Open all OERs

Time to reflect on the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) workshop on Open Educational Resources, which was held in Windhoek, Namibia this week. Around 50 delegates attended, predominantly from African nations including Namibia, South Africa and Botswana and there were also representatives from Canada, Australia, Holland, Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysia and Jamaica. Many were representing the Quality Assurance Agencies of their home countries. Dr Stella Anthony (Australian Universities Network for Quality Assurance) gave the opening presentation for the event, and spoke about the opportunities and challenges of OERs in higher education. She took a pragmatic approach, arguing that we need to pay attention to a number of issues that threaten the success of OERs, including lack of a common understanding of their purposes and limitations, overcoming infrastructural barriers, as well as ensuring the quality of OERs in terms of content and design.

Jenny Glennie (South African Institute for Distance Education) presented a paper entitled 'Understanding OER in Higher Education' in which she outlined the basics of Openness and provided essential input into what OERs are for those who were new to the concept. A presentation by Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams (University of Cape Town, South Africa) opened up the debate over the benefits and limitations of OERs, and addressed some of the quality assurance issues, as well as issues of financial sustainability and battles over ownership of content. IPR and Creative Commons were discussed.

I was live-blogging throughout these presentations, and during the first panel session presented two questions from the Twitter stream to the panel. The first question was from Mark Power (Bolton University, UK) who wondered why we should pay attention to OERs when reusable learning objects had apparently failed. The panel responded that OERs are not the same as RLOs, for one simple reason - Learning objects are usually decontextualised (stand alone) whereas OERs are generally contextualised within a larger module or course/programme. It is all a matter of granularity, with Open Courseware the most contextualised. The second question was asked about design and content. If content is good, but poorly presented in an amatuerish manner, does this matter? The panel agreed that it did matter, but that many OERs are generally well presented anyway.

After lunch, it was my turn to present my invited paper, which dealt with the wider issues surrounding OERs, such as pedagogy, theoretical and philosophical considerations. I outlined two projects, OPAL and CONCEDE which respectively examine Open Educational Practices and user generated content. I touched on the synergy between Web 2.0 tools and OERs which both espouse openness, and concluded with some ideas about how OERs could benefit higher education in the future. The following panel session was lively, with plenty of questions from the delegates. From the workshop came ideas that included the belief that OERs will improve social inclusion and encourage better student engagement, even to the point where students will contribute to the development of OER content alongside their tutors.

Sir John Daniel (our host and CEO of CoL) summed up the workshop in his closing remarks. He argued that OERs are just another development in the ongoing evolution of education, and should be treated just like any other educational process - they should not treated as a special case, and just because they are created in an open manner and are free, this doesn't mean they are poor quality. OERs, he said, go beyond centralised repositories of learning objects - their ability to be embedded across multiple web sites will mean better longevity and sustainability. OERs will also encourage more widespread repurposing of existing resources across wider groups and communities of practice, he predicted. He concluded with a reference to Apple's new toy, suggesting that the iPad will do to educational resources what the iPod did to popular music.

Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

A day with a knight

I spent some time chatting with Sir John Daniel yesterday at the UNESCO sponsored workshop on Open Educational resources. Sir John was hosting the event, organised by the Commonwealth of Learning, of which he is the President and CEO. Sir John was formerly the Vice Chancellor of the UK Open University, and was knighted for his services to higher education by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. His career in HE has spanned almost 50 years, and he holds over 30 honourary doctorates, professorships and fellowships from universities around the globe. To many in education his name is widely regarded to be synonymous with lifelong learning. I had several conversations with him yesterday, and we also debated the notion of user generated content during the panel session at the workshop.

I'm grateful to Sir John for a number of reasons. Firstly, whilst he was VC at the UK Open University, I graduated with a first class honours degree in Psychology, so you could say he was instrumental in launching my academic career. Later, when I was studying for another academic award, I read his book, Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media, which inspired me to learn more about distance education and technology supported learning. I'm grateful to Sir John also for encouraging me to into a research career - when I was invited to chair some sessions at the 2nd Turkish Distance Education Symposium in Ankara, Turkey, in 1998, I met Sir John for the first time. He asked me what I did, and I told him that I was working on a distance education project called RATIO - to set up learning centres in remote rural areas. He told me he worked for the Open University. We got into a conversation about distance education, and then I discovered who he was and what he did. I was impressed. Meeting him inspired me to pursue my studies in distance education, and he was thus instrumental in launching me into my research career in e-learning. The Turkish symposium was quite an event, because that was where I also first made acquaintance with a number of other distance education luminaries, including Michael Moore, David Jonassen, Tony Bates, Liz Stacey, Charlie Schlosser and Mike Simonson. I joined the Faculty of Education as a lecturer shortly after returning from Turkey, and thus began my academic career. So it was a wonderful experience to once again stand talking with this very unassuming man over a cup of tea, and to remember that first encounter (which of course he did).

