With this entry I am claiming that I have earned the OPenEd Evangelist badge. The blog post with my arguments is found here.
The blog post describing my experience speaking with a faculty is found here.
I express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Wiley and those who have participated in this open education course this spring. I have learned a great deal and found myself considering how I might contribute in ways that will increase access to education for those who might not otherwise have such access in the future.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Conversation with a Faculty Member
In pursuit of the OpenEd Evangelist badge, I drafted an argument supporting the adoption of open education (see blog post of argument here). I then had a conversation with a member of the faculty at an institution of higher education.
We had met regarding the development of some on-line instruction for the use of students on the campus. As we talked, I discussed some of the issues outlined in my argument post (referenced earlier) and expressed my belief that the efforts of the faculty member could be a blessing far beyond the course and student population we were then discussing.
I mentioned the possible use of OER in the development of the content for the course we were discussing. I also proposed that we actually develop some of the content we were planning to put on-line and that we openly license that content. I suggested that we might want to consider only using content that was openly licensed and then licensing the course as OpenCourseWare and making it available on-line.
The faculty member was familiar with MIT OpenCourseWare and had been considering how curriculum might be offered that way from the institution. In fact, this faculty member had designed a curriculum that progressed through several levels of instruction (foundation, upper division, graduate) for different topics in the field that was part of their curriculum. We discussed how we might follow that map and develop a complete curriculum plan for each specific topic and make that available openly as well.
The last point that I emphasized was that we could make these courses part of the instructional strategy in the classrooms on campus. These courses would be advertised as supplementary materials available 24x7 to matriculated students is support of their learning. This would position the open courses in the strategies supporting on-campus students and justify expenditure of faculty time to develop the courses and department and institutional funding to develop and maintain them.
There was an agreement that we would proceed with the course we were then discussing in the format that was already proposed due to time constraints. But we identified two general education level courses that we would commence a project in the near future to produce as OpenCourseWare. I have prepared the budget and I am awaiting official project approvals (and developer assignments) to begin course design and production.
I was pleased to encounter a faculty member who was progressive in thinking about the sharing of knowledge and curriculum openly with learners around the world. I am almost afraid to approach other faculty on campus because I don't believe that all of them will be as receptive. But that will be an opportunity to assess just how persuasive my arguments are.
We had met regarding the development of some on-line instruction for the use of students on the campus. As we talked, I discussed some of the issues outlined in my argument post (referenced earlier) and expressed my belief that the efforts of the faculty member could be a blessing far beyond the course and student population we were then discussing.
I mentioned the possible use of OER in the development of the content for the course we were discussing. I also proposed that we actually develop some of the content we were planning to put on-line and that we openly license that content. I suggested that we might want to consider only using content that was openly licensed and then licensing the course as OpenCourseWare and making it available on-line.
The faculty member was familiar with MIT OpenCourseWare and had been considering how curriculum might be offered that way from the institution. In fact, this faculty member had designed a curriculum that progressed through several levels of instruction (foundation, upper division, graduate) for different topics in the field that was part of their curriculum. We discussed how we might follow that map and develop a complete curriculum plan for each specific topic and make that available openly as well.
The last point that I emphasized was that we could make these courses part of the instructional strategy in the classrooms on campus. These courses would be advertised as supplementary materials available 24x7 to matriculated students is support of their learning. This would position the open courses in the strategies supporting on-campus students and justify expenditure of faculty time to develop the courses and department and institutional funding to develop and maintain them.
There was an agreement that we would proceed with the course we were then discussing in the format that was already proposed due to time constraints. But we identified two general education level courses that we would commence a project in the near future to produce as OpenCourseWare. I have prepared the budget and I am awaiting official project approvals (and developer assignments) to begin course design and production.
I was pleased to encounter a faculty member who was progressive in thinking about the sharing of knowledge and curriculum openly with learners around the world. I am almost afraid to approach other faculty on campus because I don't believe that all of them will be as receptive. But that will be an opportunity to assess just how persuasive my arguments are.
Why Open Education?
There are many reasons that educators, administrators and boards at educational institutions of all sorts, and government and other funding bodies should consider the promise of open educational resources in setting strategies for the future. I have chosen to focus on five specific elements that support OER as a strategy that will expand the opportunities for education to more people while also controlling the cost and effort required to produce and disseminate educational materials.
One element that drives the consideration of OER is the expanded need for education. Education is the greatest source of opportunity for men and women around the world. The USAID Education Strategy for 2011-2015 makes the observation that
A second consideration then is how we might replace the building of costly traditional institutions of higher education with delivery methods and channels that are more cost-effective and offer access at minimal costs to the learners, who often have limited means. In 2001 MIT showed one possibility when they embarked on their OpenCourseWare initiative. They determined that they would make all of their courses available online to anyone, at anytime, and anywhere. This meant that the lectures, syllabi, documents, and other teaching artifacts that were part of the instruction in the MIT classroom would now be available, without cost to the user, to teachers, students, and lifelong learners around the world. This is one response to expanding access in non-traditional ways.
A third consideration is the limited expense to offer educational resources, such as entire courses, textbooks, audio, video, simulations, and other learning artifacts through the internet. It is true that the development of many of these resources is costly in their initial development. The production of these resources is often covered by institutional budgets where wages are paid to faculty and supporting personnel to develop the resources. This resource development is paid with funds from governmental and other sponsoring entities, foundations and other generous philanthropists, endowment funds, and student tuition, and other sources. Generous support from these sources covers the cost of developing the resources, and once developed, the remaining costs for their use in education are those associated with their delivery.
In traditional settings, this cost includes the maintenance of facilities, the time of instructors, tutors, and support personnel. The costs for people, buildings, infrastructure, and student services can be prohibitive on a per student basis when these traditional structures are used to deliver courses. Universities cover these costs as part of their traditional operations. Expanding the opportunity to access these resources becomes a marginal cost analysis. If there are minimal marginal costs to extending access to the educational resources then there should be minimal reason to resist extending access to these resources. MIT has blazed the way in applying this theory to their curriculum. Other major institutions have followed (see OCW Consortium Members to see a list of institutions offering OpenCourseWare).
One element that is critical to consider when institutional funds and faculty creativity are used to develop these resources is ownership of the artifacts and objects created. Ownership resides with the creator according to laws in most of the countries of the world. The fourth consideration in creating greater access to education is the need to effectively deal with ownership of these resources. Most of these resources will be covered by copyright. Some by patent. Rightsholders have always had the ability to license and authorize use of their creations to others. The processes to grant individual authorizations and to draft legal documents protecting the rightsholders and the licensees is time consuming and costly. Addressing this licensing issue is necessary if the marginal costs of sharing developed OER is to be kept to a minimum.
The free and open movements have grown in an attempt to address this issue. These movements have their roots in the concept of crowdsourcing software (open software projects) and in the sharing of developed learning resources (open content and open access). These open movements developed multiple different licenses that allowed creators of resources to share them freely, or openly with others. These licenses, and their derivations, proliferated during the early years of the 21st century. The Creative Commons license has become the consolidation of these licenses into a standard, readily understood and available, and legally defensible licensing methodology allowing creators to make their works available to others at little to no cost to the user (see http://creativecommons.org/ for license information).
Projects like OpenCourseWare and other OER are developed and licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Users can use, copy, remix, create derivatives, and if allowed, use these licensed products for commercial purposes. All while giving the creator the ability to monitor and oversee their appropriate use. The creator may give up some of his or her traditional benefits of ownership (royalties, exclusive license fees, etc.) that generate income, but the creator derives the benefits of increasing influence, reputation, and contributing to the expansion of learning around the world.
The fifth element that must be considered is the sustainability of the costs that are incurred as part of extending access. MIT has experienced costs of approximately $4 million each year to maintain the availability of their OpenCourseWare. The costs of developing the courses and the resources are absorbed by the institutional budgets as part of their normal operations. But the costs to prepare the courses for electronic distribution, and the infrastructure to distribute the courses are the marginal costs of providing the open courses.
Much of the expense associated with the delivery of open courses and other open resources involves scrubbing the materials for copyrighted materials. Moving away from the use of copyrighted will reduce this cost. As the OER movement gains steam, the assembly of courses, texts, and other materials to be licensed openly will be best performed through the use of other open resources in their assembly. If these elements of the OER are either created when the resource is assembled, or selected from openly-licensed materials already available, then the need for scrubbing and obtaining permissions is reduced or eliminated. This approach will reduce the cost of the OER to the provider.
Reducing these costs enhances the sustainability of OER efforts. Aligning these OER efforts with the normal instruction occurring at the institution is another important consideration for sustainability. If the full-fare paying students are benefitting from the OER in their classroom instruction and research, then the OER becomes a part of the institutional strategies and the sustaining of the efforts becomes an institutional priority.
Sustainability is also enhanced when one considers the benefits that accrue to creators when they make the materials freely available to others (see Johansen & Wiley, 2010, Hilton & Wiley, 2010, and Hilton, 2010)
In conclusion, David Wiley's research (cited by Cable Green in this video) showed that the costs to deliver a textbook as OER is well below one cent per text when it is made available on-line (using cloud storage and access estimates). These same texts can be printed on demand at costs a fraction of the cost of acquiring textbooks in the marketplace. Using the internet to deliver OER is a miniscule marginal cost. Using the internet makes the delivery of knowledge (a non-rivalrous resource) and objects (non-rivalrous as well, since electronic copies are always available) is a way of sharing knowledge and teaching at minimal additional cost. It is the logical route to satisfying the huge demand for education in the developing world without facing the limitations of the costs of traditional educational opportunities. Faculty and institutions can expand opportunity and influence around the world at minimal marginal cost.
References:
Atkins, D. E., J. S. Brown & A. L. Hammond. A Review of the Open Educational Resources
Movement: Achievements, Challenges and New Opportunities. A Report to the Hewlett Foundation,
2007. Available online at http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/5D2E3386-3974-4314-8F67-
5C2F22EC4F9B/0/AReviewoftheOpenEducationalResourcesOERMovement_BlogLink.pdf.
