The development of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Open Educational Resource (OER) movements over the last three years indicates that major universities around the world are already or will soon become producers and publishers of OCW and OER and that these efforts will become permanent features of organizational life in these institutions. Continuing educators will gain institutional credibility by initiating open Web sites. The institutional case for OCW/OER is strong and multifaceted.
This presentation will describe how institutions are effectively using and supporting open Web sites and how such sites intersect with clear trends in higher education. Among the benefits described will be the use of OCW/OER to attract students, serve current students and supplement their learning, support faculty in both course authoring and delivery, facilitate accountability and aid continuous improvement, advance institutional recognition and reputation, support the public service role of institutions, disseminate the results of research and thereby attract research funding, serve as a repository for a wide range of digital assets, serve learning communities of all types, and enhance international service and reputation.
1. Making OpenCourseWare Indispensable:
UC Irvine’s Top Ten Reasons
Gary. W. Matkin, Ph.D., Dean
Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session
University of California, Irvine
Larry Cooperman, Director
UC Irvine OpenCourseWare
OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2011
Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 6, 2011
4. The Expanded Institutional Case
1. Serve current students (supports teaching and learning)
2. Attract new students
3. Support faculty in both course authoring and delivery
4. Facilitate accountability and aid continuous
improvement
5. Advance institutional recognition and reputation
6. Support the public service role of institutions
7. Disseminate the results of research and thereby attract
research funding
8. Serve as a repository for a wide range of digital assets
9. Serve learning communities of all types
10. Enhance international service and reputation
11. Serves as a mechanism for fundraising
6. UCI’s OCW Attracts Students to its Degree Programs in Public Health
On adding the Public Health collection
to OCW: “We designed a series of
seminars featuring really excellent
speakers from different parts of the
country and we saw this as a very
important way to let people know what
UCI is doing in public health It was
timely that when we began the
series, we had the opportunity to put
them up on OCW. And we see that that
has actually paid off. Applications at
the undergraduate level and at the
graduate level have all increased over
the past year.”
Dr. Oladele Ogunseitan, UCI Professor of Public Health
7. UC Irvine’s OCW Supports Faculty Teaching and Learning
On his experience with OCW: “The
value of OCW was really multiple. It
gave my current students direct access
to my lectures, including Power Point
slides and interactive discussion. A
second benefit is that OCW helped me
consider the possibility of expanded
future online offerings, whether
courses or entire degree programs.
OCW offers a venue for
experimentation and so far I’m very
pleased with the results.”
Dr. Michael Martinez, UCI Professor of Education
8. Sources of
Content Course
Content
(Learning
Management
1. Material from System
Object)
Content Students
Management
System
2. Teacher
Created
•VOP
•Flash
Continuous Course
Authoring Improvement
Tool
•Print
3. Open
Material Digital Learning
4. Proprietary Rights Assessment
Material Management Data
5. University
Owned
Material
12. UCI’s OCW Web Site is the Most Focused Expression of Openness
13. • Since its launch in November 2006, UCI’s OCW Web site
has received 450,000 visits from 370,000 visitors
• 53% of 450,000 visits were from internationals, from
200 countries around the world
U.S.
International 47%
53%
14. UCI’s OCW is Republished on Other Open Sites to Increase Traffic
16. UCI Leverages OCW to Build the UC Brand and Reputation
“Our participation in OCW visibly
illustrates UC Irvine’s leadership in
the UC system, fosters a strong
partnership between faculty and the
academic senate, and continues UC
Irvine’s land grant traditions of
openness.”
Dr. Michael Dennin, UCI Professor of Physics and Astronomy
19. UC Irvine’s OCW Serves Specific and Deserving Audiences
“I am a 2007 California Teacher of the Year and
a recipient of the 2008 Presidential Award for
excellence in Math and Science Teaching. In
order to supplement my multiple subject
credential, I decided to take the CSET Science
tests. UCI’s OCW website was an invaluable
study tool. I worked through every lesson and
passed both exams on my first try. Anyone
wishing to pass the CSET Exam would do well
to work through this fabulous online program. ”
Charles Reynes, California Science Teacher and UCI OCW User
20. UCI Supports its Land Grant Mission by Using OCW
“I believe that OCW delivers on the
promise of public education and
effectively brings the power of
ideas, education, and training to society.
