Why openness matters in education OCL4Ed June2014

The tasks for part 2 in the OCL4Ed June 2014 are about to:

• Consider why openness matters in education
• Reflect and share the reasons why we teach
• Establish and share what we consider fair and reasonable practice with regards to sharing of teaching materials
• ...and to reflect on lessons learned

To start with  talking about openness and why it matters, Iwill like to start with a citation by Lawrence Lessig...A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense.
—Lawrence Lessig[1]

It is a human right for everyone to have access to education.  UNESCO considers this essential to exercising the other human rights.[2]  The use of Creative Commons (cc) is contributing to the inevitable outcome  today and in the future where open education will be taken for granted by all education institutions.Sadly, today many education institutions restrict access to learning by locking content behind all rights reserved copyright. In today's world where the cost of replicating digital information is near zero combined with the affordance that the cost of developing high quality courses collaboratively using open educational resources is far cheaper than doing this alone, we have unprecedented opportunities to promote the sustainability of education futures for all.Some argues that they are for CC, but they lock the material in a Learning Management System (LMS), and without thinking that the material is not open any longer. And, also their are  like 50 shades of openness. Some argues, including myself that real openness is with CC BY and BY SA.

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Onlline Courses (MOOCs) have opened people's eyes to the future role of online learning in all educational sectors. CC, OERs and MOOCs is god enough by it selves, but they are also seen as catalysts for open up education, and they have given new blood, or new meaning and they has pushed a discussion of online learning on to the agendas even on top management, and mid management. It is also often argued that with increased openness, with CC, OERs and MOOCs quality will increase. When learners can use any course or material from anywhere, anytime with any device and learn from anyone both collaboration and competition will increase, and peer review, self-assessment develops. Institutions can improve their online courses, but Campus courses can also benefit  from the open movement. Incentives and strategies for open education are discussed today in new terms, very much through the hype in 2012 with the MOOCs.

So if education shall be available for everyone, everywhere at any time, with any device and from anyone, openness must be like default. Democracy, health, wellness, human rights will thus be developed and increased.

1.http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/lawrencele333208.html#fLKmIHc3SrTJPlJd.99

Open content licensing for educators OCL4Ed

Open content licensing for educators

The course OCL4Ed #OCL4Ed is a free online course on open content licensing for educators is  a course where we all can learn about the concepts of open educational resources, copyright and Creative Commons open licenses to achieve more sustainable education for all.

The very first task is about to reflect on our experience of  e-Learning activities on creating a blog, and to get to know each other, and to use the online course environment (see how).
Our  reflections could cover for example:

• Introduction of ourselves and reflections on what we would like to achieve by maintaining a blog to support our learning
• Reflections on the activity as such? Was it easy or hard?
• Share links to any additional resources we found useful in completing the tasks.
• Provide tips for future learners who will be completing this activity. If we were to set up a new blog again, what would we do differently?
• Add anything our readers may find interesting or useful

Hi everyone, I am Ebbba Ossiannilsson fr.o.m. Lund University in Sweden. I am very much looking forward to the OCL4Ed course. I attended this course when it first started some years agao. And now for the third time I am facilitator in the course as well as taking part to learn and to share with all of you.

I am working at national and international level on Open Educational Resources (OER);  Open Educational Practice (OEP), Creative Commons (CC), and MOOCs as well as on e-learning and especially on quality issues.
I earned my PhD 2012 from Oulu University in Finland and my Dissertation was about Benchmarking e-learning in higher education. Lessons learned from international projects 

I am a board member in several national and international Associations on elearning, MOOCs, and OERs, Associations like EFQUEL, EDEN, LANETO, EADTU, SVERD (I am V President in SVERD the Swedish Association of Distance Education). I use to serve as a quality reviewer for certification on quality in e-learning with EFQUEL (UNIQUe and ECB check).

At the latest EDEN Annual Conference 10-13 June 2014 in Zagreb, Croatia,  I was awarded the EDEN Fellow 2014.

I have done several MOOCs (some 30 in number) before.  I also use to be a facilitator in MOOCs. My main concerns are quality issues and I use to be a consultant on those issues.