U.S.Agency for International Development. U.S.Agency for International Development, (2011). Education opportunity through learning: Usaid education strategy 2011-2015. Retrieved from website: http://www.eric.ed.gov.erl.lib.byu.edu/PDFS/ED517377.pdf
One element that drives the consideration of OER is the expanded need for education. Education is the greatest source of opportunity for men and women around the world. The USAID Education Strategy for 2011-2015 makes the observation that
Education Strategy is premised on the development hypothesis that education is both foundational to human development and critically linked to broadbased economic growth and democratic governance. Research has demonstrated that education raises individual incomes and, in an enabling environment, can contribute significantly to economic growth.
Education helps ensure that growth is broadbased and reaches the poorest. Through its impact on economic growth, education helps catalyze transitions to democracy and helps preserve robust democratic governance. Education also helps improve health outcomes. Access to education is a crucial precondition to educational impact, but what matters most thereafter is the quality of education. Because of these important links to other powerful drivers of development, educational investments should be understood as dynamic and transformational levers of change. (U.S. Agency for International Development, 2011)While some developing countries are seeing demographic trends for citizens in the traditional higher education age group leveling off or even decreasing, this is not a trend in much of the world. One author observed:
This means that the goals of increasing opportunity for liberty, democracy, economic vitality for much of the world's population is closely linked to the ability to provide opportunities for education. As Atkins points out, such opportunity will not be available if we seek to expand education in these areas in traditional ways. Non-traditional teaching and learning channels will be required, as will non-traditional resources.Half of the world’s population is under twenty years old; …over thirty million people are fully qualified to enter a university, but there is no place available. This number will grow to over 100 million during the next decade; To meet the staggering global demand for advanced education, a major university needs to be created every week; In most of the world, higher education is mired in a crisis of access, cost, and flexibility. The dominant forms of higher education in developed nations—campus based, high cost, limited use of technology—seem ill-suited to address global education needs of the billions of young people who will require it in the decades ahead. (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond, 2007)
A second consideration then is how we might replace the building of costly traditional institutions of higher education with delivery methods and channels that are more cost-effective and offer access at minimal costs to the learners, who often have limited means. In 2001 MIT showed one possibility when they embarked on their OpenCourseWare initiative. They determined that they would make all of their courses available online to anyone, at anytime, and anywhere. This meant that the lectures, syllabi, documents, and other teaching artifacts that were part of the instruction in the MIT classroom would now be available, without cost to the user, to teachers, students, and lifelong learners around the world. This is one response to expanding access in non-traditional ways.
A third consideration is the limited expense to offer educational resources, such as entire courses, textbooks, audio, video, simulations, and other learning artifacts through the internet. It is true that the development of many of these resources is costly in their initial development. The production of these resources is often covered by institutional budgets where wages are paid to faculty and supporting personnel to develop the resources. This resource development is paid with funds from governmental and other sponsoring entities, foundations and other generous philanthropists, endowment funds, and student tuition, and other sources. Generous support from these sources covers the cost of developing the resources, and once developed, the remaining costs for their use in education are those associated with their delivery.
In traditional settings, this cost includes the maintenance of facilities, the time of instructors, tutors, and support personnel. The costs for people, buildings, infrastructure, and student services can be prohibitive on a per student basis when these traditional structures are used to deliver courses. Universities cover these costs as part of their traditional operations. Expanding the opportunity to access these resources becomes a marginal cost analysis. If there are minimal marginal costs to extending access to the educational resources then there should be minimal reason to resist extending access to these resources. MIT has blazed the way in applying this theory to their curriculum. Other major institutions have followed (see OCW Consortium Members to see a list of institutions offering OpenCourseWare).
One element that is critical to consider when institutional funds and faculty creativity are used to develop these resources is ownership of the artifacts and objects created. Ownership resides with the creator according to laws in most of the countries of the world. The fourth consideration in creating greater access to education is the need to effectively deal with ownership of these resources. Most of these resources will be covered by copyright. Some by patent. Rightsholders have always had the ability to license and authorize use of their creations to others. The processes to grant individual authorizations and to draft legal documents protecting the rightsholders and the licensees is time consuming and costly. Addressing this licensing issue is necessary if the marginal costs of sharing developed OER is to be kept to a minimum.
The free and open movements have grown in an attempt to address this issue. These movements have their roots in the concept of crowdsourcing software (open software projects) and in the sharing of developed learning resources (open content and open access). These open movements developed multiple different licenses that allowed creators of resources to share them freely, or openly with others. These licenses, and their derivations, proliferated during the early years of the 21st century. The Creative Commons license has become the consolidation of these licenses into a standard, readily understood and available, and legally defensible licensing methodology allowing creators to make their works available to others at little to no cost to the user (see http://creativecommons.org/ for license information).
Projects like OpenCourseWare and other OER are developed and licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Users can use, copy, remix, create derivatives, and if allowed, use these licensed products for commercial purposes. All while giving the creator the ability to monitor and oversee their appropriate use. The creator may give up some of his or her traditional benefits of ownership (royalties, exclusive license fees, etc.) that generate income, but the creator derives the benefits of increasing influence, reputation, and contributing to the expansion of learning around the world.
The fifth element that must be considered is the sustainability of the costs that are incurred as part of extending access. MIT has experienced costs of approximately $4 million each year to maintain the availability of their OpenCourseWare. The costs of developing the courses and the resources are absorbed by the institutional budgets as part of their normal operations. But the costs to prepare the courses for electronic distribution, and the infrastructure to distribute the courses are the marginal costs of providing the open courses.
Much of the expense associated with the delivery of open courses and other open resources involves scrubbing the materials for copyrighted materials. Moving away from the use of copyrighted will reduce this cost. As the OER movement gains steam, the assembly of courses, texts, and other materials to be licensed openly will be best performed through the use of other open resources in their assembly. If these elements of the OER are either created when the resource is assembled, or selected from openly-licensed materials already available, then the need for scrubbing and obtaining permissions is reduced or eliminated. This approach will reduce the cost of the OER to the provider.
Reducing these costs enhances the sustainability of OER efforts. Aligning these OER efforts with the normal instruction occurring at the institution is another important consideration for sustainability. If the full-fare paying students are benefitting from the OER in their classroom instruction and research, then the OER becomes a part of the institutional strategies and the sustaining of the efforts becomes an institutional priority.
Sustainability is also enhanced when one considers the benefits that accrue to creators when they make the materials freely available to others (see Johansen & Wiley, 2010, Hilton & Wiley, 2010, and Hilton, 2010)
In conclusion, David Wiley's research (cited by Cable Green in this video) showed that the costs to deliver a textbook as OER is well below one cent per text when it is made available on-line (using cloud storage and access estimates). These same texts can be printed on demand at costs a fraction of the cost of acquiring textbooks in the marketplace. Using the internet to deliver OER is a miniscule marginal cost. Using the internet makes the delivery of knowledge (a non-rivalrous resource) and objects (non-rivalrous as well, since electronic copies are always available) is a way of sharing knowledge and teaching at minimal additional cost. It is the logical route to satisfying the huge demand for education in the developing world without facing the limitations of the costs of traditional educational opportunities. Faculty and institutions can expand opportunity and influence around the world at minimal marginal cost.
References:
Atkins, D. E., J. S. Brown & A. L. Hammond. A Review of the Open Educational Resources
Movement: Achievements, Challenges and New Opportunities. A Report to the Hewlett Foundation,
2007. Available online at http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/5D2E3386-3974-4314-8F67-
5C2F22EC4F9B/0/AReviewoftheOpenEducationalResourcesOERMovement_BlogLink.pdf.
U.S.Agency for International Development. U.S.Agency for International Development, (2011). Education opportunity through learning: Usaid education strategy 2011-2015. Retrieved from website: http://www.eric.ed.gov.erl.lib.byu.edu/PDFS/ED517377.pdf
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Novice Badge Earned
Earlier in the semester I created a blog post where I started linking all of my topic posts as required to earn the badge. This link will take you to that post which will link to all of my topic entries. I believe this shows that I have earned the novice badge.
Open Policy
Two years ago I participated in a class here at BYU that reviewed policy related to OER and discussed how these open resources were making education less expensive. Our class was divided into two groups one of which researched policies related to OER in general, and the other to institutional policies at colleges and universities in the U.S. related to the development and support of OCW in particular.
Dr. Wiley made a post to his openness blog earlier this year about the focus that we make on OER as a low cost option to increase access to learning and reduce the costs incurred by institutions and students through OER adoption. The post to which I am referring was published soon after the announcement by Apple about the textbooks that were being made available at minimal cost (at least relative to regular textbooks) through the iBooks store. Dr. Wiley pointed out that the proposition that OER is all about cost and that is where development should be focused puts the future of OER on unstable ground. He argued that we need to develop OER that is every bit as well-produced and interactive as that which will be made available by traditional text publishers if OER is to continue to provide equivalent educational experiences.
Dr. Cable Green is very persuasive in the materials we reviewed under this topic regarding the money that can be saved by governments, institutions, and students when OER is given sufficient priority in funding decisions. He cited the numbers reported by Dr. Wiley and others of the costs to produce open textbooks compared to the cost to purchase them from traditional publishers. Dr. Green argues for the implementation of government policies that will advocate the development and maintenance of quality OER by providing funding for these efforts in lieu of having the same funds used to buy traditional texts and other resources ate much higher unit costs to the students and the taxpayers.
Dr. Green advocates mandates by governments and institutions requiring open publishing and funding for OER. Mandates are generally reserved for instances where there is a constituency that is unwilling to adopt changes. There is a train of thought that mandates are required when the benefits of change do not stand on their own merit and must be supported with coercion. But in this case, the mandate may be required because of the disconnect between decision-makers and the impact of their decisions. Instructors and faculty are often unconcerned about the motivations of students when it comes to selection of texts.