The value of OCW gives permanence to
educational materials, allows the reach of
educational efforts to be extended beyond
the confines of academic institutions, and
enables a plethora of audiences to benefit
from a host of educational moments.
Dr. Valerie Jenness, UCI Dean and Professor of Criminology, Law & Society
25. Gaining Institutional and Faculty
Support for OCW
• Create a Web site that you can be proud of
• Focus on helping students and faculty — get
them involved
• Leverage and support existing units
• Build an inventory — spread it around
• Create “micro” demonstrations — publicize them
• Get media attention — both internal and
external
26. Getting Students and Faculty Involved
• 79 faculty and lecturers have contributed courses or
lectures, including
▫ the chancellor
▫ five deans
▫ top faculty
• Other collaborations
▫ Nearly all schools
Law, Social Ecology, Engineering, Medicine, etc…
▫ 15 centers
Global Peace and Conflict Studies, Center for
Unconventional Security Affairs, etc
27. Getting Students and Faculty Involved
• Campus Outreach
▫ Grants
▫ Recruitment
▫ Development
• Student Outreach
▫ 1/3 of all visitors are from California
▫ Large clusters are from each city with a UC
campus
31. Leverage and Support Existing Units
• Library
• Teaching/Learning technology centers
• Development offices
• Schools and departments
• Research
• Information technology operations
36. Dean, Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session
University of California, Irvine
Email: gmatkin@uci.edu
Telephone: 949.824.8825
On the Web: http://ocw.uci.edu/
Download this Presentation at:
http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/ocwc-global-2011
Editor's Notes
The development of the OpenCourseWare(OCW) and Open Educational Resource (OER) movements over the last three years indicates that major universities around the world are already or will soon become producers and publishers of OCW and OER and that these efforts will become permanent features of organizational life in these institutions. Continuing educators will gain institutional credibility by initiating open Web sites. The institutional case for OCW/OER is strong and multifaceted. This presentation will describe how institutions are effectively using and supporting open Websites and how such sites intersect with clear trends in higher education. Among the benefits described will be the use of OCW/OER to attract students, serve current students and supplement their learning, support faculty in both course authoring and delivery, facilitate accountability and aid continuous improvement, advance institutional recognition and reputation, support the public service role of institutions, disseminate the results of research and thereby attract research funding, serve as a repository for a wide range of digital assets, serve learning communities of all types, and enhance international service and reputation. To download this complete presentation, please visit: http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/ocwc-global-2011
One of the barriers to the adoption of OCW might be called the “perceived cost” barrier. In an era of sharply reduced funding for higher education (in the U.S., at least) the notion of providing free material to the public seems counter to the cost saving measures widely in place today, particularly when universities are cutting staff and reducing wages. Indeed the issue of “sustainability” has dominated the attention of those involved in the OER/OCW movements, and has attracted criticism from outside those movements. Under a front page headline “Open Courses: Free but Oh, So Costly,” (Parry, 2009) the Chronicle of Higher Education reported predictions of the sharp decline in the movements based on the inability of institutions to continue to fund those efforts. In this article, David Wiley, now at Brigham Young University predicts: “Every OCW initiative at a university that does not offer distance courses for credit will be dead by the end of calendar 2012.” Since that article was published, the number of active universities on iTunes U (as of January 2011) has increased from 222 to 800 and education materials available on the site increased from 200,000 to 350,000. About half of those 800 institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley — distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store.
