Open Education for Non Profits - Defining Open
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This document discusses open online education for non-profits. It unpacks key terms like open, online, and education. It also explores examples of open online education and addresses concerns around funding. The document invites the reader to join further discussion on Google+.
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Open Education for Non Profits - Defining Open
- 1. Open Online Education for Non-Profits Jenni Hayman, executive director Wide World Ed
- 3. Open
- 4. Online
- 5. Education
- 6. Exploring Examples Flickr Creative Commons By ©CJS*64
- 7. Concerns
- 8. Funding
- 9. Discussion & Questions Join us for more discussion in Google+ Open Online Education for Non-Profits
- 10. Discussion & Questions Join us for more discussion in Google+ Open Online Education for Non-Profits
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to the first of two webinars on the topic of open online education for non-profits. I’ll introduce myself and allow my colleague Sean to introduce himself and then we’ll check in with all of you (if there are too many skip this part). I’ll also introduce you to the web environment we’re using and point out some of the key tools you might take advantage of while we’re talking and interacting. I’ll be managing some muting and unmuting of microphones. Sean and I have been exploring open education in a higher education context for a while now, and what we see is that higher education has all the tools it needs to produce open education if it chooses to do so. One of the things we discovered in our research and conversations with tons of people about this topic is, there is a shortage of knowledge and expertise about the potential of open education to serve informal community-based learning. In particular, we believe that open education can be designed and driven by expert non-profit and charitable organizations that serve communities through public education and awareness mandates. Open education empowers connection. Connection between audiences and users of non-profit services, as well as connection and deeper bonds with those who contribute time and talents, and donate to non-profits. Relationship building through the delivery of organizational mandates, the strengthening of communities of practice among non-profit professionals, and the capacity to increase access for grant-based education projects can all be served by open online learning experiences. But what is open online education? Let’s unpack it a bit.
- You may have heard about open education, things called MOOCs (massive open online courses), organizations like Coursera, edX, Udacity, Udemy and more getting into the game of offering no-cost, or low-cost, high quality online courses. What is it really all about? What’s the history behind it? How does it relate to non-profit mandates? Let’s take a look.
- Openness in an education context does not just refer to content or courses that are free to the learners, although those values are important. Openness is a process, it represents opportunities for collaboration among learners, and between learners and educators; multiple channels for participants to connect with each other and establish an equal balance of power; and barrier-free places with high quality tools to explore and build knowledge collectively. In our view those are the important elements of open. UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources as Definition: “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work” For us, the key words here are no-cost access, no restrictions. It means that everything that you build in an open education context should be completely free, and free to use and share by the end-user. That’s not to say you can’t take credit for it, and that is doesn’t cost money to build. But the emphasis is on “share.” In an Internet and digital context, the open education movement is fairly new. Mostly because the Internet is still fairly new, especially as used to transmit teaching and learning. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was one of the leaders in getting the higher education “open” concept rolling over ten years ago by beginning to post their course content, digitally, and openly, for anyone to use or learn from. There is the Open Courseware Consortium, and the Open University UK that have focused on making subject content available (though completely self-directed), and there there came the MOOCs. In 2008, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and some of their friends in Canada decided to try an experiment teaching very large numbers of learners online, because there were now places where large numbers of online learners could log in and interact, share resources, participate in discussion forums and so on. In their world “large” was somewhere in the 1000-5000 participant range, mostly because they felt that was already too large for good relationship building among participants. It was a good transmission and resource collaboration idea, and a successful experiment. Their work is now more widely known as Connectivist MOOCs. A rather showy chap named Sebastian Thrun, a professor at Stanford took this idea a large step further and conducted an experiment inviting any number of learners (160,000 showed up) to his course on Artificial Intelligence. The the whole MOOC thing went ballistic and voila, Coursera and the like. These are all higher education instances, but we’re going to focus on the implications and possibilities for non-profits to use this concept as part of their service. Learning for me, and maybe for many of you, has shifted significantly in my lifetime. I now learn almost everything, and on a daily basis I usually learn at least five new things, on the Internet. That’s where I read, practice, explore, research. Occasionally I interact with the real world and learn things there, but most often, if I need to know something specific, I reach for my iPhone or laptop and look it up. There is an extraordinary world of support for me to learn what I need to know. If your organization has something important to impart, and to teach its audience, you need to help ensure that your organization is in the Internet mix with interesting, engaging, accurate and free offerings.
