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Open Courseware Consortium – 6th Annual International Conference – Summary of Day 2/3
Open Courseware Consortium – 6th Annual International Conference – Summary of Day 2/3
Day 2 of the conference began with panel presentation. I was honored to present with the CCCOER (Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources) panel in a session titled, “Discover How OER Adoption Fosters Policy and Practice Changes at Community Colleges”. Kicking off the panel was the Una Daly from CCCOER. Other faculty members presenting included Barbara Illkowsky from De Anza College and James Glapa-Glossklag from College of the Canyons.
We each shared some background on the OER projects at our institutions then talked about changes in policy that came about as a result of OER efforts in each location.
Following our panel presentation, I attended sessions on technology and OER then later in the afternoon, the entire group headed to the king’s palace for tour and dinner. This activity took up most of the afternoon and evening and allowed us to see some local culture and interact with local leaders.
After a keynote session on the state of OER in Southeast Asia by Emeritus Prof. Gajaraj Dhanarajan, I attended a group of sessions related to student involvement in creating OER. I found especially interesting a talk by Jonan Donalson titled, “Learners as Producers: Structuring Courses around OER Production by Students”. Jonan teaches educational technology courses at Oregon State University. He discussed a project in which students wrote the first ever published book about MOOC’s (Massively Open Online Courses) as part of their course requirements. While I find the idea of student OER creation very interesting, I have not yet determined how best to incorporate it at the developmental mathematics level.
Afternoon sessions included those on licensing issues related to OER. Presentations included those by Cable Green related to Creative Commons licensing 4.0 and “Legal and Quality Guidelines for Open Coursewares Sites” by Ignasi Labastida from the University of Barcelona.
Closing ceremonies followed these sessions and our Indonesian hosts gathered on the stage en mass to thank us for coming.
Our CCCOER group took a photo opportunity after the closing ceremonies. Left to right, Una Daly, Donna Gaudet, Barbara Illowsky, James Glappa-Glossklag.
Thanks to everyone for a great conference. I learned a tremendous amount about OER on an international level and made lots of new friends.
Open Courseware Consortium – 6th Annual International Conference – Summary of Day 1 – Part 2
The afternoon of Day 1 was jam packed with good sessions to choose from. The conference sessions were 90 minutes long with 2 – 4 speakers in each session. For my first afternoon session, I selected a segment titled, “Consider MOOC’S”. MOOCS are a hot topic of the conference and the session I attended was packed to the rafters.
Presenters included individuals from MIT, Kansas, Taiwan, and Australia. I took lots of notes and will be using the information to inform some reading and research I am doing on MOOC’s this summer. The jury is still out here, as it is everywhere, per the effectiveness of MOOC’s. However, I can say that the open resource community is very interested in re-establishing the true idea of open (as in open, free materials) in the context of MOOC’s. Often the word MOOC and the idea of OER are confused in the minds of students and faculty. Many MOOC’s do not have free materials. The foundational philosophy of the OER movement and the OCWC organization is “access to education for all” and the means to that access should be free (or at very low cost) in all aspects including enrollment AND materials.
The second afternoon session was on the topic of OER and Access to education. I was pleased to be one of the presenters in this session and to provide information on the wonderful things going on at Scottsdale Community College per our OER efforts in the math department.
Dr. John Hilton, from BYU, also presented and discussed research he has been working on around three key ideas related to OER:
⁃ Do students save money
⁃ Are the success rates for OER courses as good or better than those of traditional texts
⁃ What are the student and faculty perceptions of OER
John presented research from studies with 8 schools that are part of the Kaleidoscope project. He also presented as part of my session on work that we have been doing to research the effectiveness of OER at Scottsdale CC.
The takeaway from his studies with project Kaleidoscope community colleges, as well as with Scottsdale community college, are that:
⁃ Students are saving a tremendous amount of money through the use of OER
⁃ Student success rates with OER are not significantly better or worse than the rates with traditional textbooks
⁃ Students and faculty are both overwhelmingly positive and supportive of OER efforts and materials and feel that OER materials support the learning that is part of their courses
Open Courseware Consortium – 6th Annual International Conference – Summary of Day 1 – Part 1
The conference began with some wonderful Balinesian dancing followed by a welcome from Dr. Richardus Eko Indrajit from Indonesia. I did not know much about Indonesia before arriving so welcomed his review of some statistics related to his country. Other speakers this morning also provided additional information about Indonesia and its place in the world including:
⁃ Indonesia has 243 million people scattered among 187,000 islands
⁃ Denpasar (close to where we are) is the capital of the island of Bali
⁃ Indonesia is the 3rd largest democratic country in the world with the 16th largest economy
⁃ 55 million skilled workers are in the Indonesian economy
⁃ Indonesia is the #4 adapter of mobile learning technology, the #3 country currently in the use of textbooks and the #5 country in the use of Twitter
⁃ 95% of Indonesia has telecommunications coverage
Anka Mulder, the president of the board of OCWC, gave a short reminder at the start of the conference of the main points of OCWC which are the 1) Access to education for all, 2) an unbiased view to open and online education and 3) the inclusion of innovation. She also mentioned that by 2025, 80 million more students worldwide will be in higher education and that to meet this need we would have to build 3 universities a week that would hold 40,000 students each. Open resources and open courseware delivered via distance and online learning are an international imperative to meet the educational needs of a growing population of learners.
