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Value Of OER_ VSS_09
- 1. The Value of Open Educational Resources (OER): Practical Applications and Opportunities Terri Rowenhorst NROC Membership Services Monterey Institute for Technology and Education iNACOL’s Virtual School Symposium November 16, 2009
- 2. Teaching, learning and research resources, In the public domain or, Released under a license that permits free use or re-purposing by others. For examples, see Creative Commons.org What are OERs? OERs include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, Streaming videos, audio, text, software, tools, or techniques Used to support access to knowledge .
- 4. Growth and Partnerships OER Coalition
- 5. ARRA 2009
- 6. Federal Stimulus and OER
- 7. Common Core
- 8. So, if OER is GOOD , and its FREE , Living Up to the Promise why isn’t everyone using it?
- 11. HippoCampus.org: Free for Individuals
- 13. Curricular Complete teaching materials Correlated with popular textbooks & state standards
- 14. Flexible Customizable by a teacher, a department, or a system Can be used within popular CMS’s and repositories
- 19. 2009 Network Members 2009-2010 Advisors Academy School District 20 Online (CO) Alabama ACCESS (DOE) Albuquerque Public Schools (NM) Anaheim Union High School District (CA) Arizona Department of Education Bambugare Network (Sub-Saharan Africa) Bethel Covenant College (Uganda) California State University at Fullerton Center to Bridge the Digital Divide (Rwanda) Chattanooga State Technical & Comm. College (TN) CORE (China) Clark County School District (NV) Colorado Community Colleges Online Colorado Online Learning CUDI (Mexico) Florida Distance Learning Consortium Georgia Virtual School (DOE) Global Literacy Foundation (AZ) Greenville County Virtual School (SC) Grossmont Union High School (CA) Gwinnett County Online Campus (GA) Kentucky Statewide Consortium (P-20) ( a joint effort of the KY Department of Education, KY Council of Post-Secondary Education & the KY Community & Technical College System ) Hudson Schools of Technology (NJ) Idaho Digital Learning Academy IDEAL-New Mexico Illinois Virtual School (DOE) Indian Prairie School District #204 (IL) Iowa Community Colleges Online Consortium Los Angeles Unified School District Louisiana Virtual School Lubbock Independent School District Online (TX) Maryland State Department of Education Michigan Virtual High School Mid-Hudson Regional BOCES Consortium (NY) Minnesota Learning Commons (P-20) ( a joint effort of MN State Colleges and Universities and the University of Minnesota serving P-20 learners across the state) Minneapolis Public Schools Online Mississippi Virtual School (DOE) Missouri Dept. of Elem. and Secondary Education Montana State University at Billings Myron B. Thompson Academy (HI) Niles Township High School District (IL) Nebraska: Partnerships for Innovation (P-20) North Carolina Community College System North Dakota Center for Distance Education Northwest Area Education Agency (IA) Oregon Department of Education Portland State University San Jose Education Foundation (CA) San Luis Obispo County Board of Education (CA) School District of the Chathams (NJ) Sierra Vista High School (CA) South Carolina Virtual School (DOE) Tulare County Office of Education (CA) University of California, Irvine University of Georgia System Board of Regents Utah Electronic High School University of Texas at Brownsville UT System TeleCampus Valley Christian School (CA) Virtual Virginia (DOE) West Virginia University-Parkersburg West Virginia DOE Whitfield County School District (GA) Partner Advisors: Council of Chief State Supervisors and Officers Southern Regional Education Board
- 21. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: To offer robust online resources to support academic continuity initiatives. “ The (NROC courses) were a unique find. The quality is extraordinary, the flexibility is exceptional, and the feedback we’re getting from our teachers is the content is amazing.” Steve Nelson Chief Information Technology Strategist, Oregon DOE
- 22. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: Replacing Costly Textbooks On teaching US History without a textbook “ . . . we turned to NROC. I left my discussion questions, midterms, and finals the same as they were when we used the textbook, so I could compare outcomes. I was happy to find that my students are right on track with the digital alternative.“ Karen Kaemmerling Chair of Social Sciences, CCCOnline
- 23. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: To customize and adapt rigorous content for credit recovery “ T he use of NROC content has opened our thinking to Open Education Resources and their application in the K-12 environment. Adoption of adaptable, rigorous, multi-modal resources for teachers that align with district standards is vital to student learning.” Mary Schlegelmilch, eLearning Supervisor, OPS
- 24. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: To secure high quality Advanced Placement © content and learning objects to enhance AP course offerings for Michigan students. The quality and flexibility of the NROC content has assisted MVS instructors and course designers in creating numerous AP courses. Robert Currie, Executive Director, Michigan Virtual School
- 25. NROC Network Case Studies “ NROC has provided us the opportunity to support students, teachers, and community members across the state in a cost-effective way. MVLO has benefitted by being able to offer high-quality resources at a fraction of the cost it would take to develop from scratch.” Bob Cole Maryland Virtual Learning Opportunities, MSDE Opportunity: All students and educators in Maryland public schools have the opportunity and ability to enhance the educational experience through access to high quality online courses and instructional support.
