This document summarizes lessons learned from developing an Open Course Library (OCL) in Washington state. The OCL aims to provide free open educational resources for 81 high-enrollment college courses to improve access and lower costs. In Phase 1, faculty expressed concerns about using different websites and learning management systems. In Phase 2, collaboration improved by using Google Docs in one shared website. Overall, open resources can help more students learn better by increasing access to customizable, scalable materials. Challenges remain in tracking adoption, addressing copyright issues, and developing versioning and publishing tools to support open content.

1. Going Open - Lessons Learned from the Open Course Library NW eLearn2011 – Vancouver, WA October 13, 2011 Tom Caswell & Scott Dennis WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

2. Open? “Open” Terminology: Open = free/flexible/sharable Open License = sharable license (example: Creative Commons’ most open license: CC-BY) Open CourseWare (OCW) = sharable course materials Open Educational Resources (OER) = sharable learning materials (broader than OCW)

3. Making the Case for “Open” Why is “Open” Important in Education? Efficiency & Affordability Quality Self-interest Collaborative Serendipity

4. Making the Case for “Open” What is this madness?? (How do we do open?)

6. What is Creative Commons? A simple, standardizedway to grant copyright permissions to your creative work.

7. Share Alike Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works Step 1: Choose License Conditions http://creativecommons.org/choose 7

8. Step 2: Receive License 8

9. Each CC license comes in 3 formats:

10. 500 million open resources so far

11. Higher Ed

12. Open Course Library Goals Design and share 81 high enrollment, gatekeeper courses Improve course completion rates Lower textbook costs for students (<$30) Provide new resources for faculty to use in their courses Fully engage our colleges in the global open educational resources discussion.

13. Timeline Phase 1: 42 courses Available October 31, 2011 at http://opencourselibrary.org Phase 2 : 39 courses Available Spring 2013

14. Design Process 81 courses built by our own faculty Define learning objectives Use existing, quality Open Educational Resources (OER) Fill in gaps with their own content

15. More? Better? Faster? How does OER help teach more students and teach them better? Non-rivalrous, scalable, searchable Allows students to preview and review Paves the way for lifelong learning Can be customized, translated, improved Data feedback loops are useless without the ability to change the content

16. Potential Savings 81 courses = 411,133 enrollments / year Textbook savings up to $41M+ in / year At 25% adoption (faculty decision), savings to students will be $7.2M / year. Completions rates may also increase when all students can afford course materials

17. Lessons Learned

18. Lessons Learned Phase 1 Faculty Concerns: Many were unfamiliar with ANGEL LMS No way to compare work between course teams Too many websites to keep track of Phase 2 Adjustments: Using Google Docs to collaborate & share as we go All project information in one Google Site

19. Why Google Docs? Pros: Collaborative, consistent, simple tool Similar to Microsoft Word Broader adoption base – not limited to specific LMS communities (LMS-neutral) Allows for easier viewing, sharing, saving copies Cons: No automated quizzed & assessments Designers can link to other tools or type up questions LMS adopters : move OCL resources into LMS

20. Other Challenges Measuring adoptions How to count adoptions in the open Institutional concerns over copyright Is the YouTube “take down” policy adequate? Technical challenges with current technology Need better support for versioning content Need “push-button” open publishing feature

21. Tom Caswell Scott Dennis State Board for Community & Technical Colleges http://opencourselibrary.org Slides at: http://slideshare.net/tom4cam