EDUCamp 2010: Open Learning and Open Educational Resources

In the final instalment of our series of EDUCamp 2010 articles, we look at open learning and open educational resources.

Thinking Session III: Open Platforms for Open Learning

Brian Lamb, the Emerging Technologies and Digital Content Manager at CTLT, opened the morning EDUCamp session by providing an unconventional view of social media platforms. One thing that became quite clear at the start of the session was that social media does not necessarily mean using social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter; instead, as attendees found out, it also means using online technologies as educational learning tools.

MIT Open Courseware is an excellent example of a university embracing open education. MIT Open Courseware is a repository of course materials that have been released by the school, and are free of charge for anyone to see. Started in 2002, the repository has over 1900 courses. Within each course, there might be lecture notes, video and audio lectures, exams, and assignments – some instructors share more content than others. MIT Open Courseware is currently the largest openly licensed courseware site developed by any post-secondary institution, but this is due in part to the fact that MIT had the size and budget to invest in such a major endeavour. On that note, Brian asked whether or not this kind of system “needs a big institution and money?” The example of MIT led into the introduction of the Open Learning Initiative, a Carnegie Mellon project, which allows institutions with less capital for development to promote open learning.

Jeff Miller, Senior Manager of Distance Education at CTLT, led the second part of the discussion, focusing on current and emerging platform technologies. Jeff teaches ETEC 522, a course in the Masters of Educational Technology (MET) program, where students create their own content on a public WordPress blog. Similarly, ETEC 510 uses a wiki as its content management system, something that is also public but privately edited (meaning that only students in ETEC 510 can edit content, but that the content can be viewed publicly by anyone). Although some students were initially resistant to using new technology, Jeff insists that the benefits of using blogs and wikis far outweighs the challenges students face in learning to use these tools. The main benefit is having practical exposure to the tools, given that the course is designed to help students grasp and understand the different learning tools available.

The final speaker was Wyeth Wasserman, an instructor in the Medical Genetics 421 course. Wyeth talked about how the introduction of wikis into his course has been a benefit to his students, as it has allowed them to quickly and effectively collaborate on projects. Medical Genetics 421 is an honours level course that encompasses the use of wiki-based gene reports. Since Medical Genetics 421 follows a fast paced curriculum, Wyeth teaches his students the basic functions of a wiki at the outset of the course. Unlike the courses in the MET program, Wyeth uses a public wiki that is refreshed each year to ensure students maximize their learning. Wyeth conceded that it is challenging to grade students when they collaborate on gene reports: he must dig through the wiki revision history in order to identify the work of individual students. Since it takes quite a bit of time to mark group assignments on a wiki, Wyeth noted that the course can only handle a maximum of 30 students.

Jeff concluded the presentation by highlighting some of the major successes in the use of social media at UBC. First, the UBC Blogs system has received a lot of support from professors and students who benefit from having their work viewed by many people around the world. One of the most popular blogs is UBC Insiders, where a team of students cover issues of campus politics at UBC. A recent new feature on the UBC Wiki is Wiki Books, which allows users to create a PDF document on any wiki page or section. UBC is also working on implementing a social network based on WordPress called BuddyPress, which has a tentative release in the summer of 2010. UBC’s CWL Login provides a unified system of access to UBC Blogs, UBC Wiki and other cross platform tools.

Doing Session III: Free Stuff! What Open Education Can Do For You

Brian Lamb concluded the afternoon session at EDUCamp with an attention-grabbing “Free Stuff!” banner, leading many people in the audience to think they were going to receive free gifts. Instead, Brian delivered non-tangible “free stuff” as-in Creative Commons licensed digital content. He noted that many people, including those involved in education, have “little awareness of [the] free content which is available to reuse or republish”. Brian has created a wiki page that outlines some of the most popular free resources for open education, and contains his speaking points from his presentation.

For educators, a very useful free course material website is the OER Commons. Brian noted that in the past, “every piece of content [had] a copyright automatically applied to it”, so this created a “barrier to reuse”. Today, it is much easier for a content creator to determine how his/her work is distributed. His or her work can now be marked digitally as having “all rights reserved” (whereby users are unable to repurpose the work) to “some rights reserved” (where there are some guidelines that need to be followed, such as proper attribution). Using a Creative Commons license is one way in which users can mark their work digitally. Creators who are releasing their content free of charge, are not giving it away, but rather sharing it, so the best way to reuse the content is by always giving credit to the creator by attributing them. OERs and other search tools like Google, offer the ability to search for free content. Brian points out that in Google’s “advanced search” option, one can opt to search for non-copyright material.

Another online resource that Brian feels is noteworthy is the Khan Academy. Although the Khan Academy is not an open education website, he noted that it is a surprisingly good resource for information on virtually any academic topic. The website’s main feature is its concise overview of each topic, providing a great start to any research topic.

A member of the audience asked if there is a comprehensive search engine for non-copyrighted music. Brian suggested the Free Music Archive. This website is one of his favourites, as it offers an “intuitive [music] genre search” experience. He reminded everyone to ensure that proper credit is given when using downloaded music.

Brian ended the session with a tip for content creators, introducing attendees to the Vancouver-based, Artist Legal Outreach. The Alliance is an organization that focuses on protecting and educating content creators. In Brian’s experience, it is an excellent resource for anyone who feels that their content is improperly used. Brian’s lecture was a perfect finish to the session by emphasizing the need to respect copyright permission, and to find out what type of material is free to use. Educators need to be careful about choosing their resources, and need to find avenues where they can obtain content with the creator’s permission. By using some of the open educational resources and searches, which Brian shared, educators might be able to do this for free – as long as they properly attribute and give credit where credit is due.