Running head: OpenCourseWare
and the Self-Learner
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OpenCourseWare and the Self-Learner |
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Amy Lowman |
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LIBR 287 |
Abstract OpenCourseWare is identified as a learning tool for
self-learners around the world. Although thousands of courses are freely
available, only a small percentage (by world population standards) is
aware of these banks of knowledge. As Librarians strive to disseminate
knowledge to their community, to be aware and knowledgeable of this
division of the Open Educational Movement is beneficial to the movement's
sustainability.
Introduction
How many people are
aware they can have the same educational advantages as a student from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for free? This option is available
to the public through open source networks referred to as Open Educational
Resources (OERs). An important aspect of open education is the awareness of the
resources available. Would the awareness of open
education inspire more people to expand their knowledge and take advantage of
the educational resources? How can we as information professionals and
distributors of knowledge create consciousness of these resources? What methods
can be used to reach self-learners? How will self-learners benefit from OER? One
division of OER is OpenCourseWare, most readily affiliated with the creators at
MIT; this will be the primary open educational tool upon which I will focus.
Defining OER and the Self-Learner
Open Educational Resources are teaching,
learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been
released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or
re-purposing by others (Atkins, 2007, p. 4). Open Educational Resources shape
the self-learner through a portal of knowledge infusion. These portals,
repositories and initiatives include OER Commons (www.oercommons.org), Multimedia
Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT, www.merlot.org), and MITs
OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu). Self-learning, also called self-directed
learning (SDL), has been explained by Abdullah (2001, p. 2),
[it]
views learners as responsible owners and managers of their own learning
process. SDL integrates self-management (management of the context, including
the social setting, resources, and actions) with self-monitoring (the process
whereby the learners monitor, evaluate and regulate their cognitive learning strategies).
(Bolhuis, 1996; Garrison, 1997)
What makes a
self-learner different from a student? One basic consideration is the
involvement of a guide or professor. Overall, this is someone with authority
who guides a student through information, initiates discussion and provides
feedback. A number of member institutions in the OpenCourseWare (OCW) project
allow self-learners to email professors to ask questions. Response time for
feedback can range anywhere from twenty-four hours to months to never. The
quick responses on average come from schools with a smaller number of OCW
courses, whereas, the larger universities such as MIT, with thousands of OCW
selections, have been known to be on the less timely spectrum. Students
generally have a designated classroom, unless he/she is enrolled as a distance
learner, in which additional students and course professor meet to discuss a
specific subject of topics. Self-learners take on their education alone or in small,
personally formed groups in the quest for knowledge. They are not affiliated as
a learner or enrolled with an institution, concerned with grades or the
obtainment of a degree.
The OpenCourseWare Movement
OpenCourseWare
is supplied by highly sought educational institutions allowing the learner to
use the same materials available to the universitys students in a structured
process without the demands of professors, institutions or financial
obligations. Open Educational Resources include full courses, course material,
modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools,
materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge (Atkins, 2007, p.
4). Institutions from around the world are contributing their OCW in this
relatively new and growing movement. In figure 1.1, a graph from an
OpenCourseWare Consortium presentation (van Valkenburg, 2009) shows
the growth of courses from October 2003 to October 2008. These staggering
numbers provide a true grasp on the force of the OCW and OER movement.
Figure
1.1
Howard Feintuch (2009) interviewed Steve
Carson, MITs external relations director for their OCW program, in relation to
OERs and the prospect of an educational movement. "OpenCourseWare is one
type of open educational material," says Carson, "but there have also
been other types of open educational efforts that have been growing as well,
such as open textbooks, open journal publications and open educational
software. They all have been feeding off one another. To me, this constitutes a
movement, a really vibrant movement, within vibrant educational communities"
(p. 16).
This revolutionary
movement began with MIT, whos mine of educational resources has in five years
put 1,800 courses - virtually the entire MIT curriculum - onto the Internet
(Boroughs, 2009, p. 30). This process began in 2003 and has all but grown in
the years following. This online curriculum has over 650 courses translated
into ten different languages with many institutions providing RSS feeds for
users. MIT started a movement so profound that more than a hundred
universities around the world put course content online for free public use,
many of them through the MIT-inspired OpenCourseWare Consortium (Boroughs,
2009, p. 30). The quality of MIT as an educational guru is a weighty rationale
as to why many universities around the world have caught the OCW bug. Would OCW
have taken off if a smaller, less well known, institution tried to play out this
initiative; would it have faltered in the minds of many and have the hundreds
of contributing universities still vying for a way to profit from placing their
content on the Web? How long would the OCW movement have lasted if it had been
any other institution? Of course there are many other well known educational
institutions that may have been able to pull it off and create this anomaly but
MIT has reinforced the backbone of an open tool to sustain the integrity of
OCW. Many believe the consistent addition of new courses and the level of
traffic makes open education sustainable. The website, ocw.mit.edu, draws 15
million visits per year and has earned public praise from Bill Gates and from
Margaret Spellings, the outgoing Bush administration Secretary of Education (Boroughs,
2009, p. 30). Even with millions of visitors per year, open education is not
just a matter of whipping content up onto a site. According to Boroughs (p. 30)
MIT spent approximately 29 million dollars creating their OpenCourseWare and it
costs approximately $25,000 (Atkins, 2007, p. 24) for each new course to go
through the rigorous process of OCW implementation. Money
well spent and struggles over copyright issues led other universities to follow
trend. It also paved the way for
institutions that would not have had the means or the understanding to clear
these issues themselves.
