At the beginning of our distance course we were given the premise that distance learning should not just be different than, or as good as F2F learning, but that it should be better. In an article on Blended Learning, Garrison believes that blended learning can accomplish this. He states that the challenge of blended learning is not just to add technology to existing F2F experiences to but fundamentally rethink how we go about teaching. He states that some kinds of learning take place better in asynchronous environments. For example, he thinks that dialogue can be improved in some ways if it is written asynchronously (providing reflection time). Building sociality perhaps is done better face to face. With blended learning we have the opportunity to critically think about what really promotes learning and design a system where this takes place. I've only done this first reading so far, but I look forward to studying blended learning more.
Two thoughts that I had after reading the article--one was to read what wikipedia has to say about blended learning. From what I read, I thought a fun class project might be to update the wikipedia entry.
A second thought I had was that it is a little surprising if, as Garrison says, blended learning is "inevitable" that I have experienced so little blended learning in my Ph.D program, in a fairly progessive department. I'm not saying this to be critical of the theory, nor the department, I just think that this illustration shows that it may be more complex to do blended learning right than first meets the eye. More posts on this topic to come.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thoughts on visit with Dr. Barbour
We had a successful online meeting with Dr. Michael Barbour at our distance education class. I had read some of his work before so I felt pretty excited for the opportunity. I hadn't thought very much about distance and K-12 education, but this is obviously a fruitful field. He gave us a brief history of things likek-12 online learning started in 1997; the first was was the F virtual school—used with state allocated funds.
We also discussed the difference between a "virtual school" (supplemental program, district/state based) and a "cyber school" (usually a district-based school, created under charter legislation).
We also discussed the difference between a "virtual school" (supplemental program, district/state based) and a "cyber school" (usually a district-based school, created under charter legislation).
Cyber charter schools have 70-80 kids per teacher, they use a model that the parent is considered one of the teacher and provides the primary instructional role. The cyber school providers the content, technology, a grader and a tutor.
An exciting part of the class (for me) had to do with a discussion Disrupting Class. Barbour has blogged extensively about this book, and I have written a humble review of it for Education Review. It appears that we had different views of the book :) I also later discovered that Jeb Bush (governor of FL, home of the first online school) is reading Disrupting Class, and apparently likes it. --no intent is given to state that Jeb Bush's reading materials do or do not merit endorsement.--
Another interesting thing we discussed is that there is no statistically significance in student performance in the F2F VS online courses. In fact, he seemed to think that perhaps only the “better” students are taking the online courses, in which case it might skew these results. In one case study he referenced those in the online classes got 11% lower grades than their f2f counterparts.
He pointed out that a lot of the distance learning strategies are built on learning for adults, which may be different from the learning style of adolescents. I think this is an important thing to think about as I try to create resources for youth - to study carefully about the ways in which they think and learn.
Friday Review
Yet another good week. Here's a quick roundup--
Research
Made some great findings in open publishing. I came across the research report "Challenging Notions of Free" which had some information I had been looking for. Even better, I was able to spend an hour talking with Mac Slocum and gained a lot of insight on what is and is not known about the consequences of releasing electronic versions of books for free. I had a wonderful time visiting with Jeff Clark about possible future projects. I also benefited from attending a University library meeting and Justin Johansen's prospectus defense.
Distance
Worked on my research proposal, and hopefully finished the IRB for that project. We had an interesting distance class featuring Michael Barbour. He had some interesting thoughts that I'll be blogging about later.
Open
Finished the third quest. See blog post here.
Assessment
I read the affective assessment book. Enjoyed it. Getting started on a project to analyze a test I gave to see how it can be improved.
Stats and research
Took the first big test--took a ton of time, but was fun.
Research
Made some great findings in open publishing. I came across the research report "Challenging Notions of Free" which had some information I had been looking for. Even better, I was able to spend an hour talking with Mac Slocum and gained a lot of insight on what is and is not known about the consequences of releasing electronic versions of books for free. I had a wonderful time visiting with Jeff Clark about possible future projects. I also benefited from attending a University library meeting and Justin Johansen's prospectus defense.
Distance
Worked on my research proposal, and hopefully finished the IRB for that project. We had an interesting distance class featuring Michael Barbour. He had some interesting thoughts that I'll be blogging about later.
Open
Finished the third quest. See blog post here.
Assessment
I read the affective assessment book. Enjoyed it. Getting started on a project to analyze a test I gave to see how it can be improved.
Stats and research
Took the first big test--took a ton of time, but was fun.
Open: Quest #3
The Creation and Use of Open Educational Resources in Religious Education
Abstract A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts. These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources; this openness is also specifically manifest in the field of religious education. I discuss different levels in which OERs can be “open” and the implications of these levels when creating OERs. Common motivations and obstacles to creating OERs are discussed. A particularly significant issue regarding openness concerns copyright issues. I discuss copyright implications both in terms of reusing resources others have made (resources that may or may not be copyrighted), and using Creative Commons licenses to license OERs so as to give the desired level of copyright protection. Although OERs are not appropriate in all situations, they can be an important part of improving pedagogy and increasing access to education.
Introduction A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources. Perhaps the most well-known institutional program is MIT’s OpenCourseWare Program which provides open materials for over 1,800 courses. Other significant providers that share completely open courses include Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, Yale’s Open Courses and Stanford’s Engineering Everywhere courses. Some institutions, instead of offering full courses, offer small units of instruction such as a class module, flash video file, lesson plan. Curriki and Rice University’s Connexions are examples of institutions providing these smaller units of educational content.
This sharing takes place by individual teachers as well as institutions. Individual teachers have uploaded lectures to YouTube, posted PowerPoint presentations to SlideShare, and shared photos of religious sites to Flickr.
Open educational resources are being shared with increasing frequency. This trend is occurring throughout education generally, and also specifically in religious education. Yale Divinity School publishes a course on the Old Testament, Notre Dame has three religion classes available and MIT OpenCourseWare has a class called “The Bible.” More than twenty religion courses are offered on iTunes University.
The increasing number of available OERs leads to several questions. What does it mean to be “open?” Why would teachers want to share their educational resources? What are obstacles to creating OERs, and how does copyright affect openness? In this paper I will discuss answers to these questions. Let’s begin with the question, what does it mean to be “open”?
A Closer Look at “Open”
As stated previously, “open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically, Wiley (2009) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness. These R’s are as follows:
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital article to a colleague).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
Any open item allows reuse. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach. Depending on the goals of the creator of a particular OER, different levels of openness will be appropriate (Gurell, 2008). How the OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, also affects how open the OER will be.
In addition to these four R’s, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix it, the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a scanned document that has been turned into a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but is not easy to edit. Because free software exits to both open and edit a .doc file, this might be considered a more “open” format. Thus openness is increased when file formats are used that are easy to both access and edit. Another way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats as constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share
resources. Four common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) give new life to out-of-print works, (4) improve the quality of educational resources.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the distribution of
your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (a figure with which he and the publisher were both pleased). In addition, the book was downloaded 25,000 times in those six weeks. Boyle believes that the downloads do not represent lost sales (he believes that most people who downloaded the book would not have purchased the book anyways). Rather he believes that the downloads represent an increase in exposure (Boyle, 2008).
Allowing content to be revised can also significantly increase the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. According to the Bookscan database, this book has sold approximately 17,000 copies in the United States since being released. However, the book has been downloaded several hundred thousand times (L. Lessig, personal communication, January 17, 2009). Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different file formats (Free Culture Derivatives/Remixes, n.d.). All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Culture vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages or revised in multiple formats, even small OERs often benefit from increased exposure when shared. For example, a PowerPoint presentation on the subject of open education has been downloaded from http://slideshare.net 5,809 times (2009). This increasing visibility of one’s work can build one’s reputation within a given community of practitioners (OECD, 2007).
Doing good in the world
A second reason for creating OERs is simply to do some good in the world. Many students cannot attend college. On-campus students might like to learn about the content of a specific course, but not be able to fit that course into their schedules. Some teachers would benefit from reusing educational resources created by others.
An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can post electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit? If my campus’s Center for Teaching made a flash video to help me explain conflict in the Middle East, why not put it online?”
Give new life to out-of-print works. A third reason to create OERs is to give new life to out-of-print works. A significant problem in the publishing world relates to orphan books (Boyle, 2008). These are books that are out-of-print, and the copyright owner of the books cannot easily be identified. As time passes the out-of-print book becomes increasingly unavailable, as publishers merge and authors change locations, it can become impossible to locate. One religion professor wrote a book discussing the results of a significant longitudinal study. Once the book was out-of-print, he was frustrated because he felt that the study needed to be seen by many more people. Posting the book online and referring people to the book’s website when he spoke on the study would allow the book to receive new attention and bring new life to a book that would have otherwise not been seen again.
Improve the quality of educational resources A fourth reason to create OERs is that it may improve the quality of both the resources and student learning. When an educational resource is published openly it may bring about the mechanisms of peer review (Wiley, 2009). If people know their educational resource will be viewed by others they might desire to make it better than they ordinarily would. In addition, as others use the resource they may improve it and return the revised version to the creator, who then benefits from the improvement.
For example, suppose a teacher creates a PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes from world religious leaders and puts it online. A teacher on another continent has a collection of related audio files and attaches some to the slides. A third teacher has a video clip of one of the quotations and adds that into the presentation. The resulting work may in some contexts be a better educational resource than the original, and everyone can benefit from the improved resource.
Openness has a tendency to lead to better material used in courses not only because faculty can build on other open resources, but simply because teachers can more easily see what other teachers are doing. Just as observing others teach has been shown to improve teaching (Elmore, 1997), observing the educational resources that others use in the classroom may also improves teaching. Thus OERs benefit both the teachers who used them and the students who receive them. In addition, because the resources are openly available on the Internet, teachers can refer students to the resources directly so that they can be utilized outside of class.
Obstacles to Openness
Although there are many reasons why an educator might want to create and share OERs, there
are also obstacles to creating such resources. Four common obstacles are the following: 1. the amount of time necessary to put the OER in a format that can be shared. 2. A desire to keep the resource from being seen by others. 3. There are few if any external reward mechanisms for creating OERs. 4. Some educators are concerned that nobody will want to use the OERs they create.
A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they are shared freely, they are not completely free to create. For example, suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is an additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if a professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, the costs in time increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing the additional steps to “open the resource” to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
A second obstacle to creating OERs is that an individual may not want others to see the resource. This could be due to a professor not wanting to publish half-finished research, or a fear that others could copy ideas and profit on them. In some cases this is a legitimate obstacle. Openness is not the right solution for all educational resources. It is also important to note that how an OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, can sometimes ameliorate this concern.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. For example, one individual took a book he had written about a city and turned it into an online resource for information about that city. When it came time to review his publications from the previous year, the academic committee did not know what to make of this online resource. Although this is a problem likely to remain in academia for some time, there are glimmers of change on the horizon. Some have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs could be created to provide external motivation (OECD, 2007). Others report that some OERs (such as contributing a chapter to a book that is openly distributed) may be included in a Vita (Bazerman, et al., 2008).
A fourth obstacle that may prevent some from creating OERs is the thought that nobody will use the resource (Brown, 2007). If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating may have been wasted. It would be like planning a big party, but having nobody attend. This obstacle is an important issue with respect to OERs (Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk, 2006). Attention does need to be focused on creating resources from which others will benefit, as well as developing a community of users sufficiently large to have a collective impact. This obstacle can be related to the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?” In today’s world, the answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it also (Wiley, 2009). As individual and collective capacities to effectively search online increase, it will become easier to locate and reuse OERs.
Another obstacle that prevents people from creating Open Educational Resources concerns copyright issues. This is a significant issue that is discussed in the following section.
Copyright Considerations
There are two key copyright issues with respect to OERs. First, ensuring that you have appropriate permissions to use existing resources as part of your OER, and second choosing a license for your OER.
Permissions
One professor teaching a Hebrew literature class used a series of articles as part of the class
readings. Because these articles were copyrighted he was not able to openly distribute them as a packet for others to use. Another professor wanted to upload his PowerPoint presentations but was not sure whether the images used in the presentation would constitute “fair use” and was worried about copyright violations. These are common concerns.
There are two ways that the permissions challenge can be overcome. One is to simply substitute open resources for copyrighted ones. Although not possible in all in all cases, it becoming increasingly easier to accomplish. For example at http://flickr.com one can search for photos that have been licensed for non-commercial use. There are 8,321 such photos of “The Dome of the Rock,” and 277 photos of “St. Peter’s Tomb.” Such photos might easily take the place of copyrighted photos in a PowerPoint presentation. Similarly, teachers sometimes can utilize articles that are already available for free on the Internet and combine them into a packet that can be used by others.
A second way to overcome the permissions challenge is to modify resources before they are openly shared. For example, if a teacher wanted to share a packet of course materials, the copyrighted materials could be removed prior to online distribution, and the rest of the resource could be openly shared.