Tian Belawati, president of the Open University of Indonesia, gave an overview of Open Educational Resources (OER) and their place and importance in the educational system of Indonesia.
Young Monitor Lizard
A wonderful lunch (where we were joined by a young monitor lizard pictured above) with spirited conversation and dialogue was followed by the ACE awards reception. Awards for Open Courseware Excellence (ACE) are international awards selected by the OCWC board and/or an appointed committee. These awards have traditionally gone to individuals and efforts at university member institutions. However, this year, community colleges were well represented. Barbara Illowsky, from De Anza College in California, was presented with the ACE Educator Award. Barbara is an early adopter and support of OER and is best known for her work on a open statistics textbook used by more than 20 colleges in the U.S., Canada, and beyond. Congratulations, Barbara!
Barbara Illowsky receiving ACE Educator Award
I was also very pleased to see that my Basic Arithmetic online course received one of 5 Multimedia Course awards. These awards are given for exemplary courses that contain a high level of multimedia and interaction.
I also want to mention that James Glapa-Glossklag from College of the Canyons was recently elected as a member of the OCWC Board of Directors. Community colleges are beginning to find their place in the international world of OER.
Don’t know Mooch about MOOCS?
Presentation given at Scottsdale Community College Tech Talks, February 1, 2013.
Basic Arithmetic – MOOC
Basic Arithmetic
Course Information
Basic Arithmetic is a MOOC (massively open online course) delivered in conjunction with Scottsdale Community College. While an instructor is present in the course, they will act as more of a course coordinator than a direct instructor.
Details about the course are as follows:
ENROLLMENT:
- Open, free enrollment, no tuition
MAX ENROLLMENT:
- First offering (500 via the Canvas Network Feb 3, 2013 – May 3, 2013)
- Future offerings will increase the maximum enrollments
- Map of enrollments in first offering of the course:
COURSE GUIDE:
COURSE MATERIALS:
- Basic Arithmetic Student Workbook, Second edition 2013, published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license
- Free digital download through Lulu.com or
- Print and shipping costs only hard copy purchase through Lulu.com
- Over 150 videos created by the course instructor and aligned directly with lesson examples.
- For a complete list of videos and lessons that are free and open to the public, visit the SCC Mathematics Blog Page for Basic Arithmetic – Fall 2013 version
COURSE DESIGNER/INSTRUCTOR:
- Dr. Donna Gaudet, Ed.D
- Scottsdale Community College
- Professor of Mathematics
- donna.gaudet@scottsdalecc.edu
Donna Gaudet is an instructor in and chairman of mathematics at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. She received her Ed.D in Instructional Technology and Distance Education from Nova Southeastern University in 2006. She also earned an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (1991) and a B.A. in Mathematics from the same school (1989). Donna has used technology actively in her courses since the mid-1990s and her current interest is in the design and delivery of hybrid and online learning experiences and courses.
COURSE STRUCTURE:
- 12 Lessons covering the topics of Whole Numbers, Fractions, Decimals, Percents, Ratios, Rates, Proportions, Statistics, Units & Conversions, Geometry, & Signed Numbers.
- Lessons are delivered via print materials (Student Workbook) and over 150 videos that are aligned directly with the examples in each lesson.
- Students work through an initial MiniLesson by completing a few videos, then a You Try problem on their own (answers are provided), more videos, more You Try problems, etc… until the MiniLesson is complete. MiniLessons are designed to be completed in 2 – 3 hours or less depending upon the current knowledge of the student.
- After MiniLesson completion, students move to online practice via an open source tool for online homework and testing called iMathAS.
- They may engage in additional written practice via a set of Practice Problems in the Student Workbook. Complete solutions are provided.
- In MathAS, students complete online HW, an online Quiz, and finally an online test. They must earn at least 80% on the lesson test to complete the lesson. All of these items are graded automatically and students receive feedback about their results.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is a review of Basic Arithmetic skills that serve as a prerequisite for placement into and success in pre-college and college-level algebra courses. In this course, primary emphasis will be placed on fundamental operations with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and integers. Other topics covered include proportions, percentages, representations of data, geometric figures, and measurement.
Students who should take this course include: those that have an interest in brushing up on arithmetic skills prior to taking an upcoming placement test or those that have not had math in many years and want to review foundational skills and concepts.
