open courseware: realising the potential of standards as enablers of valuable global participation...

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Open Courseware: realising the potential of standards as

enablers of valuable global participation

Jon Mason, Liddy NevileAustralia

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Introduction

• The public good that represents our ability to communicate freely, at reasonable cost, in all languages with all people anywhere and anytime, while preserving different cultures, must be at the heart of our concerns and supported by the international community’s generous and open impulse to share as has been stated in the WSIS principles. Open Forum 2005

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Summary

• An infrastructure of standards

• Supports the phenomenon of open courseware

• for the benefit of educationally privileged and deprived

• consistent with the WSIS principles.

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But…

• Not everyone has the same needs and

• Not all standards are created equal!

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Google

• has managed in a very short space of time to engage millions of people in an

• activity that was once conducted only in the rarefied atmosphere of libraries and research institutions.

• Everyone with a computer and a connection now engages in research, for free.

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Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)

• Skype hit the ‘market’, as we once might have said,

• with a free communications product

• Millions of people use it now.

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Open source movement

• significant in recent years, particularly with the network effect

• Benkler refers to commons-based production or peer production.

• access to the code is available so it can be modified.

• It is protected by licenses

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Open courseware movement • builds upon the open software

movement

• by adding the free use of information resources, specifically those designed for use in education and training. In the case of these resources,

• there is often a blurring between software and information, as indicated by the name open courseware (OCW).

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The MIT OCW Project

• Two decades ago– 6.001 in Australia cost $56,000

• Now – As part of the MIT OCW project, all

materials needed for the 6.001 course are online, available for anyone, anywhere, to use for free, including videos of lectures, tutorial notes, the textbook, problem sets and exam questions and answers.

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OCW beginnings

• Some smart people at MIT decided the best project in the world would be OCW

• MIT shares research so why not teaching?

• OCW builds on traditional resource sharing, and open source ….

• But OCW is distinguished in that it separates knowledge from commodities

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OCW free resources

• OCW resources challenge the fundamental role of teachers in a new way.

• Learners can progress without intervention from their teachers.

• Teachers and learners are interacting in new ways.

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OCW free resources

• Include activities, problem sets, exam questions, and answers.

• Teachers are sharing strategies and technology

• Managing a room full of active students– eg using the hand-held devices

• the practice of teaching has been enlivened

• The students are achieving higher standards of comprehension than previously.

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The iCampus Project

• an extension of the OCW

• distributed model with regional ‘hubs’

• to provide local customisation/ development of resources and tools

• promotes the decentralisation of resource and software production

• iLabs for sharing of expensive scientific instruments and equipment

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iCampus at La Trobe Uni• a first year teacher of advanced

graphics ….

• As experts in learning, teaching staff can work alongside their students.

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iCampus worldwide

• By middle of 2006, 1/2 resources from outside MIT

• Already 500,000 more than 30 mins visits p/month

• Students do not get degrees

• Many can use University of Utah’s collaborative environment

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So what is happening?

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The ‘open’ philosophy in action• The catalyst at MIT was simply that

knowledge should be free

• Public Knowledge Project in Canada

• Wikibooks - over 11,000 online textbooks

• Development Gateway’s Open Education portal

• Etc ….

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Freeing resources is a radical political idea• However, institutions such as

MIT are not charities!

• Good actions and materials promote institutions

• There is great value in eliminating inequity of education

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OCW, like OSS, means ‘resources as currency’• Money does not have intrinsic

value.

• In the digital world, information and educational resources are like money - they have to be used

• Interoperable money is currency.

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OCW’s value is its use

• Resources must be used

• There must be many resources

• Resources must be usable everywhere

• Resources must be interoperable ….

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Resource use and sharing• The complexity of

interoperability is challenging.

• It usually comprises four aspects: structure, syntax, semantics and system adoption.

• The many solutions need to be merged or harmonised in some way.

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The challenge is sharing distributed resources • This is not a new problem but its

scale is hard to comprehend - its potential to benefit students is compelling.

• Standards abound, so which standards should be used?

==> eg SCORM, a reference model of standards.

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OCW’s value

• depends upon a firm base of standards

• depends on Creative Commons licenses

• depends on standards compliant open source software

• Respectful/independent of cultures, languages, policies, ….

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Interoperability as infrastructure• Whatever way we look at the problem

of how to ensure education for everyone, everywhere, beyond the production of resources, we find the problem of how to share, to interoperate.

• Interoperability is, in effect, the widespread adoption of common solutions to problems.

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Interoperability as infrastructure• Interoperability is not just consensus

eg i18n of terms – Concepts not just vocab. must be agreed

• Interoperability requires abstract models at all levels – Information models make a difference a

with DCMT and IEEE/LOM

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Interoperability requires TLC• Eg, SCORM‘s origins may make it

difficult politically for many countries to participate.

• The model of SCORM nevertheless suggests an important activity for those promoting the sharing of education and thus, OCW.

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Pedagogical (r)evolution• Teaching is not always visible

• Teaching is not just course materials but a valued process

• Teachers move from being the sage on the stage to the guide on the side.

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The emerging OCW economy• a market activity

• not using traditional models of marketing that require the user to pay..– like Google and Skype and ……

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Open source software

• Not destroying business but changing it:– eg free software and a support contract

– "If you look at the open source, open community aspects of open source, they are definitely bringing innovations to the market, solving problems that are not being solved by standardised software."

– “These are programmers building great technology to help their peers to build software to solve customer problems." - IBM's Chet Kapoor

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Maturity of the open source movement• twenty years ==> a thriving

economy– not just for hippies: to get a computer to

do something, people need programs and they share them to get on with the business of making computers do things.

• “Software is just the beginning ... open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation…” - Goetz

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Open source education?

• Yochai Benkler, Yale Law Professor, argues: – there are so many potential creative

knowledge workers, motivated by a range of psychological, social, and material gain factors, that we do not need to fear a shortage of learning materials.

– The sharing of the ‘stuff’ of education enables the business of education.

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OCW Quality Assurance

• New ISO standards for describing quality - global and local qualities

• The Times Education Supplement ranking of universities worldwide.

• What emerge as de facto standards, hopefully always under review and reflective of public opinion, will affect the way universities present themselves to the public.

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So how does standardisation help?• Standards provide stable reference

points for a community of practice.

• Innovation occurs because the wheel does not have to be reinvented.

• Standards have enabled the emergence of dedicated software tools such as learning content management systems.

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Standards: Think global, act local

• Parmesan cheese manufacturers now put RFID chips into their cheese.

• There is a need for vigilance in the adoption of standards for fear that the interests of those for whom they are relevant may not be best served by their adoption.

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Conclusion

• standardization must be used with care

• OCW and iCampus offer promise for the global distribution of locally beneficial education

• Those who give and those who receive both benefit

• It is economically possible and

• VERY desirable!

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Merci beaucoup!

Merci beaucoup!(Photo of La Trobe University campus, early September 2005)

open courseware: realising the potential of standards as enablers of valuable global participation...

Documents

open courseware ocw

mit ocw project

ocw beginnings

open courseware movement

open impulse

open forum

open software movement

phenomenon of open courseware