Open Education 2017

In an attempt to align instructional resources with new state standards, and to increase teacher awareness of these standards, one large suburban public school district piloted the development and adoption of open secondary science textbooks. Open textbooks created by teachers in grades six through nine replaced conventional science textbooks provided by mainstream publishing companies. The school district provided students in grades six through eight online access and a print copy of the open textbook. At the end of the first quarter, middle school students (grades six through eight) who used the open textbooks were surveyed. Survey responses required respondents to consider their learning before and during the use of the open textbook. The survey included quality and presentation of content questions, as well as an opportunity for students to explain their responses. There were qualitative and quantitative indications that students' perceptions of an open textbook in place of a standard textbook are improving students' attitudes and behaviors toward learning.

For many student leaders, finding ways to make a post-secondary degree more affordable is a top priority. While student leaders may have heard about the benefits of OER, many may not be aware of the tactics needed to actually transition their efforts into increased awareness and adoption. Further many librarians, teaching and learning support staff and faculty members working to advance OER on campus have not yet collaborated with students. In recognition of this, this workshop will provide attendees with an overview of grassroots tactics, highlighting the benefits of involving students in OER advocacy. Through highlighting successful collaborative OER campaigns, this session will provide attendees with the opportunity to connect, learn from one another and commit to further action that can be taken on their campuses through grassroots organizing.

Open Up Resources has partnered with Illustrative Mathematics to develop an open middle school math curriculum and are working with school districts in the US with the goal of widespread adoption.

This session will focus on how each organization has developed a business model that features materials licensed using CC BY. We'll discuss the issues and opportunities inherent in selling related products, like print editions and materials kits, and services, like teacher professional development.

The Open Textbook Network (OTN) is an alliance of more than 380 colleges and universities committed to improving education through the use of open textbooks. The OTN was built on some basic faculty education and engagement strategies that were found to be effective in convincing faculty to adopt open textbooks. While the successful growth of the OTN has been primarily based on this effective faculty development, these tactics are grounded in a larger vision for open education in higher education.

Central to this model is the belief that open education is critical to the mission of colleges and universities - so critical that it merits the ongoing investment of institutional resources in the effort. These resources are used to embed the necessary work required for a sustainable open education ecosystem (e.g., adoption, editing, creation, pedagogy) within and across higher education institutions. The OTN's efforts are focused on motivating faculty, staff, and institutional leaders to enact this permanent change.

Many in the field of open education are only looking to for-profit ventures in their quest for the "business model" for open education (presumably because for-profit companies are primary players in course content today). In contrast, the OTN is working toward a vision where colleges and universities are primarily and collectively responsible for course content. As open education leader Hal Plotkin once said, "We have a business model for open education. It's called 'schools.'"

The presentation will describe this vision, the strategies that the OTN is using to move toward that vision, and measures of progress to date.

In recent student focus groups, Ohio State's Affordable Learning Exchange team discovered that required textbooks were assigned not because the texts were referenced heavily in class, but primarily for access to test banks used to deliver quizzes throughout the semester. These test banks are a significant barrier to open textbook adoption in large enrollment courses at our institution, and the questions included are often of low quality. To address this barrier, we're piloting a process to bring faculty from across several institutions to collaboratively author and review large test banks in three disciplines: Macroeconomics, Biology and Sociology. In this pilot, we are examining the time, tools and resources required to create not only a test bank useful in one course with a specific textbook, but one that can be used and customized by many instructors in an iterative, sustainable process in many courses across institutions. The project began in March 17 and will produce test banks ready for use beginning in fall 17. Questions we will attempt to answer in this session include: How do authors approach development of learning objectives that can be applied across many courses, using differing course materials? How do we integrate a robust peer review process into this process, to create a higher-quality finished product? What process and support framework should be in place for each content area? How many contributors are needed to create a robust test bank, and how do needs change based on discipline? Which part of the workflow can be managed within an authoring tool? What is the best way to deliver question/answer sets for easy remix and reuse? We will share Content Camp project and process documentation and resources and report on our lessons learned and future plans. The audience will be actively engaged in the conversation, with plenty of time for questions and feedback that we'll take back home and incorporate as our Content Camp model grows beyond the pilot.