Another set of barriers might be called the “failure of imagination.” Despite its immense contribution to the OCW movement, MIT’s OCW model has so dominated the press and overall conception of OCW that it has served as a barrier to the imagination—even as MIT itself pushes at the edges of that model. That model is defined for all on the MIT OCW Web site (http://ocw.mit.edu/about): MIT OCW “is a free publication of course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.” “OCW is not an MIT education”“OCW does not grant degrees or certificates”“OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty”“Materials may not reflect entire content of courses” These explanations are quite reasonable and necessary from MIT’s perspective but they are not limits that must be adopted by all universities—even the most prestigious. Other institutions may choose not to limit their OER/OCW offerings only to degrees they provide their own students, choosing, for instance, to share with and target their expertise to deserving non-student audiences. They may add instructional services, including learning assessments and certifications to their open offerings, so that the open material does constitute an institutional educational offering. Some open material may be intended to foster external involvement with faculty members. And finally, institutions may decide to define what a “course” is to distinguish it from materials that are less complete in order better to serve their users. So, the institutional case for OER/OCW should use the MIT OCW as a sound but also limited model for what can be accomplished. In fact, MIT is now going beyond its “initial model” in some very creative ways. The OCW Scholar and Highlights for High School programs are examples of this creative expression.
Although these perceived barriers might exist, the experience of the last four years has added substance to the case that can be made for institutional involvement in the OER/OCW movements. This experience has supported and reaffirmed all of the early objectives for higher educational institutions to become actively involved in sponsoring and publishing OER/OCW and, in addition, presented new examples of the benefits that institutions can derive from such involvement. As these new uses emerge, so does the justification for the financial support of them, support that results in revenue generation, cost savings, and service improvements that are so compelling as to demand funding and support from institutional leaders. This list builds the case for institutional support of OER/OCW which will be described in the following slides.
There is no more compelling a case to be made for OER/OCW than its ability to serve the core instructional mission of the institution. Charles Vest, in 2004 describes why MIT chose to give its materials away for free and lists two of his five reasons under this category—to provide MIT faculty the opportunity to view each other’s work and to help MIT students be better prepared. In fact, these two reasons are clearly manifested in the MIT experience and in the experience of other universities, some of which have taken an even more active role than MIT. For instance, UC Berkeley has created an infrastructure whereby course lectures are automatically recorded and then posted to iTunes U, available for viewing by students in the course soon after the lecture is complete. Individual students and study groups can review lectures as they prepare for exams. This same service can also serve students who miss a class and, in one case at a major university facing a classroom shortage, an alternative delivery system to the classroom. New York University (NYU) recently video captured lectures in ten courses, added learning assets to them and placed them online in an open format for its fall 2010 term. The professors teaching the courses used the time gained in not having to deliver the lecture for one-on-one interactions. Of course, these examples could be provided by the institution without offering the material in an open format. The advantage of the NYU and UC Berkeley models is that they utilize a free, publically available distribution site (YouTube EDU or iTunes U). These sites are easily accessible by students from anywhere and can remain in place along with later versions of the same course beyond the current term, serving as a continuing reference for subsequent students. And the institution gains the benefits of wide-spread exposure to its instructional product.
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) placed a series of public health seminars on its OCW Web site, and professor of public health Oladele Ogunseitan reports that “applications at the undergraduate level and the graduate level have all increased over the past year.” http://learn.uci.edu/ucionline/. Also at UCI, the continuing education unit of the University reports that traffic from its OCW site (http://ocw.uci..edu) is one of the largest sources of referral traffic to its catalog site. It uses its OCW Web site to capture leads for its online courses and programs and as a demonstration site for those who want to understand what kind of experience they will have in an UCI online course.
UCI usesOCW to support its faculty. For instance, Michael Martinez, a professor in our Department of Education offers his lectures in “Education 173, Learning and Cognition in Educational Settings” online through OCW. According to Martinez, “the value of OCW was really multiple. It gave my current students direct access to my lectures, including Power Point slides and interactive discussion. A second benefit is that OCW helped me consider the possibility of expanded future online offerings, whether courses or entire degree programs. OCW offers a venue for experimentation and so far I’m very pleased with the results.” Martinez reports that his OCW lectures have been viewed by students around the world, which he believes broadens awareness of UCI’s high quality instruction.