Licensing Open Educational Resources
How an individual licenses an OER will significantly affect its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it (Lessig, 2004). One remedy to this situation is to use a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in ways consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
"Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
"NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
"ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
"NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission. [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.]" (Creative Commons, 2009).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be revised or built upon then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause. These licensing options provide creators of OERs the ability to license their works in ways that are consistent with their desires for openness.
Conclusion As the world becomes increasingly connected, open educational resources provide a significant opportunity to share both content knowledge and pedagogical practice. Openness is increased as educators provide resources that can be reused, redistributed, revised, and remixed. Openness also increases when resources are placed in a file format that is easy to open and edit. There are several motivations and obstacles for creating OERs. One frequently cited obstacle concerns copyright issues. Through the use of Creative Commons licenses educators can protect the rights they wish to keep while giving some of those rights to others. Although OERs are not appropriate in all situations, they can be an important part of improving pedagogy and increasing access to education.
Bibliography
Bazerman, C., Blakesley, D., Palmquist, M., & Russell, D. (2008). Open access book publishing in writing studies: A case study. First Monday, 13(1-7).
Boyle, J. (2008). The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Brown, J. S. (2008). Creating a Culture of Learning. In T. Iiyoshi & M. S. V. Kumar, (Eds.), Opening Up Education (xi-xvii): Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Creative Commons (2009). Creative Commons Licenses. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.
Dholakia, U., King, J., & Baraniuk, R. (2006). What makes an open education program sustainable? The case of Connexions. Retrieved February 26, 2009, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf.
Elmore, R. F., Burney, D., & (US), E. R. I. C. (1997). Investing in Teacher Learning: Staff Development and Instructional Improvement in Community School District# 2, New York City. National Commission on Teaching & America's Future; Consortium for Policy Research in Education; US Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Educational Resources Information Center.
Free Culture Derivatives/Remixes. (n.d.). . Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://www.free-culture.cc/remixes/.
Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin.
McMartin, F. (2008). Open Educational Content: Transforming Access to Education. In T. Iiyoshi & M. S. V. Kumar, (Eds.), Opening Up Education (135-148): Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Giving Knowledge for Free. The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved February 27, 2009 from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf
Gurell, S. (2008). Open educational resources handbook for educators 1.0. Logan, UT: Center for Open and Sustainable Learning.
Slideshare.net (2009). “Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education.” Retrieved February 27 2009 from: http://www.slideshare.net/opencontent
Wiley, D. (2009). Class lectures on January 13, January 27.
Abstract A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts. These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources; this openness is also specifically manifest in the field of religious education. I discuss different levels in which OERs can be “open” and the implications of these levels when creating OERs. Common motivations and obstacles to creating OERs are discussed. A particularly significant issue regarding openness concerns copyright issues. I discuss copyright implications both in terms of reusing resources others have made (resources that may or may not be copyrighted), and using Creative Commons licenses to license OERs so as to give the desired level of copyright protection. Although OERs are not appropriate in all situations, they can be an important part of improving pedagogy and increasing access to education.
Introduction A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources. Perhaps the most well-known institutional program is MIT’s OpenCourseWare Program which provides open materials for over 1,800 courses. Other significant providers that share completely open courses include Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, Yale’s Open Courses and Stanford’s Engineering Everywhere courses. Some institutions, instead of offering full courses, offer small units of instruction such as a class module, flash video file, lesson plan. Curriki and Rice University’s Connexions are examples of institutions providing these smaller units of educational content.
This sharing takes place by individual teachers as well as institutions. Individual teachers have uploaded lectures to YouTube, posted PowerPoint presentations to SlideShare, and shared photos of religious sites to Flickr.
Open educational resources are being shared with increasing frequency. This trend is occurring throughout education generally, and also specifically in religious education. Yale Divinity School publishes a course on the Old Testament, Notre Dame has three religion classes available and MIT OpenCourseWare has a class called “The Bible.” More than twenty religion courses are offered on iTunes University.
The increasing number of available OERs leads to several questions. What does it mean to be “open?” Why would teachers want to share their educational resources? What are obstacles to creating OERs, and how does copyright affect openness? In this paper I will discuss answers to these questions. Let’s begin with the question, what does it mean to be “open”?
A Closer Look at “Open”
As stated previously, “open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically, Wiley (2009) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness. These R’s are as follows:
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital article to a colleague).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
Any open item allows reuse. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach. Depending on the goals of the creator of a particular OER, different levels of openness will be appropriate (Gurell, 2008). How the OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, also affects how open the OER will be.
In addition to these four R’s, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix it, the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a scanned document that has been turned into a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but is not easy to edit. Because free software exits to both open and edit a .doc file, this might be considered a more “open” format. Thus openness is increased when file formats are used that are easy to both access and edit. Another way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats as constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share
resources. Four common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) give new life to out-of-print works, (4) improve the quality of educational resources.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the distribution of
your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (a figure with which he and the publisher were both pleased). In addition, the book was downloaded 25,000 times in those six weeks. Boyle believes that the downloads do not represent lost sales (he believes that most people who downloaded the book would not have purchased the book anyways). Rather he believes that the downloads represent an increase in exposure (Boyle, 2008).
Allowing content to be revised can also significantly increase the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. According to the Bookscan database, this book has sold approximately 17,000 copies in the United States since being released. However, the book has been downloaded several hundred thousand times (L. Lessig, personal communication, January 17, 2009). Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different file formats (Free Culture Derivatives/Remixes, n.d.). All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Culture vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages or revised in multiple formats, even small OERs often benefit from increased exposure when shared. For example, a PowerPoint presentation on the subject of open education has been downloaded from http://slideshare.net 5,809 times (2009). This increasing visibility of one’s work can build one’s reputation within a given community of practitioners (OECD, 2007).
Doing good in the world
A second reason for creating OERs is simply to do some good in the world. Many students cannot attend college. On-campus students might like to learn about the content of a specific course, but not be able to fit that course into their schedules. Some teachers would benefit from reusing educational resources created by others.
An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can post electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit? If my campus’s Center for Teaching made a flash video to help me explain conflict in the Middle East, why not put it online?”
Give new life to out-of-print works. A third reason to create OERs is to give new life to out-of-print works. A significant problem in the publishing world relates to orphan books (Boyle, 2008). These are books that are out-of-print, and the copyright owner of the books cannot easily be identified. As time passes the out-of-print book becomes increasingly unavailable, as publishers merge and authors change locations, it can become impossible to locate. One religion professor wrote a book discussing the results of a significant longitudinal study. Once the book was out-of-print, he was frustrated because he felt that the study needed to be seen by many more people. Posting the book online and referring people to the book’s website when he spoke on the study would allow the book to receive new attention and bring new life to a book that would have otherwise not been seen again.
Improve the quality of educational resources A fourth reason to create OERs is that it may improve the quality of both the resources and student learning. When an educational resource is published openly it may bring about the mechanisms of peer review (Wiley, 2009). If people know their educational resource will be viewed by others they might desire to make it better than they ordinarily would. In addition, as others use the resource they may improve it and return the revised version to the creator, who then benefits from the improvement.
For example, suppose a teacher creates a PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes from world religious leaders and puts it online. A teacher on another continent has a collection of related audio files and attaches some to the slides. A third teacher has a video clip of one of the quotations and adds that into the presentation. The resulting work may in some contexts be a better educational resource than the original, and everyone can benefit from the improved resource.
Openness has a tendency to lead to better material used in courses not only because faculty can build on other open resources, but simply because teachers can more easily see what other teachers are doing. Just as observing others teach has been shown to improve teaching (Elmore, 1997), observing the educational resources that others use in the classroom may also improves teaching. Thus OERs benefit both the teachers who used them and the students who receive them. In addition, because the resources are openly available on the Internet, teachers can refer students to the resources directly so that they can be utilized outside of class.
Obstacles to Openness
Although there are many reasons why an educator might want to create and share OERs, there
are also obstacles to creating such resources. Four common obstacles are the following: 1. the amount of time necessary to put the OER in a format that can be shared. 2. A desire to keep the resource from being seen by others. 3. There are few if any external reward mechanisms for creating OERs. 4. Some educators are concerned that nobody will want to use the OERs they create.
A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they are shared freely, they are not completely free to create. For example, suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is an additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if a professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, the costs in time increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing the additional steps to “open the resource” to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
A second obstacle to creating OERs is that an individual may not want others to see the resource. This could be due to a professor not wanting to publish half-finished research, or a fear that others could copy ideas and profit on them. In some cases this is a legitimate obstacle. Openness is not the right solution for all educational resources. It is also important to note that how an OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, can sometimes ameliorate this concern.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. For example, one individual took a book he had written about a city and turned it into an online resource for information about that city. When it came time to review his publications from the previous year, the academic committee did not know what to make of this online resource. Although this is a problem likely to remain in academia for some time, there are glimmers of change on the horizon. Some have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs could be created to provide external motivation (OECD, 2007). Others report that some OERs (such as contributing a chapter to a book that is openly distributed) may be included in a Vita (Bazerman, et al., 2008).
A fourth obstacle that may prevent some from creating OERs is the thought that nobody will use the resource (Brown, 2007). If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating may have been wasted. It would be like planning a big party, but having nobody attend. This obstacle is an important issue with respect to OERs (Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk, 2006). Attention does need to be focused on creating resources from which others will benefit, as well as developing a community of users sufficiently large to have a collective impact. This obstacle can be related to the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?” In today’s world, the answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it also (Wiley, 2009). As individual and collective capacities to effectively search online increase, it will become easier to locate and reuse OERs.
Another obstacle that prevents people from creating Open Educational Resources concerns copyright issues. This is a significant issue that is discussed in the following section.
Copyright Considerations
There are two key copyright issues with respect to OERs. First, ensuring that you have appropriate permissions to use existing resources as part of your OER, and second choosing a license for your OER.
Permissions
One professor teaching a Hebrew literature class used a series of articles as part of the class
readings. Because these articles were copyrighted he was not able to openly distribute them as a packet for others to use. Another professor wanted to upload his PowerPoint presentations but was not sure whether the images used in the presentation would constitute “fair use” and was worried about copyright violations. These are common concerns.
There are two ways that the permissions challenge can be overcome. One is to simply substitute open resources for copyrighted ones. Although not possible in all in all cases, it becoming increasingly easier to accomplish. For example at http://flickr.com one can search for photos that have been licensed for non-commercial use. There are 8,321 such photos of “The Dome of the Rock,” and 277 photos of “St. Peter’s Tomb.” Such photos might easily take the place of copyrighted photos in a PowerPoint presentation. Similarly, teachers sometimes can utilize articles that are already available for free on the Internet and combine them into a packet that can be used by others.
A second way to overcome the permissions challenge is to modify resources before they are openly shared. For example, if a teacher wanted to share a packet of course materials, the copyrighted materials could be removed prior to online distribution, and the rest of the resource could be openly shared.
Licensing Open Educational Resources
How an individual licenses an OER will significantly affect its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it (Lessig, 2004). One remedy to this situation is to use a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in ways consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
"Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
"NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
"ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
"NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission. [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.]" (Creative Commons, 2009).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be revised or built upon then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause. These licensing options provide creators of OERs the ability to license their works in ways that are consistent with their desires for openness.
Conclusion As the world becomes increasingly connected, open educational resources provide a significant opportunity to share both content knowledge and pedagogical practice. Openness is increased as educators provide resources that can be reused, redistributed, revised, and remixed. Openness also increases when resources are placed in a file format that is easy to open and edit. There are several motivations and obstacles for creating OERs. One frequently cited obstacle concerns copyright issues. Through the use of Creative Commons licenses educators can protect the rights they wish to keep while giving some of those rights to others. Although OERs are not appropriate in all situations, they can be an important part of improving pedagogy and increasing access to education.
Bibliography
Bazerman, C., Blakesley, D., Palmquist, M., & Russell, D. (2008). Open access book publishing in writing studies: A case study. First Monday, 13(1-7).
Boyle, J. (2008). The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Brown, J. S. (2008). Creating a Culture of Learning. In T. Iiyoshi & M. S. V. Kumar, (Eds.), Opening Up Education (xi-xvii): Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Creative Commons (2009). Creative Commons Licenses. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.
Dholakia, U., King, J., & Baraniuk, R. (2006). What makes an open education program sustainable? The case of Connexions. Retrieved February 26, 2009, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf.
Elmore, R. F., Burney, D., & (US), E. R. I. C. (1997). Investing in Teacher Learning: Staff Development and Instructional Improvement in Community School District# 2, New York City. National Commission on Teaching & America's Future; Consortium for Policy Research in Education; US Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Educational Resources Information Center.
Free Culture Derivatives/Remixes. (n.d.). . Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://www.free-culture.cc/remixes/.
Lessig, L. (2004). Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin.