Because the government continues to increase the funds available to students in financial aid, there is little incentive for text publishers and universities to exercise pricing restraint. There is almost a conspiratorial waltz where the government must provide more money to assist students because the cost of education is rising so rapidly. As more money is available, those who provide the education and resources see that they can charge more because the students now have access to more funding, which in turns leads to the cost of education increasing, resulting in calls to the government to increase funds available for education, and so on . . .
There is a need for the government to be more concerned about value for the funds that they are making available for education. Mandating access to government funded research is one way of executing policy that will provide educational benefit and reduce the costs of education. Another is the mandating of the development and use of OER to replace more expensive resources where the marketplace is not price responsive. The approach of mandating through policy is dictating to the marketplace a pricing mechanism that they would have been driven to consider themselves if the access to government funding would have included more consideration of expectations for pricing and competition rather than just priming the flow of funds that is always inflationary.
Dr. Green concludes his comments stating the following:
The $2 billion funded in 2011 to help Community Colleges and consortiums develop OER for use by their students is one policy that is being advanced in education. Others include the open access policies that are being implemented in association with government grants. These policies are good starts. Conversations about policies that will consider how the savings from these open policies will affect the education market are important to maximize the impact of these access and publication policies.
Do we find ways to increase competition by mandating faculty and institutional acceptance of education credits that might be obtained in non-traditional ways through open learning. This will introduce more competition in the education marketplace by giving value to low-cost alternatives to achieve educational competency.
I heard a caller to a financial advice radio program talk about the fact that she had just received her Ph.D. and was excited about an interview that she had with a university for a teaching position. She was concerned about a decision she needed to make about moving and the kind of housing that she would be required to obtain. She knew that the advisor was a proponent of buying rather than renting but she was not in a position to buy. He was incredulous that having just completed her education, and having a job virtually in hand, that she would not be in a position to buy a home. Her response was that she had student loans that needed attention first. He asked the amount that she would be paid for the new position and was told the salary would be $50,000. He asked about the student loan and was told the balance was well over six figures. He was amazed that she had been able to accumulate that much debt. Were she to attempt to borrow that money for any other need, the bankers who had saddled her with that debt would be considered immoral.
Dr. Wiley made a post to his openness blog earlier this year about the focus that we make on OER as a low cost option to increase access to learning and reduce the costs incurred by institutions and students through OER adoption. The post to which I am referring was published soon after the announcement by Apple about the textbooks that were being made available at minimal cost (at least relative to regular textbooks) through the iBooks store. Dr. Wiley pointed out that the proposition that OER is all about cost and that is where development should be focused puts the future of OER on unstable ground. He argued that we need to develop OER that is every bit as well-produced and interactive as that which will be made available by traditional text publishers if OER is to continue to provide equivalent educational experiences.
Dr. Cable Green is very persuasive in the materials we reviewed under this topic regarding the money that can be saved by governments, institutions, and students when OER is given sufficient priority in funding decisions. He cited the numbers reported by Dr. Wiley and others of the costs to produce open textbooks compared to the cost to purchase them from traditional publishers. Dr. Green argues for the implementation of government policies that will advocate the development and maintenance of quality OER by providing funding for these efforts in lieu of having the same funds used to buy traditional texts and other resources ate much higher unit costs to the students and the taxpayers.
Dr. Green advocates mandates by governments and institutions requiring open publishing and funding for OER. Mandates are generally reserved for instances where there is a constituency that is unwilling to adopt changes. There is a train of thought that mandates are required when the benefits of change do not stand on their own merit and must be supported with coercion. But in this case, the mandate may be required because of the disconnect between decision-makers and the impact of their decisions. Instructors and faculty are often unconcerned about the motivations of students when it comes to selection of texts.
Because the government continues to increase the funds available to students in financial aid, there is little incentive for text publishers and universities to exercise pricing restraint. There is almost a conspiratorial waltz where the government must provide more money to assist students because the cost of education is rising so rapidly. As more money is available, those who provide the education and resources see that they can charge more because the students now have access to more funding, which in turns leads to the cost of education increasing, resulting in calls to the government to increase funds available for education, and so on . . .
There is a need for the government to be more concerned about value for the funds that they are making available for education. Mandating access to government funded research is one way of executing policy that will provide educational benefit and reduce the costs of education. Another is the mandating of the development and use of OER to replace more expensive resources where the marketplace is not price responsive. The approach of mandating through policy is dictating to the marketplace a pricing mechanism that they would have been driven to consider themselves if the access to government funding would have included more consideration of expectations for pricing and competition rather than just priming the flow of funds that is always inflationary.
Dr. Green concludes his comments stating the following:
We have to think bigger and make smarter decisions collectively. Abraham Lincoln in a message to congress on December 1, 1862 said 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so must we act anew. And think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and we shall save our country.'
Our goal is that open policies be adopted by all nations, all states, all national agencies, all systems of education, institutions, departments, and individual creators when they are using public funds. The moral and the political imperative would overwhelm any opposition.Earlier in his presentation talked about a feeding machine that would allow us to feed all of the people in the world at minimal cost just be turning it on. He went on to say in his presentation that:
We do not have a feeding machine . . . We do have a learning machine, we simply need to turn that machine on. We have a moral and an ethical responsibility to act. If we are smart. If we share. Everybody in the world can learn.That is a worthy objective of policy makers if they can establish policies to incorporate OER in a way that requires all stakeholders to have an investment in its effective use. While appeals to egalitarian motives will work with many people, the funding that has been thrown into education without real accountability has resulted in non-competitive marketplaces, with little incentives to control pricing, and political chits that can be earned just by asking for more investment in order to show that you are "for education and our kids." There is much money and power that has been accumulated as the government funding flows in education have become monolithic and monopolistic. Mandates will be required to change this industry that has sprung up to access these funds in unaccountable and undisciplined ways. Authors, faculty, editors, and publishers will rarely relinquish their prized place in this industry willingly. Unfortunately, policies will be required to force change.
The $2 billion funded in 2011 to help Community Colleges and consortiums develop OER for use by their students is one policy that is being advanced in education. Others include the open access policies that are being implemented in association with government grants. These policies are good starts. Conversations about policies that will consider how the savings from these open policies will affect the education market are important to maximize the impact of these access and publication policies.
Do we find ways to increase competition by mandating faculty and institutional acceptance of education credits that might be obtained in non-traditional ways through open learning. This will introduce more competition in the education marketplace by giving value to low-cost alternatives to achieve educational competency.
I heard a caller to a financial advice radio program talk about the fact that she had just received her Ph.D. and was excited about an interview that she had with a university for a teaching position. She was concerned about a decision she needed to make about moving and the kind of housing that she would be required to obtain. She knew that the advisor was a proponent of buying rather than renting but she was not in a position to buy. He was incredulous that having just completed her education, and having a job virtually in hand, that she would not be in a position to buy a home. Her response was that she had student loans that needed attention first. He asked the amount that she would be paid for the new position and was told the salary would be $50,000. He asked about the student loan and was told the balance was well over six figures. He was amazed that she had been able to accumulate that much debt. Were she to attempt to borrow that money for any other need, the bankers who had saddled her with that debt would be considered immoral.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Open source motivations and "success"
One of my research projects that I proposed relating to open source considered how to know if an OSS project was a success. You can refer to comments that he wrote at the end of the post I created proposing research projects for my Open Ed Researcher badge see post here).
On Tuesday Dr. Wiley shared this slashdot link to an "ask slashdot" posting in April 2003 where someone asked what makes an OSS project successful. I believe that the question and responses include some interesting metrics regarding what success is.
I think this same consideration identifies with the issues that arise when you are trying to “evaluate” the success of social
welfare programs. Some see funding in its role
as the allocation of scarce resources that might be more effectively spent on
other programs or needs or in other ways. If this is the nature
of the evaluator, then success would be defined through some kind of an
effectiveness (benefit) vs funding (cost) analysis. The determination of effective is in the eye of the beholder.
Others might have an “evaluation eye” that sees the fact that the program “helped” a person/organization/community so it was successful. But the determination of what “help” is may be in the eye of the beholder as well. The fact is that we all have different ways of determining whether things are successes and one man’s success is another man’s failure, or at least insignificant in their considerations.
Others might have an “evaluation eye” that sees the fact that the program “helped” a person/organization/community so it was successful. But the determination of what “help” is may be in the eye of the beholder as well. The fact is that we all have different ways of determining whether things are successes and one man’s success is another man’s failure, or at least insignificant in their considerations.
This class has been interesting to
me in so many ways. I have appreciated
the review of the open source movement, its motivations and its history. But I am reminded of the review of journal
issues project that we did in Rick West’s foundations class in IP&T here at BYU. That project had us review 10 years worth of issues in one academic journal related to distance education. I found it interesting how certain
topics in the journal Distance Education appeared, flamed very hot, cooled, and almost
became yesterday’s news in the course of the decade we reviewed. Some things that were important in years two through five were almost refuted by the issues that were developing in years nine and ten.
Perhaps this is always the cycle of research and discovery. I believe it probably is. At some point our hot new idea will likely encounter a circumstance where it does not work and which we did not anticipate or suspect. Now our great new thing has to die, or at least becomes dormant, because it may not be great enough to endure.
Perhaps this is always the cycle of research and discovery. I believe it probably is. At some point our hot new idea will likely encounter a circumstance where it does not work and which we did not anticipate or suspect. Now our great new thing has to die, or at least becomes dormant, because it may not be great enough to endure.
I guess that is what I was trying
to assess when I was thinking of a project to evaluate Sourceforge projects and
see what their patterns of contributions were, as well as its duration. If something lives and breathes through all
it encounters, gaining life and being sustained by others who become its
companions, then perhaps it is a more “successful” OSS project. But the Slashdot link makes perhaps the most
pertinent point about defining success.
