The “open” space is expanding.

2011 has been a watershed year with open gaining traction and acceptance.  

Governments in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the U.S. have all adopted Creative Commons licenses to communicate broad reuse rights to the content, data, and educational materials they create. By doing so these national governments are seeking to:

• promote creative and innovative activities, which will deliver social and economic benefits
• make government more transparent and open in its activities, ensuring that the public are better informed about the work of the government and the public sector
• enable more civic and democratic engagement through social enterprise and voluntary and community activities

This move to more open government is not just happening at the national level. Here in British Columbia the provincial government has established a Ministry of Labour, Citizen’s Services and Open Government and became the first provincial government in Canada to launch an open data portal.

Its even happening at the city or municipal level. The city of Sao Paulo in Brazil has decreed that all educational resources paid for by the city need to be Open Educational Resources (OER) licensed using Creative Commons license.

Its not just happening at the national, provincial, and municipal levels its happening at the organizational and institutional levels. The National Autonomous University of Mexico, better known as UNAM, has said it will make virtually all of its publications, databases, and course materials freely available on the Internet over the next few years. This is to include all magazines and periodicals published by UNAM, research published by UNAM employees, and online access to theses, dissertations and its approximately 300 undergraduate and graduate courses. The UNAM Online initiative seeks to achieve open access, public and free to all products, collections and digital developments of the university. This move is seen as part of the university’s mission. A way to give back to society what it is doing with its financial support. A way of being open, accountable and transparent.

Its not just publications, research, theses and other content that is going open, 2011 was the year that open pedagogies including Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC) were adopted by mainstream big name institutions. A Massively Open Online Course is typically taught by faculty at an established institution to tuition paying regular students but is also open to enrollment by anyone interested for free. Only the tuition paying students receive accreditation. MOOC’s have been around for a while (see here and here) but this year saw the following fascinating examples.

Digital Storytelling DS106 – Jim Groom’s University of Mary Washington DS106 is an open, online course free to anyone who wants to take it. You can join in whenever you like and leave whenever you need. Participants develop skills in using technology as a tool for creative self-expression, building a digital identity, and critically examining the landscape of communication technologies. The 2011 version of this course invented a free form live streaming course radio station as a new form of teaching and learning. This course starts up again in January 2012 in case you’d like to sign up.

In the fall of 2011 Stanford Engineering professors offered three of the school’s most popular computer science courses for free online as MOOC’s, Machine Learning, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Introduction to Databases. The Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course generated over 100,000 enrollments and had to be capped. Students taking the course for free watch video lecture recordings, read course materials, complete assignments and take quizzes and an exam. What online students don’t receive, however, is one-on-one interaction with professors, the full content of lectures – or a Stanford degree.

In late December MIT announced MITx which aims to let thousands of online learners take laboratory-intensive courses, while assessing their ability to work through complex problems, complete projects, and write assignments (see FAQ). As with other MOOC style offerings students won’t have interaction with faculty or earn credit toward an MIT degree. However, for a small fee (yet to be defined) students can take an assessment which if successfully completed will provide them with a certificate from MITx. Whether this turns out to be anything more than the form letters Stanford’s faculty provide non-enrolled students who complete the course remains to be seen. But, imagine this scenario. A student signs up for a free MITx course, completes the assignments, pays the assessment fee and receives a certificate indicating successful completion. That student then decides to apply to and enroll in MIT proper. Would that certificate be accepted by MIT as transfer credit or would they force the student to retake the entire course?

Museums and libraries are going open. Check out the Commons on Flickr to see how libraries and museums are openly sharing what have been hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and how they are openly sourcing public input and knowledge into making these collections even richer. The Commons on Flickr openly shares photos where “no known copyright restrictions” exist, such as:

• The copyright is in the public domain because it has expired;
• The copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions;
• The institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control; or
• The institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions.

I think of these collections as partially open. The rights statements of participating libraries and museums are full of statements like; “It is your responsibility to determine what permission(s) you need in order to use the Content and, if necessary, to obtain such permission.” Not particularly helpful or encouraging of reuse. No where near as clear as Creative Commons licenses. However, I do really like the way they are seeking public input into the cataloging and data associated with these images. See No. 47. Crew member taking a movie of ice berg from the ship, Greenland, 1939 for an example of how Smithsonian images are being shared through the Commons on Flickr and how public input is improving the collection. It’s particularly heartening to see the Smithsonian directly interacting with end users.

Photo from Smithsonian Institution’s Photostream

In November 2011 Wired announced that all Wired.com staff-produced photos will be released under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) license in high-res format on a newly launched public Flickr stream. In making the announcement Wired notes; “Like many other sites across the web, we’ve benefited from CC-licensed photos at Wired.com for years — thank you, sharers! It seems only fitting, and long overdue, to start sharing ourselves.”

Its great to see these examples of open leadership happening at the national, provincial, municipal, institutional, and organizational level and it makes me wonder – Is open going viral? Is open going mainstream? 

There is growing government interest in seeing resources produced through tax dollars be publicly accessible. Governments at all levels are using policy and legal frameworks to open up access to publicly held information, promote transparency, and enable wider economic and social gain. These are all factors every government and their electorate are interested in.

I can’t wait for the day when more and more government officials recognize the benefits of open and establish themselves as proponents. Washington State representative Reuven Carlyle gets it in spades. See: $64 million for out-of-date and educationally generic textbooks? Here’s a new approach, and Beginning of the end for $100 college textbooks: Legislature, colleges, Gates Foundation partner for examples of how a politician can make a difference by understanding and leveraging open.

I think of open textbooks as low hanging fruit. One of the most compelling open education initiatives to undertake. Open textbooks have a clear value proposition for students, parents, educators and public funders. CK-12′s flexbooks are totally impressive for the fact that they are Creative Commons licensed and for the simple way you can assemble a book as a .pdf, an e-book, or html and embed it in an LMS. And then there is Saylor’s Open Textbook Challenge which is offering a “bounty” of $20,000 if you submit your textbook to them and it is accepted for use in their course materials. I expect we’ll see open textbooks for high enrollment undergrad courses across the board.

While I’m interested in the full range of ways in which open principles are being used I’m particularly interested in how they apply to education. Governments could establish policy that requires public funds for education to result in education resources openly accessible to the public. Some governments have provided funding for development of educational resources under agreements that have the IP and copyright for those resources resting with the government. Governments could easily convert all these legacy educational resources to Open Educational Resources (OER) by simply using an open license like Creative Commons.

UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) published the UNESCO-COL Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education this year providing a set of guidelines to support governments, teaching staff, higher education institutions/providers, and quality assurance/accreditation and recognition bodies adopt and support OER.

The guidelines for government include:

1. Support the use of OER through the revision of policy regulating higher education
2. Contribute to raising awareness of key OER issues
3. Review national ICT/connectivity strategies for Higher Education
4. Consider adapting open licensing frameworks
5. Consider adopting open format standards
6. Support institutional investments in curriculum design
7. Support the sustainable production and sharing of learning materials
8. Collaborate to find effective ways to harness OER.

I look forward to seeing these policies adopted around the world, used at the national, provincial, municipal, and institutional level, and applied across all of education.

