Open Education 2014

The goal of this session is to provide an overview of OER policy in Europe and North America, seen from a comparative perspective.

In Europe, recent policy developments in 2013, focused around the "Opening Up Education" initiative of the European Union, has suddenly made OER one of the cornerstones of educational policy. At the same time, the openness standard set by the EU within the Erasmus+ funding program (with a budget of 14.7 billion euro until 2020) is binding, but weak (without a clear definition of openness of resources). In member states, there is a patchwork of varied approaches. In general, OER-related programs (such as creation of content repositories for teachers) are more common and advanced than policy-based approaches. Finally, across Europe alliances are being formed to offer grassroots support for public policy development. Coalition for Open Education has been active in Poland since 2008. Similar developments have been taking place in the Nordic countries, Macedonia, Romania and Germany.

In North America, a myriad of institutional, state, and national OER policies have emerged over the last decade, from Washington State's publicly funded Open Course Library to the U.S. Department of Labor's $2 billion workforce training grant program. Canada is quickly emerging as an international leader on open textbooks and promoting inter-provincial cooperation in support of OER. The surge in OER policies is largely a response to the rapidly rising cost of textbooks, particularly at the higher education level but also in K-12. Yet, advocates have faced significant barriers to policies and their implementation, including a strong publisher lobby, confusion with MOOCs, and political opposition to government spending.

Education is the pillar that supports the social and economic development of countries. It is a right recognized by the main international human rights instruments, as well as in the legal systems of Latin American countries. Huge public resources have been aimed at improving national education systems, experiencing some progress but with ample room for further progress.

We know that digital technologies and proposals that have emerged from the open movement (i.e. open education resources -OER, Open Access) contribute to the education improvement, offering new opportunities to address issues such quality, relevance and diversity of education resources, teacher skills, maximizing economic resources, among other. The emergence of ICT, on the other hand, has prompted a wave of state policies and programs that seek to incorporate and use them for the benefit of the teaching and learning processes. Despite good intentions and major efforts of many Latin American governments, the focus has been on addressing coverage, without necessarily being implemented actions that effectively promote appropriation of digital technologies and harness its disruptive capacity.

The Karisma Foundation has been researching on this subject and in March launched the "Public Expenditure on Education in Latin America. Can serve the purposes of the Paris Declaration on OER?" report, where it was mapped the public expenditure reported by some Latin American governments for developing and procuring educational resources for K-12 education. Currently, Karisma is working on a second research that seeks to analyze the way in which such spending occurs at higher education level. The ultimate goal is to offer some recommendation for developing policies that promote and support the OER implementation in national education systems in Latin America.

Therefore, the proposed panel will discuss how public spending for developing and procuring education resources is being managed in Latin America's K-12 and higher education systems. In such discussion, it will be examined strengths and weaknesses of public educational policies, will be showing examples of good practices related to implementation of OER projects, will be looking into alternative models for development of OER, and will be considered the role state, educational institutions, the educational community, civil society and the private sector. To do this, open education experts from the region, who will share their knowledge and concerns in this subject, will form this panel.

US states are as different as foreign countries when it comes to education policy, planning and budgets. This talk examines major statewide K-12 OER initiatives and how they came to be. Each state's unique barriers and successes are examined, as is the interplay between policy and practice. The role of the individual OER champion is reviewed as a primary driver in stimulating successful OER policy and implementation.

This research is part of a fellowship-based research study for the OER Research Hub (Open University, UK).

In January 2014, the Dutch Minister of Education sent a letter to the Dutch Parliament. The letter described the trend towards more open and online education as a promising and inspiring development which she is keen to promote and facilitate. These intentions come with an annual funding commitment of 1 million euro per year for several years. Which road did the Netherlands take in order to secure commitment for a national policy?

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Netherlands all participate in SURF, a collaborative ICT organisation. The ensuing cross-institutional initiatives are strong; they are based on trust and reciprocity of knowledge exchange. In this presentation we identify ways in which HEIs can take the initiative to give the development of national policy on OER a boost. We will use the Dutch case study as a model.

