 25,000 visits from 125 countries to
http://opencourselibrary.org
16. Initial Impact
In the first year, students will save
$1.1 million in textbook costs
That’s more than we spent to develop the
courses…
17. Lessons Learned
Phase 1 Faculty Concerns:
Many were unfamiliar with ANGEL LMS
No way to compare work between course teams
Too many websites to keep track of
Phase 2 Adjustments:
Using Google Docs to collaborate & share as we go
All project information in one Google Site
18. Next Steps
Driving Open Course Library Course Adoptions
Regional conferences and workshops
New faculty trainings
Building open sharing into existing teaching workflows
and technologies
Next LMS will have “open sharing” feature
Explore open sharing via Tegrity
Working with system librarians to track and
promote open content
20. Great places to find openly licensed
images, video, clipart, etc:
search.creativecommons.org.
21. Where can I search specifically for
Open Educational Resources (OER)?
• opencourselibrary.org
• oercommons.org/oer
• Connexions (cnx.org)
• saylor.org
• oerglue.com/courses
Through a match from the Gates Foundation and the State Legislature, the Open Course Library initiative was created. The goals of the Open Course Library are to:design and share 81 high enrollment, gatekeeper coursesImprove course completion ratesLower textbook costs for students (<$30)Provide new resources for faculty to use in their coursesFully engage our colleges in the global open educational resources discussion
Through a match from the Gates Foundation and the State Legislature, the Open Course Library initiative was created. The goals of the Open Course Library are to:design and share 81 high enrollment, gatekeeper coursesImprove course completion ratesLower textbook costs for students (<$30)Provide new resources for faculty to use in their coursesFully engage our colleges in the global open educational resources discussion