UnCommon Women sits at the intersection of Open, Social Change and Tech. To celebrate the work and opportunities for women and to push for equal representation. To support the women in the field of open, we need clear paths to advancement, mentorship opportunities and ensure individuals identifying as female have a visible presence in leadership. We will announce survey results of women in the movement on the panel. Pulling together women across levels of experience working OpenEd, this panel is convened to discuss experiences, challenges and successes, and to show the strength of women working in the open.

OERs represent examples of a global phenomenon in an innovative approach that promote unrestricted access as a possible solution for bridging the knowledge divide in education. A large number of OERs initiatives are currently distributed globally and are seen as a way to meet educational needs. Given the purported importance of OERs in the international arena, it is critical to examine the global understanding of OERs.

Although OERs have successfully captured researchers and practitioner's attention in promoting the knowledge as a public good, expanding understanding, awareness, utilization, and adoption from individual and institutions to publish is another challenge. It is our argument that addressing these challenge must involve examining the global understanding of OERs.

This study is driven by the following three questions:

1. What are global understandings of OERs?

2. What are the awareness, perceived benefits and challenges of OER and how do they differ cross-culturally?

3. What are the current utilization and adoption of OERs in participating countries?

This study employs in-depth survey research and interviews to investigate the understanding of OER at universities in Botswana, China, Namibia, Taiwan, and Thailand. Using a survey approach and interview, the authors developed a set of questionnaires and interview questions, with the intention of understanding the global perspective of open educational resources from participant countries.



Data collection for the present study is on going and will be completed in July 2017. Completed data from Taiwan and Thailand indicate that there is a varied understating of what OERs and MOOCs are. Although the acronyms have become the terms dujor in academic discourses and international education it appear that there are varied definitions of the concepts which educators and researchers alike would be well served to be aware of and consider.

Arizona State University has a number of global education initiatives that deliver educational content to developing areas: the SolarSPELL project, a portable, solar-powered digital library designed to provide educational resources to people without reliable internet or electricity; and the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Community platform, creating a social learning network connecting scholars with tools and resources that can be used to contribute to their local communities. Additionally, the Center for Education through eXploration, focused on science learning through explorative digital experiences, is interested in partnering to develop OERs. The ASU Library supports these initiatives, assisting them with finding OERs, content curation, and consulting about licensing and intellectual property rights.

Using open content is critical to the success of these initiative. These programs require content that is freely available for people everywhere to view, and local teachers and learners need to be able to reuse and repurpose resources for their own needs. Trying to teach about copyright, intellectual property, and licensing on a global scale would make these projects impossible.

Our panelists will discuss their hopes for contributing to a healthier and more informed global society, and share ideas about how to overcome the challenges they face, such as:

How to partner with local educators and curate content for communities with different cultures and contexts? Can we augment their curricula and optimize materials, tools, and interfaces to reflect life in those locations?

How to build capacity in underdeveloped areas to sustain digital educational programs, including: teaching with technology, leveraging content for the curricula, developing information literacy skills, and developing local content?

How to create platforms that are easy to use for a wide variety of teachers and learners that incorporate many ways of understanding, knowing and navigating?

Nearly 5 billion people around the world lack basic internet access, putting them at a severe disadvantage in terms of economic, educational, health, and social opportunity. While a number of providers are attempting to address this global digital divide, our panel will explore a collaborative effort to bridge this divide using several low-cost technological solutions, offering enormous potential for reaching the developing world. We will discuss our experiences using Outernet, Keepod, and RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education & Learning). These technologies allow our team to distribute open content to information-poor communities in a cost-effective and efficient way.



In partnership with Outernet, a global broadcast data startup, an IT nonprofit in Malawi called ShiftIT, Salesforce/Heroku, and World Possible, University of Massachusetts Amherst librarians, students, and faculty are transmitting sought-after, openly licensed information to libraries and schools that have no, or very limited, internet access. Under the leadership of the UMass Amherst Libraries a student World Librarians group is providing residents of the developing nation of Malawi with access to information that would otherwise be out of reach. Sites in Malawi request information they want via Twitter and tag the UMass Amherst account. The advantage of Twitter being the reduced cost to cellular data plans. Tweets are then organized and managed within the Salesforce & Heroku Apps, allowing searchers to easily fulfill requests. The preliminary success of this pilot suggests that there is potential for it to be replicated on a much larger scale as well as expanded into other fields such as public health.