We will take a look at the following elements:

- 1. HEIs uniting in a Special Interest Group for Open Education
An important role was taken by the Special Interest Group (SIG) Open Education. The SIG is a community of HEI staff members, working in the various institutions of higher education. The SIG is supported by SURF in terms of organisation. SURF's self-appointed task is to share its knowledge on open education, jointly work on vision building and facilitate development within the individual HEIs. This group publishes a yearly Open Education Trend Report, based on a range of meetings within the community of experts to generate input.

- 2. SURF Open Education Innovation Programme
SURF started its Open Education Innovation Programme in 2011. This programme aims to expand awareness of trends and developments, exchange information about concrete applications, and jointly discuss opportunities and threats around open and online education. For instance, this programme organised a study trip to the US for chairmen of HEI institutions and representatives of the Ministry of Education. This trip gave them a key opportunity to generate a shared vision on OER. Another element of the programme is the SURFacademy, in which HEI professionals transfer knowledge across HEI institutions, both on a basic and advanced level. The SURF programme also co-ordinates the Open Education Week, stimulating the individual HEIs to organise their own activities in open education. And finally, together with the SIG Open Education, they organised tailor-made workshops for HEIs to formulate a vision or policy on open education.

The existence of a cross-institutional cooperation structure that has the support of virtually all HEIs offers many possibilities: it forms a fundament for a solid programme that addresses the needs of and has the support of all HEIs. Based on this case study, we will discuss to what extent other countries can use a similar approach.

We will wrap up the presentation with a brief look to the future: what will be the next step? Is there an inevitable need for a clear policy framework? If so, which role should HEI institutions have in defining its contours' Or should this innovative force be granted space to develop further while we experiment with flexibilisation, life-long learning, hybrid learning and the further improvement of quality of education?

In February, 2014, the University of British Columbia passed Policy 81, requiring the open sharing of many teaching and learning resources with the university and other UBC faculty, unless one opts out. Upon a first read Policy 81 appears to be a small step forward in the promotion of open educational resources; what has happened, however, has been a significant step backwards. In this session I will discuss the policy and its aftermath as a story of: (a) how not to approach promoting OER at an institutional level, (b) what the reaction of many faculty members to Policy 81 says about the attitudes of at least some higher education faculty members about open sharing of educational materials, and (c) what might be better methods of promoting the creation of OER at a North American university such as UBC.

Policy 81 states that if UBC instructors make their teaching materials available for use by others, "UBC may, through its Faculties, Departments and individual Instructors, use, revise, and allow other UBC Instructors to use and revise the Teaching Materials to facilitate ongoing offerings of Credit Courses' unless the instructor restricts the use of these materials." (http://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2014/02/policy81.pdf) Ostensibly, the purpose of this policy is, in part, to allow for the revision and reuse of educational materials in a streamlined fashion, such as those shared directly between persons, deposited in university department collections, or used by instructors in a course with a curriculum and materials created in the past by others. Faculty members can choose to opt out of sharing their teaching materials by putting a notice on each item they wish to restrict, or by registering entire courses on a central university registry saying that none of the materials for those courses may be revised or reused by anyone else at the university for for-credit courses.

The main problems with this policy are that the university designated it as an "opt out" rather than "opt in" system, and that it covers materials not automatically assumed to be shared for the purpose of reuse and revision, such as those placed on public course websites.

Anecdotal evidence shows a significant amount of anger about this policy, and many have reacted by asserting on their teaching materials that they may not be reused and revised by others - the very opposite of promoting more open sharing. During the summer of 2014 I will be doing a survey of UBC teaching staff to get a better sense of faculty reactions to the policy and the arguments people have for not wanting their educational materials to be used by others at the university (as well as whether they would be open to sharing them beyond the university, and if not, why not). Through this, and a workshop I am doing on open education at UBC in June 2014, I will try to determine some of the main obstacles to my colleagues openly sharing educational resources, and suggest a more fruitful approach to encouraging them to do so.

The University of Tasmania is the only University in the Australian State of Tasmania and has a reputation for learning and research that is international in scope, vision and standards. UTAS has recently endorsed to share the unique expertise of UTAS teachers through openly sharing developed educational resources with the broader academic community and develop further resources through the use of high quality content sourced from experts around the globe through Open Educational Resources (OER).