You had an itch and what you did scratched it. Even if no one else (including yourself) ever
contributes again, that project was a success because it solved the problem it
was intended to solve when it was created.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Open Business Models - A Lead Scholar Badge
I have chosen to complete A Lead Scholar Badge that Erin proposed as part of her quest to complete the Open Assessment Designer badge. She defined the requirements for the badge as:
I will be leading the discussion on March 23rd in our class meeting on the topic of Open Business Models. The points from the readings assigned are outlined below. After presenting in the class of Friday I believe that I will have met the requirements for the badge.The rationale behind the design of it is that this badge provides an opportunity for us to be knowledgeable in a topic and to inspire other students to learn more and think deeply about that topic.In order to fulfill this badge, you follow the step:1) Choose a topic interests you (refer to our course topics: http://openeducation.us/badges)2) Let our teacher, David Wiley, know about your decision and get approval3) Become knowledgeable in that topic by carefully reading all required readings4) Present main points of readings in class or in your organization5) Lead a class discussion on that topic by posing meaningful questions or hold an introductory meeting in your organization
The main concept of the business models is that of sustainability. As Downes (2007) notes in his paper (not assigned for the topic) there are economic and non-economic definitions of sustainable. The economic definition of sustainable involves finding a mechanism that will provide the funds that at least equal the costs of the provision of OER. The costs to provide are ". . . calculations . . . often expressed in terms of 'total cost of ownership' (the make-up of which varies, depending on who is asked)." (p. 33).
Downes also writes that there are non-economic sustainability concerns that some organizations may view as more important than the funding. These may include the the actual sustainability of the OER itself in terms of lifetime, or objectives that the organization might view OER achieving that otherwise not have been available without the resources used. Because of these varied considerations of what sustainability means, Downes writes:
What constitutes 'sustainable' is unlikely to be reducible to a single metric or calculation. It will ultimately depend on the economies and the objectives of the provider. This may well explain why there are many models for sustainable OERs. This indeterminacy, though it may raise difficulties for economists, may nonetheless be a good thing. It may allow many organizations in many ways to see OERs as 'sustainable' even in cases where a broad social consensus does not exist. (p. 34)The articles provided in the topic readings discuss different business model considerations associated with providing resources to sustain the OER on an ongoing basis. I will discuss the main points in each article and some of the considerations related to business models discussed in each; however, I thought it important to first consider what Downes had to say about definitions of sustainable because I think his point is important to consider.
Reading 1: Johansen and Wiley (2010) - A Sustainable Model for OpenCourseWare Development
This study considered the development of OpenCourseWare (OCW) at BYU Independent Study and asked three research questions:
- How much does it cost to “open” an existing BYU IS course?
- How does opening a BYU IS course affect paid enrollments in the course?
- If the impact on paid enrollments is positive, is it enough to sustain an ongoing open publishing initiative at BYU IS?
The last question describes how the study defined sustainability.
The study reveals that there have been documented concerns that institutions offering online courses for credit would suffer a decline in enrollments (and revenue) if they provide an OCW version of the same courses. So the study attempted to determine if there was a significant discernible impact on expected enrollments when an open version of the course is made available.
The second aspect to be addressed was the flow of funds that might be generated by the OCW version to offset its conversion costs. The study decided to place a button in the OCW pages that would allow the viewer to register and pay for the for-credit version of the course. This funding source was described by Downes (2007) as a Conversion Model which he says is summarized by Sterne and Herring (2005):
The study reveals that there have been documented concerns that institutions offering online courses for credit would suffer a decline in enrollments (and revenue) if they provide an OCW version of the same courses. So the study attempted to determine if there was a significant discernible impact on expected enrollments when an open version of the course is made available.
The second aspect to be addressed was the flow of funds that might be generated by the OCW version to offset its conversion costs. The study decided to place a button in the OCW pages that would allow the viewer to register and pay for the for-credit version of the course. This funding source was described by Downes (2007) as a Conversion Model which he says is summarized by Sterne and Herring (2005):
“In the Conversion model, you give something away for free and then convert the consumer of the freebie to a paying customer.”
The conversion of an OCW user to a paying enrolled student generates funding that can be used to cover the costs to convert the course to the OCW format. Johansen notes that other studies have indicated a conversion rate of approximately 2%. So there are approximately 2 enrollments for every 100 visitors to the OCW version of the course.
BYU Independent Study courses were converted to OCW with minimal conversion costs because the courses were already fully delivered and available to user in an online format and were largely self-contained with limited use of copyrighted materials. The study points out that there would be considerably more costs to be covered to sustain the courses if there were development costs from the initiation of the course that needed to be allocated to the open version of the course as well as use of copyrighted materials.
Johansen notes that the University owns the product of the authoring work done by the faculty developing the course so the copyright for the course belongs to BYU. He also notes that BYU Independent Study purposely limits the use of copyrighted content, including required texts for the course. Most of the text materials are contained within the course itself and copyrighted by BYU.
Due to these ownership considerations, and the fact that the courses were already developed for enrollment by paying students in a near to OCW format, the conversion costs were minimal in these regards. The most significant costs incurred were for what Johansen calls the transform. This was the process to take the existing XML formatted content and transform it to a format for OCW use. This meant that the costs to develop the first course was considerably higher than that of the subsequent courses which did not require the transform development.
Johansen reported the costs to convert as follows:
BYU Independent Study courses were converted to OCW with minimal conversion costs because the courses were already fully delivered and available to user in an online format and were largely self-contained with limited use of copyrighted materials. The study points out that there would be considerably more costs to be covered to sustain the courses if there were development costs from the initiation of the course that needed to be allocated to the open version of the course as well as use of copyrighted materials.
Johansen notes that the University owns the product of the authoring work done by the faculty developing the course so the copyright for the course belongs to BYU. He also notes that BYU Independent Study purposely limits the use of copyrighted content, including required texts for the course. Most of the text materials are contained within the course itself and copyrighted by BYU.
Due to these ownership considerations, and the fact that the courses were already developed for enrollment by paying students in a near to OCW format, the conversion costs were minimal in these regards. The most significant costs incurred were for what Johansen calls the transform. This was the process to take the existing XML formatted content and transform it to a format for OCW use. This meant that the costs to develop the first course was considerably higher than that of the subsequent courses which did not require the transform development.
Johansen reported the costs to convert as follows:
- University Courses
- first course: $3,485.07
- second course: $284.12
- third course $284.142
- High School Courses
- first course: $5,204.34
- second course: $1,172.71
- third course $ 1,172.71
The process to convert the high school courses was slightly different and required more labor than that university courses accounting for the difference.
Statistical analysis was used to determine if there was a possible effect of the open courses on enrollments in the paid courses. This analysis seemed to indicate that there were no significant discernible effects on paid enrollments in the courses.
The study used web-analytics and cookies to count the conversions to the paid course. The count of conversions was 512 paid enrollments from 20,148 visits for a rate of 2.54%. The study then assumed the second and third course conversion costs would be representative of future conversions. This assumption was then used to calculate the costs to convert and then the 2.54% conversion rate was used to estimate the revenue that might be available from conversions. The analysis used a four-year period for analysis since it is anticipated that the lifetime of the course before needing significant rewrite is four years.
The four year revenues that were estimated for the OCW versions of the courses provided sufficient funds at the 2.5% conversion rate to require an 11% margin on sales of courses in order to sustain the OCW efforts.
Statistical analysis was used to determine if there was a possible effect of the open courses on enrollments in the paid courses. This analysis seemed to indicate that there were no significant discernible effects on paid enrollments in the courses.
The study used web-analytics and cookies to count the conversions to the paid course. The count of conversions was 512 paid enrollments from 20,148 visits for a rate of 2.54%. The study then assumed the second and third course conversion costs would be representative of future conversions. This assumption was then used to calculate the costs to convert and then the 2.54% conversion rate was used to estimate the revenue that might be available from conversions. The analysis used a four-year period for analysis since it is anticipated that the lifetime of the course before needing significant rewrite is four years.
The four year revenues that were estimated for the OCW versions of the courses provided sufficient funds at the 2.5% conversion rate to require an 11% margin on sales of courses in order to sustain the OCW efforts.
Reading #2: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - Free: Why Authors are Giving Books Away on the Internet
This article states:
Anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to both authors and books increases when books are available as free downloads, and that print sales are not negatively affected.The authors read past materials written by 10 authors who openly publish their books. They also surveyed the authors and analyzed the sales of books written by one of the authors. The most frequent responses given by the authors when asked why they openly publish were:
- they had a desire to increase the exposure of the book, and
- open publishing is, morally speaking, the right thing to do.
One of the authors, Lawrence Lessig said, “The number of people who tell me they would never have seen the book had it not been freely licensed is extraordinary.” Another author, Cory Doctorow, wrote:
Most people who download [a book I wrote] don’t end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience…After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.The authors note that the offering of the books in the open formats has attracted attention to their writings. One indicates that it actually has "extended the long tail" of the book leading to longer period of ongoing sales because of the good will that the open publication has engendered.
The authors note that there are benefits that they derive personally from the open publications that they may not have received without being open. These are not sales but the satisfaction of "doing the right thing" or the ego strokes that come when they hear from readers all over the world. There is also the satisfaction that their books are being translated into other languages and readable formats so that those who may not have had access to the books otherwise can be readers because of the open licenses that allowed these modifications.
When it comes to the sacrifice of financial benefit to them personally that most would assume would be part of the decision to openly publish, Doctorow wrote:
A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free ebook as a substitute for the printed book — those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the ebook as an enticement to buy the printed book. They’re gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I’m ahead of the game…The number of people who wrote to me to tell me about how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper book far exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, “Ha, ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I’m not gonna buy it."Other authors indicated that they had books whose sales far exceeded the publishers estimates and that they thought that was because of the interest generated by the open version of the book. Another author expressed that he viewed the open version of the book to be a sampler that allowed readers to assess their interest in the book and then make a decision to buy it. This author believed that some people bought the book who otherwise would never have considered it because they were able to sample it.
