Session Title: Publicly Funded OER - a Local OER Model
Presenter: Paul Stacey, Director Communications, System Relations and Academic Services, BCcampus
Time & Date: 2:30 P.M. - 3:15 P.M., Thursday, August 13, 2009
Location: Rm. C100
Session Description: Grants from funding agencies like the Hewlett Foundation have sparked the development of a wide range of OER initiatives including OpenCourseware, Connexions, and Hippocampus. However, these grants do not provide OER with a sustainable funding model for ongoing development and operation. In addition the focus and mandate of many of these grant funded OER initiatives is on meeting needs associated with the global shortage of education.
Starting in 2003, concurrent with the emergence of these global OER programs, a local, publicly funded OER initiative has been unfolding here in British Columbia, Canada. The focus of the BCcampus OER program has been on supporting development of OER with public funds provided through the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development. $7.25 million dollars has been invested so far. As a BC publicly funded higher education initiative, the mandate for the program has been to ensure all resources are open and shared locally among the 25 colleges and universities in BC’s public post secondary sector. Licensing the resources via Creative Commons to be accessible and part of the global OER movement has been encouraged but is optional. Development efforts have focused on producing digital online learning resources deployable through Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn and Moodle.
What happens when OER are publicly funded? How does the OER model change when public funds are used? What happens when resources are made open and shareable at the local level? Do others reuse them? When given the choice of participating in the OER movement locally and/or globally what do faculty choose? What opportunities and challenges emerge when resources are developed for use in Learning Management Systems rather than as print based materials for use in face-to-face classrooms? How can you build support for “open” education more widely including use of Open Source Software and Open Textbooks?
This session will present a publicly funded local OER model as a point of contrast with more foundation grant and globally oriented OER initiatives. Lessons learned and answers to the questions posed above will be provided. Future directions, including the recent BC adoption of this model for development of flexible learning OER for the trades, will be put forward for discussion.
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Rather than focusing on just the BCcampus OER initiative this session will be presented as “OER Jeopardy” comparing and contrasting BCcampus’ OER initiative with MIT’s OpenCourseware and Connexions.
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