For public government, public service agencies, and not-for-profits open policy is a perfect fit. For the most compelling and articulate description of its obviousness I highly recommend you listen to Cable Green’s Sloan-C presentation The Obviousness of Open Policy which he gave in November 2011 (advance to time index 10:25 and click on the 4 arrows in the upper right corner to go full screen). In a digital world the potential is there for open to become a widespread win/win de facto policy with benefits for governments and citizens. The most amazing thing of all is that government support for open can happen at the policy and guidelines level without any additional funding. It’s hard to imagine why any entity serving the public interest wouldn’t adopt open policies when open can clearly generate social and economic benefits.

I’m highlighting these government developments around policy and open as I see them as an essential complement to the grass roots way open adoption has happened to date. Individuals, on their own, have embraced open. Photographers have uploaded over 200 million images to Flickr tagged with Creative Commons licenses. Wikipedia’s more than 3.8 million entries are openly licensed using Creative Commons. In June 2011 YouTube added the Creative Commons Attribution license as a licensing option for users and launched a Creative Commons video library containing 10,000 videos under CC BY from organizations such as C-SPAN, PublicResources.org, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera. There are now hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos that users have posted with Creative Commons licenses.

People who tweet and use social networks appreciate openly engaging others in solving problems or providing advice. The New Einsteins Will Be Scientists Who Share explores this potential for science. Even Scientific American is in on the act with their citizen science site. I expect we’ll soon see national organizations responsible for research establish open innovation as an essential aspect of research agendas.

As might be expected there are a growing number of practices and technologies emerging to support this kind of open engagement. Knowledge in the Public Interest is using the concept of a JAM‘s for open engagement. A JAM is a a non-linear moderated discussion of fixed duration that is part creative brainstorming, part active dialogue, and part focus group. In a JAM participants share experiences, knowledge, and ideas, and collaborate in search of actionable responses to complex issues. It’s interesting to note that Knowledge in the Public Interest’s customized version of Moodle and its JAM process are similar to what BCcampus has been doing for years with its customized Moodle SCoPE seminars.

Idea Scale is another interesting example. The recently launched US initiative Digital Promise is using Idea Scale to generate and tackle “grand challenges” to spur breakthrough technologies that can help transform the way teachers teach and students learn. You can see grand challenge ideas submitted so far in Idea Scale here.

In education, Learning Management Systems are largely closed walled off online learning environments that require passwords and logins for entry. It was a welcome surprise then when in October 2011 Blackboard announced a series of new initiatives to provide greater support for open education efforts. Working with Creative Commons, Blackboard now supports publishing of open educational resources (OER) across its platforms. Support for OER enables instructors to publish and share their courses under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) so that anyone can easily preview and download the course content. Blackboard also updated its policy around fees so that there are no extra charges associated with sharing courses with outsiders such as other educators, auditors, or prospective students. Blackboard says it wants to help institutions share the content of their courses with larger, online audiences. When a technology vendor like Blackboard starts to support open then you know open is past the idea stage and going mainstream.

Given the growing personal use of open licenses by end users it makes sense for governments to do the same. Open will flourish when bottom-up grassroots efforts toward open take place in an environment supported top-down by policy. 

My own work at BCcampus around OER has been an example of that synergy. Government Ministry of Advanced Education support for faculty development of online learning resources has been provided with the caveat that the resources be open and shareable. I’ve written about this initiative extensively elsewhere in this blog (see here, and here, and here) so thought I’d shine the light on a couple of other 2011 developments that add credence to the growing sense of open going viral and the synergy between policy and grassroots adoption.

In the US the Obama administration initiated the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program out of the US Department of Labor. The first round of TAACCCT grants made available and awarded in 2011 totals $500 million but a total of $2 billion over four years has been committed. This example of government commitment to open is the largest I know of and I hope others are inspired to follow suit. TAACCCT provides eligible institutions of higher education with funds to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs that can be completed in 2 years or less, and that result in skills, degrees, and credentials that prepare program participants for employment in high-wage, high-skill occupations, and are suited for workers who are eligible for training under the TAA for Workers program. TAACCCT funds are capacity building grants strategically targeted to assist workers adversely affected by trade agreements. All TAACCCT initiatives are expected to meet accessibility and interoperability standards and produce OER licensed using Creative Commons (CC-BY).

Wayne Mackintosh and the Open Educational Resource Foundation (OERF) in New Zealand have been doing just an amazing job of bringing to life the OER university (OERu). Here’s how the OERu is described:

The OER university is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit.

The OER university aims to provide free learning to all students worldwide using OER learning materials with pathways to gain credible qualifications from recognised education institutions. It is rooted in the community service and outreach mission to develop a parallel learning universe to augment and add value to traditional delivery systems in post-secondary education. Through the community service mission of participating institutions we will open pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credit and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit.

The concept of an OERu gained widespread support and made incredible progress over the 2011 year. Institutions from around the world have become OERu founding partners including: 

• Athabasca University
• BAOU (Gujarat’s open university)
• Empire State College (SUNY)
• Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology
• NorthTec
• Open Polytechnic
• Otago Polytechnic
• Southern New Hampshire University
• Thompson Rivers University
• University of Canterbury
• University of South Africa
• University of Southern Queensland
• University of Wollongong
• OER Foundation (non-teaching)
• BCcampus (non-teaching)

These founding partners represent Canada, USA, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and India. For OERu to have attracted the interest and involvement of this many partners in a one year period is impressive. I’m particularly encouraged with the breadth, depth and reputations of these partners. It’s worth pointing out that the OERu openly invites other institutions to join. I expect many additional institutions from all around the world will join the OERu and follow the early leadership these founding anchor partners have shown.

Over the course of 2011 the OERu:

• conducted an international consultative webinar on the OER university with a focus on OER for assessment and credit for students in February 2011
• hosted a strategic international planning meeting for the OER university February 2011
• established a plan of action for implementing its logic model
• held an international consultative webinar on designing OERu credentials in August 2011
• brought on 15 anchor partners (see above)
• held an OERu Founding Anchor Partners inaugural planning meeting in November 2011
• defined 2012 prototype courses in Dec 2011
• and is currently doing an international consultative webinar for designing Academic Volunteers International (until Dec 16) as well as conducting an OERu assessment and credentialisation practice survey (until Dec 31)

Perhaps the most impressive thing of all with OERu is that all of this has been planned and published openly on Wikieducator with invited and included participation from people all over the world. Got ideas you’d like to contribute to the OERu? Log on to the wiki and add them – input from all is welcome. OERu is not only about opening education its modelling how to do planning and development in an open and inclusive way. For the OERu, open is not just about content – its about all aspects of education, it seeks to engage and benefit all people everywhere, it’s a way of working. Outstanding!

Against this backdrop of growing global momentum and critical mass around open, 2011 has been a pivotal year of open for me personally too. Here’s my own personal 2011 top 10 open highlights:

#1. The University of Open articulates a vision of a new kind of university that strategically chooses to use and contribute to the code of Open Source Software, publish research openly using Open Access principles, teach openly in the public using Open Pedagogies, share data on it’s activities using Open Data, and involve faculty and students in developing and using Open Educational Resources (OER). This vision of an alternative ‘university of open’ serves as an inspiration for me. I’ve been thrilled to find this idea picked up and promoted internationally by Sir John Daniel of the Commonwealth of Learning (Open Courseware, Open Content, Open Practices, Open Learning: Where are the limits? — Tertiary Education: How Open? — Open Universities: what are the dimensions of openness? — Publishing with Public Money for Public Benefit)

#2. Award of grants for the 2010 BCcampus Online Program Development Fund which supports partnerships of BC public post secondary institutions in their development of online learning curricula as OER. This was the eighth consecutive round, the longest running publicly funded OER initiative I know of, bringing the cumulative 2003-2010 investment to $9 million. Kudos to BC’s Ministry of Advanced Education for its early foresight and willingness to back open over all these years.