McMartin, F. (2008). Open Educational Content: Transforming Access to Education. In T. Iiyoshi & M. S. V. Kumar, (Eds.), Opening Up Education (135-148): Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Giving Knowledge for Free. The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved February 27, 2009 from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf
Gurell, S. (2008). Open educational resources handbook for educators 1.0. Logan, UT: Center for Open and Sustainable Learning.
Slideshare.net (2009). “Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education.” Retrieved February 27 2009 from: http://www.slideshare.net/opencontent
Wiley, D. (2009). Class lectures on January 13, January 27.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Book Review: Free Culture
Free Culture
By Lawrence Lessig
I enjoyed this book. In some ways it was similar to other books I have been reading lately with critiques of copyright and scary stories such as the documentary maker who had to jump through 1,000 hoops because a part of his documentary caught 5 seconds of Simpsons clip.
There is lots that could be said about this book, but since you can read Free Culture (for free) I’ll let you do the heavy lifting. I want to focus on two specific points that meant a lot to me from this book.
One thing that I have been thinking about is what happens to a book after it goes out of print, and what a shame it is that so much “good stuff” is gone from the common view of the world. Lessig says,
“Here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of creative property goes through different ‘lives.’ In its first life, if the [page 113] creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the commercial market is successful for the creator. The vase majority of creative property doesn’t enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity.
“After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform even if that information is no longer sold.
“The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very quickly (the average today is after about a year). After it is out of print, it can be sold in used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is extremely important to the spread and stability of culture” (112-113).
To put briefly, there is life after commercial use. Online technologies now allow the distribution of books and other culture to have a life outside of libraries and used book stores. Because it is now easy and cheap to share books and other media in this matter there is no reason why it should not be done. Just this past weekend I took a trip with Jack Marshall, author of several LDS talk CDs that are gone—out of print. These could easily preserved. But we need to act quickly. Lessig points out on pages 224 and 225 that some types of film will have disintegrated by the time they fall out of copyright—they aren’t being used right now, just there collecting dust. Continuing this train of thought:
“Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device….But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short…Yet that doesn’t mean the life of a creative work ends…The noncommercial life of culture is important and valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made the mistake that we have, we need to have access to this history” (225).
The second point that was so helpful to me was that while Lessig refers to “Free Culture” not in “Free” as in “give it away” but that we should be free to access the culture. But what I got out of it was Free Culture as in “set culture free.” Find culture that is trapped and will otherwise not be able to be accessed and set it free. My humble efforts to set LDS book culture free has begun at http://freeldsbooks.com As time goes on, I hope it can become a force in connecting people with culture that otherwise would be missing. Just this past week my wife was talking about a church book that had been written in the 1950s. It was a book for kids telling inspiring pioneer stories. But it’s out of print, and there is no way to get a copy…Let’s set culture free.
By Lawrence Lessig
I enjoyed this book. In some ways it was similar to other books I have been reading lately with critiques of copyright and scary stories such as the documentary maker who had to jump through 1,000 hoops because a part of his documentary caught 5 seconds of Simpsons clip.
There is lots that could be said about this book, but since you can read Free Culture (for free) I’ll let you do the heavy lifting. I want to focus on two specific points that meant a lot to me from this book.
One thing that I have been thinking about is what happens to a book after it goes out of print, and what a shame it is that so much “good stuff” is gone from the common view of the world. Lessig says,
“Here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of creative property goes through different ‘lives.’ In its first life, if the [page 113] creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the commercial market is successful for the creator. The vase majority of creative property doesn’t enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity.
“After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform even if that information is no longer sold.
“The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very quickly (the average today is after about a year). After it is out of print, it can be sold in used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is extremely important to the spread and stability of culture” (112-113).
To put briefly, there is life after commercial use. Online technologies now allow the distribution of books and other culture to have a life outside of libraries and used book stores. Because it is now easy and cheap to share books and other media in this matter there is no reason why it should not be done. Just this past weekend I took a trip with Jack Marshall, author of several LDS talk CDs that are gone—out of print. These could easily preserved. But we need to act quickly. Lessig points out on pages 224 and 225 that some types of film will have disintegrated by the time they fall out of copyright—they aren’t being used right now, just there collecting dust. Continuing this train of thought:
“Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device….But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short…Yet that doesn’t mean the life of a creative work ends…The noncommercial life of culture is important and valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made the mistake that we have, we need to have access to this history” (225).
The second point that was so helpful to me was that while Lessig refers to “Free Culture” not in “Free” as in “give it away” but that we should be free to access the culture. But what I got out of it was Free Culture as in “set culture free.” Find culture that is trapped and will otherwise not be able to be accessed and set it free. My humble efforts to set LDS book culture free has begun at http://freeldsbooks.com As time goes on, I hope it can become a force in connecting people with culture that otherwise would be missing. Just this past week my wife was talking about a church book that had been written in the 1950s. It was a book for kids telling inspiring pioneer stories. But it’s out of print, and there is no way to get a copy…Let’s set culture free.
Virtual Schools
--note-- this was written and published yesterday, but to the wrong blog--
Tom Clark's chapter on "Virtual and Distance Education in North American Schools" reinforced the idea that distance education is important, not just at the university level, or even high school level, but throughout all of school. It was interesting to see how over the past 80 years various forms of virtual schools have taken place, with a variety of technologies. Clark reports that there "were about 300,000 K-12 online-learning enrollments in public and private schools in 2002-2003, up from an estimated 40-50,000 in 2000-2001. That is amazing growth!
Some of what I read reminded me of Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class.
Christensen and his coauthors state that a key problem in schools is students learn in different ways and that schools are not built to customize student learning to the different needs that students have. The authors argue that disruptively deploying computer-based innovations is a key to customize educational resources for students. They state, “student-centric learning is the escape hatch from the…hierarchical cells of standardization. The software is emerging. Student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences” (38-39).
Their point is not that more computers are needed, but that computers need to be used differently. For example, consider a class in Arabic. Because the class is not offered, nobody takes the class. Through the use of video conferencing, a class in Arabic could be offered to interested students. In addition, video conferencing could allow students to be paired up with peer learners in Arabic speaking countries who are trying to learn English. Although the quality of this type of educational opportunity might not be as good as a live classroom (at first), it is better than the alternative (no Arabic instruction). Over time, as the technology improves, it is conceivable that this form of education could become as efficacious as face to face classroom instruction.
Christensen predicts that by 2020 a majority of high school students will be in "virtual schools." Looking at the graphs presented by Clark it seemed to me that the growth that has been shown in virtual schooling could continue to dramatically increase. As technology improves and access increases it may become an increasingly attractive choice.
The Open High School of Utah could be an interseting labratory in which to study a "virtual high school" in our own backyward.
Tom Clark's chapter on "Virtual and Distance Education in North American Schools" reinforced the idea that distance education is important, not just at the university level, or even high school level, but throughout all of school. It was interesting to see how over the past 80 years various forms of virtual schools have taken place, with a variety of technologies. Clark reports that there "were about 300,000 K-12 online-learning enrollments in public and private schools in 2002-2003, up from an estimated 40-50,000 in 2000-2001. That is amazing growth!
Some of what I read reminded me of Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class.
Christensen and his coauthors state that a key problem in schools is students learn in different ways and that schools are not built to customize student learning to the different needs that students have. The authors argue that disruptively deploying computer-based innovations is a key to customize educational resources for students. They state, “student-centric learning is the escape hatch from the…hierarchical cells of standardization. The software is emerging. Student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences” (38-39).
Their point is not that more computers are needed, but that computers need to be used differently. For example, consider a class in Arabic. Because the class is not offered, nobody takes the class. Through the use of video conferencing, a class in Arabic could be offered to interested students. In addition, video conferencing could allow students to be paired up with peer learners in Arabic speaking countries who are trying to learn English. Although the quality of this type of educational opportunity might not be as good as a live classroom (at first), it is better than the alternative (no Arabic instruction). Over time, as the technology improves, it is conceivable that this form of education could become as efficacious as face to face classroom instruction.
Christensen predicts that by 2020 a majority of high school students will be in "virtual schools." Looking at the graphs presented by Clark it seemed to me that the growth that has been shown in virtual schooling could continue to dramatically increase. As technology improves and access increases it may become an increasingly attractive choice.
The Open High School of Utah could be an interseting labratory in which to study a "virtual high school" in our own backyward.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday Review
It's been another good week. Here's a quick recap:
Research
Continued work on the open publishing project. It is something I enjoy and feel passionate about. I found a presentation made last week on the subject--looks great. We were able to get a few more people to participate in the survey and some exciting trends are starting to emerge.
Distance
I spent a lot of time this week looking at different possibilities for my research project. It has been a little frustrating because I spent several hours walking down one road, doing interviews, etc. but was starting to feel like that wasn't going to get me where I want to be. Now I've been looking at how self-directed learners participate in online courses and this seems to have some interest for me. It is the kind of thing I can see myself doing in a couple of years (creating a course like the one I'm studying) and so I think the research will have some practical meaning for me. I'm excited about the direction I'm going.
Open
Worked more on a draft of a paper I am submitting next week. I think I made some good headway, but there is polishing still to do!
Assessment
I'm in the thick of 3 projects, one is an interpretative exercise, a second is doing an item analysis on a test, and the third is revising said test. It is fun and a meeting with Dr. Davies today gave me the direction I need to go forward.
Stats and Research
Our first test is this next week and so I've been going back and trying to consolidate the learning that I've gained. It is fun to see the statistics/research angles come together. Also, I made the suggested changes to the IRB and hope that it is approved so that I can get the next phase of research going.
Research
Continued work on the open publishing project. It is something I enjoy and feel passionate about. I found a presentation made last week on the subject--looks great. We were able to get a few more people to participate in the survey and some exciting trends are starting to emerge.
Distance
I spent a lot of time this week looking at different possibilities for my research project. It has been a little frustrating because I spent several hours walking down one road, doing interviews, etc. but was starting to feel like that wasn't going to get me where I want to be. Now I've been looking at how self-directed learners participate in online courses and this seems to have some interest for me. It is the kind of thing I can see myself doing in a couple of years (creating a course like the one I'm studying) and so I think the research will have some practical meaning for me. I'm excited about the direction I'm going.
Open
Worked more on a draft of a paper I am submitting next week. I think I made some good headway, but there is polishing still to do!
Assessment
I'm in the thick of 3 projects, one is an interpretative exercise, a second is doing an item analysis on a test, and the third is revising said test. It is fun and a meeting with Dr. Davies today gave me the direction I need to go forward.
Stats and Research
Our first test is this next week and so I've been going back and trying to consolidate the learning that I've gained. It is fun to see the statistics/research angles come together. Also, I made the suggested changes to the IRB and hope that it is approved so that I can get the next phase of research going.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Open Quest #2: Explaining openness--round 2
To those who will read this post before 2/23. I welcome feedback. I'm not worried about spelling/missing words as much as substantive changes. What areas do see as being weak? Where should I add? What could I do to strengthen the work? How to conclude? I feel that I still need more specific examples from the realms of religious education, though I have improved in this iteration. All comments are welcome. Thank you.
Openly Sharing Your Classroom Content
Introduction
A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources. Perhaps the most well-known is MIT’s OpenCourseWare Program which provides open materials for over 1,800 courses.
Other significant providers that share completely open courses include Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, Yale’s Open Courses and Stanford’s Engineering Everywhere courses. Others organizations, such as Curriki and Rice University’s Connexions provide ways to share smaller units of educational content.
Educators are sharing open educational resources with increasing frequency. This trend is occurring throughout education generally, and also specifically in religious education. Yale Divinity School publishes a course on the Old Testament, Notre Dame has three religion classes available and MIT OpenCourseWare has a class called “The Bible.” More than twenty religion courses are offered on iTunes University. Other teachers have uploaded lectures to YouTube, posted PowerPoint presentations to SlideShare, and shared photos of religious sites to Flickr.
The increasing number of available OERs leads to several questions. What does it mean to be “open?” Why would teachers want to share their educational resources? What are obstacles to creating OERs, and how does copyright affect openness? In this paper I will discuss answers to these questions. Let’s begin with the question, what does it mean to be “open”?
A Closer Look at “Open”
As stated previously, “open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically Wiley (2007) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness.
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital article to a colleague).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
With any item that is open there is an assumption that reuse is allowed. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach. Depending on the goals of the creator of a particular OER, different levels of openness will be appropriate (cite source). How the OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, also affects how open the OER will be.
In addition to these four Rs, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix it, the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a scanned document that has been turned into a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but is not easy to edit. Because free software exits to both open and edit a .doc file, this might be considered a more “open” format. Thus openness is increased when file formats are used that are easy to both access and edit. Another way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats as constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share resources. Four common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) give new life to out-of-print works, (4) improve the quality of educational resources.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the distribution of your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (a figure with which he and the publisher were both pleased). In addition, the book was downloaded 25,000 times in those six weeks. Boyle believes that the downloaders do not represent lost sales (he believes that most would not have purchased the book anyways), but rather an increase in exposure (Boyle, 2008).