Later that evening, I was invited along with other delegates from the conference to attend a Gala Dinner in celebration of the launch of a new Commonwealth of Learning initiative - the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth Transnational Qualifications Framework (VUSSC). We all stood for the Namibian national anthem. Then the Namibian Minister for Education stood and gave a speech. The television cameras from a premier African TV network captured the proceedings. And finally, Sir John Daniel walked to the podium and outlined the details of VUSSC.

The history of VUSSC goes back to a meeting in 2000 of the Commonwealth Education Ministers who agreed to address the issues of inconsistency of academic awards and standards across the small states of the Commonwealth. The plan for the newly launched VUSSC is to regulate, communicate, transform or reform, establish consistent standards and promote quality of academic programmes and awards across 32 small Commonwealth nations. It's a tall order, but a much needed initiative to bring all academic awards up to the same standard and comparison. I'm very pleased to have been there to see the birth of this excellent new network of professionals and academics. I wish Sir John and his team great success and thank him for his continued inspiration.

Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Opening spaces, open learning

I'm enjoying the workshop on Open Educational Resources (OER) here in Windhoek, Namibia. It took me almost 24 hours of travelling to get here, via London Heathrow, and Johannesburg. But now I'm here, it's a beautiful country, the skies are clear blue, and the hotel we are staying in is excellent. The conference venue here at the Safari Court Hotel is purpose built, and continually hosts events sponsored by the likes of UNESCO, UNICEF and other UN organisations. Today, the workshop for Quality Assurance Agencies is addressing the concept of OERs and how they can be quality assured. Inevitably, under this banner, we are also discussing how content can be standardised in terms of its delivery, design and licensing. Creative Commons and IPR issues have already been raised, and this afternoon we continue round table discussions with representatives from a number of African countries, and delegates from Holland, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Australia, Canada and Malaysia.

We have had excellent speeches from Sir John Daniel (Commonwealth of Learning), Jenny Glennie (South African Institute for Distance Education) and Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams (University of Cape Town) all of whom are positive about OERs, but also cautious about how open courseware, open content and user generated content can, and will be evaluated and used. Later this afternoon, I'm giving an invited talk on the CONCEDE Project (CONtent Creation Excellence through Dialogue in Education) which I am involved in.

Sir John Daniel spoke this morning about the barriers to Open Content and listed three. 1: The 'not invented here/by me' sydrome, 2: Adaptation of materials is often tiresome, and 3: Intellectual Property issues prevent repurposing of content. Sir John argued that OER addresses the last two barriers, and that the first is a psychological/cultural issue that needs addressing. Comments coming in from the Twitter stream suggest that IPR issues may take a long time to address fully, because very few people fully understand how Creative Commons functions. The workshop online forum can be found at this link. I will come back to discuss some of these issues more fully when time permits. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the event, the great company and the excellent weather here in beautiful Namibia.

Image source

Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

OER the seas and far away....

I'm packing frantically to travel down to South Africa and onwards to Namibia tomorrow, volcanoes and strikes permitting. My destination is first Johannesburg, and then a short flight onwards to Windhoek, capital of Namibia, where I will be giving an invited presentation to the UNESCO Open Educational Resources Conference organised in conjunction with the Commonwealth of Learning.

I'm looking forward to attending the conference, and visiting another African nation. I learn so much every time I venture out of my own country, and often use the things I see in my writing and presentations. My last trip overseas a few weeks ago was also to Africa, to the Gambia, on the West coast, where I saw a lot of stuff that really opened my eyes to the incredible poverty most of the world's population live in. If you ever get complacent about life, go to Africa. My thoughts about education and its purpose changed radically as a result of my one week's stay, as you can see if you read my post What Price Education?

Namibia is not such a poor country as the Gambia, but I anticipate that I will once again be challenged by the places I visit, and the sights I will see. I had never dreamt I would go to Namibia - it was just another place on the map. But the invitation came out of the blue last month and so I jumped at the chance. My talk, mainly courtesy of Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (and also with thanks to Carmen Holotescu) is based loosely around the question: 'What's so Good about Open Educational Resources?' In it I will try to outline some of the benefits I can see in its use for individual learners, teachers, institutions (schools, colleges, universities), professional networks, and communities of practice. I will be interested to hear the feedback from my audience when I present on Monday.

I will say more about my Namibian excursion when I return, hopefully in time to cast my vote in the UK General Election on Thursday.

(The picture above is one I took of an old fisherman, looking out over the sea in the Gambia).


Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.