The document discusses the promise of open educational resources (OER) to address global challenges through improved access to knowledge and learning opportunities. It outlines how OER, which are free and openly available online, can enable systemic reform and transformation by supporting a global movement in higher education and K-12. OER allow institutions to reach more learners and give individuals control over content to adapt and improve it. The movement toward open sharing of digital resources will likely accelerate due to changing generational habits and the need for new skills to address societal problems. While intellectual property and other issues remain obstacles, OER could dramatically increase access to education and support problem-based, personalized learning on a global scale.

1. The Promise of
Open Educational Resources
AERA Meeting
New York, NY
March 25, 2008
Marshall S. Smith
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

2. Our Global Challenges
• Rapid social and economic change
• Great human-made problems
– Global warming
– Extensive poverty
– Terrorism
– Nuclear proliferation

3. Meeting Challenges Requires Social and
Educational Transformation
• Build on common values to strengthen
resolve to improve the world while cherishing
diversity and its innovative power
• Enable access for all to knowledge and
opportunities for learning

4. • High quality educational content and tools
• Free on the Web anytime
• Usable and re-usable
• Adaptable for all cultures and languages
A Powerful Tool for Systemic Reform
and Transformation

5. Global Movement
Higher Education

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• 100+ universities around the world published OCWs
• 5,000+ courses, 700+ translated into 10 languages

7. K12 Global Movement

8. Journals, Books, Videos, Data,
Games…

9. Usage Expanding
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
4,000
4,500
All other
MIT
Number of Visits Per Month (000)

10. Open is Powerful for Learning
Because…
…Institutions can now reach people that they don’t
have the capacity to serve
…Individuals have control over the content -- adapting
and perfecting
…Continuous improvement through user and expert
feedback and modification
…Act of modifying is an instructive learning process

11. Re-Mixing
Winston Churchill
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candle with it.”
Thomas Jefferson
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction itself
without lessening mine: as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me.”

12. Movement Will Accelerate
• Changing habits
of the new
generation
• We all face challenges
that require different
skills than often taught in
schools
• Openly sharing digital
content becoming cultural
norm

13. Some of The Obstacles
• Intellectual Property
• Localization and Translation
• Accessibility
• Sustainability

14. Institutions and Individuals have taken the
lead so far…
Governments starting to define their roles…
How might openness change teaching and
learning? Five examples.

15. • Use Open Courseware: builds a
global library of teaching materials
from leading universities worldwide:
• Open archiving (publishing, data
bases and data analysis) to support
research: books, journals, video.
• Shared courses located on virtual
worlds.
• Open web-based laboratories create
lab experiences for those without labs
Open Collaboration Enables Meta
Universities

16. Openness Leads to Fast Feedback
Loops That Engage Rapid Cycles of
Improvement of Teaching Materials
Open Textbooks

17. • Facts & skills based
• Teacher controlled
• Work alone
• Avoid failure
• Discipline based
• Deeper understanding
• Student controlled pace
• Creative by creating
• Work in groups
• Synthesize and analyze
• Try, fail and try again
Beyond Systemic Reform –
Transform Learning

18. Accelerated, Personalized Learning
Challenges Conventional Wisdom

19. Dramatically Increase Access to K-
12 and Higher Education
• Reach remote areas without
qualified teachers with full
blown, complete courses:
(multi-media, lecture,
cognitive tutor.)
• Reach people out of school
or lifelong learners
• Using proctored
assessments to give credit
for open learning.
Photo by mathew ramsey via Flickr

20. Problem-Based Learning Environments:
Virtual and Open
Poverty:
Food ForceScience Education:
Immune Attack
Politics:
PeaceMaker
Harvard Law Extension
School’s Virtual Class in
Second Life

22. Opening The World to Knowledge and Education
http://www.Hewlett.org
http://www.OERCommons.org
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.