Presentation given by Excelsior College's Mika Hoffman in Berlin, Germany at ATP Europe 2012. The presentation focused on Excelsior's experience with matching open educational resources with established Excelsior College Examinations (ECEs).

1. Matching Assessments to
Open Educational Resources
Mika Hoffman, Excelsior College

2. Open Educational Resources

3. Types of OER
o Lecture notes Physics lecture
o Videos of classroom lectures
o Lessons designed for OER
o Courses
OpenStudy
o Discussion groups
Khan Academy
Open University

4. OER = Free education?
o Funding sources
• Foundations
• Support from universities where OER is produced
o Funding pays for
• Compensation for professors/course designers
• Costs of producing materials
• Software design and maintenance
• Monitoring of student communications
o Funding efficiency
• OER can reach large numbers of people
woldwide

5. What is OER’s value?
o Learning
o Certificates
But…
o OER by itself does not typically
award formal educational credit
Why not?

6. Academic credit
o What is credit?
• Assurance that someone knows
something
• The something must be appropriate for
the particular academic program
o To provide that assurance, both the
someone and the something must be
verified
6

7. OER and assessment
“What you know is more important
than how or where you learned it.”
Credit should be based on
knowledge, not attendance
7

8. Validity
• Interpretation and use of results/credit is
supported by (good) arguments
• Part of making the argument is identifying
threats to validity and countering the threats
8

9. Aspects of validity for OER
assessments
• Identity verification
• Assessment quality
• Appropriateness of knowledge tested
for a particular degree program
• Scalability
9

10. Identity verification
Ryan Ruppe
Jeffery Turner
Steve Winton
10

11. Threats to validity
o Did the person actually go
through the course?
o Did the person do his/her own
work?
o Is the person who took the
course the same person
presenting the credential?
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12. Assessment quality
A good assessment
• Measures knowledge of the subject
• Does not measure irrelevant
characteristics
• Gives a person the same score
regardless of which form is taken
• Gives people of the same ability
the same score
12

13. Appropriateness of content
o Match of assessment to OER
• How close are the assessment
specifications to the learning
objectives of the OER material?
o Match of assessment to credit-
granting body
• How close are the assessment
specifications/learning objectives to
what is taught at the institution where
credit is sought?
13

14. Scalability - Generalizability
Less generalizable
o Course final exams and
homework
o Third-party assessments
designed for a specific course
o Competency assessments
More generalizable

15. Scalability – Large groups
Less scalable
o Individual assessments
• Portfolios
• Research papers
• Oral examinations
o Human-scored group assessments
• Short answer questions
• Essay questions
o Machine-scored assessments
• Multiple-choice exams
More scalable • Machine-scored constructed response
exams

17. Efficient assessment
o Machine-scored competency
exams can handle large numbers
of examinees and be used for
multiple OER sources

18. Assessment and credit
o Even with a valid assessment, the
credit decision is up to the
institution where the student wants
credit.
o Europe has mechanisms in place to
help standardize
• Bologna Process
• European Credit Transfer System
• European Higher Education Area

19. A model for low-cost
education
OER University

20. Thank You!
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