Open Models and Open Teaching in the Bricks and Mortar Institution

Session Title: Open Models and Open Teaching in the Bricks and Mortar Institution

Presenters: Tannis Morgan, Instructional Developer/Project Manager, BCIT
Stephen Carey, Professor, University of British Columbia

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Time & Date: 1:30 P.M. - 2:15 P.M., Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Location: Rm. C100

Session Description: The Open Education Resource (OER) movement has to date largely focused on promoting and enabling the creation and distribution of educational resources and OpenCourseWare (OCW) to a global audience. While there is much to be gained through the open sharing of content being created and duplicated across global education systems, in particular where access to education presents a challenge, we propose that it is important to begin looking at how adopting open course models in traditional universities can offer benefits to both the institutions and the open education movement itself.

There has been considerable effort on the part of international organizations such as UNESCO, Open Universities (eg. http://openlearn.open.ac.uk), and public and private institutions to make educational content and courses freely available through the internet. In addition, the open teaching efforts of David Wiley (http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i06/06a01301.htm), Alec Couros (http://eci831.wikispaces.com), and George Siemens and Stephen Downes (http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/), have stimulated thinking about how students globally can participate in higher education without the usual barriers to access.

Clearly, OERs and OCWs have great potential for providing access to knowledge for the global public, in particular for those who are excluded from higher educational opportunities due to a variety of circumstances.  However, these OCWs and OERs must be supplemented with an academic structure that allows students to receive instruction and credit for these courses if they wish to pursue an academic qualification or degree. In this regard, we echo Lane’s (2008) concern that “people may be able to access OERs on their own, outside of the constraints of a university, but what recognition and benefits do they gain from doing so if universities still require prior achievement for entry, and employers recognized only those achievements made at universities?” (p. 155).  Since the financial means to commute to, as well as pay tuition and live at internationally renowned foreign institutions of higher learning remains more problematic, new models for global access are needed.  To more fully address the issue of global access inter-institutional cooperation at diverse levels of university governance is needed.

Concurrently, there is an increased emphasis on an internationalisation agenda at Canadian higher education institutions (AUCC, 2008) resulting in the development of jointly offered programs, partnerships, and study abroad exchanges. However, current models have not addressed how international participation can occur in these institutions and programs without barriers of entrance requirements, academic English requirements, tuition fees, and the financial ability to travel and stay at the host institution, while being sensitive to issues of local/global knowledge, social and cultural capital, language, and academic literacies.

In our view, the open access movement and internationalisation agendas of Canadian institutions share some challenges while competing on different moral platforms.   We propose that both an international and open access agenda can be facilitated through the adoption of open course models to reduce some of the barriers of participation in academic contexts. We describe a model, its implementation in one course with undergraduate students located in universities in Canada, Mexico, and Russia, and outline its benefits and challenges.