The lecture at China Open University discusses the increasing demand for education and the role of distance and online education (ODL) in addressing global challenges. It highlights the potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) and technology to enhance flexible, high-quality learning opportunities. The document emphasizes the need for educational institutions to adapt to online learning trends to meet future educational demands and challenges.

1. Opportunities from a more open and
online world
Lecture at China Open University, Beijing
21 February 2012
Gard Titlestad
Secretary General
ICDE

2. Outline
• Introduction
• Global context
• Trends in education
• OER
• Trends in ODL/Online learning
• Convergence
• What is on the ICDE radar?

3. Need for education
- Education For All
• Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO
“Higher education: In less than 40 years,
enrolments have increased fivefold. Globally it
is estimated that demand will expand from
less than 100 million students in 2000 to over
250 million students in 2025.”
Distance and online education can help

4. ”People with
university degrees
have suffered far
fewer job losses
during the global
economic crisis
than those who left
school without
qualifications.”
”Good education and skills are crucial to improving a person’s
economic and social prospects.” OECD 2011

5. Example – global
challenges
Sustainable development and
climate change
Clean Water
Population and resources
Energy
Green growth
Organized crime
Democratization
Global ethics
Rich – poor gap
Health
Peace and conflict
Status of women
IT – global convergence

6. Universities
Universities are increasingly faced with societal
challenges of national, regional and global
nature: Grand challenges
• Universities deliver through their three
funcitons:
– Education
– Research
– Innovation

7. The Knowledge Triangle
need to be strengthened to:
meet with global challenges
promote economic growth, green growht
deliver high quality knowledge supply
Universities
Universities in the center of the knowledge triangel

8. Mobilising the workforce:
Mobication
or Flexication
Education
Welfare Work
An opportunity for flexible and online learning!

9. High Quality education
OECD:International Student Assessment
The Programme for
PISA
(PISA ) is an internationally standardised assessment
15-year-olds in schools.
PISA assesses how far students near the end of compulsory
education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills
that are essential for full participation in society.
In all cycles, the domains of reading, mathematical and
scientific literacy are covered not merely in terms of
mastery of the school curriculum, but in terms of
important knowledge and skills needed in adult life.

10. PISA and China
What do we know?
http://www.oecd.org/document/7/0,3746,en_2649_35845621_49428807_1_1_1_1,00.htm

11. PISA – Top 12
Reading, Math and Sciences

12. PISA – Top 12
Reading, Math and Sciences

13. School failure
• Reducing school failure pays off for both
society and individuals. More education
attainment provides better labour market
prospects and contributes to economic
growth and social progress. The highest
performing education systems across OECD
countries are those that combine high quality
and equity.
Overcoming School Failure: Policies that Work
February 2012

14. One of five don´t complete
”Drop outs”
Or ”Push outs” (Hal Plotkin)
Distance and online education can help

15. ”Never Waste a Crisis”
The financial constraints
facing the European
countries should also be
seen as a major
opportunity for ODL.
Morten Flate Paulsen,
President, European Distance
and e-Learning Network.

16. The traditional educational
system is challenged
”many speakers referred worryingly to the
growth of online and for-profit providers—
suggests a growing concern at even the
most elite institutions that the classroom
experience is not all it could be”
Harvard Conference Seeks to Jolt University Teaching, February 2012

17. Traditional lecture:
10% retention after 15 minutes?
Comparison of Learning Results from Traditionally Taught
Courses and Courses Using Research-Based Pedagogy
A Scientific Approach To Science Education - Technology And Institutional Change, By Carl Wieman

18. OER
In its simplest form, the concept of Open
Educational Resources (OER) describes any
educational resources (including curriculum
maps, course materials, textbooks, streaming
videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, and
any other materials that have been designed for
use in teaching and learning) that are openly
available for use by educators and students,
without an accompanying need to pay royalties
or licence fees.
www.ocwconsortium.org/

19. Educational potential
• Increased availability of high quality, relevant learning materials can
contribute to more productive students and educators.
• The principle of allowing adaptation of materials provides one mechanism
amongst many for constructing roles for students as active participants in
educational processes, who learn best by doing and creating, not by
passively reading and absorbing.
• OER has potential to build capacity by providing institutions and
educators access, at low or no cost, to the means of production to develop
their competence in producing educational materials and carrying out the
necessary instructional design to integrate such materials into high quality
programmes of learning.
“A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources”, (Butcher, Kanwar and Uvalic´-Trumbic´)

20. OER can fuel the
Knowledge Triangle
High quality education Open Access
Research based education Research based OER
Resource based education Research based teaching
OER
Innovation in education
Innovate the learning system and institutions
Knowledge supply for innovation

21. 2012 World OER Congress
20 – 22 June, Paris, France
Should all education resources funded
with public money be OERs?

22. Case: Open Educational
Practice

23. The OEP Guideline
• Step 1: Positioning your Organization in the
OEP Map
• Step 2: Creating a Vision of Openness and a
Strategy for OEP in an Organization
• Step 3: Implementing and Promoting OEP

24. Websites
• A Basic Guide to Open Educational
Resources (OER)
• http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide
• Guidelines for Open Educational Resources
(OER) in Higher Education
• http://www.col.org/oerGuidelines
• http://www.oer-quality.org/

25. Technology as
facilitator
The rapid development of
information and
communication technology
(ICT) offers tremendous
educational opportunities to
provide new innovative,
accessible and more affordable
ways of learning.
Mansoor Al Awar,
Chairman, Middle East e-
Learning Association.

28. WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND
POPULATION STATISTICS
December 31, 2011
Internet World Stats

29. BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- China had
513 million Internet users by the end
of 2011, showing that 38.3 percent of
Chinese people used the Internet, the
country's network information center
said Monday
Since 2006, the proportion of Internet
users to the country's total population
rose by an average of around 6
percentage points annually..

30. "Going the Distance:
Online Education in the United
States, 2011"
• Almost one-third of
enrolments in HE in the
autumn of 2010 in the
USA were online
enrolments, with more
than 30% of the
students taking at least
one course online.
Allen, E. I., Seaman, J. - Sloan Consortium, 2011

31. ”Higher education, is vulnerable
to disruption.”
Clayton M. Christensen, professor of
business administration at the
Harvard Business School.

32. Mobile technologies
– students become driving forces
Field studies 18 February 2012 - Beijing

33. Will elite institutions have to
change or lose in competition
with Online start-ups?
Case: Stanford Professor Gives Up Teaching Position, Hopes to
Reach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up
”We believe university-level education can be both high quality
and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we've
connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of
thousands of students all over the world.”
http://www.udacity.com/
Professor David Evans and
Professor Sebastian Thrun

34. Certificates for free online courses –
what impact could that have for HEI?
Case: MIT granting certificates for free online courses.
• Participants will watch five- to 10-minute
video tutorials, read an e-textbook, and
complete homework assignments, virtual
laboratories and two exams. At the end of the
course, they will receive a cumulative grade
and a certificate from MITx.
• http://mitx.mit.edu/
MITx MIT’s new online learning initiative

35. Convergence
Convergence (logic), the notion that a sequence of transformations come to the
same conclusion, no matter what order they are performed in. (Wikipedia)
Conventional, face-to-face universities are increasingly
moving into the delivery of online learning programs.
Many conventional universities have been unable to
adopt or adapt the strategies developed by distance
teaching organizations fast enough to ensure increased
access, quality, and sustainability through the use of
teaching technology.
International Council for Open and Distance Education, Global
Trends in Higher Education, Adult and Distance Learning (2009).

36. Convergence
“The University of
California has launched an
online programme as a
part of its goal to become
the first top-rated
American institution to
award an online
bachelor’s degree.” 2011

37. Convergence
“The Task Force has concluded that online
learning – however blended with on- or off-
campus interactions, whether delivered in the
UK or overseas – provides real opportunity
for UK institutions to develop responsive,
engaging and interactive provision which, if
offered at scale, can deliver quality and cost-
effectiveness and meet student demands for
flexible learning.”
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Collaborate to
compete, Seizing the opportunity of online learning for UK higher education, 2011

38. Convergence
• Distance Learning in British Universities – is it
possible?
– Conventional campus-based universities struggle
to build and/ or expand sustainable distance
learning provision.
– The problem rests in an institutional lack of
understanding about distance learning pedagogy
and/ or a lack of capability to make the necessary
institutional changes required to ensure that
distance learning works
Helen Lentell, University of Leicester, 2012

39. Rapid growth in online
education leads to concern
• «To help Education Why GAO Did This Study
strengthen its oversight of
distance education, the
”Distance education—that is, offering
Secretary of Education courses by the Internet, video, or other
should direct FSA to forms outside the classroom— has been
develop a plan on how best a growing force in postsecondary
to use the new IPEDS education and there are questions about
distance education data and quality and adequate oversight”
provide input to NCES on
future IPEDS survey work Research objectives:
with regard to distance
(3) how the quality of distance education
education»
is being assessed,
and (4) how Education monitors distance
• HIGHER EDUCATION: Use of New Data Could Help education in its stewardship of federal
Improve Oversight of Distance Education. Report to
Congressional Requesters. 17 November 2011. GAO-12- student aid funds.
39 United States Government Accountability Office

40. The Future
• College presidents predict substantial growth in
online learning: 15% say most of their current
undergraduate students have taken a class online,
and 50% predict that 10 years from now most of
their students will take classes online.
• Nearly two-thirds of college presidents (62%)
anticipate that 10 years from now, more than half of
the textbooks used by their undergraduate students
will be entirely digital.
• The Digital Revolution and Higher Education. 2011. By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart and
Kathleen Moore

41. Teachers
and teachers education
• Teachers – a key target group for attention
• The need for teachers
• The teaching challenge in a more open and online
world
• Teachers and studentoriented teaching
• The need for continued education in new
methodologies
• Teachers and research based education
• Policies and strategies to support teachers meeting
tomorrows opportunities and challenges
• Teachers as the benchmark for quality education

42. What is on the radar
for ICDE?
 Studying the regulatory frameworks of open & distance education
 Promoting OER in partnership with UNESCO
 Developing quality standards for ODL
 Digital divide
 Revising & improving quality review service for member institutions
 Promoting ODL - a global day of ODL in 2013?
 Enhancing the role of ODL in teacher education and training
 Monitoring trends in ODL and OER - statistics on ODL.
 Strengthening research on ODL – have an overview.
ICDE will develop a new strategy for 2013 – 2016 and determine key priorities and
activities – including a possibility to convene a policy event, a meeting place for
ministers and policy makers, to discuss current trends in ODL, opportunities and
challenges in a more open and online world and the need for policies, strategies
and leadership.
Next milestone: The Standing Conference Of Presidents (SCOP) in Dubai, 12 – 15 November
2012, hosted by HBMeU

43. ICDE 25 World Conference
Tianjin, China
16th to 18th October 2013
Host: Tianjin Open University

44. Opportunities
from a more
open and online
world – in the
early dawn

45. Thank You!
titlestad@icde.org
www.icde.org