I am very curious to take part in this I think  5th time  at the OCL4Ed

#OCL4Ed #EbbaOssian

Would like to share a link to the Norwefgien MOOC Investigation, from the Government on MOOCs to Norway. I will share the link because I believe it will have consequenses in the Nordic countries
http://www.regjeringen.no/nn/dep/kd/Dokument/NOU-ar/2014/NOU-2014-5.html?id=762916&WT.tsrc=epost&WT.mc_id=epostvarsel_regjeringano

Concerning writing Blogpost I do that quite frequently. I will use my current Blog for this course as well. I took part as a bloger in the Spring Blog Festival  an online course on WizIQ with Dr Nellie Dutsch.
But if I should create a  new blog, I will have done it somewaht different, maybe more structured and more ineractive.
Will see if I can do something to update this one 

Open Education Week 2014, 10th -15th March. The Swedish initiative - OERSweden

//www.openeducationweek.org/


This blogpost is to dissiminate and discuss about the Swedish initiative OERSweden


Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation (UNESCO).


The OER movement originated from developments in open and distance learning (ODL) and in the wider context of a culture of open knowledge, open source, free sharing and peer collaboration, which emerged in the late 20th century. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are discussed widely on a global, European and even Nordic level. The UNESCO OER Declaration shows the importance of Open Educational Resources and gives recommendations to governments and institutions around the globe. The European Union launched in autumn 2013 a large-scale initiative on Opening Up Education. These developments have been the starting point for a Nordic initiative in promoting and utilizing OER in the Nordic countries with a focus on creating a strong base for OER and Open Educational Practices (OEP) amongst the Nordic countries and in the Nordic region, also with a global outreach in mind. The Nordic countries have a potential to become a forerunner in OEP and the use of OER in Europe.

The idea of open educational resources (OER) has numerous working definitions. Often cited is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which defines OER as: "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge". The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines OER as: "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences". This is the definition cited by Wikipedia's sister project, Wikiversity. By way of comparison, the Commonwealth of Learning has adopted the widest definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) as ‘materials offered freely and openly to use and adapt for teaching, learning, development and research. The WikiEducator project suggests that OER refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing. 



During 2012/2013 a project was implemented on OER in Sweden open opportunities for learning,
the project is now called OER Sweden, funded by The Internet Infrastructure Foundation Internet Infrastructure in Sweden .SE . The project was coordinated by the University of Karlstad. Overall nine universities in Sweden attended .

 



One of the aims was to promote general awareness of the issues of OER (Open Educational Practice), open sharing cultures and practices. For participating institutions, the aim was also to develop a form of collaboration with efficient support to foster an open dialogue on the Internet. The project built further on a previous project on OER resources for learning funded by the Royal Library .

Anchoring in research / practice: OER are teaching resources over the Internet, which are freely available, to be freely used , processed and disseminated, often totally unlimited. An open digital learning resource has an indication, or copyright license, showing the conditions under which it may be used, copied, processed and disseminated. Creative Commons is currently the most common license type.

The project conducted a dozen open webinars and thirty shorter virtual networking meetings for planning and monitoring. The Webinars covered preferably about what OER is, how digital materials may be reused, but also to the digital library and metadata and standards. Two webinars were held in English with invited international guests; Open education - global challenges and OER - a question of quality. Each webinar followed a structure which subsequently was revised and refined .

The Webinars was conducted with nearly 1,200 participants. The recordings from webinars has also been seen by over 4000 people. The project website has had around 8000 visitors who came in
contact with the project through over 200 linkages from other sources.

The project's shape contributed to increasing the quality and efficiency of interaction. The project experience can be described in four areas. These are : virtual project organization, implementation
of webinars, continuous evaluation and improvement, and technical aspects .

The OER movement international and in Europe is very strong. Initiatives eg UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration , OER Africa and the EU Commissionens Opening Up Education in 2013. The project and website www.OERSweden.se initiated to promote and raise awareness of OER in Sweden and OERSweden has spread well in the NordicOER project  and in the Baltic, BoldicOER
www.boldic.org . Both financed with funds from the Nordic Council of Ministers. The presentation will thus put OER in Sweden in a broader international context.

Aim of contribution
This suggestion for the Open Educational Week 2014 will focus on implementation and use of OER in small languages and cultures (like the Nordic), as most OERs are in English and within an English influenced contex

 

We also like to discuss webinars as a form for networking and democracy and for learning, contribution

Target group and focus
Everyone interested in OERs and opening up education, policy questions, implementation issues, possibilities and limitations, webinars

Language is English

Points and questions to be discussed during the  OEW
Possibilities and limitations with use and implementation of OER in small cultures and languages?
Are OERs culture and language dependent?
Adaptability of OERs?
Resusability issues?
Context dependency?
To learn from experiences from others?

Webinars as a form for networking, learning, and increased democracy

Open Education Week 2014, 10th -15th March- the NordicOER Community

 


This blogpost is to dissiminate and discuss about the Nordic OER Alliance.