- 26. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: Seeding a statewide repository to promote content sharing and save development costs "Starting a statewide digital repository is a challenge. At the core of the project, the repository must offer sufficient rich multimedia and high quality resources to attract and motivate faculty to use repository content. In Florida, we are licensing the high quality NROC content library to form that essential content core." Susie Henderson, Director, Orange Grove
- 27. NROC Network Case Studies Opportunity: Bridging the gap between High School and College to support student success. “ Perkins IV launched new thinking about how Nebraska could build statewide systems to accomplish program improvement and increase student achievement. Our consortium provides an opportunity to reduce the burden on local institutions by offering resources like NROC for every student and teacher in the state. NROC provides the opportunity for integration of career and academic education in every classroom and learning delivery system.” Erika Volker, Administrative Director, Nebraska PFI
- 29. Terri Rowenhorst NROC Membership Director [email_address] 719-783-0804 OER site: Free for individuals! www.hippocampus.org For more information about membership: www.montereyinstitute.org/nrocnetwork Questions?
Editor's Notes
- First some background about OER: The term “Open Educational Resources” was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the “Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries.” Major funding for support of OER has come from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
- One of the OER projects with which you may be familiar is Creative Commons or MIT’s Open Courseware initiative. OCW know in over 120 countries. All 1800 MIT courses now online – surprising recruiting impactof posting these materials publicly. You may, in fact, know of many others under different names: Merlot- a long-valued “referatory” (they don’t host the content directly, and about 15% of the resources are vetted by academic panels) Wisc-Online- an outstanding resource for CC’s with over 2000 learning objects that are hosted locally and may be downloaded for a modest fee to be adapted to local needs Connexiones project from Rice also include tools to build LO’s. Most popular object is “how to grill a steak”. ---though also working to publish open textbooks and to serve broader academic interests. OER Commons and CreativeCommons.org offer links to many other OER sites.
- A Coalition of OER partners has been working in Washington to support the acceleration of the creation of OER to be available across the nation as a means of making powerful multimedia resources more broadly available to serve teachers and students across the nation.
- The spending guidelines in ARRA do include OER as an approved expenditure for educational institutions.
- President Obamas proposed legislation to support community college efforts includes a recommendation for $500M in spending on OER over the next 10 years. The efficiencies of sharable, adaptable, curricular resources are in line with the presidents goals to make education more accessible to citizens everywhere.
- The idea of OER available to support a recommended Common Core is powerful for individual students and teachers and for instituttions.
- So, this begs the question, “If OER is so good, and its free, why isn’t everyone using it?” For those in the audience that know about OER and don’t use it, why not? Hard to use Uneven quality Not curricular Time-consuming to search Can’t adapt the content easily
- We have tried to address many of these concerns with the NROC project. Curricular content- many general education subjects Complete course content- including presentational material, assessments, teacher’s guides, problem sets, etc. Customizable- learning object architecture allows customization Correlated- to popular textbooks and state standards Teaching tool- not just stuff, intended to achieve defined educational outcomes
- NROC is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, a 501c3 in California , has been funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation since 2004 for a unique approach to OER that addresses many of these concerns. The first goal of NROC was to assemble a library of high-quality general education content for high school and college gathered from educational institution sacross the US. We then invest in the content to insure editorial rigor and curricular completeness. We also invest in the technology to allow the content to operate with the various LMS so it may be readily adapted to meet local needs. Our mission is to make the content available at no cost to individuals worldwide; students, teachers, and the general public, but we also have a membership community to sustain the project over time.