Allowing content to be revised can also significantly increase the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. The book has sold approximately 17,000 copies in the United States since being released (Bookscan, 2009). However, the book has been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different file formats. All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Culture vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages or revised in multiple formats, even small OERs often benefit from increased exposure when shared. For example [either use David Wiley # of times a slideshare presentation is seen, or iTunes example of number of times a course has been downloaded). This increasing visibility of one’s work can build one’s reputation within a given community of practitioners (source: Giving Knowledge for Free (available here).
Doing good in the world
A second reason for creating OERs is simply to do some good in the world. Many students cannot attend college. Others would like to learn about the content you teach, but cannot fit it into their schedule. Some teachers, particularly in developing countries, cannot access the latest research and would benefit from reusing educational resources created by others (cite source).
An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can post electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit? If my campus’s Center for Teaching made a flash video to help me explain conflict in the Middle East, why not put it online?”
Give new life to out-of-print works.
A third reason to create OERs is to give new life to out-of-print works. A significant problem in the publishing world relates to “orphan books” (Boyle, 2008). These are books that are out-of-print, and the copyright owner of the books cannot easily be identified. As time passes the out-of-print book becomes increasingly unavailable, as publishers merge and authors change locations, it can become impossible to locate. One religion professor wrote a book discussing the results of a significant longitudinal study. Once the book was out-of-print, he was frustrated because he felt that the study needed to be seen by many more people. Posting the book online and referring people to the book’s website when he spoke on the study would allow the book to receive new attention and bring new life to a book that would have otherwise not been seen again.
Improve the quality of educational resources
A fourth reason to create OERs is that it may improve the quality of both the resources and student learning (cite source). When an educational resource is published openly it may bring about the mechanisms of peer review (cite source). If people know their educational resource will be viewed by others they might desire to make it better than they ordinarily would. In addition, as others use the resource they may improve it and return the revised version to the creator, who then benefits from the improvement.
For example, suppose a teacher creates a PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes from world religious leaders and puts it online. A teacher on another continent has a collection of related audio files and attaches some to the slides. A third teacher has a video clip of one of the quotations and adds that into the presentation. The resulting work may in some contexts be a better educational resource than the original, and everyone can benefit from the improved resource.
Openness has a tendency to lead to better material used in courses not only because faculty can build on other open resources, but simply because teachers can more easily see what other teachers are doing. Just as observing others teach has been shown to improve teaching (cite source), observing the types of educational resources that others use in the classroom also improves teaching (cite source).
The improved OERs benefit the students who use them. In addition, because the resources are openly available on the Internet teachers can refer students to the resources directly so that they can be utilized outside of class.
Obstacles to Openness
A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they are shared freely, they are not completely free to create. For example, suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is an additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if a professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, the costs in time increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing the additional steps to “open the resource” to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
A second obstacle to creating OERs is that an individual may not want others to see the resource. This could be due to a professor not wanting to publish half-finished research, or a fear that others could copy ideas and profit on them. In some cases this is a legitimate obstacle. Openness is not the right solution for all educational resources (Osguthorpe, 2009, others?). It is also important to note that how an OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, can sometimes ameliorate this concern.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. For example, one individual took a book he had written about a city and turned it into an online resource for information about that city. When it came time to review his publications from the previous year, the academic committee did not know what to make of this online resource. Although this is a problem likely to remain in academia for some time, there are glimmers of change on the horizon. Some have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs could be created to provide external motivation ([source: The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here).]. Others report that some OERs (such as contributing a chapter to a book that is openly distributed) may be included in a Vita (First Monday article, 2008).
A fourth obstacle that may prevent some from creating OERs is the thought that nobody will use the resource. If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating may have been wasted. It would be like planning a big party, but having nobody attend. This obstacle is an important issue with respect to OERs (Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk). Attention does need to be focused on creating resources from which others will benefit, as well as developing a community of users sufficiently large to have a collective impact. This obstacle can be related to the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?” In today’s world, the answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it also (Wiley, 2009). As individual and collective capacities to effectively search online increase, it will become easier to locate and reuse OERs.
Another obstacle that prevents people from creating Open Educational Resources concerns copyright issues. This is a significant issue that is discussed in the following section.
Copyright Considerations
There are two key copyright issues with respect to OERs. First, ensuring that you have appropriate permissions to use existing resources as part of your OER, and second choosing a license for your OER.
Permissions
One professor teaching a Hebrew literature class used a series of articles as part of the class readings. Because these articles were copyrighted he was not able to openly distribute them as a packet for others to use. Another professor wanted to upload his PowerPoint presentations but was not sure whether the images used in the presentation would constitute “fair use” and was worried about copyright violations. These are common concerns.
There are two ways that the permissions challenge can be overcome. One is to simply substitute open resources for copyrighted ones. Although not possible in all in all cases, it becoming increasingly easier to accomplish. For example at http://flickr.com one can search for photos that have been licensed for non-commercial use. There are 8,321 such photos of “The Dome of the Rock,” and 277 photos of “St. Peter’s Tomb.” Such photos might easily take the place of copyrighted photos in a PowerPoint presentation. Similarly, teachers sometimes can utilize articles that are already available for free on the Internet and combine them into a packet that can be used by others.
A second way to overcome the permissions challenge is to modify resources before they are openly shared. For example, if a teacher wanted to share a packet of course materials, the copyrighted materials could be removed prior to online distribution, and the rest of the resource could be openly shared.
Licensing Open Educational Resources
How an individual licenses an OER will significantly affect its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it (cite source). One remedy to this situation is to use a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in ways consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission. [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.] (cited from
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be revised or built upon then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause. These licensing options provide creators of OERs the ability to license their works in ways that are consistent with their desires for openness.
Conclusion
As the world becomes increasingly connected, open educational resources provide a significant opportunity to share both content knowledge and pedagogical practice. Although OERs are not a panacea for all educational problems, they can provide an important role in improving the teaching and learning of religious topics.
Openly Sharing Your Classroom Content
Introduction
A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources. Perhaps the most well-known is MIT’s OpenCourseWare Program which provides open materials for over 1,800 courses.
Other significant providers that share completely open courses include Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, Yale’s Open Courses and Stanford’s Engineering Everywhere courses. Others organizations, such as Curriki and Rice University’s Connexions provide ways to share smaller units of educational content.
Educators are sharing open educational resources with increasing frequency. This trend is occurring throughout education generally, and also specifically in religious education. Yale Divinity School publishes a course on the Old Testament, Notre Dame has three religion classes available and MIT OpenCourseWare has a class called “The Bible.” More than twenty religion courses are offered on iTunes University. Other teachers have uploaded lectures to YouTube, posted PowerPoint presentations to SlideShare, and shared photos of religious sites to Flickr.
The increasing number of available OERs leads to several questions. What does it mean to be “open?” Why would teachers want to share their educational resources? What are obstacles to creating OERs, and how does copyright affect openness? In this paper I will discuss answers to these questions. Let’s begin with the question, what does it mean to be “open”?
A Closer Look at “Open”
As stated previously, “open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically Wiley (2007) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness.
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital article to a colleague).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
With any item that is open there is an assumption that reuse is allowed. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach. Depending on the goals of the creator of a particular OER, different levels of openness will be appropriate (cite source). How the OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, also affects how open the OER will be.
In addition to these four Rs, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix it, the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a scanned document that has been turned into a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but is not easy to edit. Because free software exits to both open and edit a .doc file, this might be considered a more “open” format. Thus openness is increased when file formats are used that are easy to both access and edit. Another way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats as constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share resources. Four common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) give new life to out-of-print works, (4) improve the quality of educational resources.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the distribution of your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (a figure with which he and the publisher were both pleased). In addition, the book was downloaded 25,000 times in those six weeks. Boyle believes that the downloaders do not represent lost sales (he believes that most would not have purchased the book anyways), but rather an increase in exposure (Boyle, 2008).
Allowing content to be revised can also significantly increase the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. The book has sold approximately 17,000 copies in the United States since being released (Bookscan, 2009). However, the book has been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different file formats. All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Culture vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages or revised in multiple formats, even small OERs often benefit from increased exposure when shared. For example [either use David Wiley # of times a slideshare presentation is seen, or iTunes example of number of times a course has been downloaded). This increasing visibility of one’s work can build one’s reputation within a given community of practitioners (source: Giving Knowledge for Free (available here).
Doing good in the world
A second reason for creating OERs is simply to do some good in the world. Many students cannot attend college. Others would like to learn about the content you teach, but cannot fit it into their schedule. Some teachers, particularly in developing countries, cannot access the latest research and would benefit from reusing educational resources created by others (cite source).
An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can post electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit? If my campus’s Center for Teaching made a flash video to help me explain conflict in the Middle East, why not put it online?”
Give new life to out-of-print works.
A third reason to create OERs is to give new life to out-of-print works. A significant problem in the publishing world relates to “orphan books” (Boyle, 2008). These are books that are out-of-print, and the copyright owner of the books cannot easily be identified. As time passes the out-of-print book becomes increasingly unavailable, as publishers merge and authors change locations, it can become impossible to locate. One religion professor wrote a book discussing the results of a significant longitudinal study. Once the book was out-of-print, he was frustrated because he felt that the study needed to be seen by many more people. Posting the book online and referring people to the book’s website when he spoke on the study would allow the book to receive new attention and bring new life to a book that would have otherwise not been seen again.
Improve the quality of educational resources
A fourth reason to create OERs is that it may improve the quality of both the resources and student learning (cite source). When an educational resource is published openly it may bring about the mechanisms of peer review (cite source). If people know their educational resource will be viewed by others they might desire to make it better than they ordinarily would. In addition, as others use the resource they may improve it and return the revised version to the creator, who then benefits from the improvement.
For example, suppose a teacher creates a PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes from world religious leaders and puts it online. A teacher on another continent has a collection of related audio files and attaches some to the slides. A third teacher has a video clip of one of the quotations and adds that into the presentation. The resulting work may in some contexts be a better educational resource than the original, and everyone can benefit from the improved resource.
Openness has a tendency to lead to better material used in courses not only because faculty can build on other open resources, but simply because teachers can more easily see what other teachers are doing. Just as observing others teach has been shown to improve teaching (cite source), observing the types of educational resources that others use in the classroom also improves teaching (cite source).
The improved OERs benefit the students who use them. In addition, because the resources are openly available on the Internet teachers can refer students to the resources directly so that they can be utilized outside of class.
Obstacles to Openness
A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they are shared freely, they are not completely free to create. For example, suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is an additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if a professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, the costs in time increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing the additional steps to “open the resource” to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
A second obstacle to creating OERs is that an individual may not want others to see the resource. This could be due to a professor not wanting to publish half-finished research, or a fear that others could copy ideas and profit on them. In some cases this is a legitimate obstacle. Openness is not the right solution for all educational resources (Osguthorpe, 2009, others?). It is also important to note that how an OER is licensed, a subject discussed later in this paper, can sometimes ameliorate this concern.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. For example, one individual took a book he had written about a city and turned it into an online resource for information about that city. When it came time to review his publications from the previous year, the academic committee did not know what to make of this online resource. Although this is a problem likely to remain in academia for some time, there are glimmers of change on the horizon. Some have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs could be created to provide external motivation ([source: The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here).]. Others report that some OERs (such as contributing a chapter to a book that is openly distributed) may be included in a Vita (First Monday article, 2008).
A fourth obstacle that may prevent some from creating OERs is the thought that nobody will use the resource. If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating may have been wasted. It would be like planning a big party, but having nobody attend. This obstacle is an important issue with respect to OERs (Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk). Attention does need to be focused on creating resources from which others will benefit, as well as developing a community of users sufficiently large to have a collective impact. This obstacle can be related to the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?” In today’s world, the answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it also (Wiley, 2009). As individual and collective capacities to effectively search online increase, it will become easier to locate and reuse OERs.
Another obstacle that prevents people from creating Open Educational Resources concerns copyright issues. This is a significant issue that is discussed in the following section.
Copyright Considerations
There are two key copyright issues with respect to OERs. First, ensuring that you have appropriate permissions to use existing resources as part of your OER, and second choosing a license for your OER.
Permissions
One professor teaching a Hebrew literature class used a series of articles as part of the class readings. Because these articles were copyrighted he was not able to openly distribute them as a packet for others to use. Another professor wanted to upload his PowerPoint presentations but was not sure whether the images used in the presentation would constitute “fair use” and was worried about copyright violations. These are common concerns.
There are two ways that the permissions challenge can be overcome. One is to simply substitute open resources for copyrighted ones. Although not possible in all in all cases, it becoming increasingly easier to accomplish. For example at http://flickr.com one can search for photos that have been licensed for non-commercial use. There are 8,321 such photos of “The Dome of the Rock,” and 277 photos of “St. Peter’s Tomb.” Such photos might easily take the place of copyrighted photos in a PowerPoint presentation. Similarly, teachers sometimes can utilize articles that are already available for free on the Internet and combine them into a packet that can be used by others.