- Easy right, we all understand what online means. What about mobile, what about digital documents that can be stored, audio, video, interactive assessment tools on the go? Are these still what we would call online? It’s all changing on a minute-by-minute basis. There are many ways to transmit and participate in learning experiences these days. More to come. It’s clear that there is some element of data transmission required for a participant to access a digital learning experience, so we’ll simplify and call it online. It’s important to keep in mind though, and here I would say very important for non-profits that serve low-income clients, not everyone has access to the Internet or the literacy skills to use it for their own benefit. Statistics Canada’s 2009 figures state 19.7% of Canadian households do not have internet access. U.S. figures are similar. This is an issue of territorial infrastructure, and also one of poverty. That’s 2.5 million or so households. It’s up to all of us to think that through and do what we can to insist that our service to the maximum number of clients requires better access for them to the Internet and support for their digital literacy skills. For those of us privileged with access to empower our learning, there are many possibilities online. Maybe too many. We are as connected as we have ever been on this planet and the opportunities we have to learn from each other are unprecedented, and almost completely unexplored. Because of all the Internet information noise in the world, we believe that small-scale, connected learning experiences, and well-designed open educational resources are the way forward as pilot projects for non-profit organizations. Focusing on existing clients and audiences. If the possibility emerges to move into large scale learning experiences, so be it. But it’s important to pilot first. There is a core element of organizational reputation on the line in the concept of open online education.
- What is education? Is it accreditation? Is learning the same as education? What does it mean to you and your organization to “educate” your audiences? How do you traditionally educate them? What would you like to change? These are some of the questions we’re asking so that we can begin to provide recommendations and elements that contribute to the delivery of successful non-profit education and awareness mandates. We’re currently shifting our language a little bit in a way that may matter for non-profits. Rather than courses, or education, we’re considering calling open online courses, open online learning experiences. This challenges participants to consider their experience and learning leaders to consider what type of experience they are designing for participants. Are participants experiencing one-way communication in the transmission of information? Are they contributing to their own learning experience and the experiences of others in their learning community? Experiences can be short or long, they can consist of a scheduled, interactive and time-limited experience in a learning community, or can consist of reading a PDF or eBook designed by a learning leader. What do you want to do as a learning leader? What do you want your audience to experience?
- I’m going to walk though some examples of open education, including open online courses, and open educational resources that reside in the non-profit spectrum. I have to tell you that it’s become even more clear to me in the course of developing this presentation that there is a tremendous need to build engaging and informative resources for non-profits. There are a lot of PDFs out there, parked in difficult to find places on non-profit websites. I know that non-profits can be creative and begin to develop some innovative ideas for educating their audiences using the open tools of the Internet. Let’s take a look at what I could find. Over the course of this week I will continue to seek and show additional examples.
- While I believe in the power and capacity of well-designed, innovative online learning experiences to contribute a great deal to the success of non-profits with their audiences, I am very aware of concerns about open, online education, in terms of the quality of the learning experience, and the learning curve in how to accomplish it, among other things. In the course of our research and work in instructional design, it turns out that many concerns about open online learning are eventually found to be fear-based and can be offset by quality research exposing innovative practices. The process of communicating and connecting with learners online is new, and different, and not-traditional. There are very few experts, and a large number of “experts” (air quotes being used) trying to get into the market of eLearning for non-profits. Self-directed eLearning is not the same as open connected learning, in important ways that matter to non-profit mandates of relationship building and interaction with audiences. I’m going to say that again, because it’s the crux of our conversation about open online learning experiences, “One way communication via PDF, or Captivate, or video, or audio, is not as valuable as two-way interaction between learning leaders and participants in short-term learning adventures.” I understand the need for educational materials on non-profit websites, but how great would it be if all of those materials were archived, collaboratively developed documents with your clients? Some common concerns are: Online learning is lower quality (All learning is contextual, who determines what quality means? Does the learning deliver on its objectives, are the learners satisfied?) Open learning takes away from revenue (some non-profits offer courses for a fee) Online teaching is difficult (becoming an effective online learning leader certainly takes time) Building learning experiences and designing content is expensive and time consuming (time and costs can be managed, the goal is innovative and effective, not the highest possible production values)
- Open online education in any form is not free to develop. What are the costs of designing and delivering open online learning experiences? Where do you find subject matter experts, learning leaders? Are they volunteers, do you develop grant proposals for learning projects? What about staff time in development of materials? Do you use external, paid instructional designers? Can you do it yourself? What are some of the fund-seeking upsides of developing open publicly available online learning experiences? You’re creating digital materials that can persist and become part of your education resources? You’re engaging with a larger audience than might be possible in a face-to-face event. You’re reducing costs of space, food, etc. to host an in-person event.
- If you have any questions about this presentation or would like to know more about Wide World Ed’s next direction for open education and non-profits, please check in with us this week March 10-14, 2014 on our Google+ Community Open Education for Non-Profits.