In the U.S., the regional accrediting bodies are requiring that desired student outcomes (DSOs) be articulated for each degree program as a whole and for each course. The metrics, preferably external metrics, must be adopted for the measurement of those outcomes and the results of those metrics must be translated into action that improves the university’s educational product. Similar regulations are beginning to be promulgated in Europe partly as a result of the Bologna Process. But the calls for accountability go beyond educational organizations. A recent law passed in the state of Texas, HB2504, requires institutions to post a public Web site for every undergraduate course taught for credit by public institutions (except medical and dental schools). Included in the posting must be the course syllabus, departmental budget (if available) and the curriculum vitae of each regular instructor. The information must be easily accessible to the public no later than seven days after the academic term begins, must be updated as appropriate, and must be maintained for two years. While this is an extreme example, the trend is toward more openness in the instructional function. In addition to rigorous standards, increased accountability, and transparency, accrediting agencies are demanding processes for continuous improvement. This chart illustrates one conception of the continuous improvement process. One of the premises of the online learning movement is that the investment in the production of learning/teaching materials can be captured and leveraged through re-use and (as we will see) continuous improvement. So a core technology of any serious and large scale technology-assisted learning organization is a content management system.What is content: it is really anything that can be digitally recorded and filed. For our purposes, of course, we are concentrating on content that will be used in the teaching/learning process. Examples: printed materials, video and audio recordings, charts, simulations, PowerPoint slides. Any content management system must include the capacity to manage the intellectual property rights of contributors to the system. This is known as digital rights management (DRM). Again, for our purposes, any content management system must serve the course authoring system in an efficient manner. The content management system should be capable of accepting and managing content from a wide variety of sources, not only from an internal content management system, but also from any digital material created by instructors, from the huge inventory of open material now available and also from material owned and controlled by others, including the University. The content management system should be able to handle almost any digitized material, text of course, but also video, audio, PowerPoint, flash files, and any combination. By “handle” I mean not only be able to file, but also find and manipulate. Following this logic, a course (or any “learning object”) can be produced from the content in the content management system with the course authoring tool. Students can then take the course. As they proceed through the course, their use of course material and particularly their successin achieving learning objectives, can be collected and analyzed. The data can then be used to modify the content (learning object) to improve it for the next offering.
OCW allows everyone to see how any particular professor expects to achieve the learning outcomes for a course, to see the design of the course, and to make judgments about both the content (level and extent) of the course and the pedagogical methods used. For the first time, we now have visible demonstrations of how institutions can offer their prospective students (their customers) a clear view of an important part of the product offered for sale—something that campus visits or recruitment literature cannot adequately disclose. Although there is more to a university experience than content and pedagogy, and not all the richness of a pedagogical approach can be displayed in OCW, the trend is clear. In the current environment which explicitly demands accountability and disclosure, it is not a giant leap to predict that some degree of openness as expressed in OCW will quickly make its way into accreditation requirements.
An OER/OCW Web site immediately pays dividends in terms of recognition at the institutional, school, department, center and individual faculty levels. The impressive statistics of the use of MIT OCW clearly enhanced MIT’s already strong image and recognition. But there are more such examples, including the experience of UCI, which was the first campus in the UC system and the first west coast university to join the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC).
The reputation aspects of OCW do not stop at the institutional level. Individual faculty members can also gain very high recognition for their efforts. For instance, Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University has drawn more 11,000,000 views to his video describing Web 2.0 since its launch in December of 2007.
While there are many possible expressions of an institution’s commitment and ability to draw positive effects from openness, the establishment of an institutional open Web site is the most effective way of creating institutional value. UCI’s OCW site features contributions from 66 UCI faculty members,over 50 full open courses, 120 video lectures, 1,000 learning assets and is consistently ranked alongside MIT, Johns Hopkins, and other major institutions within the top ten U.S. OCW Web sites. The existence of an OCW Web site enables the institution to regularly and with little cost provide contributions to the public welfare, attracting positive stories in the news media.
Similar to the MIT experience, UCI is drawing views to its OCW site from around the world.
UC Irvine has a regular protocol for republishing material posted on the UCI OCW site to other open sites including YouTube Edu, iTunes U,Merlot, and Connexions. We also publish course links on Facebook, Twitter, and VideoLectures.net. This multiple site exposure increases search engine visibility,driving up coursetraffic to our site.