A second way to overcome the permissions challenge is to modify resources before they are openly shared. For example, if a teacher wanted to share a packet of course materials, the copyrighted materials could be removed prior to online distribution, and the rest of the resource could be openly shared.
Licensing Open Educational Resources
How an individual licenses an OER will significantly affect its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it (cite source). One remedy to this situation is to use a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in ways consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission. [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.] (cited from
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be revised or built upon then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause. These licensing options provide creators of OERs the ability to license their works in ways that are consistent with their desires for openness.
Conclusion
As the world becomes increasingly connected, open educational resources provide a significant opportunity to share both content knowledge and pedagogical practice. Although OERs are not a panacea for all educational problems, they can provide an important role in improving the teaching and learning of religious topics.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Friday Review
It's been another great week! Here's the wrapup of what I have been learning.
Research
Made some good headway on a paper regarding the effects of open publishing. Uncovered a great finding comparing two of Larry Lessig's books; hope to share more about that soon. Got the website http://freeldsbooks.com running-still room to improve it. I had thought it might be my only way to study open book publishing in the LDS market, but it also appeared this week that other possibilities may emerge.
Distance Learning
We had a fun field trip (see this post). With some help from Charles I submitted an IRB proposal to do the research I described last week. I have received some feedback on the proposal and just need to make a few changes to it. I will be doing this next week.
Open Ed
We've been working on a proposal to take to the CTL to have new creations at the walk-in center receive a CC license. After two "working classes" the CTL now has a form that they are ready to use. It will be an interesting experiment to determine how many professors choose to sign the form.
Assessment
One interesting thing I did this week that was related to the course, but not an assignment was to meet with one a religion professor and talk with him about his philosophy on testing. It is very different than most. His main theme was that our assessment should match that of God's. E.g. God's tests are primarily open-book. He doesn't grade on a curve. He wants everyone to succeed. It was very interesting to learn from his insights.
Statistics and Research
I know it sounds crazy, but I am really enjoying the textbook in this class. I finished chapter 5 about 9:00 PM one night and wanted to just keep on reading (I did)! This is some of the nuts and bolts of research and I'm enjoying it.
Research
Made some good headway on a paper regarding the effects of open publishing. Uncovered a great finding comparing two of Larry Lessig's books; hope to share more about that soon. Got the website http://freeldsbooks.com running-still room to improve it. I had thought it might be my only way to study open book publishing in the LDS market, but it also appeared this week that other possibilities may emerge.
Distance Learning
We had a fun field trip (see this post). With some help from Charles I submitted an IRB proposal to do the research I described last week. I have received some feedback on the proposal and just need to make a few changes to it. I will be doing this next week.
Open Ed
We've been working on a proposal to take to the CTL to have new creations at the walk-in center receive a CC license. After two "working classes" the CTL now has a form that they are ready to use. It will be an interesting experiment to determine how many professors choose to sign the form.
Assessment
One interesting thing I did this week that was related to the course, but not an assignment was to meet with one a religion professor and talk with him about his philosophy on testing. It is very different than most. His main theme was that our assessment should match that of God's. E.g. God's tests are primarily open-book. He doesn't grade on a curve. He wants everyone to succeed. It was very interesting to learn from his insights.
Statistics and Research
I know it sounds crazy, but I am really enjoying the textbook in this class. I finished chapter 5 about 9:00 PM one night and wanted to just keep on reading (I did)! This is some of the nuts and bolts of research and I'm enjoying it.
Distance: Field Trip
This past week my "Distance Education" class took a field trip to BYU's Independent study center. The size and scope of their business surprised me. Some of the things that stood out to me are below:
I also was reminded of how widely learning styles can differ. When it came to a discussion of "religious education" my views about how learning should take place came on somewhat strongly. But others at the table had their own views that they held equally strongly. So again the theme came back to having as many different approaches as possible so that people could select what was good for them as opposed to "the one true way."
(As I write that it makes me think how the "do whatever works for you" as opposed to "the one true way" philosophy isn't always a good idea.
Another thing that interested me was that they allow people to get their money back up to 60 days after beginning the course. So in terms of thinking about the "free" courses they are going to offer, what is the difference between letting them do the course for free VERSUS signing up for the course in the regular way and quitting after 25 days. Still was free.
The difference I see is that the "open" option allows them to be free as in "I don't have to give you my credit card info." I think one interesting thing to look at as this project moves forward is to see how many people sign up for the course because it was free. Obviously the hope is that people who would have never paid money upfront for the course do take it for free, and some buy it. I look forward to Chris Anderson's book on this topic.
- They serve about 125,000 students and employ 250 people (I may be off a bit on my numbers, feel free to correct me).
- Most of the students they serve are _high school_ students
- They have a team that aggressively markets IS courses to school districts (e.g. they are not just sitting around hoping that somebody finds their course).
- They receive about 2,000 help calls a day, and have multiple tiers of service. Only 1% of problems need to go to the professor for resolution.
- As part of a research study a few years ago they implemented the idea of having tutors who provide a free (to students) service of helping them with problems.
- They have a machine that opens their envelopes! (okay, that wasn't the highlight, but it was pretty cool). ]
I also was reminded of how widely learning styles can differ. When it came to a discussion of "religious education" my views about how learning should take place came on somewhat strongly. But others at the table had their own views that they held equally strongly. So again the theme came back to having as many different approaches as possible so that people could select what was good for them as opposed to "the one true way."
(As I write that it makes me think how the "do whatever works for you" as opposed to "the one true way" philosophy isn't always a good idea.
Another thing that interested me was that they allow people to get their money back up to 60 days after beginning the course. So in terms of thinking about the "free" courses they are going to offer, what is the difference between letting them do the course for free VERSUS signing up for the course in the regular way and quitting after 25 days. Still was free.
The difference I see is that the "open" option allows them to be free as in "I don't have to give you my credit card info." I think one interesting thing to look at as this project moves forward is to see how many people sign up for the course because it was free. Obviously the hope is that people who would have never paid money upfront for the course do take it for free, and some buy it. I look forward to Chris Anderson's book on this topic.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
I lost my phone number -- now with a CC license
I am happy to say that my book I lost my phone number, can I have yours? Is now available for free with a CC license. It is available at http://freeldsbooks.com
distance: 10 articles finding
Articles from International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
As I looked for themes this week, one of the things that I learned was something about how I value and rank research findings. I noticed that tend to value more highly research that is experimental and concrete in nature. I place less value on historical or theoretical discussions—when it comes to research findings.
A couple of themes I found are as follows:
Of the 11 articles I read,
3 used extensive qualitative data
4 used extensive quantitative data
4 specifically listed limitations
I was surprised that more did not discuss the limitations of the article, and at how many used no “new” qualitative or quantitative data (I did not count literature review as qualitative data).
An article-by-article review follows.
1. Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3), 1-9.
Finding(s):
As this is a theoretical paper there are no official “findings.” The author does however give a “prognosis” that in order to stay relevant and viable higher education will need to adapt their educational methods and procedures. I rate this “prognosis/finding” a 3 because although it is interesting and somewhat well-supported, there are no specific findings to back up the assertion.
2. Barnard, L., Paton, V., & Lan, W. (2008). Online Self-Regulatory Learning Behaviors as a Mediator in the Relationship between Online Course Perceptions with Achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Finding(s):
The authors found that “while online self-regulatory learning behaviors do not appear to be that strongly associated with academic achievement, self-regulatory learning behaviors do appear to mediate and account for a significant amount of the positive relationship between student perceptions of online course communication and collaboration with academic achievement” (8). More simply we could state that as students increase in their self-regulation they tend to be more likely to communicate well at a distance, which affects their achievement. I rate this finding a 6 because it helps tease out exactly in what ways self-regulation affects grades.
3. Bray, E., Aoki, K., & Dlugosh, L. (2008). Predictors of Learning Satisfaction in Japanese Online Distance Learners. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
The authors found that the students they surveyed were satisfied with their distance learning experiences. They also found that people who felt comfortable using a computer were more likely to enjoy distance courses and that people who had a high preference for social interaction in learning were less likely to enjoy distance courses. They also found that students with teachers they ranked as easier to interact with were more satisfied with the course. I rank these findings a 6. The analysis and statistical manipulations were extensive and rigorous; however, because their sample was based on volunteers it is unclear how widely these results could be extrapolated.
4. Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1).
Finding(s):
This theoretical article did not offer anything by way of experimental findings. They state that for open educational resources to continue that they need to be self-sustaining. I did not find this to be a very novel finding, hence its rating of a 3. I did enjoy the review of OERs and have cited this article; however in terms of findings it is not very strong.
5. Deka, T. S., & McMurry, P. (2006). Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Finding(s):
The researchers found that “F2F students were significantly more successful than distance students, obtaining a higher percentage of A, B, and C grades” (11). They found that the main reason why F2F students did better is that they were much more likely to take all the exams. Completion was a major factor in lowering the grades of the distance students. Although this research may be old-hat to some, I thought it was significant and that the study was well-designed. I rate this study a 7.
6. Eib, B. J., & Miller, P. (2006). Faculty Development as Community Building. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(2).
Finding(s):
Although this what not a research paper, the authors did give a fairly detailed explanation of what they did and included several quotations from participants to support their assertion that it was a positive experience. It could have been stronger had they compared people who participated in the faculty development with those who did not, but given the limitations it seems that they did what they could. The other weakness was that the researchers themselves were heavily involved in faculty development so I wondered if there was a researcher bias. I would rate these findings a 4.
7. Grandzol, C. J., & PhD, J. R. G. (2006). Best Practices for Online Business Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Finding(s):
These researchers state that “the process of developing online courses requires faculty to do more than just try to duplicate the classroom online. Faculty must transform instruction, requiring fundamental rethinking of how to achieve learning objectives given the opportunities and limitations of the online environment…the evidence is overwhelming that online education tends to be as effective or more effective than traditional delivery” (8). In some respects this assertion goes contrary to Eib article mentioned above. I believe that the authors of the present study are trying to say that distance education, done properly, with students who are prepared for the experience, can be more effective. The authors have reviewed dozens of articles in order to determine what it would take to have the most effective distance education and gave 33 concrete descriptions of desired practice. Although they did not do their own experimental research they clearly surveyed the data. I would rate these findings a 7 because they have practical value and relevant application to me.
8. Leslie, P. H., & Murphy, E. (2008). Post-Secondary Students' Purposes For Blogging. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
Because only 8 of the 266 of the blogs analyzed met the criteria for inclusion in this research study I would rate their findings a 4, simply because I cannot tell how much they can be generalized. The authors state that the bloggers they studied seldom challenged ideas, and did not engage in knowledge construction; however there was little discussions as to why this was the case. The authors were frank about the limitations of their study, and I did admire them for upfront about those limitations.
9. Müller, T. (2008). Persistence of Women in Online Degree-Completion Programs. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Finding(s):
The authors found that the main facilitating factors for women in completing online degree programs were (1) engagement in a learning community, (2) schedule convenience, and (3) opportunities for personal growth. The three largest barriers were (1) juggling multiple responsibilities (e.g. working, mothering, etc.), (2) disappointment in faculty, and (3) face-to-face preference. Although their sample of twenty students does not allow for widespread generalization of results, hearing the voices of these women students was quite powerful. I rank this study a 6 due to its comprehensive discussion of factors experiences by these women.
10. Pan, G., & Bonk, C. J. (2007). The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3).
Finding(s):
As with number 4, above, this historical article did not offer anything by way of experimental findings. One interesting thought that they shared (though it could not be considered a finding) is the idea of a “gift culture.” When people create open resources and give them away for others to build on, it changes the dynamics of the educational resource as well as the relationships amongst those who use the resource. Although I liked the article I rated the findings a 3 because they did not appear to present any kind of new research to the field.
11. Shachar, M. (2008). Meta-Analysis: The preferred method of choice for the assessment of distance learning quality factors. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
Although the author is clearly passionate about the importance of meta-analysis there was little research showing that it was clearly the best method to use (perhaps a meta-analysis of meta-analytical studies would have been in order!) This is more of a “how-to” article as the author explains how to conduct a meta-analysis. If my goal were to do a meta-analysis I would rank the article a 5 (had it been more plain it would have received a higher ranking). However, if the goal is do present research findings I would rate it a 3 because there was little evidence to back up the claim that meta-analysis is the direction distance research should go. I do not necessarily disagree with the claim, there simply was little evidence of it presented.
As I looked for themes this week, one of the things that I learned was something about how I value and rank research findings. I noticed that tend to value more highly research that is experimental and concrete in nature. I place less value on historical or theoretical discussions—when it comes to research findings.
A couple of themes I found are as follows:
Of the 11 articles I read,
3 used extensive qualitative data
4 used extensive quantitative data
4 specifically listed limitations
I was surprised that more did not discuss the limitations of the article, and at how many used no “new” qualitative or quantitative data (I did not count literature review as qualitative data).
An article-by-article review follows.
1. Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3), 1-9.