#3. One of OER’s holy grails is reuse by others. I think there is a dearth of understanding about just what people think this means but this past year several significant events happened around OER developed in B.C. being picked up and expanded by others elsewhere. I find these examples fascinating as they represent real-life examples of what happens as OER mature. The University of British Columbia’s Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources are a great example of an OER initiative that started in BC and has expanded. The additional institutional partners brought on over time contribute to improving existing learning resources, developing new learning resources, and use existing virtual soil science learning resources for courses in their own institutions. I enjoyed helping bring together soil scientists in India with the core UBC team to further expand the work through an international partnership.

When someone says to me OER reuse I think about this – the formation of distributed social networks of faculty and students collectively working on shared curriculum.

Royal Roads University has a wonderful Open Educational Resources site and Mary Burgess, the lead for this initiative sent me an e-mail in November 2011 saying:

“We’ve had some exciting developments on our little OER project of late that I just had to share with you!

Last week, we found out that a consortium of Chinese institutions is using our Instructional Skills Workshop Online (shared from our OER site) – you can see it here.

And today, we found out that 2 of our Moodle customizations are being made part of Moodle core in version 2.3.

Finally, I had an email from a guy at the University of Madrid yesterday who is using another one of our Moodle patches.

"We are over the moon that our work is of use to others!”

I love that last statement. It is exciting to see the work you openly share be of use to others.

#4. Consortium of BCcampus, WICHE, CCCS, North Island College, College of the Rockies and institutions in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado awarded Gates Foundation funded Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave I $750K grant for the North American Network of Science Labs Online. Especially momentous for me was the workshop we did at North Island College in Courtenay BC where over 50 educators, faculty and edtech specialists participated in a demonstration of the Remote Web-based Science Lab and in discipline panel discussions around the biology, chemistry and physics OER courses and labs this project is creating. This project is exciting and yet another example of an OER project that has been unfolding over several years in BC expanding outward and increasing impact through additional partners.

#5. Moodle Moot Canada 2011 keynote “Talking About All Things Open” with Terry Anderson, Stephen Downes, Gavin Hendrick and myself. Terry Andersons’ description of open scholarship was a key idea for me. I also got a blast out of openly engaging all conference attendees in crowdsourcing the Future of E-Learning.

#6. Open4Learning Educational Technology Users Group Workshop in Nelson BC. An awesome program exploring the diverse aspects of open in education from a BC perspective.

#7. OERu. I’ve described this initiative in some detail earlier in this post. It’s been fascinating to see this initiative evolve over 2011 and to be an active participant and facilitator in helping define what it is.

#8. Interview with Timothy Vollmer at Creative Commons resulting in Open Education and Policy

#9. University of Northern British Columbia Opportunity Side of Open talk, workshop on Finding and Using OER, and ABC Copyright Conference Especially enjoyed the conference Talkshop session exploring issues related to recent Access Copyright efforts to increase tariffs which caused many institutions to withdraw from Access Copyright and giving a keynote, the Opportunity Side of Open Part 2 which includes suggestions for actions faculty, students and institutions could pursue if they embrace and adopt open as a key aspect of their work.

I’ve received some inquiries from people as to whether I’ve evolved the University of Open concept. The answer is yes. Some of what I’ve been working on are these suggestions for actions faculty, students, and institutions could pursue if they embrace and adopt open as a key aspect of their work. I’ve been thinking about what people would do, how they’d behave, if they were committed to the University of Open. Here’s a brief synopsis of possible actions:

Open Faculty:

• Make intellectual projects & processes digitally visible & open to criticism/comment
• Do open research
• Publish in open access journals
• Self archive work for open peer and public review
• Create a new type of education work maximizing social learning, participatory pedagogies, global connections
• Teach open courses
• Develop OER with communities of professional peers & students
• Use open educational resources developed by others
• Assign and author open textbooks

Open Students:

• Use OER to select institutions & courses of study
• Use OER for self-study
• Engage in open study around OER with global peers of students
• Assemble OER and open/free software tools into personal learning environments
• Customize, enhance and develop OER (for credit)
• Actively participate in social learning and form networks and connections
• Track and use open data on learning to plan and manage learning process
• Create open e-portfolios making learning projects, processes, and outcomes digitally visible

Open Institutions:

• Work in consortia to develop and use OER for academic programs
• Use OER to market & promote programs & courses

#10. BCcampus Opening Education event. It’s really great to see in followup to this event that BC’s Electronic Library Network at their December meeting began planning initiatives around OER, open textbooks and a copyright course for faculty and students in 2012. I think librarians can make a huge impact on open and will play a much more central role in the way it plays out in education over the coming years.

photo by Paul Stacey

Going in to 2012 I see big opportunities for open to unfold on a larger scale. Summarizing calls for action from the above I hope:

• Governments, municipalities and institutions adopt open policy and licenses
• Legacy resources held by governments, municipalities and institutions are openly licensed
• New grant funds for development of educational resources use open licenses
• Faculty and students at the individual level automatically license their resources openly
• International consortia form around the development and enhancement of open educational resources

For many “open” is not even on their radar screen. For others open is present but fragile. Still others think ‘Open-ness’ is growing, but in ways that are not quite what was anticipated by the more dedicated proponents of OERs. I agree with this last statement and hope I’ve depicted some of the breadth of ways open is growing in this post. I think open is past the tipping point. This year even institutions who were not early adopters began to find ways to be participants. I think there are even more people and organizations on the sidelines looking for a way to enter the field.

As is apparent from this blog Creative Commons licenses are critical enablers of open. 2012 will be Creative Commons’ tenth anniversary. I’ve been imagining ways I’d improve Creative Commons. Everyone in the Open Educational Resource (OER) space has been wanting some way for tracking reuse. I think this could be enabled through the license although I’d frame it differently. I think we should be tracking attribution which is a condition of all Creative Commons licenses. Ideally creators receive attribution notification when others reuse their work – like pingbacks, or trackback in social media. Its motivating for creators to know that their work is having an impact and valued by others. Tracking attribution will generate a means of showing impact akin to research citations. My colleague Scott Leslie has done some work around tracking OER reuse and I’m also intrigued by the Total Impact work Heather Piwowar is involved with.

I’ve also been thinking of the potential to go “beyond permissions to intentions”. Let me explain. Creative Commons licenses do a great job of complementing copyright by providing a mechanism for creators to express permissions they accord others in terms of use of their work. However, what is missing is any expression of creators intentions. Are they giving permissions and don’t really care how its used? Would the creator like to see derivatives of their work that others create? Is the creator really interested in finding others who want to collaborate with them on the continuous improvement of the work? This latter intention is in my view critical to the long term success of OER. All open initiatives succeed over the long term based on the size and vibrancy of the open community that gets built up around it. I really wish there was some means of expressing creator intentions so that others reusing the work can do so in ways that fulfill creator aspirations.

So in summary I see Creative Commons licenses as having three components:

1. Permission – this component exists already. It’s how creators express the permissions they are according to creators in terms of attribution, creating derivative works/or not, allowing commercial use/or not, and requiring share alike/or not.
2. Attribution – this component would make explicit how users are to provide attribution to the original creator and send the creator a trackback indicating attribution/reuse.
3. Intention – this component would express the creators intention in making the work available through Creative Commons and provide a means for subsequent users to support those intentions.

