OpenEd 2009 OER Organization Stakeholders

Striving for Sustaining Values
Open Education Resource Organization Stakeholders
Curt Madison, PhD
Director of eLearning Program Development
School of Management
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Open Ed 2009
Vancouver, Canada

Three Organization Types
Traditional University creating OER
Traditional University importing OER
Research Entity creating OER

By allowing citizens to “see through” its workings and investigate whether or not their leaders and organizations have met their expectations, the government brings the public into its inner circles and empowers citizens to contribute to decision-making

Exporting OER
Outreach to community with transparency
Decrease time-to-degree with transparency
Higher retention rates with OER success
Increased learning through pre/post-exposure to OER
Automatic faculty alignment of sequences
Increased publication by faculty members

Outreach through transparency
Native Ways of Knowing
Recovery.gov
UCosmic

Openness vs Competition
There are real opportunities to distribute quality content...But this makes more sense for established institutions with robust brands such as Oxford or, in the US, MIT, than it might for other less established or high-profile institutions. For those with exceptional reputations, it is not the access to the material that attracts students so much as the signal of being accepted and included in its formal provision.

Openness vs Competition 2
But where the material is more of a direct means to education, there will be greater need to offer a high standard of content and provide it in forms useful to the institution’s own students and to others.
Peter Bradwell. 2009. the edgeless university: why higher education must embrace technology. Demos

Time to Degree
Excess Student Credit Hours

Most students attending the state’s public universities graduate with credit hours in excess of graduation requirements, which increases state higher education costs.
The 780,769 excess hours of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in FY 2004-05 cost the state $62 million.
Twenty percent of the students accounted for over one-half (58%) of all credit hours over the minimum graduation requirements.
Florida House of Representatives
PCB SPCP 09-02

Days to a Bachelor’s Degree

Higher Retention Rates
Drop out due to:
Lack of relevance
Lack of Preparation in Math

Increased Depth of Learning

Preview OCW prior to enrollment
Review of material in a sequenced course

Automatic Course Alignment
Mitigate natural divergence
Promote transparency among faculty

Reputation Builder
“Publish” a course with peer review
Engage public dialog around nascent ideas

Desirable OER Import Features
Easily Allow Localization - Derive
Aggregate Reading Lists
Link Design Choices to Outcomes

Research creating OER
Outreach PR with Structured Access
Satisfy NSF grant requirements
Public Institution mandate to engage k-12
Disambiguate professional jargon

National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs
http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=OPP

What Doesn’t Work
Selling OER as a franchise revenue stream
Satisfying noblesse oblige

Philanthropy
While St. Petersburg College has, in a limited fashion, made contributions in the realm of open courseware... Fiscal needs and concerns are the driving forces behind many administrative policies and decisions; the economic reality is that our institution cannot easily afford to give freely of its resources without some financial compensation in return.
J. J. Rutledge. UNESCO Forum: Impact of Open Courseware
for Higher Education in Developing Countries Preliminary Report.
St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, FL

Visual Thesaurus
“Noblesse Oblige”