Finding(s):
As this is a theoretical paper there are no official “findings.” The author does however give a “prognosis” that in order to stay relevant and viable higher education will need to adapt their educational methods and procedures. I rate this “prognosis/finding” a 3 because although it is interesting and somewhat well-supported, there are no specific findings to back up the assertion.
2. Barnard, L., Paton, V., & Lan, W. (2008). Online Self-Regulatory Learning Behaviors as a Mediator in the Relationship between Online Course Perceptions with Achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Finding(s):
The authors found that “while online self-regulatory learning behaviors do not appear to be that strongly associated with academic achievement, self-regulatory learning behaviors do appear to mediate and account for a significant amount of the positive relationship between student perceptions of online course communication and collaboration with academic achievement” (8). More simply we could state that as students increase in their self-regulation they tend to be more likely to communicate well at a distance, which affects their achievement. I rate this finding a 6 because it helps tease out exactly in what ways self-regulation affects grades.
3. Bray, E., Aoki, K., & Dlugosh, L. (2008). Predictors of Learning Satisfaction in Japanese Online Distance Learners. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
The authors found that the students they surveyed were satisfied with their distance learning experiences. They also found that people who felt comfortable using a computer were more likely to enjoy distance courses and that people who had a high preference for social interaction in learning were less likely to enjoy distance courses. They also found that students with teachers they ranked as easier to interact with were more satisfied with the course. I rank these findings a 6. The analysis and statistical manipulations were extensive and rigorous; however, because their sample was based on volunteers it is unclear how widely these results could be extrapolated.
4. Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1).
Finding(s):
This theoretical article did not offer anything by way of experimental findings. They state that for open educational resources to continue that they need to be self-sustaining. I did not find this to be a very novel finding, hence its rating of a 3. I did enjoy the review of OERs and have cited this article; however in terms of findings it is not very strong.
5. Deka, T. S., & McMurry, P. (2006). Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Finding(s):
The researchers found that “F2F students were significantly more successful than distance students, obtaining a higher percentage of A, B, and C grades” (11). They found that the main reason why F2F students did better is that they were much more likely to take all the exams. Completion was a major factor in lowering the grades of the distance students. Although this research may be old-hat to some, I thought it was significant and that the study was well-designed. I rate this study a 7.
6. Eib, B. J., & Miller, P. (2006). Faculty Development as Community Building. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(2).
Finding(s):
Although this what not a research paper, the authors did give a fairly detailed explanation of what they did and included several quotations from participants to support their assertion that it was a positive experience. It could have been stronger had they compared people who participated in the faculty development with those who did not, but given the limitations it seems that they did what they could. The other weakness was that the researchers themselves were heavily involved in faculty development so I wondered if there was a researcher bias. I would rate these findings a 4.
7. Grandzol, C. J., & PhD, J. R. G. (2006). Best Practices for Online Business Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Finding(s):
These researchers state that “the process of developing online courses requires faculty to do more than just try to duplicate the classroom online. Faculty must transform instruction, requiring fundamental rethinking of how to achieve learning objectives given the opportunities and limitations of the online environment…the evidence is overwhelming that online education tends to be as effective or more effective than traditional delivery” (8). In some respects this assertion goes contrary to Eib article mentioned above. I believe that the authors of the present study are trying to say that distance education, done properly, with students who are prepared for the experience, can be more effective. The authors have reviewed dozens of articles in order to determine what it would take to have the most effective distance education and gave 33 concrete descriptions of desired practice. Although they did not do their own experimental research they clearly surveyed the data. I would rate these findings a 7 because they have practical value and relevant application to me.
8. Leslie, P. H., & Murphy, E. (2008). Post-Secondary Students' Purposes For Blogging. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
Because only 8 of the 266 of the blogs analyzed met the criteria for inclusion in this research study I would rate their findings a 4, simply because I cannot tell how much they can be generalized. The authors state that the bloggers they studied seldom challenged ideas, and did not engage in knowledge construction; however there was little discussions as to why this was the case. The authors were frank about the limitations of their study, and I did admire them for upfront about those limitations.
9. Müller, T. (2008). Persistence of Women in Online Degree-Completion Programs. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Finding(s):
The authors found that the main facilitating factors for women in completing online degree programs were (1) engagement in a learning community, (2) schedule convenience, and (3) opportunities for personal growth. The three largest barriers were (1) juggling multiple responsibilities (e.g. working, mothering, etc.), (2) disappointment in faculty, and (3) face-to-face preference. Although their sample of twenty students does not allow for widespread generalization of results, hearing the voices of these women students was quite powerful. I rank this study a 6 due to its comprehensive discussion of factors experiences by these women.
10. Pan, G., & Bonk, C. J. (2007). The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3).
Finding(s):
As with number 4, above, this historical article did not offer anything by way of experimental findings. One interesting thought that they shared (though it could not be considered a finding) is the idea of a “gift culture.” When people create open resources and give them away for others to build on, it changes the dynamics of the educational resource as well as the relationships amongst those who use the resource. Although I liked the article I rated the findings a 3 because they did not appear to present any kind of new research to the field.
11. Shachar, M. (2008). Meta-Analysis: The preferred method of choice for the assessment of distance learning quality factors. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Finding(s):
Although the author is clearly passionate about the importance of meta-analysis there was little research showing that it was clearly the best method to use (perhaps a meta-analysis of meta-analytical studies would have been in order!) This is more of a “how-to” article as the author explains how to conduct a meta-analysis. If my goal were to do a meta-analysis I would rank the article a 5 (had it been more plain it would have received a higher ranking). However, if the goal is do present research findings I would rate it a 3 because there was little evidence to back up the claim that meta-analysis is the direction distance research should go. I do not necessarily disagree with the claim, there simply was little evidence of it presented.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Distance: Self-directed learning
This week I read two articles by D. Randy Garrison concerning self-directed learning (SDL) and distance education. Garrison states, "The foundation of the interest and movement in SDL was a focus on the freedom and responsibility of the individual learners to construct their own learning experiences. It was also a rejection of an excessively teacher-centered traditional educational experience, which too often demonstrated little trust and respect for the competency of individuals to take responsiblity for learning" (162). However, Garrison did not appear to be 100% sold on the virtues of SDL as it is generally understand. Garrison pointed out that a total focus on SDL negates opporutnities for teachers and institutions (who may know better) to guide student learning.
I think that much of what I have written/thought about distance learning was summed up when Garrison described Peters view that the "new form of distance education [has] the dominant pedagogic pattern being 'autonomous, self-guided learning.'" (164).
Garrison pushes back stating, "However as relevant as Peters' concept of autonomous learning might be for informal learning and society at large, it does not address distance eduation's role and responsibility in the area of facilitating or supporting effective formal learning" (164).
Garrison went on to discuss issues of control and motivation, and how they relate to SDL. I decided to do more research on SDL and uncovered a book review of "Self-direct learning" by Malcom Knowles, which, as far as I could tell, was the first book using that term. One of the key points I took from the summary is that the self-directed learner has to feel like the problems that are being researched are important for him/her. I wonder how much of institutionally-directed learning fits this criteria.
I also stumbled across an article about Andragogy and Self-Directed Learning. I was not familiar with the term "andragogy" (adult education) and it was interesting to read this additional perspective. A key takeaway was that there are different kinds of learners. Different degrees of SDL will be appropriate for different learners.
I look forward to touring Independent Study and learning about how these principles are being put into practice in their instructional design.
I think that much of what I have written/thought about distance learning was summed up when Garrison described Peters view that the "new form of distance education [has] the dominant pedagogic pattern being 'autonomous, self-guided learning.'" (164).
Garrison pushes back stating, "However as relevant as Peters' concept of autonomous learning might be for informal learning and society at large, it does not address distance eduation's role and responsibility in the area of facilitating or supporting effective formal learning" (164).
Garrison went on to discuss issues of control and motivation, and how they relate to SDL. I decided to do more research on SDL and uncovered a book review of "Self-direct learning" by Malcom Knowles, which, as far as I could tell, was the first book using that term. One of the key points I took from the summary is that the self-directed learner has to feel like the problems that are being researched are important for him/her. I wonder how much of institutionally-directed learning fits this criteria.
I also stumbled across an article about Andragogy and Self-Directed Learning. I was not familiar with the term "andragogy" (adult education) and it was interesting to read this additional perspective. A key takeaway was that there are different kinds of learners. Different degrees of SDL will be appropriate for different learners.
I look forward to touring Independent Study and learning about how these principles are being put into practice in their instructional design.
Distance: Response to "Computer Mediated Learning Groups"
Charles Graham was the lead author of a book chapter entitled "Computer-Mediated Learning Groups: Benefits and Challenges to Using Groupwork in Online Learning Environments." I thought this was a very interesting article.
To me there is a tension between what the research says, and my own personal experience. In this I am not referring to F2F group learning VS computer-mediated group learning, but rather the research that group learning is so much more effective than individual learning. My experience is that most group learning that is contrived for the sake of classroom exercise has not been as fruitful as independent learning. (I admit it is possible that I have been a part of many poorly constructed group learning activities, or that I have a personality/learning style that needs specialized group work treatment. Graham points out that business executives differed in their approach to group work from educators and management was my undergraduate study). However as I talk to many of my peers they seem to share the view that most classroom groups they have been a part of are contrived and quickly merge to the less effective "divide and conquer" approach that Graham discusses.
I have found group learning to be powerful when (1) all participants are highly motivated and (2) share the same goal. One fruitful group I was recently a part of was centered on a book called WHY but as I looked more carefully at the chapter I realized that this was a "work group" as opposed to a "learning group."
I want to believe the research, and I want to develop the skills of helping facilitate powerful learning. I had no quarrels with the ideas presented on how to apply group learning to a computer-mediated environment, but I struggled with the research presented by Johnson and Johnson because it is so different from how I have interpreted my learning experiences.
Please comment and share successful learning groups you have been a part of...
To me there is a tension between what the research says, and my own personal experience. In this I am not referring to F2F group learning VS computer-mediated group learning, but rather the research that group learning is so much more effective than individual learning. My experience is that most group learning that is contrived for the sake of classroom exercise has not been as fruitful as independent learning. (I admit it is possible that I have been a part of many poorly constructed group learning activities, or that I have a personality/learning style that needs specialized group work treatment. Graham points out that business executives differed in their approach to group work from educators and management was my undergraduate study). However as I talk to many of my peers they seem to share the view that most classroom groups they have been a part of are contrived and quickly merge to the less effective "divide and conquer" approach that Graham discusses.
I have found group learning to be powerful when (1) all participants are highly motivated and (2) share the same goal. One fruitful group I was recently a part of was centered on a book called WHY but as I looked more carefully at the chapter I realized that this was a "work group" as opposed to a "learning group."
I want to believe the research, and I want to develop the skills of helping facilitate powerful learning. I had no quarrels with the ideas presented on how to apply group learning to a computer-mediated environment, but I struggled with the research presented by Johnson and Johnson because it is so different from how I have interpreted my learning experiences.
Please comment and share successful learning groups you have been a part of...
Friday, February 6, 2009
Friday Review
It's been another great week! Here's the review of what I've been learning:
Research: Making some exciting progress on the open-book project. I also had an idea for helping "orphan LDS books" find open online distribution. I look forward to working more on that.
Distance Education: I made some good progress on my research paper (see here) and have two more interviews scheduled for Monday. I also had my first formal "distance learning experience" as I experienced class from home this week. There were definitely advantages (being home earlier was the primary one), but to be candid I will state that I probably didn't get as much out of class than I would have had I been there face to face. I was tempted to eat dinner while listening to the lecture, and technical difficulties prevented me from making comments as often as I would like. In my case where distance is not a necessity, I believe that going to class F2F would be better. However, if I lived in Salt Lake and worked full time and it was the only way I could participate then it would be a great way to go.
Open Ed: I enjoyed spending several hours this week just reading and writing. I'm almost done with the OER Handbook (good job Seth). I also have been writing a draft of a paper to introduce somebody to OERs and hopefully motivate them to want to participate.
Assessment: I did some extra research learning about how to use multiple choice tests in literature. I was appalled at the paucity of information; perhaps I should be appalled at my research skills...but the research librarian couldn't find anything either. I wrote several multiple choice questions and am experimenting with some different forms of questions in an upcoming test.
Research and Statistics: We started getting into the numbers this week. It was a lot of fun, I haven't had to do any math for 9 years, and it's been 13 since I've taken a stats class. What I'm learning here is basic stats, and it's fun. I also submitted my IRB proposal to do research on how grading affects students' scripture study.
Good stuff!
Research: Making some exciting progress on the open-book project. I also had an idea for helping "orphan LDS books" find open online distribution. I look forward to working more on that.