I’d like to see each of these three functions embedded in the license and available to creators and subsequent users with one click. One of my big interests is in increasing the value proposition for creators.

This blog post provides a body of evidence on the many ways open expanded in 2011. I’d like to close this blog by celebrating one form of open that happens every year at this time – the way Christmas opens the human heart. Merry Christmas all.

We believe that establishing a systemic responses to educational technology challenges and opportunities in the B.C. higher education sector is the key strategy for BCcampus. 

So, we’re happy to announce that the BCcampus Strategic Council has approved our strategic plan for 2012-2015 and has directed us to proceed to drafting a fiscal year service plan for 2012-2013.

A previous post on evergreen strategic planning outlined some of the sources we’ve researched to write a plan that allows us to push into new educational technology focus areas while strengthening and maintaining the systemic infrastructure we’ve built in British Columbia to support the online learning initiatives of our system partners.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions about operational tactics that will allow us to achieve the key directions and goals outlined in our strategic plan.

Reprinted under Creative Commons license from David's blog: conviviality

BCcampus is conducting usability testing of ApplyBC.ca in mid-January, allowing us to make improvements. We are recruiting five "typical" ApplyBC users to observe how they interact with our site.

We are looking for high school students, or recent grads, who:

• are thinking about applying to post secondary schools here in B.C.
• have not used ApplyBC before
• preferably have their own laptop
• are living in the Vancouver area
• are available during the week of January 16-20, 2012, between 10 AM and 3 PM.

Each will receive a $50 Amazon gift certificate for coming to our downtown Vancouver office one day during the week, for approximately one hour, to help us test ApplyBC.ca.

During the session, we will record them as they complete the application form. We'll also ask for their general impressions and ask them to rate the site for its ease of use. This will help us identify any form elements or content that cause difficulties or are counter-intuitive to new applicants.

Please contact Dave Dumaresq to book a testing time: 604-412-7738 or ddumaresq [at] bccampus.ca.

I'm so glad to see more of these open opportunities around the province! I thought I would share the experience and perhaps those institutions that would like to be more open in their professional learning activities will see some elements of what they will or will not do for their own events.

The Selkirk Tech team took care of the live streaming, which I understand was a first for them. They did a great job, and used Ustream which conveniently captures a recording. The number of online participants went up and down but I think the average was around 18. Some high school students were participating, including a debate team. How great is that!

The day before the event I received a couple really fun posters as PDF files via email which I posted on my own blog. In hindsight I should have also uploaded these posters to Slideshare as a way to help spread the word, and also Facebook. Ideally, these posters would have been embedded on the Selkirk website. Information about the event was also sent out via the BCcampus blog, @bccampus, and added to the MicroSCoPE Scoop.it page.

The rest of Sylvia's post can be found on her blog: My Webbed Feat - it's worth the read.

The first set is over 500 resources developed by C2T2 and system partners (referred to in the past as the C2T2 Electronic Curriculum Collection) that are now available under a BC Commons license to any BC educator. These span a host of curriculum areas, and are particularly strong in Adult Basic Education, Health, and Human & Community Services.

The second set of 300+ links was added as part of a new partnership with the BC Academic Health Council. These curated links are freely available and of primary interest to Practical Nursing educators.

Our sources also include local institutions and their planning documents, as well as peer organizations worldwide.

This year we asked one our creative SFU co-op education students, Diana Chan, to put together a meta-view of all the relevant plans within the British Columbia post-secondary sector. Diana came up with a very nice annotated view as a GoogleDoc with links to the specific documents. You can see the meta-view here: Strategic Plan Research Summary.

In addition we have also received strategy documents from Council of Senior Student Affairs Leaders (CSSAL) and from our AskAway colleagues at the BC Electronic Library Network.

Further afield, these are some of the information sources we reviewed in building our draft 2012-2015 plan:

Australia – Open Universities Australia (OUA) like BCcampus, is a relatively new initiative that provides centralized access to online courses with transferable credit in the Australian university context on a national basis.

The Campus Computing Project annually publishes an update on the management of information technology in the higher education sector. This year’s survey is titled The 2011 national survey of information technology in U.S. higher education: big gains in going mobile; slow movement to cloud computing.

Canadian colleagues and organizations with whom we work with closely and share ideas for improvement:

• ContactNorth.ca – We have hosted delegations, board members and staff from Contact North (Ontario) at BCcampus, and are currently working with ContactNorth in a consulting capacity to plan an exciting new initiative in Ontario that will incorporate some BCcampus service models
• eCampus Alberta.ca – BCcampus has contributed OPDF models and collaborated on professional learning initiatives with colleagues at eCampusAlberta

EDUCAUSE – BCcampus is an institutional member of this US-based organization that organizes research and practice knowledge about information and communications technology (ICT) for higher education professionals globally. Adrian Sannier’s article in the most recent edition of the EDUCAUSE Review, If not now, when? provides lots of food for thought about technology-induced disruptive change on the horizon for higher education.

Horizon Report – BCcampus monitors the influential yearly Horizon Report published by the New Media Consortium. BCcampus staff member Scott Leslie has served on the advisory board for the NMC Horizon Report.

JISC United Kingdom - BCcampus has hosted individuals and met with JISC delegations in BC. We follow JISC’s strategic directions. JISC is a national entity in the UK that provides infrastructure and supports ICT research and innovation.

OECD - The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publishes working papers and research documents relevant to higher education in a global context. OECD’s most recent report is Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society - Pointers for Policy Development. The first set of strategic initiatives undertaken by BCcampus in 2003- 2006 were reinforced by recommendations from OECD’s (2005) research publication E-learning in tertiary education: Where do we stand. These initiatives included:

• Encouraging the dissemination of good practices to stimulate innovation, avoid wasteful duplication of efforts, and scale up successful experiments.
• Exploring the issues surrounding intellectual property in e-learning and specifically the exploration of open educational resources (OER).
• Promoting a dialogue between IT providers and institutions, and supporting public-private partnerships, in order to keep costs at a reasonable level.

The Open Education Resource Foundation continues to probe and challenge higher education thinkers and practitioners to consider an alternative future in which open educational resources become the study materials for students who choose to pursue independent study practices towards a credential awarded partially through challenge or prior learning assessment and recognition. Already anchor partners in the Open Education Resource University (OERu) consortium are actively considering how to implement this version of the future.

Sloan Consortium Report 2011 - These annual survey reports from the U.S. are solid indicators of current practices and trending opportunities within the higher duration sector.

SURF Netherlands – BCcampus has hosted delegations from SURF at our Vancouver offices. We follow SURF’s strategic directions closely. SURF has a national responsibility for infrastructure, innovation and ICT research in the Netherland, similar to JISC in the UK.

WCET – BCcampus is an institutional member of the WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies, and co-chairs the WCET eLearning Common Interest Group (CIG) that surveys systemic consortia in the US and Canada on a yearly basis. WCET is the largest and most well-known colleague network for e-learning consortia members worldwide. It is a child organization of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), and is based in Boulder, Colorado.

Compass image used under Creative Commons license, from Wikimedia

During the past summer, a discussion framework for the future of ApplyBC was developed and distributed. See: http://urls.bccampus.ca/ABCframework/

This framework identified the drawbacks to the current multiple application streams as well as providing three options for consideration and further discussion.

This post focuses on a key question raised: are the cost savings of maintaining a single set of forms sufficient for participating institutions?