Stemming from the ongoing Power in Numbers project from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), subject matter experts and program staff will come together to discuss the state of OER in adult education, and what OER creators need to know to serve the needs of this underserved market segment. With a focus on the unique needs and learning styles of adult learners - a massive and underserved market segment, the panel will communicate lessons learned from the project's research activities and teacher user groups. Panelists will include OER experts, adult learning experts, and representatives from federal work on OER in adult ed. Discussion topics will include the importance of resource contextualization, andragogy and adult learning style, and how materials can be adapted for the adult audience. Aimed at an educator and OER creator audience, this panel will give listeners actionable advice on bridging this crucial and underserved segment, as well as insight and wisdom gained from the panelists' collective years of passionate service to the adult learner community.

It should come as no surprise that textbook affordability is a major gripe for students pursuing higher education. In recognition of this, there is growing interest in adopting programs that ensure students have immediate access to discounted, publisher produced course materials. While the names of all inclusive courseware models vary across higher education institutions, (eTexts, Include-Ed, U-Read, etc.) the general framework behind each remains the same.

This panel will explore the structure of the inclusive access model and its implications to the stakeholder groups they represent. With Pearson having announced that over 1,200 campus bookstores were piloting these models in fall 2016 alone, this timely discussion will leave attendees more aware of the implications of adopting these models. Attendees will also have a greater understanding of how this model compares to alternatives in the textbook market.

Commercial publishers, many re-focused under new missions as "learning science companies," have been rightly criticized for strolling unannounced into the Open Education space with products and services that belie the mission and value of open content. These early attempts should not be reason to dismiss a future in which a shared vision to support teaching and learning features complementary work from commercial education companies and the Open Education community. This presentation will discuss ways in which learning tools, both commercial and free, protected and open, are complementing one another in many classrooms; a look into ways in which that relationship can grow (and the risks of how it can go awry); and will explore how data analytics and learner insights provide a prime opportunity for commercial education companies to become good citizens of the Open community. The talk will be constructed to provide time for Q&A.

Digital Sanctuary, modeled on the sanctuary city and campus movement, asks universities and colleges to seriously question their student data practices, policies, and systems. Rather than assuming that our closed student data systems are safest for our students, Digital Sanctuary demands a more nuanced look at the dangers. Sharing that critical process in the open is an educational exercise in student empowerment.

In this session, four colleagues from diverse institutions will discuss how their domains projects are encouraging conversations about student risk and agency, and how both closed and open environments at our institutions impact our understanding of that risk and agency. What might we learn about protecting our students through our domains projects, and how can we work together across institutions to advocate for more principled data practices, policies, systems, and curricula?

During the past 15 years, the open education movement has built and contributed to dozens of open textbook repositories and referatories. Today the challenge is to sustain, improve, and build upon these resources.

According to Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education 2015-2016 released by the Babson Survey Research Group, almost half of American faculty surveyed cited lack of resources for their subject area as a barrier to adopting open educational resources for the classroom. Canadian instructors expressed similar concerns in the 2016 Exploring Faculty Use of Open Educational Resources at British Columbia Post-Secondary Institutions with 58% stating relevant OER materials were difficult to find as well as those of high quality (49%).

Join us in this guided workshop as we explore the challenges of sustaining and growing an open textbook collection. Issues include discoverability, peer review, adoption data, user experience, as well as how to define the book of record, especially when there are derivatives in addition to new editions.

Open Embedded Assessments (OEA) has come a long way from their humble beginnings as a seed of an idea from the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. From the proof of concept produced in 2013 and presented at OpenEd in 2014 to today, we've built robust, open source software in use by Lumen Learning in the United States and by MIT and partners in India. Thousands of learners have taken hundreds of thousands if not millions of assessments to help understand their learning in English and STEM topics.



This presentation will showcase the authoring and player environments developed by MIT and Atomic Jolt and used in the Connected Learning Initiative in India. These CLIx assessments are used by learners in Grade IX in about 400 government schools across four states in India. Learners engage with English, Math and Science learning modules in which OEA formative assessments are provided as activities embedded in the content modules. Learners interact with these assessments either on stand-alone computers or ones served by a local server in their computer labs. Authoring is accomplished by curriculum teams in India on cloud-based servers. Currently OEA supports a number of common item types (multiple choice, short answer, numerical answer with a tolerance, etc.) and a number of customized user interfaces on other common types (drag and drop, fill in the blank, audio response / file upload, etc.).