Each university must
adhere to copyright, in opening up course material to the world, institutions
must invest the time and expense to scrub the material to be sure that
materials licensed for use in their formal community are not available to
world (Atkins, 2007, p. 27). This can lead to portions of textbooks, graphs,
pictures and other material to be cited but not viewable. The MIT OCW has
adopted the Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike (By-NC-SA)
license. All of this is fundamental infrastructure for the OER movement and
thus Hewlett has quite wisely lent sustaining financial support to Creative
Commons (Atkins, 2009, p. 14). Creative Commons, like GNU Copyleft, is the
option to provide a digital copy of work to be licensed to allow access,
distribution and other properties (depending on the license chosen). A division of OCW, which expands on the
issues of copyright, is the knowledge behind the purpose of open content. The
education of open content and the usefulness of disseminating knowledge for
free into the public domain can inspire further creators to pursue open
licenses, such as Creative Commons or GNU Copyleft, in order to continue the
open educational movement and permit open licensing to become commonplace. MIT
has illustrated how the need for free knowledge and the ability to touch more
learners through open resources can be accepted and used by many. Rather than
segregating learners by putting a price on knowledge and thoughts, an educator
now has the ability to focus on the distribution to all to who are interested.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Centre
for Educational Research and Information, 2007, p. 58) explain that
a number of possible positive effects from
open sharing are put forward, such as: free sharing means broader and faster
dissemination, with the result that more people are involved in problem
solving, which in turn means rapid quality improvement and faster technical and
scientific development; decentralised development increases quality, stability
and security; and free sharing of software, scientific results and educational
resources reinforces societal development and diminishes social inequality.
From a more individual standpoint, open sharing is claimed to increase
publicity, reputation and the pleasure of sharing with peers.
Dissemination of OCW Awareness
There
is proof that the open educational movement continues to grow. So how do we
bring awareness and potential users to this wealth of knowledge? Some
will argue the requirement of only using other open approaches to advertise
OERs; that it would be a clich to use for-profit tools to spread the word. The
use of open source tools shows the reverence for the overall movement but at
this time would be doing more of a disservice to the product and potential
users. It is typical of self-learners to use resources such as the library in
their informational quest for knowledge. Therefore, Librarians have an
opportunity to facilitate in this movement, creating one way around the use of
for profit applications for advertising/marketing. Marketing tools such as
write-ups in the library newsletter, links from the library website, guides at
the reference desk and subject specific programs can initiate interest in courses
and bring awareness to these educational resources. Librarians have the opening
to engage patrons about their interests and endow with resources that would
otherwise cost thousands of dollars.
One
way to expedite the process of searching through multiple OERs is to roll all
of the resources up into one search engine. These personalized vertical search
engines can be created using sites such as rollyo.com. Taking a personalized search
engine one step further by integrating it into the library website would be a
tremendous service to the self-learner. It would give patrons the option of
searching all of the trusted sites at once or browsing through courseware to
see the range and availability of subjects offered.
Another way to create awareness is
to form groups of people who are interested in learning about the same subject.
Reference librarians can create a program that meets weekly and provide open
information for members to study. Providing an area for people to learn and
using social stimuli may meet the needs of certain populations who learn better
in a group environment.
Youth Services Librarians
can use repositories such as Curriki, found at www.curriki.org, to bridge the
gap for students curricula during summer vacation, or for homeschooling or
extra help in a particular subject. Many teachers use and adapt shared items on
Curriki to help better engage and teach their students. Just as these
educators used to pull relevant books onto a cart, they can now create a set of
vetted online curricular resources that directly aligns to a classs particular
area of study (Levy, 2009, p. 10). Another excellent runoff of MITs OCW is
Highlights for High School http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/home/home/index.htm. Hosting material available for the
K-12 audience shows the concern for education not only for adults but for this
age group as well. Highlights for High School focus on the sciences and
mathematics studies but also has links to knowledge in action such as: build
stuff, save the world, write better. In addition,
The
site includes more than 2,600 video and audio clips from faculty lectures, as
well assignments and lecture notes. Some of that material is assembled on the
site for specific high school classes, such as Advanced Placement biology,
calculus, and physics, which are college-preparatory courses.
