Slides from EDEN webinar on the need to move from projects to sustainable policy at national, provincial and regional levels across the wide range of open education dimensions.

1. Open education at the
macro level: how could
policy help?
ALAN TAIT
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT
THE OPEN UNIVERSITY UK
alan.tait@open.ac.uk

2. Open Education and Open Practices
 OEP
 From projects to policy to embedding of sustainable practices
 Open publishing: articles, journals and books
 Open text books
 Open Educational Resources
 MOOCs
 Digital revolution is enabler and driver for change
 Anti-commoditisation: from commodities to commons
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3. Open publishing: articles, journals and books
From projects to collaboration and policy
 Institutional and Research Council policy now in place e.g. gold and green routes
 Open Archives: collaboration drives policy
 Open Access Journals funded by universities and Professional Associations
 Much more than projects
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4. Open text books
 British Columbia Provincially funded post secondary open text books
 See https://open.bccampus.ca
 More than project
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5. Open Educational Resources
 Many!
 Open Learn has 5m visitors per year
 OER University
 But innovative projects with rhetoric run ahead of outcomes
 Policy not yet embedding innovation or lower cost opportunity
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6. MOOCs
 35m users world-wide
 Major insertional policy and commitment
 Digital innovation feeding back on to campus
 Many unanswered questions: quality; student persistence; business model;
futures
 MOOCs have demonstrated enormous demand
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7. Anti-commoditisation
 from educational commodities to commons
 Scandal of publically funded research outputs being paid for again by
public through expensive journals
 Cost of higher education in North America and England
 Openness and access inherent in potential of web revolution
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8. From projects to policy: commodity or
commons?
 Projects vulnerable to short-term financing and exhaustion
 Policy drives and confirms sustainability
 UNESCO open education policy is helpful but can be ignored
 EU ‘Policy recommendations for Opening Up Education’
 Some important institutional policies
 But policy with funding at national levels lacking
 Risk of exhaustion by innovators and ‘next new thing’ by philanthropic
Foundations
 Battle for outcome of digital revolution in education: commodities or
commons?
alan.tait@open.ac.uk
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