Public and media relations can go a long way in the building an institution’s leadership position in open education. Several UCI faculty members have been featured in the mainstream news media for their contributions to OCW. UCI Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Michael Dennin was featured in the New York Times on April 16, 2010 for his award winning “Science of Superheroes” course.
Dr. Michael Dennin, a professor of Physics and Astronomy, authored UCI’s first fully-developed online undergraduate course, “Physics 21: From Superheroes to Global Warming.” In 2009, Dennin contributed the course to the University’s OCW site and received an award for instructional technology innovation at UCI’s 16th Annual Celebration of Teaching. His course, one of the most popular on the site, has received over 3,000 visits. Dennin has a distinct view of OCW, seeing it from the perspective of UCI’s important service role using online education—a perspective gained from his chairmanship of the academic Senate Sub-Committee on courses, his current chairmanship of the Council on Educational Policy, and his involvement in the Office of the President Online Instruction Pilot Program. According to Dennin, “Our participation in OCW visibly illustrates UCI’s leadership in the UC system, fosters a strong partnership between faculty and the academic senate, and continues UCI’s land grant traditions of openness.”
OER and OCW support the ability of the university to serve the public. While this purpose was an underlying impulse of MIT’s pioneering project, the expression of its OCW did not directly address specific public service efforts. But the large mass of material ultimately produced by MIT naturally put pressure on it to adapt the material for deserving audiences. The most ambitious effort is MIT’s Highlights for High School project, an effort to provide a “lens” on the mass of MIT material in science and mathematics that might be useful to high school teachers and students (http://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/).
Another example is UCI’s OER material designed specifically to help California’s K-12 teachers prepare for the state’s examinations in order to teach science and mathematics. Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The Boeing Company, UCI’s effort continues to serve thousands of teachers and receives more visits than any other collection of courses on the UCI OCW site (http://learn.uci.edu/ocw/collections.php). UCI’s CSET courses continue to be the some of the most visited courses on its site with over 30,000 visits. Many teachers attribute their success in passing the CSET exams to our preparatory courses.
Unlike many OCW Web sites that offer only degree courses as OCW, UCI has paid special attention to the targeting of specific, deserving audiences. These audiences are served with courses designed specifically for their needs and designed to be “stand alone” or self-paced learning experiences, without the help of an instructor. Funded by generous grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Boeing Company, UCI developed one of its most critical and highly utilized collections, California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET). This collection provides prospective California teaches with resources to prepare for the rigorous subject matter examinations required to teach science and mathematics in California’s K-12 schools.
Another UCI OCW contributor is Dr. Valerie Jenness, dean of the School of Social Ecology and Professor of Criminology, Law & Society. Dr. Jenness contributed her course, “C219: Hate Crimes” to the OCW site. Jenness’ initial experience with OCW has been positive and she believes that OCW delivers on the promise of public education and effectively brings the power of ideas, education, and training to society. “The value of OpenCourseWare is threefold: it gives permanence to educational materials, it allows the reach of educational efforts to be extended beyond the confines of academic institutions, and it enables a plethora of audiences to benefit from a host of educational moments,” says Jenness.
Every large university has many initiatives that call for dissemination of parts of the knowledge base created and maintained by it. Sometimes the need for dissemination is internal, such as the sharing of learning materials among colleagues even when they are in the same department or located close by. But most universities continually produce material useful to the public. For instance, universities often produce learning objects useful to the K-12 educational segment. Even when they can find funding to produce or publish the material, delivery methods remain cumbersome and expensive. The main issue is not so much OER production as its disposition. An institutionally sponsored OER/OCW Web site is a convenient “default” repository, but one that also automatically serves as a low cost publication and dissemination mechanism. With the establishment of an open Web site there is immediately a place for much of the production of the university.