Institutions that use the complete set of ApplyBC services save money (compared to institutions that develop and maintain their own forms) because ApplyBC provides the following:

• Development and operation of high-availability web forms with secure data exchange
• Data verification e.g. address/postal code
• Helpdesk services for applicants
• Regular updates to all code tables, e.g. high school names/codes
• Real-time reports of application volumes (https://reports.bccampus.ca) and access to a map-based report query tool (http://spatial.bccampus.ca) that provides the ability to view applicant data filtered from continents to postal code, by one/more program codes, etc.
• Consistency of data definitions contributes to more accurate data processing and reporting

Further efficiencies that are underway or in the planning stage should result in additional cost savings at these institutions:

• Automated application fee processing via PCI-compliant credit card processor
• Integration of applicant transcripts
• Provision of application form in multiple languages to better support applications from prospective international students
• Links to federated identity capabilities to support authorized data exchange to related services e.g. StudentAidBC

Institutions have identified other important considerations that need to be met:

• The long-standing online application process employs an outdated multi-part form set that could readily be converted to a single set of screens that would be consistent with each institution’s branding
• Control over institutional form questions and data fields is provided through an administrator panel, and this could be extended to the full form contents

There are certainly other potential cost-savings benefits of a collective effort, including addition of social, recruitment-focused services that some institutions have begun to employ individually.

I think the best of all worlds is possible.

When

November 15, 2011 at 11:30 (Pacific). See your time zone

How

Live Stream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/selkirk-danm

Twitter http://twitter.com/FrankenSmarter  hashtag #frankensmarter

Brought to you by the Selkirk College Teaching and Learning Centre.

During the past summer, a discussion framework for the future of ApplyBC was developed and distributed. See: http://urls.bccampus.ca/ABCframework/

This framework identified the drawbacks to the current multiple application streams as well as providing three options for consideration and further discussion.

The key questions are: Does it still make sense to have a single, consistent, province-wide online process for prospective students to use to apply to B.C. post-secondary institutions? Does having the reporting capability to provide current aggregate information about applicant actions help institutions, applicants and government make quicker decisions that improve effectiveness and efficiency? Are the cost savings of maintaining a single set of forms sufficient for participating institutions?

This post focuses on the second question pertaining to reporting capabilities.

From the outset, a primary purpose for this provincial service has been “To provide system-wide information on applicant behaviours, demand and placement by capturing applicant data”. While historically, the reports generated provided an up-to-date picture of applicant trends, over the past few years, some institutions have made independent decisions to develop and maintain their own online application services without consideration of the loss of reporting function that would impact. This has resulted in the current situation where it is not possible to provide a current set of data about applications to B.C.’s public post-secondary institutions.

When it realized the loss of key data was happening, the service’s Steering Committee struck a Taskforce on Data Reporting, and in February 2009 it issued its last report. This group, which consisted of 9 members from B.C. universities, colleges, secondary schools and BCcampus, proposed a mechanism that each institution could readily implement, which would provide the ability for comprehensive, real-time enrolment data to be realized. The final sentence of their report reads “A mechanism to facilitate this process (PASBC data connector), but buy-in is required from the B.C.’s post-secondary instituitons in order to implement.

A few of the capabilities that such a mechanism could enable include:

• Knowing that demand for certain programs are either high or low across all (or a selected number of) institutions (and then there is the potential to take immediate action).
• Knowing which institutions and programs students from various school districts, provinces or countries are applying to - and comparing that with historical data.
• Knowing how many institutions individuals are applying to on average, and creating the capability to refer students to other institutions with available space if their applications are declined/not accepted.

What other uses of this data can you envisage?

Thought I'd share a brief summary of what took place at WCET's 23rd annual conference in Denver. Given that WCET is primarily made up of US organizations I thought I'd playfully riff on the US State of the Union Address by calling this report a State of Online Address.

The opening keynote was customized based on live audience feedback. The speakers, using Poll Everywhere, presented the audience with multiple topics and invited them to express their choice using mobile phones, twitter, and the web. Responses are displayed in real-time on charts in PowerPoint. The speakers then customized their presentation based on the audience choices. Over the course of their presentation the speakers referenced Headmagnet as a means of maintaining something in short term memory, Historypin, supported by Google, as a means of creating a global history by crowdsourcing photos from everyone around the world, Enterzon a multiplayer online learning environment designed to teach Chinese language and culture through gameplay, and the nursing neighbourhood as a means of learning how to diagnose health issues via virtual patients.

The 2011 Horizon Report lists learning analytics on the four-to-five year adoption horizon but the rapid rise of analytics tools combined with the increasing demand for data-driven decision making is pushing this horizon closer. Learning Analytics was a hot topic throughout the entire event. Learning analytics mines data from Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Student Information Systems (SIS) to support real time data driven decision making. Some learning analytics data analysis is oriented to supporting teaching and learning. The University of Maryland Baltimore County showed an analytics tool they use within their LMS that tells students where they are in course compared to other students. It generates a grade report that shows how students are doing against others in class and shows how activities of those who are doing well are different from those not doing well. LMS activity of students with D and F grades are noticeably lower from those getting higher grades. Students who enrol after a course starts, stop attending for five consecutive days, log-in to the LMS fewer than three times per week or have less than three hours of activity per week are considerably at risk of dropping out. Based on these analytics some institutions are taking actions where college advisors are provided with data on students that shows their last login date, activity in minutes, activity submission counts, course points earned and course average to date as a means of triggering interventions and contact with at risk students. Another learning analytics tool called Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice (SNAPP) does an analysis of discussion forums activity and generates networking maps identifying who is leading discussion, volume of posts, volume of responses, and interconnections between those posting to discussions. This has led to research exploring a whole range of questions such as:

• Do networks between students relate to successful completion?
• How does professor discussion interaction with at risk or low performing students impact student success?
• How important is multi node, multi directional interaction to course success?

While some learning analytics are focused on teaching and learning others are focused on supporting administration and policy makers. Analytics coming out of LMS"s can help administration identify students who are not engaged and at risk of drop out. One of the largest examples of Learning Analytics work in this category is the Predictive Analytics and Recording (PAR) framework being funded by the Gates Foundation. This project is aiming at deeper analytics by analysing 3 million unique records from 6 different institutions across 34 common variables to determine what trends there are for retention and progression. It is well known that retention in campus-based face-to-face courses is higher than online courses so the findings coming out of this analysis are highly anticipated. Factors analysed include things such as completion based on the % of students still enrolled at the end of a course, success based on % of students who haven't withdrawn or received a D or an F, continued semester to semester enrolment and progression to degree completion. However it is interesting to note that definitions for factors like length of a semester, what a course is, course completion and even grades differ across institutions making it challenging to have common measures. Analysis is being done using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and predictive modelling. This project is essentially looking at what factors impact loss, progression, momentum. It's still early days for this project and one thing all the learning analytics projects mentioned is that 90% of the work is getting the data. Extracting data out of the LMS/SIS is challenging. Analysis of the data is 10% of the work. However, early analysis has focused on trying to find what was universally true for those who got a C grade or better in a course vs those who disenroll. Students were categorized as high risk, medium risk or low risk. High risk students have attributes such as being new to online, returning to school after 5 years, having a low high school GPA or failing an online course in the previous two years. Preliminary findings indicate that the biggest factor causing at risk students to disenroll is if they are pushing multiple courses simultaneously. Taking concurrent courses is not a good idea for students who are at risk. However, in many cases receiving student aid is contingent on being enrolled in multiple courses. This is an example of a learning analytics finding that suggests we rethink financial aid policy. This PAR project is large and part of the challenge is simply demonstrating that analytics like this can be done and that the methodology is scaleable. I look forward to hearing more in the coming months after this project has had the time it needs to complete their analysis.

