Open education aims to remove barriers to learning through open courses, open educational resources, and open pedagogies. Open courses like MOOCs had over 230,000 courses in 2012 enrolling over 25,000 students on average, though only 15% completed courses. Open educational resources are learning materials that can be modified and shared under open licenses. Benefits of open education include helping democratize and lifelong learning, allowing students to explore new industries, and providing flexibility for instructors.
2. “Education is the passport to the
future, for tomorrow belongs to those
who prepare for it today.” ~Malcolm X
3. What is Open Education?
Open learning is an umbrella term for any scheme of
education or training that seeks systematically to
remove barriers to learning, whether they are
concerned with age, time, place, or space.
PART ONE
5. Open Courses
Open courses are what most people typically think about when they
hear “open learning”—particularly massive open online courses
(MOOCs).
PART TWO
7. MOOC DERIVATIVES
Micromasters
Online graduate-level courses
centered around a particular field
of study that can be applied
toward a full master’s degree
program
Teach-Outs
Short learning experiences
focused on a specific current
issue
Nanodegrees
A nanodegree is a course of
study which can be
completed in less than
twelve months
8. Open Educational
Resources (OER)
Open educational resources (OERs) are learning materials that can
be modified and enhanced because their creators have given others
permission to do so.
PART THREE
9. The CARE Framework for OER Stewardship
The CARE Framework for OER Stewardship
OER QUALITY
Dr. Gail Matthews-DeNatale, lecturer for Northeastern's Master of Education in Higher Education Administration program and associate director at the Center for Advanced Teaching and Learning Through Research, breaks open learning down into three dimensions:
Open courses
Open educational resources
Open pedagogies
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available for anyone to enroll. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance your career and deliver quality educational experiences at scale.
Early MOOCs often emphasized open-access features, such as open licensing of content, structure and learning goals, to promote the reuse and remixing of resources. Some later MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials while maintaining free access for students.
Micromasters: edX
Teach-outs: University of Michigan
Nanodegree: udacity
Open educational resources (OER) also enable students to tap into and explore a field of study in a more approachable, cost-effective way.
The individuals or organizations that create OERs—which can include materials like presentation slides, podcasts, syllabi, images, lesson plans, lecture videos, maps, worksheets, and even entire textbooks—waive some (if not all) of the copyright associated with their works, typically via legal tools like Creative Commons licenses, so others can freely access, reuse, translate, and modify them.
To ensure OERs are of high quality, guides such as the CARE Framework and TEMOA Rubric have been created to help educators benchmark and evaluate the quality of open resources.
Contribute: OER stewards actively contribute to efforts, whether financially or via in-kind contributions, to advance the awareness, improvement, and distribution of OER; and
Attribute: OER stewards practice conspicuous attribution, ensuring that all who create or remix OER are properly and clearly credited for their contributions; and
Release: OER stewards ensure OER can be released and used beyond the course and platform in which it was created or delivered; and
Empower: OER stewards are inclusive and strive to meet the diverse needs of all learners, including by supporting the participation of new and non-traditional voices in OER creation and adoption.
Khan Academy
Offers online practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. It covers math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more.
OpenStax CNX
A dynamic non-profit digital ecosystem serving millions of users per month in the delivery of
educational content to improve learning outcomes.
Open Textbook Library
A curated and peer-reviewed collection of open textbooks that have been adopted at multiple institutions of higher education.
MIT OpenCourseWare 89 (OCW)
OCW makes the materials used in the teaching of MIT’s subjects freely available on the Web.
Dr. Gail Matthews-DeNatale describes this as “engaging students in real work that they can share beyond the boundaries of the classroom.”
David Wiley, a thought leader in open learning, suggests faculty transition from “disposable assignments,” which students throw away upon receiving a grade, to “renewable assignments,” which challenge students to create materials that can be shared with the public.
Open learning is helping democratize education, by making it more affordable, accessible, and attainable to students, no matter their location or income level.
Helps students explore new industries before investing in an often costly, more formal education.
It also offers flexibility for instructors to draw from multiple resources to support course learning without requiring students to spend money on multiple books, infinite opportunities for collaboration among OER developers, and web-based resources can be “living textbooks” that are constantly updated with new information and technology developments.
Inconsistent quality control
Inconsistent availability across disciplines and/or across specific content areas within disciplines.
Reliance on web-based resources presents potential problems with unequal access for students who do not have broadband internet connections.
Uncertainty in ongoing maintenance of web-based resources. What happens when the person who created the resource has moved on to other interests and the resource becomes obsolete?