But the
online portal also allows high school teachers to search by topic for faculty
lectures and assignments and use them as they see fit. (Cavanagh, 2008, Introductory
section, para. 7)
These materials are
sought not only by educators close to home but throughout the world. If they
are able to provide an Internet connection (preferably high-speed), the use of
audio visual clips, lectures and the other material would help less educated
populations to offer a better education for their children. Too often, there is
a lack of funding throughout the world for schooling. MITs
Highlights for High School and Curriki can help supplement some of the material
in the form of worksheets and lectures. Librarians are often looked to for
guidance from a number of parents homeschooling their children for ideas on
curriculum; many parents want their kids to continue their studies through
summer vacation. These open educational resources are authoritative and conducive
to students online environment.
Is it plausible or idealistic to
believe more people would make use of OpenCourseWare when they become aware of
the resources? Is it possible that one would find an influx of traffic with
increased awareness? It is reasonable that with increased
awareness you would also see an increase in traffic to OCW; but not all people
will specifically go through an entire course. A dedicated and stimulated
self-learner will work through the material provided and continue with
additional courses. However, a number of people will find open education
attention-grabbing, and look through courses or search syllabi, lectures or
worksheets for answers. To give the world the knowledge that such resources
exist and are accessible is all one can truly ask for when dealing with the
public.
Incorporating OCW Into Life
There
is also a niche for employers to use OpenCourseWare to expand learning not only
for themselves but for employees and job improvement. Smaller businesses may
not have the funds available to pay for employees to take classes or to pay for
schooling. If the goal is to help employees improve business, management or similar skills,
and the employee is not focused on obtaining a degree, employers can suggest
courses that they have authorized as beneficial to their position. Therefore,
the business is taking the initiative and providing employees with ways to
better themselves in their position.
It
is essential for many people to become (if they are not already) self-learners
due to the career path they have chosen. This can be seen in the health
industry, tourism, academia, and business. Although a number of professional
positions must continue their education with accredited classes, show proof of
completion and seek higher education such as a Masters or Doctorate degree,
this is not the case with all professions. A stockbroker can improve their
knowledge and marketability by taking courses in economics or finance, just
expanding on their day to day tasks, in addition to stockbroker licenses. Open
courses have no time limit, so if the learner takes a whole year to finish a
course they are not penalized.
OCW is not all frills
and Christmas lights; it does have its downfalls here and there.
Barriers
for using or producing OER can also be characterised as technical, economic,
social, policy-oriented and legal. A technical barrier would be the lack of
broadband availability. The lack of resources to invest in the hardware and
software needed to develop and share OER would be an economic barrier. (Centre for Educational Research and
Information,
2007, p.59)
Social barriers can be classified and
expanded on the users lack of understanding and skills. Copyright laws are a
major issue and are placed under the policy-oriented and legal barrier. Without
open textbooks or material with copyleft or creative commons licenses,
universities are unable to show this content online. This means that some
readings and figures that may be extremely valuable in the learning process are
unavailable. Users must then purchase the text if they choose or continue on
and skip those sections. Another interesting downfall to OCW is the lack of
information in the available course. At times, a course is added and it is
incomplete; this can be very frustrating to users. In this case, another
resource or course can be searched in order to supplement the lack of
information. Although there are conflicts and barriers, it also shows a bit of a utopian society: the ability
of major universities willing to apply their material and upset the traditional
workings to contribute to the open movement.
Conclusion
OCW is important in
the open education environment and a bridge for self-learners to seek higher
education without the constrictions placed by the attendance at a university. The
benefits are extensive, even with the lack of information in some courses, and
the power to use the material is only restricted by the creativity of the potential
self-learner. Just because one will not earn college credits, degrees or any certifications,
does not mean that adherence to the work of the course is not beneficial. The
self-learner is still profiting from the knowledge and information they have
obtained. The challenge is to create awareness to the population around the
world and give them the opportunity to make a decision about partaking in OCW.
Public librarians can
connect patrons to OCW through the reference interview and the execution of OCW
related programs. Working with children, teachers and parents, whether the
librarian is in a public or school library, can provide this specific
population with teacher repositories, such as Curriki. These repositories may
help to initiate the implementation of different teaching methods and
curriculum and provide extra help to the children in their primary educational
years. Special libraries can also supply their users with subject specific
courses; this would be useful for expanding on an already present college
degree. There are many graduates who did not stay after graduation to take
classes that were still of interest because they could not be fitted into their schedule
or graduation requirements. Whatever may be the motivation, it will only thrive
if given the proper tools to succeed. MIT has created a wonderful tool and
network which has been expanded upon by other universities. The willingness and
eagerness to learn and expand ones knowledge must be attended to by librarians and others
who are in the field of information dissemination.
References
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(OER) Movement: achievements, challenges, and new opportunities (pp. 4-27).
Retrieved October 19, 2009, from http://www.oerderves.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/a-review-of-the-open-educational-resources-oer-movement_final.pdf
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