If you are interested in reading more about learning analytics and understanding who is doing what in this field I recommend the Next Generation Learning Challenges paper called Underlying Premises: Learner Analytics.

The majority of WCET members are based in the US. In October 2010 the US Department of Education released a broad package of regulations. These new Program Integrity Rules which became effective July 1, 2011 have a direct impact on all US institutions involved in creation and delivery of online learning. A great deal of attention and effort has been paid to the new rules around the state authorization regulation requiring all institutions teaching students outside of their state to have authorization to do so from the state the student resides in. This has caused online learning providers considerable grief and untold hours and money as colleges and universities scramble to comply. While state authorization has received the greatest attention other regulations have an impact on the way online learning is being provided including provisions dealing with the definition of credit hours, compensation of persons and organizations involved in student recruitment and enrolment, and defining when a student ceases to be considered in attendance. This last one is particularly interesting as last day of attendance for online students used to be based on "last click" within an LMS - last day of attendance for on campus students is based on physical presence in the classroom. However the new regulations for online learning deem last click inadequate and require "evidence of academic engagement". This appears to be a double standard as we all know that physical presence in a bricks and mortar classroom hardly constitutes academic engagement. All these new regulations have had a chilling effect on online learning in the US. Huge effort is being diverted from online learning innovation to red-tape compliance. While some of the regulations are obviously intended to curb the excesses of private education providers in the US many of them seem based on a fundamental distrust of online and distance education. I'm glad we're not embroiled in similar regulations here in Canada.

As mentioned WCET brings together online learning consortia and it was sobering to hear news from US consortia in Texas, Ohio and Arizona about either closures or significant reductions in support. In contrast Canada's consortia including BCcampus, eCampus Alberta and Contact North/e-Learning Network (and soon to include the Ontario Online Institute) are doing well.

While the magnitude of online learning innovation in the US may be diminished it is not extinguished. Each year WCET issues WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) awards (I received one in 2008). This years WOW Award winners are:

1. Century College and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System for GPS LifePlan

2. Kansas State University for University Life Café a site providing counseling on emotional wellness.

3. Regis University for Passport to Course Development a site integrating graphics, audio, multimedia and technology to provide support for faculty new to online environment. (Note if you visit this site use Password: passport11 and Name: passport11 to login)

Another US initiative that received considerable profile (and one that I'm particularly interested in given my involvement with Open Educational Resources) is the US Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program. This initiative is providing $500 million a year for four years to expand and improve the ability of eligible institutions to deliver education and career training programs. These programs are targeted to workers adversely affected by trade agreements.

The Department of Labor is encouraging online/technology-enabled learning and evidence based strategies and grantees are required to make all the resources developed Open Educational Resources by applying a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license to all content developed with grant funds. This program has four priorities: 1. accelerate progress for low-skilled and other workers 2. improve retention and achievement rates to reduce time to completion 3. build programs that meet industry needs including developing career pathways 4. strengthen online and technology enabled learning Thirty two awards were announced 26-Sept-2011 for the first year of this program. Twenty three of the awards involve consortia, 9 are individual efforts. Grantees are being offered a complementary set of support services funded by the Gates Foundation including open licensing support from Creative Commons, accessibility support from CAST, technology assistance from Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative and best practices in using OER from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

The Colorado Online Energy Training Consortium TAACCCT grant was profiled by Rhonda Epper. This project received $17.2 million for a 36 month project. The consortium involves 15 community colleges, 14 energy industry employers, the Colorado Dept of Labor and Employment, 10 regional workforce centres. Together the consortium support Colorado's fast growing energy industry sector by expanding and redesigning for hybrid delivery the following programs: - Clean Energy Technology - Wind Energy Technology - Utility Line Technology - Oil & Gas Technology - Process Technology/Instrumentation - Mining/Extractive Technology - Water Quality Management Many of these will be stackable credentials with options that allow certificates to ladder into associate degrees. More information on the TAACCCT program and the capacity building grant awards is available at http://www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT

I recently got an iPad and while I'm in the early stages of using it have already been impressed with it's unique form factor, rich array of apps, and tactile/gesture modes of interacting with it. Some education institutions are actively piloting iPads on campus and I was particularly taken with how William Hicks at the Community College of Aurora/Colorado Film School incorporated the use of iPads into his film school script writing courses. Traditionally students in his short script analysis course write a script hand it in and think of it as being finished. William wanted to break the notion of scripts being untouchable and devised a unique and powerful workflow supported by iPads linking students across three different courses. Students in his Creative Producing class hire a script writer in his Script Writing course to write short scripts which are reviewed and annotated by students in a third class. iPads loaded with the app iAnnotate are used to support distribution and commenting on scripts. Prior to using the iPad his class had only been able to analyse 15 scripts. With the iPad they analysed 84 scripts, a six fold increase in efficiency. In addition he found that students prefer the iPad over hand written notes and the annotations were seen as more credible, easier to understand, and more thorough. In his view the iPad has revolutionized the outcomes in his courses. He also notes that the form factor of the iPad makes it easy to simply hand it back and forth for viewing and contrasts this with the "huddling around the campfire" way sharing content on a computer has traditionally been done.

I've been thinking and reading a lot about use of mobile devices for online learning lately. The closing session at WCET focused on innovations of which mobile was one. By 2014 mobile internet consumption will overtake desktop consumption. Android phone popularity was used to exemplify this growth. In 2009 Android had 2.8% market share, in July 2011 over 550,000 Android mobile devices were being activated every day with growth of 4.4% every week, by August 2011 Android had 48% of the smart phone market. Of course mobile devices have significant constraints. The screen is small with low device resolution and pixel density. The touch gesture paradigm of interacting with a mobile device is not as precise as a mouse. There are limitations in cpu processing and battery power. Some devices are locked down platforms with real limitations such as the non-support of Flash on an iPhone or iPad. However, there is a great deal of potential in using mobile devices as a supplement to traditional computing and exploring education possibilities for an untethered learning experience not constrained by space or time.

Finally I should note that the NANSLO online science program I'm involved with was both a formal presentation at this event and celebrated as a significant innovation in the closing session. So there you have it. A mini snapshop on the state of online in the US.

Paul

The first is Etherpad. Etherpad is a collaborative document authoring platform. It was purchased a few years back (and subsequently open sourced) by Google, and some of the patterns of use it supports eventually showed up in Google Docs. I believe it is of potential interest as a collaborative platform for student work, and as there continue to be privacy concerns about using US-based apps. A larger install of Etherpad may well prove a reasonable alternative to the difficulties in using Google Docs in our classes. You can try out the sandbox install of etherpad at abbott.bccampus.ca:9001/

The second app we’ve installed in our sandbox due to popular demand is Big Blue Button (a.k.a. BBB). BBB is pretty much an open source “clone” of Elluminate and supports multi-party synchronous discussions, slide sharing, whiteboards, etc. While both Adobe Connect and Elluminate (a.k.a. Blackboard Collaborate) have been successfully supported as BCcampus Shared Services, there have been numerous requests for us to explore this alternative, both as an option to license fees and, in the case of Elluminate, as an option to a non-US-hosted solution. You can try BBB at abbott.bccampus.ca.