Distance Education: I made some good progress on my research paper (see here) and have two more interviews scheduled for Monday. I also had my first formal "distance learning experience" as I experienced class from home this week. There were definitely advantages (being home earlier was the primary one), but to be candid I will state that I probably didn't get as much out of class than I would have had I been there face to face. I was tempted to eat dinner while listening to the lecture, and technical difficulties prevented me from making comments as often as I would like. In my case where distance is not a necessity, I believe that going to class F2F would be better. However, if I lived in Salt Lake and worked full time and it was the only way I could participate then it would be a great way to go.
Open Ed: I enjoyed spending several hours this week just reading and writing. I'm almost done with the OER Handbook (good job Seth). I also have been writing a draft of a paper to introduce somebody to OERs and hopefully motivate them to want to participate.
Assessment: I did some extra research learning about how to use multiple choice tests in literature. I was appalled at the paucity of information; perhaps I should be appalled at my research skills...but the research librarian couldn't find anything either. I wrote several multiple choice questions and am experimenting with some different forms of questions in an upcoming test.
Research and Statistics: We started getting into the numbers this week. It was a lot of fun, I haven't had to do any math for 9 years, and it's been 13 since I've taken a stats class. What I'm learning here is basic stats, and it's fun. I also submitted my IRB proposal to do research on how grading affects students' scripture study.
Good stuff!
open quest #1: explaining openness to a faculty group
Bard Quest #1
I have "revised" the bard quest and am working on a paper geared towards college professors who are not very familiar with the idea of open educational resources. This paper will continue to improve over the next three quests.
I still need to refine the introduction, I begin this version of the paper with a closer look at the word "open." Sorry for format troubles, copy/pasting from Word is killing me!
I'm particularly interested in feedback on the diagram of the Rs. Perhaps it is unnecessary, but I thought it would be helpful of having a visual way to conceptualize it. I tried various versions and I include one in the body of the paper, and another one at the end with a discussion on the two. Any suggestions on the below are welcome. It should be clear that some parts are pretty polished and others are more outline-ish.
**
A Closer Look at “Open”
"Open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically Wiley (2007) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness.
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital book to a friend).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
With any open item there is an assumption that reuse is allowed. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach.
How an individual licenses an OER also affects its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in way that is consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
"Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
"NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
"ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
"NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission" [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.] (cited either from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions%20%5D or
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses double check).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be remixed then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause.
In addition to licensing, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but it cannot be edited using the free software file. Because free software exits to both open and edit .doc files, these could be considered a more “open” format. One way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share resources. Three common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) create opportunities to collaborate and improve OERs.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the number of people who see your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (very respectable for an academic text) but had been downloaded 25,000 times. Boyle believes that the downloaders do not represent lost sales (most would not have purchased the book anyways), but an increase in exposure.
Allowing content to revised also significantly increases the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. The book has sold about 17,000 copies in the United States since being released (Bookscan, 2009). However, the books has been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different. All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Cultures vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages in formats, the possibility that the will remains.
* Increased reputation
The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here) also had some great insights.
Do some good in the world
Massive numbers of students cannot attend college. The UN says, Everyone has a right to free and compulsory education in the primary grades. Main purposes of education to teach kindness, tolerance. An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can email electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit?”
Advantages for students
• Teachers can refer students to other courses they have taught.
Create opportunities to collaborate and improve OERs. Mechanisms of peer review – I will create something better if I know that others are going to view it.
• Better material used in courses (b/c profs can see what other profs do).
• Increased speed/cheaper course design
• Faculty collaboration may increase.
Obstacles to Openness A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they may be given away for free they are not completely free to create. For example suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is still a additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if the professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, then the costs increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing openness to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. Some authors have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs should be created ([source: The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here) .].
A third obstacle that may arise is the nagging doubt that nobody will use the resource. If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating it will have been wasted.
Does anybody care? Talking about “if a tree falls does anyone hear it” Wiley's answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it.” In other words, one of the challenges with OER is that we may be planning a big party (creating lots of OERs) but nobody wants to come (or wants the resources).
[add in...Sustainability of OER is becoming a subject of academic study. Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk,81 for example, argue that current thinking on the topic is often solely tactical with too much attention on the “product” and not enough attention on understanding what its user community wants or on improving the OER’s value for various user communities. Their proposal is that “prior to considering different revenue models for a particular OER and choosing one or a combination of them, the OER providers should focus on the issue of increasing the aggregate value of the site to its constituents to the greatest extent possible. In other words, unless the OER site is able to first gain and maintain a critical mass of active, engaged users, and provide substantial and differentiated value to them in its start-up and growth phases, then none of the available and/or chosen revenue models will be likely to work for the OER in the long run.”]
Conclusion
I still need to write the conclusion.
Below is another version of the diagram. This one illustrates that an item could technically be be licensed in such a way so as to allow revisions or remixing, but not to allow distribution. But since no CC license would allow that I thought it was a point to fine to make in a paper for my intended audience. I also put a dashed line to separate revise and remix, because from a practical standpoint there is no way to allow somebody to revise your work but prevent remixing it. Even considering the distinction that remixing brings up the issue of the licenses of the different works being remixed, from a permissions standpoint, if I give you permission to revise you also have permission to remix.
I have "revised" the bard quest and am working on a paper geared towards college professors who are not very familiar with the idea of open educational resources. This paper will continue to improve over the next three quests.
I still need to refine the introduction, I begin this version of the paper with a closer look at the word "open." Sorry for format troubles, copy/pasting from Word is killing me!
I'm particularly interested in feedback on the diagram of the Rs. Perhaps it is unnecessary, but I thought it would be helpful of having a visual way to conceptualize it. I tried various versions and I include one in the body of the paper, and another one at the end with a discussion on the two. Any suggestions on the below are welcome. It should be clear that some parts are pretty polished and others are more outline-ish.
**
A Closer Look at “Open”
"Open” generally means that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts (McMartin, 2007). More specifically Wiley (2007) has described four “R’s” of openness. Each of these R’s represents an increasing level of openness.
Reuse—This is the most basic level of openness. People can use all or part of the work for their own purposes (e.g. download a copy of a song to listen to at a later time).
Redistribute—People can share the work with others (e.g. email a digital book to a friend).
Revise—People can modify, translate, or change the form the work (e.g. take a book written in English and turn it into a Spanish audio book).
Remix—Take two or more existing resources and combine them to create a new resource (e.g. take audio lectures from a course and combine them with a video from another course to create a new course).
The following diagram represents these R’s in terms of how they can be combined to increase openness.
With any open item there is an assumption that reuse is allowed. A more open approach is to allow individuals to reuse and redistribute the work. To allow others to revise, remix and redistribute resources is the most open approach.
How an individual licenses an OER also affects its openness. United States law states that anything you create is automatically copyrighted; therefore it is legally “closed” unless the author takes steps to open it. Creative Commons provides several licenses to help creators of content license their work in way that is consistent with their desires for openness. There are four important provisions of the Creative Commons licenses. They are: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives and Share-Alike. The Creative Commons website defines these terms in the following way:
"Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
"NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
"ShareAlike. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.
"NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission" [Note: the NoDerivatives clause would prevent individuals from revising or remixing the work.] (cited either from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions%20%5D or
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses double check).
If people wanted their resources to be as open as possible they could simple license them by asking for attribution. If a university did not others reusing its resources for commercial purposes it could license the resource in such a way so as to prevent commercial use. If authors do not want their works to be remixed then they could use the “NoDerivatives” clause.
In addition to licensing, there are other considerations that authors of OERs should take into account when designing for openness. Even if a work has been licensed so that users are free to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix the format in which the work is stored can make a large difference in how open it is. Some file formats are easier to open and edit than others. For example a .pdf file is easy to open with free software, but it cannot be edited using the free software file. Because free software exits to both open and edit .doc files, these could be considered a more “open” format. One way to increase openness when distributing OERs is to make them available in as many formats constraints allow.
Motivations for Sharing Open Education Resources
There are several reasons why individuals and institutions might be motivated to openly share resources. Three common motivations are to (1) receive increased exposure, (2) do some good, (3) create opportunities to collaborate and improve OERs.
Receive increased exposure
One benefit of openly publishing OERs is that it has the potential to increase the number of people who see your work. James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University openly released a book entitled The Public Domain. Within six weeks of publication the book had sold 3,000 copies (very respectable for an academic text) but had been downloaded 25,000 times. Boyle believes that the downloaders do not represent lost sales (most would not have purchased the book anyways), but an increase in exposure.
Allowing content to revised also significantly increases the impact a work can have. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University published his book Free Culture in 2004. The book has sold about 17,000 copies in the United States since being released (Bookscan, 2009). However, the books has been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Perhaps more importantly, it has been translated into seven different languages, audio versions are freely available, and it has been put into sixteen different. All of these translations and format changes are freely available for others to download. Allowing others to remix Free Cultures vastly expanded its reach.
Although not all OERs will be translated into multiple languages in formats, the possibility that the will remains.
* Increased reputation
The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here) also had some great insights.
Do some good in the world
Massive numbers of students cannot attend college. The UN says, Everyone has a right to free and compulsory education in the primary grades. Main purposes of education to teach kindness, tolerance. An individual might say, “If I've already made a set of PowerPoints for a class I teach, why not post them for others to view? If I can email electronic copies of articles I've published to others, why not let them benefit?”
Advantages for students
• Teachers can refer students to other courses they have taught.
Create opportunities to collaborate and improve OERs. Mechanisms of peer review – I will create something better if I know that others are going to view it.
• Better material used in courses (b/c profs can see what other profs do).
• Increased speed/cheaper course design
• Faculty collaboration may increase.
Obstacles to Openness A primary obstacle to creating OERs is that although they may be given away for free they are not completely free to create. For example suppose a professor wants to podcast her lectures. Although she will be preparing and presenting her lectures anyway, there is still a additional cost in time needed to record and upload the lectures. Even for a technologically proficient individual it might take five minutes to publish a new lecture. And if the professor does not have the technical ability to publish a podcast, then the costs increase. In some cases this obstacle can be overcome by outsourcing openness to a Teaching Assistant with the requisite time and technical skill.
Another obstacle to using OERs is that in most institutions there is little external motivation for doing so. An individual might want to increase exposure, or do some good by sharing, but feel a pressure to focus on activities such as publishing or committee work that will lead towards tenure. Some authors have suggested that in order to resolve this problem that a peer-reviewed outlet for publishing OERs should be created ([source: The book Giving Knowledge for Free (available here) .].
A third obstacle that may arise is the nagging doubt that nobody will use the resource. If nobody utilizes the OER some fear that the time spent creating it will have been wasted.
Does anybody care? Talking about “if a tree falls does anyone hear it” Wiley's answer is, “If Google hears the tree fall, then others will hear it.” In other words, one of the challenges with OER is that we may be planning a big party (creating lots of OERs) but nobody wants to come (or wants the resources).
[add in...Sustainability of OER is becoming a subject of academic study. Dholakia, King, and Baraniuk,81 for example, argue that current thinking on the topic is often solely tactical with too much attention on the “product” and not enough attention on understanding what its user community wants or on improving the OER’s value for various user communities. Their proposal is that “prior to considering different revenue models for a particular OER and choosing one or a combination of them, the OER providers should focus on the issue of increasing the aggregate value of the site to its constituents to the greatest extent possible. In other words, unless the OER site is able to first gain and maintain a critical mass of active, engaged users, and provide substantial and differentiated value to them in its start-up and growth phases, then none of the available and/or chosen revenue models will be likely to work for the OER in the long run.”]
Conclusion
I still need to write the conclusion.
Below is another version of the diagram. This one illustrates that an item could technically be be licensed in such a way so as to allow revisions or remixing, but not to allow distribution. But since no CC license would allow that I thought it was a point to fine to make in a paper for my intended audience. I also put a dashed line to separate revise and remix, because from a practical standpoint there is no way to allow somebody to revise your work but prevent remixing it. Even considering the distinction that remixing brings up the issue of the licenses of the different works being remixed, from a permissions standpoint, if I give you permission to revise you also have permission to remix.
Distance Research Project
I am still in the process of refining my distance research project. With the help of Charles Graham I have refined my research questions to be:
Research Questions
1. What online technologies do Religious Education Faculty use to facilitate learning?
2. Why do they use it?
3. How do they most effectively use it?
4. Are there any issues that are unique to online technologies and religious education? (e.g. not just concerned with knowledge acquisition but the spiritual edifying of students).
5. In what ways do Religious Education Faculty members consider “openness” (publishing resources for a wider audience) as part of their teaching stewardship?
I have completed three interviews with faculty members and so far I think they have gone well. I have certainly learned from hearing their perspectives. When you hang out in distance learning and open education courses your perspective tends to get a little skewed. Below is a rough transcript of one of the interviews, I've made some slight changes to protect confidentiality. If you have any bright ideas as I pursue this inquiry, please feel free to share them.
Q. What online technologies do you use to facilitate learning?
A. Mostly Blackboard. I give tests on blackboard, papers, PowerPoints, web links, assignments appear and are submitted on Blackboard.
I think that with a BYU TV output, and then respond through something like Blackboard you would be very close to really having the world as your campus.
