[Oer-community] Recentering our discussion

Wed Oct 13 10:08:57 MDT 2010

Susan/All

I think Patrick is starting to get at the critical issues regarding global
access to knowledge in general and formal education/certification in
general. At this point in time, given current momentum, knowledge in the
form of OCW/OER and other vehicles is available and will be moreso in the
future. The bottom line is not the content but the access to the content in
a manner that will allow people to learn and to have that learning validated
where the latter seems to be the critical issue.

Let me explain:

In ancient days, expertise and knowledge was scarce and locked in the heads
of individuals be they practioners in guilds or scholars. The printing press
and now the internet breaks the secrecy and control of guilds (other than
practice) whether they are knowledge guilds such as accountants or
intellectual guilds such as universities. The value of such knowledge, even
when packaged in a course or text is approaching zero. In many ways, the
problem of the person creating these course materials are the same as that
faced by others on the net- how to be compensated if knowledge is free
(money or intangibles. The need to protect common knowledge such as English
101, though unique to an individual, is hardly worth a price differential- a
problem faced by publishers as their business model deteriorates.

Cost, today, is in part due to cost of access which is dropping rapidly with
smart phones that can deliver 1st run movies as an example and bandwidth.
The other part of the cost is certification. With all the knowledge that is
available, how does an individual know what is important, necessary and just
"interesting". The problem in many developing countries and even in
developed countries is that the institutions do not have sufficiently
qualified individuals to vet students and other learners so that these
persons know that they are competent and at what level. In other words we
all know that a degree from a medallion institution says more than a degree
from other institutions in the developed and developing world. This is why
professional organizations vet their members beyond the "degree" as we see
in medicine, for example.

There is a major shift due to the internet. Focusing on content packages is
a way of  trying to maintain an old system of knowledge control much as the
Church tried to do with the print medium, not just for the Church as an
institution but for those in the Church who had control. OCW/OER and open
access copyrights are vain attempts to maintain a crumbling system. For
education as a new/emerging industry (scholarly research is another subject
for discussion) access and certification coupled with standards so that
intelligent choices can be made provide the key.

There is one other point which can be taken from the animal feed industry,
UDGF. There can be two identically formulated feeds but animals perform
differently and no one knows why. With universities or schools we know that
two schools/institutions offering identical programs with identical texts,
etc have different rankings for graduates in the world of work. Thus all the
OER/OCW materials equally distributed to different parties and different
institutions will produce different results. We know many of these reasons
but not all

Bottom line, IMO, is that OCW/OER issues are part of a systems problem and
probably, in the near future, the least critical issue as costs for content
approach zero while cost for delivery will be critical and the ability to
utilize the content to develop competence and vetting that competence, as in
the past, will continue to dominate the education arena

thoughts?

tom

tom p abeles

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Patrick McAndrew <p.mcandrew at open.ac.uk>wrote:

> One item that Susan lists is "Educational Policy and OER". I think that
> this is an area in which the openness of OER can have a big impact. The
> willingness of those involved in education to work together and develop
> innovative ideas is often restricted by the boundaries of agreement,
> legislation and aligning goals. Operating openly can break through some of
> those. Sharing results to an agreed international method (e.g. Creative
> Commons) means bilateral agreements are not needed, removing direct charging
> from resources simplifies systems, and each providing what they have done
> for themselves on the basis it can be changed for others means that
> localisation can be carried out by those who care about it. At the smaller
> scale several collaborations around our OER projects (OpenLearn and OLnet)
> follow these principles. And on those occasions when more formal
> arrangements are needed we get reminded about the barriers they represent!
>
> I also agree with the comment made below by Jacobs that getting OCW/OER
> into use is the critical step. However we do need to see the official
> released resources from educational institutions as only part of the
> picture: people are using the free resources of the internet as a resource
> that helps them in a learning process though they may not see it as learning
> in itself. A colleague found a view of "self-improvement" rather than
> education helped open up the view of others involved in providing free
> resources. So we are finding that there is use of free and OER content as
> indicated by access and also by seeing the ways communities can build around
> content. The challenge is how to blend the informal world with the formal
> both as a provider and as a user. There is almost certainly a greater
> opportunity in becoming a sophisticated (re)user of OER than in being a
> producer as the focus on new content has to fade.
>
> Best wishes,
> Patrick.
> Associate Director (L&T) Institute of Educational Technology, Open
> University
> co-Director Open Learning network http://olnet.org
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Jacobs Nkem <n.jacobs at afribank.com>wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I think OCW is one of the most commendable innovations of our time. It is
>> simplifying learning and could crash the cost of education to next to
>> nothing if properly applied.
>>
>> However, the pace of deployment is abysmally low. Those who need it are
>> not getting access to it because they are not aware of it's existence and
>> how to use it. Professors, researchers and other members of the enlightened
>> academic communities use OCW because they know how it works and how it could
>> be deployed to achieve great ends. So, when this same community talks about
>> OCW and its application and benefits in their isolated communities it is
>> like preaching to the converted.
>>
>> What I would rather see is a situation where most universities and
>> research institutes deploy OCW platforms to deliver at least 30% of their
>> professional courses. I believe this will reduce the cost of part time
>> education worldwide and enhance the spread of knowledge. Also governments
>> should be enlightened to integrate OCW into their educational policies for
>> easy acceptability and deployment.
>>
>> To make OCW development and use sustainable, I suggest universities come
>> together in groups to build and manage platforms. By so doing the burden
>> would be bearable as both cost and expertise required would not need to be
>> provided by any one institution.
>>
>> I fully support two of the models proposed:  1).  Non-Work-for-Hire
>> Publisher Models - the private sector [publishers] create [and sell] OERs
>> [textbooks],  but retain ownership of the work. 2) Work for Hire Models -
>>  the public sector (i.e.., governments, colleges and universities) produces
>> OERs directly [and authors create the work on a work-for-hire basis. So, the
>> entity that pays their salaries owns the work and has the right to
>> distribute it. Both have the tendency to inculcate transparency and
>> accountability in the OER content management process while ensuring
>> availability.
>>
>> I salute all organisations and individuals that are making efforts to
>> popularise OCW.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Jacobs Nkem Nnamdi
>>
>> Product Manager
>> Afribank Nigeria Plc
>> _______________________________________
>> From: oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca [
>> oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] On Behalf Of Susan D'Antoni [
>> susandantoni at gmail.com]
>> Sent: 13 October 2010 03:57
>> To: oer-community at athabascau.ca
>> Subject: [Oer-community] Recentering our discussion
>>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>> We have had an exchange on the OER Foundation that is important, but
>> it has taken us away from the topic of this discussion.
>>
>> We are rapidly coming to the end of our discussion with Mary Lou and
>> her colleagues on the OpenCourseWare Consortium meeting.
>>
>> I would like to suggest that we conclude the discussion by returning
>> our focus to the original framework for the discussion, and making any
>> last comments on the discussions related to the four areas put forward
>> that were the organizing principle of the conference:
>>
>> Building OCW,
>>
>> Using OCW as a Platform,
>>
>> Sustaining OCW,
>>
>> Educational Policy and OCW.
>>
>> Mary Lou will summarize before she finishes her time with us, but it
>> would be very interesting to have some last comments from you on what
>> have been the main issues or concerns raised in the consideration of
>> the confenernce themes.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Susan
>>
>> --
>> Susan D'Antoni
>>
>> Advisor to the President
>> Athabasca University
>> Canada
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