The article concludes with a study that tracked the sales of two books be Lessig immediately before and after one of the books that was in print only, was released in an open version. The conclusion was that there was a possible effect observed that the decision to "go open" may have lessened the slide in sales that might otherwise have been expected for a publication that was aging in the marketplace.
Reading #3: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales
This paper again looks at the effect of publishing a book in an online open format on the print sales of that book. The authors make this very important point:
The question of how freely distributing an electronic version of a work affects print sales is difficult, if not impossible, to answer experimentally because there is no way to simultaneously release and not release free versions of a book. It is not possible to determine causation; nevertheless, the effect of free distribution on print sales is an important issue to examine.This paper was a follow-on study to the last paper in which the authors performed the bookscan analysis that they used for the Lessig books in the last study, expanded to 41 books by different authors in different genres. They analyzed scanned sales for these 41 books in the eight weeks prior and the eight weeks following the release as an open publication. The results were mixed and may have been influenced by one of the publishers that had a more restrictive method for accessing the titles.
The authors conclude:
The present study indicates that there is a moderate correlation between free digital books being made permanently available and short-term print sales increases. However, free digital books did not always equal increased sales. This result may be surprising, both to those who claim that when a free version is available fewer people will pay to purchase copies, as well as those who claim that free access will not harm sales.The authors also note that it will be hard to make general conclusions from this data regarding the effects of open publishing on book sales.
Reading #4: Hilton (2010) - ―Freely Ye Have Received, Freely Give‖ (Matthew 10:8): How Giving Away Religious Digital Books Influences the Print Sales
of Those Books - Dissertation
This dissertation documents the significant research done by Hilton in this genre of open publishing and it effect on sales of printed books. Hilton was able to work with Deseret Book and several of their published authors to release eight books in an open version and assess the impact on the sales of those books. Hilton's Abstract states:
This study examined the financial viability of a religious publisher‘s putting free digital versions of eight of its books on the Internet. The total cost of putting these books online was $940.00. Over a 10-week period these books were downloaded 102,256 times and print sales of these books increased 26%. Comparisons with historical book sales and sales of comparable titles suggest a positive but modest connection between this increase and the online availability of the free books.It is apparent from all of these last three publications that Hilton is seeking to provide evidence that this open publishing approach will not negatively impact authors and their livelihood and thus make OER a more attractive way to spread influence and learning opportunities. He has done a good job documenting these possibilities and this dissertation reports research that serves as evidence. This evidence is played up against opposition and the fear that publishers and authors have that openly publishing books will hurt sales. One publisher feels strongly about this:
A spokesperson for the Penguin Publishing stated that Penguin Publishing believes that books are too valuable to be given away for free.Hilton reports the experience of Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, with open publishing. He notes that he openly published one of his older books in hopes that it would promote sales of his new book. He said:
My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel [which was newly available in hard copy]. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they e-mailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops. (Adams 2007, p. A19)Hilton makes the observation that:
Until authors and publishers can be assured that turning their books into open educational resources will not negatively affect sales of those books, it seems unlikely that authors and publishers will be willing to make them freely available. If research could demonstrate that providing free electronic copies of books did not diminish a printed book‘s profitability, then making books available as open educational resources could become widespread, thus greatly expanding access to information.This dissertation documents this result for the books that he was able to make open for this study, as the abstract suggests. The dissertation reports the detail that is summarized in the abstract quote above. The study uses the same approach that Johansen used in his OCW study from Reading #1. The margins that were required for Deseret Book under the different volume assumptions ranged from 17% to 95%.
The study noted a positive correlation coefficient of r = .42 between downloads of the open book and total sales of the print book through all channels. The same correlation was performed again but limiting the count of print book sold to only those sales through the same medium as the open book, the internet. The correlation coefficient in this analysis changed to r = .65. This is a stronger correlation.
The overall increase in book sales of 26% indicates that there was not a negative effect of making the books available in the open format and suggests that there may have been a positive effect.
Reading #5: Hilton and Wiley (2010) - A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story
In this article the authors talk about the business model governing Flat World Knowledge (FWK), a provider of on-line open textbooks and related supplemental materials. The efforts of FWK (and other open text providers) are in response to the tactics used by publishers of traditional text books in pricing, packaging, and issuing of new editions. Such tactics are feared to greatly increase the cost of education and therefore the financial burdens on students and families. These higher costs price many out of the possibility of higher education.
The FWK model is aligned with what the authors referred to as the Gillette model,
which can be summarized as “give away the razor and sell the blades.” This model has been successful for a number of open source businesses.
The authors also refer to this model as the open source business model (based on its accepted use by providers of Linux) and a "freemium"model where the seller gives away a product or service and then sells related merchandise or services. The FWK model provides the on-line version of the text and then charges for premium add-ons such as a printed copy, audio version, flash cards and so on.
Two significant parts of the business model are that the authors are paid a 20% royalty rate on the sales of the books and supplemental materials rather than the standard 15% royalty of the traditional publishers. One of the FWK authors stated:
“Flat World has a great business model. One of the things … that I don’t like about the current marketplace is that the books are $150 or more … So the commitment to make [textbooks] downloadable for free has several advantages for both the professor and for the students. For the student of course it makes sure that if the book is too expensive, well they will just read it online … for the professor it means that if the bookstore didn’t order enough books it’s okay the students can read it online until they can actually their physical copy. The importance of free was really driven home to me when I received an e–mail from an Indian student who said that he had studied my book, and that in his opinion it had helped him gain entrance to an MBA program in India, and that he wouldn’t have been able to do it without the free material. That was one of the most heartwarming things that I have had in my career.”So in addition to the higher royalty percentage, this author also derives some non-monetary satisfaction from his text published openly. The second significant fact is that the alpha and beta testing shows that the faculty and the students support the FWK approach as long as the text quality is of the highest caliber.
The article reports that 442 of the 750 students (59%) enrolled in courses using FWK texts (the beta test) purchased add on materials and spent an average of $28.20 each. 294 of the students paid for a printed copy of the text in addition to the free copy available to them online. The authors write,
Data from this beta test suggest that in addition to purchasing textbooks, many students are interested in purchasing a variety of course materials, particularly flashcards and audio versions of the text.The authors conclude, noting:
From the viewpoint of students and faculty, free online textbooks of acceptable quality may be particularly attractive. Data from the FWK beta test suggest that even when free online textbooks are available many students will still purchase printed versions of the books. Results from the beta test also indicate that students are interested in supplementary products such as flashcards.Reading #6: Hilton and Wiley (2011) - Open Access Textbooks and Financial Sustainability: A Case Study on Flat World Knowledge
This article reports on the first year of operations of FWK. It captured the following key statistics for that year of operation (fall 2009 through summer 2010):
- 57,690 students were enrolled in 1,153 different classes which used FWK textbooks
- 16,461 print textbooks were purchased generating $479,259 in revenues.
- 10,970 (67%) if these texts were purchased through a campus bookstore.
- 29% of students purchased a print copy of the text.
- 65.7% of the students using FWK texts registered at the FWK website
- Approximately 25% made a purchase from the FWK website
- Average buyer made 1.3 purchases
- Average purchase was $30.89
- Costs to FWK to publish the first 10 textbooks: $150,000 each
- Costs estimated for additional textbooks: $120,000 each
- Costs to recruit faculty to use FWK texts:
- 2009-2010 $2,500 on average with $225 in gross profit
- 2010-2011 $ 900 on average with $300 in gross profit (three year payback)
- 500 faculty adopters summer 2009 - 9% referred by colleague
- 1,200 faculty adopters summer/fall 2010 - 27% referred by colleague
- 2009-2010 average revenue per text: $48,00 - 3 year cost recovery
Supplemental Reading: Downes (2007) - Models for sustainable open educational resources
I have included this reading only to list the eight methods for funding OER that Downes lists in his article. These eight models are not limited to OER. This is the same set of models considered for most non-profit public institutions or resources (museums, libraries, parks, cemetaries, schools, colleges/universities, arts organizations, etc.) These are not unique to OER which has two implications to my mind:
- Those who will be involved in supporting the efforts will be very familiar with these models. This applies to the fundraisers, patrons, and donors.
- Because there are so many of these institutions and resources competing for these funds, there is competition for them.
Some of these eight models have been discussed in the readings provided for the business model topic. But many were not. All are available in some form to support the expansion of support and strengthen possibilities for sustainability of OER.
The eight models are:
- Endowment Model - money is raised from sources and invested. The fund administrator dispenses the interest each year which sustains the efforts for which the endowment was established.
- Membership Model - Interested organizations and individuals are invited to contribute certain sums to generate operating revenues. Members are granted privileges in return for their fees.
- Donations Model - Donations are requested from the wider community and are used for operations or building an endowment.
- Conversion Model - See Reading #1 above. You give something away for free and then convert the consumer of the freebie to a paying customer. This is a try and buy, sampler, or add-on such as Linux sellers use. Includes the "freemium" approach described for FWK.
- Contributor-Pay Model - In this model the contributor pays the cost of maintaining the contribution where the provider thereafter makes the contribution available for free. This is the open choice option offered by publishers where the author pays the journal accepting the article, who then provides the article in an open access format.
- Sponsorship Model - Includes advertising in the form of commercials, banners, etc. or indicating sponsorship by another entity (brought to you by Microsoft, Apple, etc).
- Institutional Model - Institution itself assumes responsibility for the OER and funds its development, support, and maintenance from institutional budgets.
- Governmental Model - The government supports the OER through direct funding and grants.