In 2012 the University of Tasmania stepped into Open Educational Practice (OEP) by leading a national project to develop an OER repository for sharing educational resources among a community of Adaptations Scholars, in Australia and internationally. In 2013 UTAS began testing further environments for the use of OEP including its first MOOC "Understanding Dementia". The MOOC served as an initial endeavour by the University of Tasmania School of Medicine and Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre to develop an open unit with associated OER.

Based upon a substantial literature review and analysis of results from Adapt, Dementia and other projects UTAS developed a technology enhanced learning and teaching White Paper that provided a centrally endorsed strategy for the implementation of sustainable OEP. The paper introduced key purposes for implementing OEP accompanied by a set of enabling principles. This new strategy disaggregates traditional elements of higher education delivery at UTAS and provides a sustainable blended model incorporating open, online and face to face delivery.

This presentation provides an account of the cultural, technical, legal, qualitative, and policy barriers the University of Tasmania has encountered in the development and implementation of OEP through nationally led open education projects. The presentation then continues to describe how open education strategies and using OER have been translated into value propositions for the institution and centrally embedded into evolving practice and policy.

OpenVA held its first conference in Oct 2013. This conference was the result of a working group of representatives from Virginia's public colleges and universities charged by Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and Secretary of Education Laura Fornash to start exploring the possibilities of open education. The initial goal of this group was to bring together educators who were experimenting with the idea of 'open' at their institutions. Through various exhibits and presentations we began to see the scope of experimentation happening around the state. Open textbooks, flipped classrooms, collaborative oases, open source online learning environments, and augmented reality were just a few of the concepts being deployed.

We discovered that many innovative and creative projects were taking place in Virginia providing valuable and accessible learning opportunities for students through various media. Social learning and student knowledge building was a key theme. There were presentations of digital storytelling, student authored open textbooks, student blogging platforms, and curation through the use of social media such as Pinterest and Twitter. Not surprisingly, gamification as a motivational and collaborative tool were also a topic of interest in the context of social learning.

A common refrain, at the conclusion of our first OpenVA conference, was that the diverse range of initiatives was both inspirational and a little overwhelming. We had created a successful showcase to highlight the best open innovations in the state. We began to think that a subsequent event would need to have a sharper focus and, at its conclusion, some form of 'call to action' in terms of infrastructure and policy.

By the time OpenEd 2014 commences, Virginia will have concluded the OpenVA Summit which is scheduled for October 18, 2014. Our second annual conference will be structured quite differently from the first, featuring three of the most ambitious initiatives, including the "Z" degree at Tidewater Community College (open resources), A Domain of Ones Own at UMW (open infrastructure), and ds106 (open pedagogy). Each presentation will be followed by a panel discussion. Each panel addressing the same question: "How can we scale these model programs so that all Virginia institutions can have the guidance, support, and collaborative environment necessary to successfully deploy these initiatives across the state and beyond?"

What's more, in addition to faculty, technologists, and support staff, this conference will be inviting targeted state legislators, policy makers, and university administrators in order to start realizing how we build a cyberinfrastructure to promote and support open education in the state of Virginia.

In this panel presentation we provide some insights gleaned after two iterations of OpenVA, offering some insights on the policies and strategies necessary to move from the small and impactful innovations currently taking place to a broader, more far reaching approach to bring 'open' throughout the state.

With the initiation of a national open e-textbooks program in 2011, Poland gained the potential to be one of the leading countries with regard to open education at K-12 levels. After 3 years, with the launch of initial batch of e-textbook content in 2013, and start of another open textbooks program (a free, printed 1st grade textbook, to be distributed to all students but also made available under CC BY), Polish K-12 education system is poised towards a strong public OER production model.

In The Netherlands a national OER-platform was born in 2008. The platform called Wikiwijs was launched with strong support from the government. What can we say after more than six years of opportunity for teachers to share? What should we take-away from the Wikiwijs-model and what should we do differently in the future?  

This session will provide an overview of policy developments in the last several years in Europe, focussing on The Netherlands and Poland. A key focus will be given to an interplay of grassroots activities, initiated in 2008 by the Coalition for Open Education, and top-down policy developments. Ultimately, OER success is due to an open, public debate on the shape of educational resources for schools.