The open education movement: What does it mean for your institution?

Image source: thechronicleherald.ca

I came across a nice post (via @catspyjamasnz) today that gathers together some of the themes I have been blogging about in recent weeks. Roland Sussex succinctly defines ‘open education’ and then goes on to contextualise what this now means in the wake of the new models of delivery that have been attracting a lot of attention of late. He refers, for example, to the founding of Udacity following the successful trial of a course in artificial intelligence delivered completely free online:

The course attracted 160,000 enrolments (roughly the total enrolment of the UK Open University) from 190 countries, and 23,000 completed it. It provided frequent feedback and tests, with two examinations (mid-semester and end-semester), all handled by software. Students who passed the course received a letter of completion. And all this was totally cost-free to the student.

The students also provided creative input. They established two large Facebook pages for course discussion and interaction, and nearly 2,000 of them translated the course materials into 44 languages. And the solutions to the very frequent quizzes, now on Youtube, provided feedback and commentary. The course designers implemented a version of problem-based learning and made it work online.

As Sussex goes on to point out, Udacity is an extension of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where a university course is made available online to anyone free of charge, but only the paying students get feedback on assessment and certification.

The key question is whether a point will be reached where the monopoly power of formal education will be broken up because the market value of a course completed with the likes of Udacity will be equal (or close) to the value of a traditionally certified programme. As outrageous as this might sound to some, the longer educational institutions continue to resist change, the more likely it is that their service will become increasingly less valuable.

At the very least, I anticipate that some institutions will start reconsidering their business models along the lines of a ‘study now, pay later’ approach, offering MOOCs with fees being paid at the end of the course by students wishing to exercise the option of certification (assuming they believe it constitutes value for money).

The MITs of this world can continue to potter around experimenting without worrying too much about how it might impact on their ‘core business’. The same cannot be said, however, for those institutions facing competitive pressure because of funding cuts, the economic downturn, and dissatisfied clients.

Remember the old days when we had to go to class?

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There is a nice article in The Chronicle this week by Jeffrey R Young entitled, Actually Going to Class, for a Specific Course? How 20th-Century. I liked this piece not because it told me anything new, but because of the sub-text that it is incredulous so many academic institutions still trot out the same tired old didactic teaching model and believe they are providing a high quality learning experience. “There is definitely a broader array of options available to students who wish to forgo the commute to class altogether in exchange for online classes that essentially provide the same content that professors regurgitate to students in lectures,” says one student in the article. Frankly, there were a sufficient number of options when I made my PowerPoint slides available ahead of class back in 1996. Now there is a veritable cornucopia of options! Who in their right mind would go to a lecture nowadays unless you were guaranteed some form of active engagement or ‘edutainment’ from an academic with stand up comedy skills?

Education needs pull not push

A very persuasive presentation from Charles Leadbeater on how social entrepreneurs are setting up schools in slum areas around the world that have pulling power because there is some extrinsic motivation to attend, namely an immediate pay-off in terms of productive outcomes. There is no national curriculum or standardised testing, but one theme that is common is that these schools reach the people they most need to serve in a personalised manner. The impersonal mass education systems that students are pushed into in many wealthier communities around the world might take heed. These systems are failing because learners are starved of opportunities for creativity. How perverse would it be if, with economic and social progress, these poor communities ‘developed’ to the point where children start enrolling for GCSEs, to become part of the ‘sausage factory’ education systems characteristic of ‘advanced’ countries.

Beyond standardised testing

This video clip from Edutopia.org runs for about 8 1/2 minutes. It puts forward the case that students are ‘over-tested and under-examined’. It includes commentary from Grant Wiggins and Howard Gardner (among others).