Additional References
Downes S. (2007). Models for sustainable open educational resources [Electronic version]. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 29–44. Retrieved from http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf
Monday, March 19, 2012
Open Ed Researcher Badge Complete
This is the post in which I propose that I have completed the requirements for the Open Ed Researcher Badge. In accordance with the requirements I am linking the posts that were required to earn this badge.
First, I affirm that I carefully read and viewed all of the materials provided for the topics Open Source, OpenCourseWare, and Open Educational Resources.
Secondly, I am providing the links to my previous blog posts about these three topics with the research materials that I found and reported.
Finally, the link below takes the reader to my proposed research project for each of these three topics.
Research Studies for Open Topics
Overall I found the research interesting and I learned a great deal about current issues in each of these three topic areas. The research studies I have proposed may be redundant with existing research but a more thorough literature review would reveal that if I were actually pursuing these studies as part of my program.
First, I affirm that I carefully read and viewed all of the materials provided for the topics Open Source, OpenCourseWare, and Open Educational Resources.
Secondly, I am providing the links to my previous blog posts about these three topics with the research materials that I found and reported.
Finally, the link below takes the reader to my proposed research project for each of these three topics.
Research Studies for Open Topics
Overall I found the research interesting and I learned a great deal about current issues in each of these three topic areas. The research studies I have proposed may be redundant with existing research but a more thorough literature review would reveal that if I were actually pursuing these studies as part of my program.
Research Projects for Open Ed Researcher Badge
The final step that I need to complete for the open ed researcher badges is to outline research studies for each of the three topics that I selected for research. In previous posts I have fulfilled the requirements to identify scholarly literature and other available resources relevant to the topic. Those posts were on the topics of:
- OpenCourseWare (click to see the post)
- Open Source Software (click to see post)
- Open Educational Resources (click to see post)
This post will outline research studies for each of these three topics per the requirements to earn the Open Ed Researcher badge.
Research Project #1 - OpenCoursWare
A prevalent issue confronting proponents of Open CourseWare is the financial sustainability of efforts to produce and maintain open courses. Previous studies identified or proposed different approaches to addressing this sustainability concern. OpenCourseWare fits with the traditional pattern of initiatives needing funding at institutions of higher education and other organizations seeking to provide a public benefit at minimal cost. Traditional sources of funding for such initiatives and organizations include: government taxpayer support through appropriations and grants, sponsoring institution support, endowments, philanthropic grants, foundation grants, patron donations, add-on sales, and licensing. Some of these sources feed the parent institution sponsoring which then allocates funding from institutional budgets to fund these efforts.
MIT OpenCoursWare has experienced funding from the institution, philanthropists, foundations, and is now soliciting patron support on its website. Other initiatives to provide open courses (particularly outside of the U.S.) rely on government support for their efforts through institutions established for open learning and as open universities. Some institutions that have entered the OpenCoursWare space have exited due to the lack of ongoing funding.
My proposed research project is to explore an approach that may demonstrate a strategic reason for higher education institutions to consider funding open courses from their regular budgets. Policies are emerging from governments and accrediting bodies that are attempting to hold institutions more accountable for the achievement of specific learning outcomes by their students. These policies and standards require an emphasis on measurement and reporting.
I contend that OpenCourseWare can be a valuable tool to insure that the design of instruction is tied to specific learning outcomes and covers the entire scope of curriculum in the academic period in which it is to be delivered. The design of online courses can enforce discipline in the design of instruction to meet all learning objectives. Such completeness of coverage may be sacrificed when limited to the contact hours in the classroom as faculty often need to adjust due to the limits of time. Having a well-designed curriculum available online promotes thorough coverage of learning objectives, even if the students have to be referred to the online materials for some of the instruction that could not be delivered in the classroom due to time constraints. This is one advantage of creating an identical version of the course materials and instruction that can be provided through OpenCourseWare.
Another benefit that could make OpenCourseWare an institutional strategy priority is the possibility that open courses could be an always-available supplement to the instruction provided in the classroom. The research study I am proposing attempts to document if such a benefit exists, as indicated by a correlation between accessing the open course and the grades students achieve when using the open course as a supplement to classroom instruction.
Research Setting
The ideal research setting for the project would be a University that offers sections of a specific course taught in the classroom to admitted students, and also provides the same course (equivalent or same artifacts, lectures, media, etc.) as an OpenCoursWare option. Ideally the same professor who designed the course would be the instructor in the classroom, and the principal involved in developing (or supporting) the OCW version of the course. The purpose of the study is to use the open version of the course as a supplement to classroom instruction and see if there is a correlation between student performance on critical assessments and the time students spent interacting with the open course.
Participants
The participants in the study would be the faculty member teaching the course and all of the students enrolled in at least one section of the course in at least one semester. Two or more periods may provide more robust data that could lead to better analysis.
Data Collection
The professor would include reference to the open version of the course in the syllabus and class discussion with the students the first day of class. The students would be told that the course materials match those that would be used in the instruction in the classroom and that they can refer to the open course as often as they would like for supplement to their learning of the materials. The professor would regularly mention the open course supplement throughout the semester.
The students would be asked to keep a record of the amount of time, or the number of times, that they use the open course to aid them in their learning. The raw test scores students achieve on critical assessments throughout the course would be recorded for data analysis. At the completion of the course the students will complete a short, non-anonymous survey, that collects qualitative and quantitative data. The data will include the hours, or number of times, that the student accessed the open course during the semester.
Another piece of data that might be interesting would be to consider the possibility that some students will use the open course as a substitute for class attendance. Asking about the number of times students actually attended class might also interact with the open course access in considering effects on grade achievement.
Analysis Methodologies
The data would be analyzed by correlating the raw scores on the assessments with the amount of engagement with the open course. I would see if there is a significant correlation between the use of the open course and the scores students achieved.
If I include the classroom replacement data, we would run multiple regression to determine if there was a significant interaction between class attendance, open course as a replacement, and the accesses to the open course on the achievement of the students.
The report would indicate whether a practice of providing an open version of the course would enhance student performance as measured on critical assessments. We would also review any qualitative data in hopes that such data that would convey information about the open course itself, the student experience with the open course, and information about the strategies that the students used.
The report would provide analysis for an institution to consider as it's leadership evaluates a possible strategic priority for funding open courses.
Research Project #2 - Open Source Software
Me research on the open source topic revealed numerous studies that considered the motivations for those who participate in open source projects. One of the basic tenets of the open source movement is stipulated by Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar as what he calls Linus' Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
One of the critical benefits of open source projects that is required is to have a large enough base of interested developers that there is a sustainable life for the development project. Raymond comments that one of the critical principles for success of an open source project is that there is a hand-off when a developer moves away from a project that he or she has been shepherding. If that happens, there needs to be a new developer who will assume ownership when the incumbent moves on or the project will die.
This challenge prompts me to consider just how effective the community is at developing and sustaining projects once the initial developer has "scratched his/her itch" by proposing (and programming) a project that satisfies their individual need in the open source community. Do these projects receive life and vibrancy once that proposer of the project leaves? That is not to say that the project may not be useful in the form at which its continued development stops. But it would be interesting to know how many of the projects take on an ongoing life with support for upgrades and updates from an interested and organized effort by developers in the open source community.
I propose a research project to find out how the community may respond and support efforts when there is a limited gateway to meter the flow of projects and channel them appropriately. Who will take up the charge to keep a project current and recruit assistance as needed to update the application?
Research Setting
My proposal is to use the data available at the open source project site sourceforge.net. This site accepts projects for open development and interested developers can create logins and then participate in projects. The site has hosted more than 300,000 projects and has more than 2 million registered users. I propose that we set our research in an analysis of data from that web site.
Participants
The participants who would be included in the project would be those who are associated with the sourcefourge projects. There would be minimal involvement of these participants, limited to the possibility of outreach by survey to a sample of contributors.
Data Collection
The data collection would be to access data on projects by mining the data available at the site. The main data to be analyzed would be collected through this mining effort. A possible addendum to the data collection would be a survey of participants (perhaps voluntary from a notice posted to the site or a random sample to which we reach out).
Analysis Methodologies
The mined data would be used to calculate the number of participants per project and any other useful information that might show how active the community is in support of the projects on the site. It is assumed that those with very few participants would be in danger of extinction without more developers participating in the project. We could also look for indications of long lapses of time since the last contribution, or between contributions. The output would be a profile of projects in the sourceforge database to include duration, participant developers, and any other metrics that might be meaningful in looking at the health and sustainability of the projects.
If we could accumulate survey data we would focus on projects with few developers per project, or long lapses of time between contributions, to determine the reasons that the project that they are developing was suggested, if that need has been fulfilled, if that need continues to exist in a significant installed base, and if there are reasons to update and maintain the code that has been developed? The intent would be to understand the genesis and life of a project and propose why the observed data about the project are what they are.
Ultimately, we would want to identify a meaningful report structure that would verify the health of open source projects as a movement, or if the movement is restricted to a few superstar projects and then tens of thousands of others that fill a small niche or are not actively developed. There may be some follow-on research that will tie the motivation research to the data from this study. Perhaps this can be used to inform those proposing projects on ways to encourage greater and more frequent participation.
Research Project #3 - Open Educational Resources (OER)
One of the most important characteristics of OER is the reduction in the costs to provide educational opportunities to impoverished or less-developed communities. There have been projects that have opened content and shared copyrighted products using Creative Commons and other open licenses. Some projects have been undertaken to experiment with the production of open textbooks and schools have been created where the entire curriculum uses OER. Such efforts have focused on the applying the lower costs of these resources to save education budgets and re-direct funds to other priorities.
My research on this topic led to several studies that were case analyses of the use of OER in different settings. The research project I would propose for OER is to actually work with educators in less-developed countries where they can participate in an OER-based curriculum and determine whether the suppositions about lower-cost opportunities can be realized. I would also use the findings as a basis for communicating with interested parties proposals about how an effective implementation of OER could be structured in realizing these benefits.