- As I mentioned, HippoCampus is free for individual use. Let’s take a look at the content at HippoCampus. Hippo is NOT just for teachers in these discipline areas! (Search feature) Bookmark assignments to Speech or English . . . Demo of Public Site: Subjects, Courses, Topics, Course context, Textbook correlation, text view, launch and play object, social book marking, feedback Demo of Customization of Public Site: Delete subjects, courses, textbooks, use announcements area for assignment (interdisciplinary example, i.e. English/Speech, Education, EdTech), Highlighted bookmarks/labels.
- Media rich- video, audio, text, graphics, animation, simulation all blended together to create a learning experience Editorial rigorous- editorial oversight by NROC and SME’s from around the country Instructionally sound- designed with widely accepted instructional design principles
- We have focused on making learning objects available in a way that allows instructors and students to readily find relevant content. Learning objects are mapped to familiar curricular frameworks like textbooks or state standards… and presented within the context of a course viewable at HippoCampus.
- NROC institutional members have even more flexibility in their use and distribution of the content. Additional benefits of membership include: additional course resources, mp3 and mp4 versions of some of the media, support, extended rights of use of the materials.
- Most of the content in the library to date has been donated by academic institutions who invested heavily in the production of media rich online courses. The library was launched with a body of AP content with investment levels well exceeding six figures per semester. The idea was to identify content beyond the production and resource capabilities of most institutions or individual instructors charged with building courses. The library has grown by about one course a semester over the past five years. We now have 38 course foundations in 9 discipline areas – over 3000 multimedia learning objects. We have one model of collaborative course development in Non-majors biology…and growth is trending toward foundation-supported development, with potential for federal funding as well.
- New precedent – foundation funding for new courses that can be developed professionally to be shared broadly. As part of our shared mission to make education more readily available to all, the idea of making robust math materials freely available to everyone on the Internet has potential for easing the transition for many adults, returning students and hs students who struggle with Mathematics admission requirements. These are the kinds of challenges the concept of OER was meant to address.
- An ongoing challenge for OERs is the question of ongoing sustainability. Since OER is free for individuals, who is paying for it? Grants from Hewlett and other foundations have supported the launch of OER so far, but it won’t go on forever. Hewlett has stated that financial sustainability is the biggest challenge to OER. NROC is the first OER project to be designed with a sustainability model through our institutional memberships.
- While NROC content is free for individuals at HippoCampus, we ask institutions that use NROC to become supporting members of the NROC Network for a nominal annual fee. As members, institutions have the rights to adapt NROC content to meet institutional needs - to integrate into shared curriculum, or into institutionally-hosted software applications. (LMS/respository) The NROC Network community is committed to continuous improvement of online content through collaborative efforts.
- Network membership continues to grow with a number of institutional memberships expanding to serve broader agencies and entire states (KY, NE, MN). Some (NE, MD) moving from a centrally-hosted model to a model allowing hosting across the constituency. We continue to move closer to reach the target of 100 premium memberships that will lead the project to operational sustainability.
- Members have broader distribution and adaptation rights. Primarily, members are using the content to support curricular initaitiives, to address specific challenges and to take advantage of new opportunities afforded by the use of online technologies.
- Oregon’s Department of Education was looking for a way to centrally deliver robust online content to teachers and students across the state. They set up a Moodle repository and incorporated the NROC objects and courses. In response to an emegent need, ODE recently created a special resource site, incorporationg HippoCampus ,as a tool for academic continuity initiatives across the state.
- Reducing curriculum budgets…high-quality, adaptable, Open Content to replace expensive textbooks…
- OPS was looking to revamp its credit recovery program as a blended learning opportunity for students. They have been working to create new activities around the NROC media content they are hosting in their ANGEL CMS to support credit recovery students. In addition, they have rolled out HippoCampus to classroom teachers throughout the district to support instruction of more than 20,000 students.
- Jumpstarting AP curriculum….
- MVLO serves districts across the state with: Access to high-quality online courses Use of online resources to prepare for end-of-course exams Support for professional development efforts
- A central repository offers a means for organizations to share resources and adaptations of those resources with the teaching community across a region…
- Consortia are maximiziing the use of Federal funds to support state-wide efforts like this one in NE…
- While we need new members to NROC Network to achieve our goal of becoming financially self-sustaining, our main mission with this project is to get NROC in the hands of students and teachers. So even if your school is not ready to join, you can still help by speading the word. Commit to sharing with at least one other person (take two postcards). Get it into the hands of LEARNERS (students AND teachers AND the public)
- Here are the links to share the content and access for more information. Thanks!