The OER movement originated from developments in open and distance learning (ODL) and in the wider context of a culture of open knowledge, open source, free sharing and peer collaboration, which emerged in the late 20th century.

The idea of open educational resources (OER) has numerous working definitions. Often cited is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which defines OER as: "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge". The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines OER as: "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences". This is the definition cited by Wikipedia's sister project, Wikiversity. By way of comparison, the Commonwealth of Learning has adopted the widest definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) as ‘materials offered freely and openly to use and adapt for teaching, learning, development and research. The WikiEducator project suggests that OER refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing. 


Open Educational Resources (OER) are discussed widely on a global, European and even Nordic level. The UNESCO OER Declaration shows the importance of Open Educational Resources and gives recommendations to
governments and institutions around the globe. The European Union launched in autumn 2013 a large-scale initiative on Opening Up Education. These developments have been the starting point for a Nordic initiative in promoting and utilizing OER in the Nordic countries with a focus on creating a strong base for OER and Open Educational Practices (OEP) amongst the Nordic countries and in the Nordic region, also with a global outreach in mind. The Nordic countries have a potential to become a forerunner in OEP and the use of OER in Europe.





The Nordic countries share many values related to education and technology development and use. The political and governmental institutions are quite similar; and there is a tradition of cooperation, exchange of knowledge and solutions between the countries. To focus on a relatively homogeneous region, which shares many basic values allows building knowledge and coming up with specific recommendations that can be useful for policy makers at different levels, be implemented in policies and practice, and used to form new co-operations. OER could potentially be a change and an innovation agent in schools, as well as in universities, vocational and adult education. Having OER as a scope allows using one strong prism to reflect crossroads the educational system has to navigate in the Nordic countries.

This Nordic OER initiative financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers aims to work for awareness, knowledge building, networking and creating an arena for dissemination of OER and openness in education. The foundation for the project is to establish a ground for Nordic and global collaboration. Open approaches are widely used in the Nordic
countries, but there is a lack of awareness about OER and no policies are in place. Furthermore, there are few Nordic collaborative projects in this area and a lack of global collaboration. A position paper has been agreed among the Nordic partners where goals, objectives, actions, recommendations and barriers are stated. More exactly the project will aim for:

* Awareness building
* Create a Nordic network
* Explore, transformative capacity, innovation potentials, cost efficiency and quality, open and flexible learning opportunities
* Help institutions positioning OER in their strategies
* Cross border and cross cultural collaboration
* Good practice, policy building and implementation
* Small languages and cultures
* Collaboration with the Boldic OER project, an OER project in the Baltic countries also financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Furthermore the project strategically will work for establishing the Nordic OER Community of individuals representing stakeholders and institutions. This Community is aiming to support uptake, adoption and collaboration around OER and to contribute to a strong OER movement within the Nordic countries with an outreach globally.
www.nordicoer.org

 
Aim of contribution
The suggestion for the Open Educational Week 2014 is to talk about the NordicOER Alliance and to discuss the use and implementation of OERs in smaller cultures and languages, as most OERs are in English and within an English influenced context.

Target group and focus
Everyone interested in OER, policy questions, implementation issues, possibilities and limitations

Language is English

Points and questions to be discussed during the  OEW
What about possibilities and limitations with use and implementation of OER in small languages?
Are OERs culture and language dependent?
Adaptability of OERs?
Resusability issues?
Context dependency?
To learn from experiences from others?
Regional development (like in the Nordic countries) of policies and strategies, any experiences to learn from?

Promoting OERs>>> Rethinking Education strategy

The Commission presents new Rethinking Education strategy for Europe


http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-1233_en.htm

From the Press-release it says:
To ensure that education is more relevant to the needs of students and the labour market, assessment methods need to be adapted and modernised. The use of ICT and open educational resources (OER) should be scaled-up in all learning contexts. 
--From Europa Press Releases RAPID

Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, said: "Rethinking education is not just of question of money: whilst it is true that we need to invest more in education and training, it is clear that education systems also need to modernise and be more flexible in how they operate to respond to the real needs of today's society. Europe will only resume sustained growth by producing highly skilled and versatile people who can contribute to innovation and entrepreneurship. Efficient and well-targeted investment is fundamental to this, but we will not achieve our objectives by reducing education budgets."

Rethinking Education calls for a fundamental shift in education, with more focus on 'learning outcomes' - the knowledge, skills and competences that students acquire. Merely having spent time in education is no longer sufficient. In addition, basic literacy and numeracy still needs to be significantly improved, and entrepreneurial skills and a sense of initiative need to be developed or strengthened (see IP/12/1224 on call for stronger focus on new skills in schools).