Q. Why do you use these technologies?
A. Saves time, less paper, Makes it easier for students to see their grades.
Electronic interaction is so good that it eliminates confusion on the part of students—fewer emails from students, fewer students stopping by.
Q. How do you use these technologies to maximize their effectiveness?
A. I teach off of Blackboard –accesses the PowerPoint via BBoard. Modeling how to use Bboard.
We have to do a better job at the adult teaching level for motivating learning. We assume that adults want to learn but that isn’t really true in the classroom. You as the teacher has the responsibility to make the classroom fun and interesting and motivational to learn. Need to find ways to motivate people to learn. University level students need motivational online teaching strategies—we have to get better at these things.
Q. Are there online technologies you have considered using but chose not to? If so, why?
I have considered taking media that I didn't want to take class time to show and put it on BlackBoard. There is lots of good media that could be developed so that students could watch it on their own in Blackboard.
Time/availability/cost are things that have prevented him from doing these things.
Q. Are there any issues that you have considered regarding online technologies and religious education?
A. I’m sure there is some truth to the idea that distance makes it harder to edify, but it hasn’t bothered the Brethren to take GC out there. But GC is only spiritually interactive. There is a difference between preaching and teaching, but I think you could have a pretty good package if you could have the interactivity where someone could participate in class long distance. All we really need is one student or TA who can take questions from a student in the Philippines. Not taking it live might reduce participation.
Q. In what ways (if any) do you consider “openness” (publishing resources for a wider audience) as part of your teaching stewardship?
If you had a BYU ID you could be still sign up for blackboard in a BYU course. The main obstacle to publishing things on iTunes, etc. is the amount of time I have available. If I had enough student TAs I could teach the world.
7. Any ideas of how else I should talk with?
Research Questions
1. What online technologies do Religious Education Faculty use to facilitate learning?
2. Why do they use it?
3. How do they most effectively use it?
4. Are there any issues that are unique to online technologies and religious education? (e.g. not just concerned with knowledge acquisition but the spiritual edifying of students).
5. In what ways do Religious Education Faculty members consider “openness” (publishing resources for a wider audience) as part of their teaching stewardship?
I have completed three interviews with faculty members and so far I think they have gone well. I have certainly learned from hearing their perspectives. When you hang out in distance learning and open education courses your perspective tends to get a little skewed. Below is a rough transcript of one of the interviews, I've made some slight changes to protect confidentiality. If you have any bright ideas as I pursue this inquiry, please feel free to share them.
Q. What online technologies do you use to facilitate learning?
A. Mostly Blackboard. I give tests on blackboard, papers, PowerPoints, web links, assignments appear and are submitted on Blackboard.
I think that with a BYU TV output, and then respond through something like Blackboard you would be very close to really having the world as your campus.
Q. Why do you use these technologies?
A. Saves time, less paper, Makes it easier for students to see their grades.
Electronic interaction is so good that it eliminates confusion on the part of students—fewer emails from students, fewer students stopping by.
Q. How do you use these technologies to maximize their effectiveness?
A. I teach off of Blackboard –accesses the PowerPoint via BBoard. Modeling how to use Bboard.
We have to do a better job at the adult teaching level for motivating learning. We assume that adults want to learn but that isn’t really true in the classroom. You as the teacher has the responsibility to make the classroom fun and interesting and motivational to learn. Need to find ways to motivate people to learn. University level students need motivational online teaching strategies—we have to get better at these things.
Q. Are there online technologies you have considered using but chose not to? If so, why?
I have considered taking media that I didn't want to take class time to show and put it on BlackBoard. There is lots of good media that could be developed so that students could watch it on their own in Blackboard.
Time/availability/cost are things that have prevented him from doing these things.
Q. Are there any issues that you have considered regarding online technologies and religious education?
A. I’m sure there is some truth to the idea that distance makes it harder to edify, but it hasn’t bothered the Brethren to take GC out there. But GC is only spiritually interactive. There is a difference between preaching and teaching, but I think you could have a pretty good package if you could have the interactivity where someone could participate in class long distance. All we really need is one student or TA who can take questions from a student in the Philippines. Not taking it live might reduce participation.
Q. In what ways (if any) do you consider “openness” (publishing resources for a wider audience) as part of your teaching stewardship?
If you had a BYU ID you could be still sign up for blackboard in a BYU course. The main obstacle to publishing things on iTunes, etc. is the amount of time I have available. If I had enough student TAs I could teach the world.
7. Any ideas of how else I should talk with?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Distance: Articles report #4
Articles from International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
Summary of theories utilized in these articles (total does not equal eleven, as some articles drew on multiple theories:
Transactional distance—3
Moore’s three types of interaction—3
Openness—2
Industrialization—1
Communities of practice—1
Communities of inquiry—1
Theories pertaining to the benefits of blogging—1
Persistence and retention—1
I noticed that the top 3 theories are all theories that I have studied either in this or other classes. It may be that I am falling into the trap of “once you know how to use a hammer, everything becomes a nail,” but I suspect that transactional theory as well as the different types of interaction are foundational issues in the world of distance education. I was surprised that only one of the articles mentioned conversational theory and it was only a passing reference.
1. Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3), 1-9.
Theoretical Framework(s):
One theoretical framework that Annand uses is the idea of Industrialization. In fact, the very first word of his article is “Peters” in references to Peters’ discussion of this theory. He also utilizes the conversation framework when discussing the three forms of interaction (student-teacher, student-student, and student-content), and highlighting how they are used in a University setting. He also uses Moore’s theory of transactional distance.
2. Barnard, L., Paton, V., & Lan, W. (2008). Online Self-Regulatory Learning Behaviors as a Mediator in the Relationship between Online Course Perceptions with Achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The authors draw on the theory of transactional distance as well as Schunk’s theories regarding self-regulated learning. They seek to find a relationship between these theories, e.g. does one’s level of self-regulation affect how one perceives transactional distance.
3. Bray, E., Aoki, K., & Dlugosh, L. (2008). Predictors of Learning Satisfaction in Japanese Online Distance Learners. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors also cite Anderson’s theory regarding the three kinds of student-interactions, and discuss the challenges of getting the mix right.
4. Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
I don’t know that there is a theoretical framework that the authors are using (at least not one that I am aware of). In their review of OpenCourse Ware it is clear that there is a theoretical construct of openness, but I am not sure that they specifically draw on that in their research.
5. Deka, T. S., & McMurry, P. (2006). Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
Although not specifically stated, it seems to me that the theory of transactional distance was the primary focus of this study. The authors were comparing F2F learners with those watching the same lectures at a distance. They discuss the “connection” between the students and teachers and noticed that the distance students felt less of a connection. TO me this appeared to be in the realm of the transactional framework.
6. Eib, B. J., & Miller, P. (2006). Faculty Development as Community Building. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors did not appear to be drawing on theoretical frameworks that are specific to distance education. Rather they focus on a theory of communities of practice (citing Barab) and Schon’s theory of the importance of reflection.
7. Grandzol, C. J., & PhD, J. R. G. (2006). Best Practices for Online Business Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors discuss best practices and frame much of the “best practice ideas” in terms of how well these methodologies promoted “communities of inquiry.” They cite Scardamalia and Bereiter, Lave and Wenger, and Garrison as having significant influence on their ideas regarding why communities of inquiry are important and how to create them.
8. Leslie, P. H., & Murphy, E. (2008). Post-Secondary Students' Purposes For Blogging. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors review literature relating to blogging. Their overall theory seems be that blogging allows students to write in a journal-format. This format helps students feel more comfortable in writing entries and provides a way to help students share their feelings with the teacher and other students.
9. Müller, T. (2008). Persistence of Women in Online Degree-Completion Programs. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The theoretical focus of this article concerns factors relating to persistence and retention. From looking at the authors they cite it appears that Tinto was a foundational theorist in this field and that many others have built on his theory, examining different factors that affect students persisting to finish distance courses. I believe at some level this also relates to transactional distance.
10. Pan, G., & Bonk, C. J. (2007). The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
Similar to the article on OpenCourse Ware, this article does not seem to have a clear theoretical base that relates to distance education specifically. Rather, the theory is based on the benefits having resources be openly available.
11. Shachar, M. (2008). Meta-Analysis: The preferred method of choice for the assessment of distance learning quality factors. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The theory Shachar draws on seems to be that to draw conclusive results it is best to synthesize multiple studies. He states, “One of the benefits and advantages of conducting mata-analysis is that it ‘gives a voice’ to ‘small and distinct’ studies, each one in itself not strong enough to qualify as being statistically significant, or robust enough to warrant serious consideration. But ‘integrated together,’ can contribute their findings to the ‘big picture’” (3).
Summary of theories utilized in these articles (total does not equal eleven, as some articles drew on multiple theories:
Transactional distance—3
Moore’s three types of interaction—3
Openness—2
Industrialization—1
Communities of practice—1
Communities of inquiry—1
Theories pertaining to the benefits of blogging—1
Persistence and retention—1
I noticed that the top 3 theories are all theories that I have studied either in this or other classes. It may be that I am falling into the trap of “once you know how to use a hammer, everything becomes a nail,” but I suspect that transactional theory as well as the different types of interaction are foundational issues in the world of distance education. I was surprised that only one of the articles mentioned conversational theory and it was only a passing reference.
1. Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3), 1-9.
Theoretical Framework(s):
One theoretical framework that Annand uses is the idea of Industrialization. In fact, the very first word of his article is “Peters” in references to Peters’ discussion of this theory. He also utilizes the conversation framework when discussing the three forms of interaction (student-teacher, student-student, and student-content), and highlighting how they are used in a University setting. He also uses Moore’s theory of transactional distance.
2. Barnard, L., Paton, V., & Lan, W. (2008). Online Self-Regulatory Learning Behaviors as a Mediator in the Relationship between Online Course Perceptions with Achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The authors draw on the theory of transactional distance as well as Schunk’s theories regarding self-regulated learning. They seek to find a relationship between these theories, e.g. does one’s level of self-regulation affect how one perceives transactional distance.
3. Bray, E., Aoki, K., & Dlugosh, L. (2008). Predictors of Learning Satisfaction in Japanese Online Distance Learners. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors also cite Anderson’s theory regarding the three kinds of student-interactions, and discuss the challenges of getting the mix right.
4. Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
I don’t know that there is a theoretical framework that the authors are using (at least not one that I am aware of). In their review of OpenCourse Ware it is clear that there is a theoretical construct of openness, but I am not sure that they specifically draw on that in their research.
5. Deka, T. S., & McMurry, P. (2006). Student Success in Face-To-Face and Distance Teleclass Environments: A matter of contact? International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
Although not specifically stated, it seems to me that the theory of transactional distance was the primary focus of this study. The authors were comparing F2F learners with those watching the same lectures at a distance. They discuss the “connection” between the students and teachers and noticed that the distance students felt less of a connection. TO me this appeared to be in the realm of the transactional framework.
6. Eib, B. J., & Miller, P. (2006). Faculty Development as Community Building. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors did not appear to be drawing on theoretical frameworks that are specific to distance education. Rather they focus on a theory of communities of practice (citing Barab) and Schon’s theory of the importance of reflection.
7. Grandzol, C. J., & PhD, J. R. G. (2006). Best Practices for Online Business Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7(1).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors discuss best practices and frame much of the “best practice ideas” in terms of how well these methodologies promoted “communities of inquiry.” They cite Scardamalia and Bereiter, Lave and Wenger, and Garrison as having significant influence on their ideas regarding why communities of inquiry are important and how to create them.
8. Leslie, P. H., & Murphy, E. (2008). Post-Secondary Students' Purposes For Blogging. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
These authors review literature relating to blogging. Their overall theory seems be that blogging allows students to write in a journal-format. This format helps students feel more comfortable in writing entries and provides a way to help students share their feelings with the teacher and other students.
9. Müller, T. (2008). Persistence of Women in Online Degree-Completion Programs. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(2).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The theoretical focus of this article concerns factors relating to persistence and retention. From looking at the authors they cite it appears that Tinto was a foundational theorist in this field and that many others have built on his theory, examining different factors that affect students persisting to finish distance courses. I believe at some level this also relates to transactional distance.
10. Pan, G., & Bonk, C. J. (2007). The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
Similar to the article on OpenCourse Ware, this article does not seem to have a clear theoretical base that relates to distance education specifically. Rather, the theory is based on the benefits having resources be openly available.
11. Shachar, M. (2008). Meta-Analysis: The preferred method of choice for the assessment of distance learning quality factors. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3).
Theoretical Framework(s):
The theory Shachar draws on seems to be that to draw conclusive results it is best to synthesize multiple studies. He states, “One of the benefits and advantages of conducting mata-analysis is that it ‘gives a voice’ to ‘small and distinct’ studies, each one in itself not strong enough to qualify as being statistically significant, or robust enough to warrant serious consideration. But ‘integrated together,’ can contribute their findings to the ‘big picture’” (3).
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