Research Setting
I would work with international organizations interested in improving educational opportunities for less-developed communities to identify a handful of sites where we might engage the educators, administrators, and the government education agencies to design and implement curriculum using OER.
Study Participants
The teachers, administrators, and government agencies would participate in the study.
Data Collection
The first step in the collection of the data would be to collect information on the costs currently incurred to provide materials, training, ongoing inservice and support, procurement, and general administrative costs associated with the curriculum and instruction. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
Once that cost data is accumulated, the next step would be to consider the curriculum design that would be the ideal aspirations of the participants that best fit the culture and infrastructure in the community. The same costs that were captured in the first step would be estimated using existing materials and services that would be required without an aggressive OER implementation. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
The final cost analysis would be to work on an aggressive OER based plan to restructure the curriculum according to the ideal aspirations. All of the costs would be accumulated, with the appropriate substitutions of the current costs from step one and the traditional education model from step two with the equivalent costs that would replace them in step three. For example the procurement costs and overhead may be replaced with identification of OER appropriate for instruction and production of the media that would be used.
Analysis Methodologies
The analysis of the data would consider the first two calculations against the actual expenditures experienced in step three. This analysis would compare the costs of the OER strategy against the existing strategy and the implementation of a new strategy using traditional educational resources. The study would inform the experience of these communities in the use of OER. There may be evidence that the cost reduction can allow additional opportunity that would not otherwise be available without the costs savings that the OER strategy delivered.
The purpose would be to align the findings against the proposition that use of OER may provide better educational opportunities for impoverished or developing communities. I could also formulate proposals for implementing an OER strategy that learns from this research, identifying ways that the expenditures in step three of the project could be modified or eliminated to decrease the funding required.
My proposed research project is to explore an approach that may demonstrate a strategic reason for higher education institutions to consider funding open courses from their regular budgets. Policies are emerging from governments and accrediting bodies that are attempting to hold institutions more accountable for the achievement of specific learning outcomes by their students. These policies and standards require an emphasis on measurement and reporting.
I contend that OpenCourseWare can be a valuable tool to insure that the design of instruction is tied to specific learning outcomes and covers the entire scope of curriculum in the academic period in which it is to be delivered. The design of online courses can enforce discipline in the design of instruction to meet all learning objectives. Such completeness of coverage may be sacrificed when limited to the contact hours in the classroom as faculty often need to adjust due to the limits of time. Having a well-designed curriculum available online promotes thorough coverage of learning objectives, even if the students have to be referred to the online materials for some of the instruction that could not be delivered in the classroom due to time constraints. This is one advantage of creating an identical version of the course materials and instruction that can be provided through OpenCourseWare.
Another benefit that could make OpenCourseWare an institutional strategy priority is the possibility that open courses could be an always-available supplement to the instruction provided in the classroom. The research study I am proposing attempts to document if such a benefit exists, as indicated by a correlation between accessing the open course and the grades students achieve when using the open course as a supplement to classroom instruction.
Research Setting
The ideal research setting for the project would be a University that offers sections of a specific course taught in the classroom to admitted students, and also provides the same course (equivalent or same artifacts, lectures, media, etc.) as an OpenCoursWare option. Ideally the same professor who designed the course would be the instructor in the classroom, and the principal involved in developing (or supporting) the OCW version of the course. The purpose of the study is to use the open version of the course as a supplement to classroom instruction and see if there is a correlation between student performance on critical assessments and the time students spent interacting with the open course.
Participants
The participants in the study would be the faculty member teaching the course and all of the students enrolled in at least one section of the course in at least one semester. Two or more periods may provide more robust data that could lead to better analysis.
Data Collection
The professor would include reference to the open version of the course in the syllabus and class discussion with the students the first day of class. The students would be told that the course materials match those that would be used in the instruction in the classroom and that they can refer to the open course as often as they would like for supplement to their learning of the materials. The professor would regularly mention the open course supplement throughout the semester.
The students would be asked to keep a record of the amount of time, or the number of times, that they use the open course to aid them in their learning. The raw test scores students achieve on critical assessments throughout the course would be recorded for data analysis. At the completion of the course the students will complete a short, non-anonymous survey, that collects qualitative and quantitative data. The data will include the hours, or number of times, that the student accessed the open course during the semester.
Another piece of data that might be interesting would be to consider the possibility that some students will use the open course as a substitute for class attendance. Asking about the number of times students actually attended class might also interact with the open course access in considering effects on grade achievement.
Analysis Methodologies
The data would be analyzed by correlating the raw scores on the assessments with the amount of engagement with the open course. I would see if there is a significant correlation between the use of the open course and the scores students achieved.
If I include the classroom replacement data, we would run multiple regression to determine if there was a significant interaction between class attendance, open course as a replacement, and the accesses to the open course on the achievement of the students.
The report would indicate whether a practice of providing an open version of the course would enhance student performance as measured on critical assessments. We would also review any qualitative data in hopes that such data that would convey information about the open course itself, the student experience with the open course, and information about the strategies that the students used.
The report would provide analysis for an institution to consider as it's leadership evaluates a possible strategic priority for funding open courses.
Research Project #2 - Open Source Software
Me research on the open source topic revealed numerous studies that considered the motivations for those who participate in open source projects. One of the basic tenets of the open source movement is stipulated by Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar as what he calls Linus' Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
One of the critical benefits of open source projects that is required is to have a large enough base of interested developers that there is a sustainable life for the development project. Raymond comments that one of the critical principles for success of an open source project is that there is a hand-off when a developer moves away from a project that he or she has been shepherding. If that happens, there needs to be a new developer who will assume ownership when the incumbent moves on or the project will die.
This challenge prompts me to consider just how effective the community is at developing and sustaining projects once the initial developer has "scratched his/her itch" by proposing (and programming) a project that satisfies their individual need in the open source community. Do these projects receive life and vibrancy once that proposer of the project leaves? That is not to say that the project may not be useful in the form at which its continued development stops. But it would be interesting to know how many of the projects take on an ongoing life with support for upgrades and updates from an interested and organized effort by developers in the open source community.
I propose a research project to find out how the community may respond and support efforts when there is a limited gateway to meter the flow of projects and channel them appropriately. Who will take up the charge to keep a project current and recruit assistance as needed to update the application?
Research Setting
My proposal is to use the data available at the open source project site sourceforge.net. This site accepts projects for open development and interested developers can create logins and then participate in projects. The site has hosted more than 300,000 projects and has more than 2 million registered users. I propose that we set our research in an analysis of data from that web site.
Participants
The participants who would be included in the project would be those who are associated with the sourcefourge projects. There would be minimal involvement of these participants, limited to the possibility of outreach by survey to a sample of contributors.
Data Collection
The data collection would be to access data on projects by mining the data available at the site. The main data to be analyzed would be collected through this mining effort. A possible addendum to the data collection would be a survey of participants (perhaps voluntary from a notice posted to the site or a random sample to which we reach out).
Analysis Methodologies
The mined data would be used to calculate the number of participants per project and any other useful information that might show how active the community is in support of the projects on the site. It is assumed that those with very few participants would be in danger of extinction without more developers participating in the project. We could also look for indications of long lapses of time since the last contribution, or between contributions. The output would be a profile of projects in the sourceforge database to include duration, participant developers, and any other metrics that might be meaningful in looking at the health and sustainability of the projects.
If we could accumulate survey data we would focus on projects with few developers per project, or long lapses of time between contributions, to determine the reasons that the project that they are developing was suggested, if that need has been fulfilled, if that need continues to exist in a significant installed base, and if there are reasons to update and maintain the code that has been developed? The intent would be to understand the genesis and life of a project and propose why the observed data about the project are what they are.
Ultimately, we would want to identify a meaningful report structure that would verify the health of open source projects as a movement, or if the movement is restricted to a few superstar projects and then tens of thousands of others that fill a small niche or are not actively developed. There may be some follow-on research that will tie the motivation research to the data from this study. Perhaps this can be used to inform those proposing projects on ways to encourage greater and more frequent participation.
Research Project #3 - Open Educational Resources (OER)
One of the most important characteristics of OER is the reduction in the costs to provide educational opportunities to impoverished or less-developed communities. There have been projects that have opened content and shared copyrighted products using Creative Commons and other open licenses. Some projects have been undertaken to experiment with the production of open textbooks and schools have been created where the entire curriculum uses OER. Such efforts have focused on the applying the lower costs of these resources to save education budgets and re-direct funds to other priorities.
My research on this topic led to several studies that were case analyses of the use of OER in different settings. The research project I would propose for OER is to actually work with educators in less-developed countries where they can participate in an OER-based curriculum and determine whether the suppositions about lower-cost opportunities can be realized. I would also use the findings as a basis for communicating with interested parties proposals about how an effective implementation of OER could be structured in realizing these benefits.
Research Setting
I would work with international organizations interested in improving educational opportunities for less-developed communities to identify a handful of sites where we might engage the educators, administrators, and the government education agencies to design and implement curriculum using OER.
Study Participants
The teachers, administrators, and government agencies would participate in the study.
Data Collection
The first step in the collection of the data would be to collect information on the costs currently incurred to provide materials, training, ongoing inservice and support, procurement, and general administrative costs associated with the curriculum and instruction. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
Once that cost data is accumulated, the next step would be to consider the curriculum design that would be the ideal aspirations of the participants that best fit the culture and infrastructure in the community. The same costs that were captured in the first step would be estimated using existing materials and services that would be required without an aggressive OER implementation. This cost would be inclusive of all direct and indirect costs, reasonably and rationally allocated.
The final cost analysis would be to work on an aggressive OER based plan to restructure the curriculum according to the ideal aspirations. All of the costs would be accumulated, with the appropriate substitutions of the current costs from step one and the traditional education model from step two with the equivalent costs that would replace them in step three. For example the procurement costs and overhead may be replaced with identification of OER appropriate for instruction and production of the media that would be used.
