Why Open Education Matters from Blink Tower on Vimeo.
Most people around the world realise our education models
are broken. Around the world, primary and secondary education is in shambles.
This is not true in every country but it is true in most regions of the world.
We need serious help. One new movement in education is the open education
movement. It won’t solve all the big educational problems facing primary and
secondary education in the world, but it is helping to create access to
excellent education for so many around the world.
Open Education Resources (OER) are materials that are
released with intellectual property license allowing people to freely use,
repurpose, improve, edit, and modify. The U.S. Department of Education is
openly supporting and encouraging the development of more OER. In fact
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a video competition inviting
people to submit a video explaining why
Open Education matters. The winners were announced,
and I’d like you to take a moment to watch the 3 short videos by the winners, First Prize, Second Prize, and Third
Prize.
I’ve already previously mentioned Khan
Academy and Udacity as examples of free online
courseware and learning. But I wanted everyone to know that though many of the
free online courses offered by physical universities or even Khan Academy were
computer science based, it has branched out to many different topics like
medicine, art history, history, law, psychology, business, public health,
international relations, and archaeology courses as well as all the science
courses. Usually many of these courses are not self-paced but at the normal
pace of the actual class. You can actually do the work and be graded just like
the students in the physical class. And though most of the physical
universities do not give you credit for taking the online OER course, there are
a few who do. So below I list a few universities who have jumped into the OER
game and invite the eternal student in you to reawaken from slumber and to
liven yourself with amazing, fresh, and current information about a range of
subjects. And it’s not just information; if you’re actually doing the work of
the course, you will be learning valuable skills. Check out the list.
Universities
·
And many many more
NGOs
·
Ck-12
·
P2PU
·
PhET
·
Saylor
·
Curriki
·
EdX (MIT and Harvard)
I would normally say to just call your nearest university or
check out its online webpage, but then again it doesn’t really matter how close
the university is to your home, does it? You can take a course from any
university anywhere if it offers OER. Here are two US-based credit options if
you want to get credit from OER.
Credit Options
CLEP
Exams – You can test out of general education requirements, and the exam
results are excepted at 2/3rds of US colleges and universities.
Prior
Learning Assessment – You can create a portfolio which is examined by a
faculty expert to prove your knowledge and receive credit.
Now, usually I’m accused of being against businesses and
for-profit institutions. Of course this isn’t true since I quite support
businesses where profit is not king, businesses with an active and engaged
conscience, businesses that don’t just avoid evil but do good—social
enterprises. Some people immediately might say that I don’t support for-profit
groups who create educational materials and that the OER movement is forcing
them or will force them out of business.
As with any innovation, new models of making money are created with the
innovation. Let me share some examples.
Flat World
Knowledge is an online publishing company that has a business around
providing access to free online textbooks to everyone. They then make money by
selling print-on-demand copies of these free online textbooks as well as
supplemental material. Ahrash Bissell even discusses a
dual-licensing model (because some non-profits are concerned about their
free content being used by for-profits for profit and some for-profits worry
about their OER being used to undercut their profits). We’ll see what the licensing
landscape around OER looks like in the years to come.
If you are interested in taking a course with me, let me
know. I’d love a study buddy or a classmate. You can check out this list of 500 free online
courses.
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