These two apps join a growing list of applications available for testing and evaluation on our sandbox server. Note – these applications are installed for evaluation purposes only; they are not supported and should not in ANY circumstance be used in real-life teaching and learning circumstances. If you are interested in seeing one of these applications brought forward as a potential pilot, please join us for our upcoming General Shared Service Meeting November 3, 2011 at the Kwantlen Richmond Campus where the state of existing shared services will be discussed, and you can find out what new teaching and learning applications your sister institutions are interested in too.

Please also feel free to propose new installs for the sandbox service, either on the sandbox site itself or by emailing Scott Leslie, BCcampus Client Service Manager, with your request.

There was a record number of talks and demos at this year's conference, hopefully reflecting that Open Ed is slowly becoming less of an outlier. The full program is here and each session links directly to a video of the talk, or you can browse the entire collection of conference videos directly on Youtube. Some of the highlight sessions for me were:

OERGlue began as a browser-based plugin tool that allowed faculty to remix OERs as they travelled the web into a course that was then directly deliverable via that same plugin. Brilliant idea, but it suffered many of the same issues that my pet topic of browser-based augmentation often does, requiring a client-install that often runs afoul of institutional policies. They have innovated around this with a new proxy-based approach, which means users still get the same augmented, browser-based experience, but now all that is needed to invoke it is a simple bookmarklet. I highly recommend trying it out for yourself. I understand not everyone will be as excited as me by this clever workaround, but I was tickled to see it as not only do I think OERGlue itself is worth a go, this approach has legs in so many other domains. (Actually, a confession, I missed the session but got a private demo later by ones of its creators.)

Jim Groom's #occupyopened keynote.Too often keynotes leave me flat, but anyone who has seen Jim speak knows that would be impossible after hearing him. Love him or hate him, we don't call him "The Reverend" for nothing. His talk highlighted the Open Educational Experience that has been #ds106, a digital storytelling course initially run out of the University of Mary Washington that has taken on a life of its own, including its own community-driven online radio station, as well as a host of new courses started by past participants. For me, at least, this refocusing of open away from licenses and onto the act of teaching and learning using the open internet as ones platform was a really welcome change, one that sparked a lot of discussion throughout the conference, as a good keynote should.

Philipp Schmidt's keynote on the P2PU and badges was both inspiring for what they have managed to achieve, and a wonderful challenge to the OER status quo. There were a ton of great examples and anecdotes of hacking the system that came out of Phillips' talk; here's one small, but to me brilliant, example - when met with the challenge of how to give recognition (e.g. "credit") for a P2P course on web development that was run outside of the bounds of any accrediting institution, the course instructor, John Britton, offered to write a LinkedIn recommendation for any successful student.

There really were too many other good sessions to list in detail here, but luckily they are all already online at Youtube for you to peruse yourself. I only hope we can meet the standards set by David and his team at BYU next year, October 16-18, when we bring the conference back to Vancouver, to the wonderful UBC Robson Square facility we used in 2009. So mark it down in your calendars, and look for a call for papers likely in April-May next year.

Hope to see you then,

Scott Leslie.

UPDATE: (Oct 29, 2011, 2:23 pm): Some BCcampus users continue to experience intermittent login problems on the Online Collaborative Program (ACT, ICT, AECE) websites. We expect this issue to be resolved no later than the end of today for most people. For updates, please go to https://mycusthelp.ca/BCCAMPUS/_cs/FindAnswers.aspx. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued patience.

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(Friday Oct 28, 3 pm) Some BCcampus users may experience intermittent login problems on the Online Collaborative Program (ACT, ICT, AECE) websites today. We expect this issue to be resolved within 24 hours, and for most people, within 8 hours. For updates, please go to https://mycusthelp.ca/BCCAMPUS/_cs/FindAnswers.aspx. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Yesterday, we had a visit at BCcampus from David Scannell, Curriculum Services Manager in the Learning Innovation and Development unit from Holmsglen in Australia. Holmsglen is a TAFE. In Australia, training and further education or TAFE (pronounced /ˈteɪf/) institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational tertiary education courses, mostly qualifying courses under theNational Training System/Australian Qualifications Framework / Australian Quality Training Framework. (Source: Wikipedia)

Lawrence Parisotto (BCcampus) meets with David Scannell (Holmsglen, Australia)

The purpose of David's visit to Canada is to investigate innovative practices in flexible learning for trades training. He visited BCcampus to find out more about our systemic role with educational technology, and specifically about our role in facilitating the E-PPRENTICE initiative that was funded by the Industry Training Authority of B.C. (ITACBC) in 2009-2010. 

Our conversation with David Scannell reminded us that one of the ideas we originally proposed for E-PPRENTICE was a digital library of open resources for flexible trades training. Our thinking originally was that such a library could generate value well beyond the borders of BC by building synergistic relationships with other trades training institutions or providers.

Flexible Learning Revisited

Flexible learning (FL) is a delivery model that responds to the unique learning needs of individual learners. FL combines traditional classroom or lab/shop experience with online or distributed learning, when a learner is primarily at a distance from the instructor and teaching institution. Learners in flexible learning programmes or courses usually have a choice of schedule, as course calendars are not bound by time and space. Recent years have seen an increase in the use of emerging electronic technologies in flexible learning such as simulations and the Internet, offering the possibilities for sophisticated, interactive, and engaging learning opportunities for trades training programs, too.

The strategy for E-PPRENTICE resulted from an extensive planning process commissioned by ITABC for the development of a strategy to develop alternative modes of delivery for trades training. The intent of the initiative was to increase access for trainees and improve their success and completion rates. Read the Report.

Subsequently, the development of a Business Plan to move the project forward was requested. The Business Plan identified a number of specific objectives including a delivery model, an instructional plan, a set of standards, communication plan, along with an action plan and timetable for the strategy. Read the Business Plan. 

The ITA and BCcampus also created a Draft Standards for Flexible Learning for Trades Training in British Columbia document intended to explain fundamental components of flexible learning and serve as a guide for educators and those developing quality resources for the flexible learning environment.

As a result of the innovative initiative, E-PPRENTICE trades programs were developed for automotive programs at Vancouver Community College, professional cook programs at Camosun College and welding programs at the Piping Institute Apprenticeship Board (PIAB), and these programs are currently being offered to apprenticeship students around B.C.

Where to next?

One of ideas from the original E-PPRENTICE plan was to create a library of open digital resources that could be used for both flexible learning and in other delivery formats within vocational programs. 

The E-PPRENTICE program was developed with public funding.  Why not build a digital library to house the products of development, make them open and accessible and invite others to improve them and provide access the improved remixes? Surely that would be a great way to leverage public investment for the greater good while demonstrating a willingness to cooperate and collaborate to develop high quality learning materials for vocational programs.  

One day after our visit with David Scannell, we were contacted by our partner agency ITABC to consider how we might reignite the notion of an open digital library for flexible trades training resources.

Sometimes the stars do align.

Republished from David's blog: conviviality

The Opening Education event on Oct 17, 2011 had some intentional planning around engaging distributed delegates, and for me it felt like a nice balance. I certainly didn't feel completely involved; my attention wandered throughout the day to other projects I'm currently working on. But in many ways, that is the advantage of participating from your office. You participate according to your own time and interest.