To ensure that education is more relevant to the needs of students and the labour market, assessment methods need to be adapted and modernised. The use of ICT and open educational resources (OER) should be scaled-up in all learning contexts. Teachers need to update their own skills through regular training. The strategy also calls on Member States to strengthen links between education and employers, to bring enterprise into the classroom and to give young people a taste of employment through increased work-based learning. EU Education Ministers are also encouraged to step-up their cooperation on work-based learning at national and European level.

Other proposed measures include a new benchmark on language learning, guidelines on the assessment and development of entrepreneurship education, and an EU-level impact analysis on the use of ICT and OER in education to pave the way for a new initiative in 2013 on Opening-up Education, aiming to maximise the potential of ICT for learning.

This is a very welcomed message. Hoperfully the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practice (OEP) rapidly will develop in Europe as in most other continents already. It was 10 years since UNESCO launched the OER concept and this summer in June 2012 the Paris declaration was taken to force  and encourabe member countries to rapidly implement the use and the development of OER.

Yesterday I wrote about the Towards a Nordic Alliance for Open Educational Resources
The OER and OEP will be implemented in Europe and in the Nordic countries as well,

Time is changing. Now  the rethinking finally will start.

Towards a Nordic Alliance for Open Educational Resources

Yesterday the 25th of November 2012 I wrote a blog post on Disruptive Innovation. I claimed  that Open Educational Resources, OER unfortunately are not very high ranked and on the agenda in the Nordic countries, whereas OER are discussed widely on a global, European and sometimes even  on  a Nordic level. For example the OER Paris declaration is almost unknown, sorry to say. This is very strange in countries where education always have been part of democratic processes and  where education in different settings always have been valued very high, for example so called "folkbildning".  Many countries around the world have even had the Nordic countries educational system ranked very high and as good examples. For example Finland are ranked year after year as number one in PISA studies. At the same time in all the Nordic countries Internet is available and accessible everywhere for everyone.

The OER Paris declaration shows the importance of Open Educational Resources and gives recommendations to governments and institutions around the globe. The European Union has just launched a large-scale initiative on “Opening Up Education” and the Cyprus EU Presidency in cooperation with the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research organises a Ministerial Conference on “Opening up education through technologies” in Oslo in beginning of December 2012. The Nordic countries need to consolidate and to act!  

Towards a Nordic Alliance for Open Educational Resources

These developments have been the starting point for a Nordic initiative on promoting and utilizing Open Education in the Nordic countries with a focus on creating a strong base for OER and Open Educational Practices (OEP) amongst the Nordic countries and in the Nordic region, but also with a global outreach in mind. The Nordic countries have the potential to become a forerunner in OEP and the use of OER activities in Europe:

The Nordic countries share many values related to education and technology development and use; the political and governmental institutions are quite similar; and there is a tradition for cooperation, exchange of knowledge and solutions between the countries. To focus on a relatively homogeneous region which shares many basic values allows us to build knowledge and come up with specific recommendations that can be useful for policy makers at different levels, be implemented in policies and practice, and used to form new co-operations (from the Nordic Alliance for OER policy paper, November 2012)

Contacts persons in this initial phase are Jan M. Pawlowski (jan.pawlowski@jyu.fi) and Tore Hoel (tore.hoel@hioa.no). 

Questions and comments can also be sent to Ebba Ossiannilson (ebba.ossiannilsson@ced.lu.se)

Will MOOC’s Forever Change Higher Education?

An interesting movement seems to be on its way. The OER (Open Educational Resources) and OEP/OEC (Open Educational Pracitce and Culure) development, the launch of MOOC and open badges seems to be driving forces. Now it is happening in Universities as well. Joe DiDonato wrote yesterday on July 18, 2012, under the heading Will MOOC’s Forever Change Higher Education? that Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners from around the world. Will we now see with MOOC that Universities are Reshaping Education on the Web. What is  a MOOC then?

 
As part of a seismic shift in online learning MOOC is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists,  announce that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.  

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng of Stanford are adding 12 universities to Coursera, the online education venture they founded.

So far, MOOCs have offered no credit, just a “statement of accomplishment” and a grade. But the University of Washington said it planned to offer credit for its Coursera offerings this fall, and other online ventures are also moving in that direction.  To earn credit, students would probably have to pay a fee, do extra assignments and work with an instructor. Finally maybe the Open Badge movement by Mozilla will become a reality

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