Analysis Methodologies
The analysis of the data would consider the first two calculations against the actual expenditures experienced in step three. This analysis would compare the costs of the OER strategy against the existing strategy and the implementation of a new strategy using traditional educational resources. The study would inform the experience of these communities in the use of OER. There may be evidence that the cost reduction can allow additional opportunity that would not otherwise be available without the costs savings that the OER strategy delivered.
The purpose would be to align the findings against the proposition that use of OER may provide better educational opportunities for impoverished or developing communities. I could also formulate proposals for implementing an OER strategy that learns from this research, identifying ways that the expenditures in step three of the project could be modified or eliminated to decrease the funding required.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Review of Open Assessment Topic
I reviewed the materials provided on the topic link for open assessment. I reviewed all of the materials provided (OK, I did not watch the full two hours of the first video) and found myself trying to relate the concepts of badges to the paradigm of the world in which I live. I have made a formal study of effective assessment both as part of my academic endeavors and as part of my current professional assignment. I am also closely engaged in our regular accreditation reviews at the University.
In graduate school we are responsible to form a committee of recognized experts in the field of our research who can guide us, evaluate our achievement, and insure that our efforts are sufficiently rigorous and that we make a valued addition to our discipline through our work. Once they have considered our contribution, and accepted our defense of our efforts, they acknowledge our accomplishment as adequate by issuing a piece of paper that serves as a credential when we represent the adequacy of our achievement to others. I ponder how badges would serve as a proxy for that credential and process at a graduate level. As a student I would be in favor of a more open approach to these learning and publishing activities. As a member of the faculty and as the institution granting the degree, I may be more controlling and traditional.
There is no doubt that there will be (there may already be) progressive institutions of higher ed that are evaluating badge-based assessments and achievement as sufficient for "transfer-credit." There may even be traditional institutions that have adopted badges as part of their transcript. But the conservative higher education field and the uncertainty of the real quality of the badges may lead to slow acceptance and adoption.
One final note, in her paper Adrianna Kezar (see Kezar, A. J. (2004). Obtaining Integrity?: Reviewing and Examining the Charter between Higher Education and Society. Review Of Higher Education 27(4), 429-459) talks about how our society is evolving its views of the purposes of higher education. She laments the changes that are moving higher education from its traditional:
I was trying to reconcile this concept of open badges (particularly the different assessment approaches) with the recent emergence of more restrictive and formal assessment efforts proscribed for accreditation standards, which also seem to be the prevailing view of governmental thinking about accountability. It seems that a rigorous outcomes-oriented approach is the foundation for every new proposed evaluation of effective education, at least here in the United States. Not only are these outcomes-based approaches being centered in accountability and accreditation, there are also movements for instructional objectives, and assessments, to be common to all institutions. While these trends have become the norm in K-12 public education, they are bleeding over to higher education, particularly in the accreditation process.
The thing I wondered as I read through the white paper at the Mozilla badge wiki was how the varied approaches to assessment and recognition for achievement (or learning, if you will) through the issuing of badges aligns with the current emphasis on formalized, standardized, outcomes-based evaluation of education in accreditation and accountability processes. The white paper notes that the badge concept is an appropriate response to the change in learning brought about by the Web in our day. The paper states:
Learning is not just ‘seat time’ within schools, but extends across multiple contexts, experiences and interactions. It is no longer just an isolated or individual concept, but is inclusive, social, informal, participatory, creative and lifelong. And it is not sufficient to think of learning simply as consumption, but instead learners are active participants and producers in an interest-driven, lifelong learning process. The concept of a 'learning environment' no longer means just a single classroom or online space, but instead encompasses many spaces in broader, networked, distributed and extensible environments that span time and space. And across these learning environments, learners are offered multiple pathways to gain competencies and refine skills through open, remixable and transparent tools, resources and processes. In this connected learning ecology, the boundaries are broken and the walls are down — now we just need to help it reach its full potential.
Much of this shift is due to the fact that our world is very different than the one when the current education system was developed and standardized. With the Web and its core principles of openness, universality and transparency, the ways that knowledge is made, shared and valued have been transformed and the opportunities for deeper and relevant learning have been vastly expanded. The open Web has enabled increasing access to information and each other, as well as provided the platform for many new ways to learn and new skills to achieve. We no longer must rely on the expert authority or professionally-produced artifact to provide us with the information or experience we seek, instead we can find it from peers or make it ourselves onlineI believe that the concept of badges is running into a headwind of accountability standards that are counter to its acceptance by academics and businesses, at least in these early years. Of course it cannot hurt to have champions in the technology industry behind your efforts, but our societal understanding of education and credentialing is not aligned with the concept of badges. Particularly when assessments proposed to grant the recognition that comes with the badges can be viewed as 'squishy.' Again quoting from the white paper:
In order for any badge system to accumulate value and for badges to carry or contend with the weight of formal grades or degrees, quality and vetted assessments will be critical. However, the rigor may differ based on the use case, community or intended audience, and badges give us the flexibility to have multiple levels of assessment. Many badges will be associated with distinct pre-defined assessment exercises and success criteria, whereas others may be more loosely defined and require learner reflection or peer recommendations. The level, or rigor, of the assessment may differ based on the skill. Most hard skills may have fairly standard or rigid rubrics to compare learner work against, whereas social or 21st Century skills will be more fluid and may require more open and social assessments, such as peer reviews or endorsements.The intended audience may also determine the assessment level. If badges are simply intended to build community or reward immediate behaviors, as with motivation badges, simple assessments or in some cases, no predefined assessment, may be used. For certification badges meant for audiences such as hiring managers or admission boards, more rigorous assessments may be required to demonstrate critical competencies. Each learner may collect a wide range of badges across many different levels of assessment.In addition to levels of assessment, badges give us the ability to support open innovation around new or relevant types of assessments, provide more personalized assessments for learners and move away from isolated or irrelevant testing practices. Instead of being forced to take an exam at a pre-determined time, in many cases learners will seek out the assessment on their own, thus encouraging reflection on their learning and competency development.
I wonder how receptive institutions of higher education will be to badges as indications of achieved learning when they have a difficult time coming to grips with effective and fair evaluation of transfer credits from one institution to another. Accreditation is intended to facilitate cooperative recognition of the quality of the education offered at an institution. Most accrediting agencies require schools they accredit to accept credits from other accredited schools as a part of maintaining their own accreditation. The first step to acceptance of these badges will probably require their introduction into accreditation conversations, perhaps through an accreditation of the individual badges, or establishing a process where badges become a required part of the offerings of accredited institutions. But this concept may require a departure from the more rigorous standards-based and outcome-oriented accreditation standards that are being proposed and implemented now.In other cases, assessment and badge awarding could happen automatically and provide immediate formative feedback, and capitalize on the benefits of 'stealth assessment', which is difficult to achieve in a formal classroom. The badge system also fits well with the increasingly popular portfolio assessment, and in fact creates a distributed portfolio by using the badges as markers or entry points to specific skills and achievements, and each earned badge could then be linked directly to the relevant artifacts in the portfolio.
In graduate school we are responsible to form a committee of recognized experts in the field of our research who can guide us, evaluate our achievement, and insure that our efforts are sufficiently rigorous and that we make a valued addition to our discipline through our work. Once they have considered our contribution, and accepted our defense of our efforts, they acknowledge our accomplishment as adequate by issuing a piece of paper that serves as a credential when we represent the adequacy of our achievement to others. I ponder how badges would serve as a proxy for that credential and process at a graduate level. As a student I would be in favor of a more open approach to these learning and publishing activities. As a member of the faculty and as the institution granting the degree, I may be more controlling and traditional.
There is no doubt that there will be (there may already be) progressive institutions of higher ed that are evaluating badge-based assessments and achievement as sufficient for "transfer-credit." There may even be traditional institutions that have adopted badges as part of their transcript. But the conservative higher education field and the uncertainty of the real quality of the badges may lead to slow acceptance and adoption.
One final note, in her paper Adrianna Kezar (see Kezar, A. J. (2004). Obtaining Integrity?: Reviewing and Examining the Charter between Higher Education and Society. Review Of Higher Education 27(4), 429-459) talks about how our society is evolving its views of the purposes of higher education. She laments the changes that are moving higher education from its traditional:
role and contribution to the public good [that] has included educating citizens for democratic engagement, supporting local and regional communities, preserving knowledge and making it available to the community, working in concert with other social institutions such as government or health-care agencies to foster their missions, advancing knowledge through research, developing the arts and humanities, broadening access to ensure a diverse democracy, developing the intellectual talents of students, and creating leaders for various areas of the public sector.Rather she notes that some critics are concerned that, "higher education is foregoing its role as a social institution and is functioning increasingly as an industry with fluctuating, predominantly economic goals and market-oriented values. Increasingly, the production of workers is the primary or singular goal of higher education." She goes on to write that one of the concerns about this approach is the "subsum[ing of] the academic functions of the university into its corporate identity." Kezar quotes Patricia Gumport as writing:
While there are concerns about this "corporatization" of institutions of higher education, such a definition of higher education as a resource for the marketplace (at least in term of producing professionals for industry) seems to play into the concept of badges. The marketplace has traditionally relied on the credential represented by a university degree as an indication of achievement and the related major of the graduate as the specific area of skills or discipline in which they have demonstrated sufficient achievement. However, the emergence of a more need-specific credential may be in line with meeting the exact needs of a company in the marketplace. There needs to be some deliberation about what these badges mean, who valued issuers are, and the specific achievement that each represents, but it is evident that the separation of the role of the academy in its traditional role for society, and the credentialing for the marketplace, may leave a place for degrees AND badges that may be more aligned with a unique and desired role for each.I am concerned that technical, market imperatives run wild, urging colleges and universities to adapt to short term market demands, to redeploy resources, in an effort to reposition themselves with an increasingly competitive context at the expense of long-term goals and commitments.
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