The emergence of learning communities is being stimulated by OER/OCW. The existence of high-quality learning materials available for free, anyplace, anytime has naturally led people to seek some form of valid learning assessment and certification. But there are several more serious efforts at encouraging this kind of learning. For instance Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is organized to help learners connect with subject experts in a temporary learning community, but the effort is searching for ways to legitimize the learning accomplished. The University of the People hopes to gain accreditation for the learning experiences it organizes around courses purchased by other universities. (Abramson, 2010). OpenLearn, an initiative of the Open University (OU) of the UK “is working toward creating a truly interactive and collaborative learning experience.” OU students can meet up in chat rooms to discuss their lessons and the university is working on what will be the educational equivalent of Facebook to allow users to create profiles, find, and communicate with others studying similar material. (Aujla and Terris, 2009). Some instructors are opening their online courses to the world, joining the open teaching movement and spawning the term “Massive Open Online Course” (MOOC). (Parry, 29 August 2010).
UC Irvine’s OCW features a collection of Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Webinars that serves a large online community of GATE teachers including:Saving GATE: What Parents Can DoTroubleshooting GATE Programming ObstaclesGifted and Talented Instruction on a BudgetUnderstanding IQ Testing and Special Programming for Advanced LearnersBuilding the Parent Teacher ConnectionWhat Differentiation Should Look LikeImplications for Educators of Gifted Minority StudentsClassroom Applications of 21st Century SkillsThis online community of parents and educators has proven to be an invaluable marketing tool for UC Irvine’s Education Programs Unit (part of University Extension) as the unit routinely advertises upcoming GATE courses and webinars to community members. Currently, membership includes nearly 130 parents, teachers, and administrators from around the county and around the world.
Fundraising for higher education has never been more important and will eventually include raising funds to support the teaching mission of the university. OCW has quickly, inexpensively and visibly demonstrated the teaching excellence of an institution’s faculty in highly targeted ways. For instance, an open course featuring a lecture by an eminent faculty member in religious studies might show potential donors what their investment would benefit. Short of taking potential donors into the classroom, few tactics work as well as OCW to feature the educational services at the heart of the university.
Here is a brief list of some actions you can take to gain institutional and faculty support of an OCW Web site.
Here is a screen capture of UCI’s OCW site. Note that it is graphically appealing with clear and intuitive “navigational” features such as the list at the top showing “collections”, courses, etc.
By clicking on “courses,” visitors get a list of all the UCI Schools which serves as a rough index of subjects covered. This allows for the logical involvement of the schools that must support this effort.
When a visitor clicks on a particular course from this list, the viewer is connected to a “landing page” with, again, clear instructions and information including a big green button prompting the user to “Begin Course.”
Virtually any unit on campus, academic or administrative, can benefit from an OCW Web site. Attracting the use of the OCW site by strategically selected allies is an important way to gain institutional recognition of the site. Libraries, teaching/learning technology centers, and information technology operations are among those units most likely to feel threatened by OCW. Showing them how OCW can help them is effective in reducing institutional resistance. Aiding development efforts say, by providing free demonstrations of high quality instruction for potential donors, puts OCW at the heart of any university—generating funding. In addition to serving students and faculty in the teaching and learning process, OCW can serve the individual needs of schools and departments. Among those needs, particularly in research universities, is the desire to disseminate the results of research in a forum designed to aid the effective teaching of the new results. Creating user-friendly means of interacting with the OCW site is necessary to keep OCW maintenance costs down.
The best way to get attention for an OCW site is to make sure it has a lot of interesting and useful material in it. Fortunately, such material is more and more available and usually it is relatively inexpensive to acquire and post. Once posted there are ways to republish institutional OER on public utility sites such as YouTube EDU and iTunes U. Video capture of lectures is relatively inexpensive and a readily available source.
Helping a faculty memberpost material useful for students and for deserving audiences creates the possibility for a valuable demonstration of the value of OCW/OEWR. The faculty member can then become an advocate and others can see the results easily. Doing the same kind of demonstration of something useful to a deserving external audience is also highly valuable.
While it may take some work, getting the press and the media to feature a story on how the University is helping the community by providing a valuable free service is a natural and continuing story that should be pushed.
To download this presentation, please visit: http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/ocwc-global-2011