Here are some observations from my participation in the event: 

1. A big monitor brought me closer to the activity in the room. I wouldn't have felt as connected using a mobile device.
2. The split screen for viewing presentation slides and presenters simultaneously makes a big difference.
3. Good microphones, and remembering to use them, is a bonus!
4. Quality of the stream does matter. It's fun to watch spontaneous broadcasts from handheld devices, but it's not something you want to do all day. The live streaming done by SFU's Teaching and Learning Centre was exceptional.
5. A pre-determined and simple hashtag #opening11 helped to bring together participants on twitter quickly and efficiently.
6. Having a designated person to monitor the twitter stream (Tori Klassen - multi-tasker extraordinaire!) to respond, prompt, and also bring forward questions and comments to the place-based audience made a huge difference.
7. When participating from a distance it does help to know some of the people in the room.
8. Stating name/affiliation before speaking is a good practice, and especially helpful for those listening in. Sometimes the camera doesn't make it to the individual in time.
9. The sync.in page "OPENING EDUCATION: How do we create educator engagement with open education?" that David Porter fired up for the final session of the day was a great idea. Delegates on location formed small groups, and there were some who contributed to the sync-in page. (Designating scribes might have been better.) Online participants typed away. The real-time-ness of that activity made it especially compelling.
10. Attention to the details, like adding a time zone converter for the live webcast participants counts for a lot.

Siamak, a UVic computer science graduate, has for the last five years worked as a computer science instructor at Heritage College in Québec. 

Siamak’s focus will be to support and help Jam Hamidi in the further development of our Connector system. This will involve both enterprise Java programming and getting to know the various PESC XML standards.

Welcome to BCcampus, Siamak!

As a prelude to Open Access Week, BCcampus and partners invited higher education institutional participants to a special event exploring the ways in which Open Access and Open Educational Resources (OER) are opening up education, and how these ideas might provide an action agenda for B.C. higher education practitioners.

The event included a keynote address and panel presentations in the morning, and interactive sessions in the afternoon that were designed to collect feedback from the face-to-face participants as well as from online participants who followed the day’s events via live web stream and a backchannel Twitter feed. The web stream archive for each section of the Opening Education event can be found here --> open.bccampus.ca

Sir John’s speech on the topic of Publishing with Public Money for Public Benefit set the tone for the day on a high plane, one that validated the interest and commitment of audience members for making educational materials more freely accessible and remixable. Sir John’s speech also challenged us to confidently marshall our arguments in support of open education, open government and open data – in his words, “to provide a common wealth.”

The panelists, Venkataraman Balaji (COL), Wayne Mackintosh (OER Foundation), Rory McGreal (AthabascaU) and Joy Kirchner (UBC Library), each took a turn highlighting opportunities in the OER space for higher education institutions to engage students and instructors about the principles of open thinking, and in each case demonstrated examples of practice from their areas of interest to show what is possible and where the future could take us. Their panel segments were web streamed.

• Balaji's segment showed how COL has instituted open policies for its collection of highly valuable educational resources. He also complimented Canada's expertise in agricultural sciences and how open knowledge in this domain could be used globally in support of food security initiatives
• Wayne provided a passionate overview of his work with world-class open projects WikiEducator and the newly minted concept of the Open Education Resource University (OERu).
• Rory spoke with his customary vigour about copyright and educational rights, highlighting Athabasca University's approach to open access journals and other resources that it believes should be freely accessible under the mantra of open scholarship.
• Joy presented a recent case-study of action on the scholarly communications front at the University of British Columbia, illustrating the actions that a large university must undertake in an effort to support its employees, instructors and students to operationalize a balanced approach to copyright management and open access.

In the afternoon, Paul Stacey led an interactive session using wireless clickers that probed and collected audience opinion on several central issues associated with open thinking that might help us to build a systemic action agenda, at least within the B.C. higher education sector.

I followed Paul with an Etherpad session with the face-to-face participants and the online audience to collect action items and ideas on three themes that might helps us move forward on the open front.

1. How do we help educators learn more about open?
2. How can we best promote open teaching and learning practices in our institutions?
3. What can we do to influence policy in institutions?

For me it was a refreshing and re-energizing day, one that reinforced the spiral approach that needs to occur with innovative ideas as they move from the periphery to the centre of our thinking. Open content and open access in higher education are barely a 10-year old concepts in a digital age, but ones that I truly believe are beginning to show signs of becoming a larger part of the consciousness of students, instructors and institutions.

Re-published from David's blog: conviviality

During the past summer, a discussion framework for the future of ApplyBC was developed, distributed, and posted on our corporate wiki.

This framework identified the drawbacks to the current multiple application streams as well as providing three options for consideration and further discussion.

The key questions are: Does it still make sense to have a single, consistent, province-wide online process for prospective students to use to apply to BC post-secondary institutions? Does having the reporting capability to provide current aggregate information about applicant actions help institutions, applicants and government make quicker decisions that improve effectiveness and efficiency? Are the cost savings of maintaining a single set of forms sufficient for participating institutions?

This post focuses on the first question.

For prospective students, it’s pretty common to apply to more than one BC post-secondary institution. Historically, our usage reports indicate that nearly 30% of applicants used the PASBC system to apply to multiple institutions. Today, because a number of large institutions also utilize their own application forms, no-one knows how many people apply to multiple institutions overall. For last year, just under 20% of those applying used ApplyBC for multiple applications.

In 2006, when nearly all institutions referred applicants through the PASBC system, there were more than 340,000 applications processed, and we can extrapolate from more current data that this volume represents approximately 240,000 individuals - and if 30% applied to multiple institutions, that would mean that at least 70,000 people are applying to multiple institutions per year. Isn’t that a sufficient number to support a focus on simplicity and uniformity for users?

Another challenge users applying to some institutions through ApplyBC face is a result of the 2-stage process that these institutions employ: first, basic personal and academic information is entered through ApplyBC, and then users are sent to institutional websites and forms to complete their application process by selecting programs, timeframes, etc. It’s hard to make this a really smooth user experience in the current system, as is noted in this short video.

We can do a better job for our prospective students. See the options described in the framework - and please provide your feedback and your ideas for improvements.

Here were his answers:

1. Encourage opening data as a standard practice, including asking registrars and senior administrative staff to work with BCcampus to make systemic data more accessible for mashups by students, institutions and systemic service providers. This would include asking government and AVED to move more quickly to a real open data warehouse, congruent with the open government strategy that is currently in play provincially.
2. Think "shared services" for educational delivery systems before installing standalone systems on your campuses. Cloud computing is here now. Big cost savings, and the opportunity to deploy educational technology staff more directly in support of faculty are the upsides. There are also easier migration paths when new systems emerge, and community of practice benefits that can be immediately realized.
3. Think "open content" as a viable alternative to proprietary content, especially in light of the proposed Access Copyright tariff hikes. Look for the presentations and streaming media from this recent forum, http://open.bccampus.ca and take a look at Creative Commons as a future-oriented model that BCcampus is promoting in British Columbia.

Next Tuesday (Oct 25, 2011) he’ll be giving a keynote address for UBC's Open Access week. Then it’s on to Denver where Paul will co-present on the North American Network of Science Labs Online program at the WCET conference.

On Monday October 31 Paul will be visiting the Colorado Community College System to see the remote web-based science lab they are installing, which replicates the one we have in B.C. at North Island College in Courtenay.

While there, he’ll also be doing a SoftChalk webinar on Funding OER. If you’d like to join, reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962111696

Here are the details of the webinar:

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director, Curriculum Development; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Title: OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability

Date: Monday, October 31, 2011

Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements:

• PC-based attendees | Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
• Macintosh®-based attendees | Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer