2,288 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2018
    1. “The fear of sharing has been drilled early on in our careers, and faculty members are so cognizant of being rated and ranked and looked over that it’s affecting our ability to share what we know [to the public].”

      tradition/culture of fear

    1. Lansing Community College had hoped for 70 of its 700 faculty members to have fully converted to OER by now. According to Regina Gong, OER resource manager at Lansing, the current number is 75, in 26 courses representing 154 sections.

      Woot, Regina!

    1. Absent from this "tragedy of the commons" argument—and related concerns about free riders—is an acknowledgment that trust, reciprocity, a history of shared commitment, and a robust community can overcome many of the alleged failures of the commons—and sometimes they do

      open-access vs. the commons

  2. Apr 2018
    1. In sum, what I hope to have demonstrated here is that the time has come for us to rethink most of the pedagogical and curricular practices associated with our discipline.

      re-think teaching and learning, roles, resources, etc.

    1. The following is a suggested list of points to share with students regarding the potential impact/consequences of opting out of using an eText:

      This list so negatively impacts the student's learning opportunities that opting out really isn't an option. Instead of "inclusive access" this looks more like "required access" or "required purchase" or "coerced purchase."

    1. In its latest incarnation, digital delivery has been cleverly branded as “inclusive access,” a model wherein every student pays a mandatory course materials fee that represents an arbitrary discount off the (arbitrary) price of a new hardcover textbook (often more than the average student currently spends).
    1. Some in the village even recognized that the feats that had been accomplished in the path around the craggy peak were more like the everyday challenges that they faced in the village, and they begin to value to quest badges even more than the traditional badge of the Castle, which, everyone agreed, wasn’t all that it used to be.

      CBE/credentialing (hard skills) vs. Liberal Arts/Humanities (soft skills)...

    1. In three key measures of student success—course completion, final grade of C- or higher, course grade– students whose faculty chose OER generally performed as well or better than students whose faculty assigned commercial textbooks.

      Well, there you go...

    1. The problem is that, increasingly, the tools we use in our daily lives are moving online, sometimes exclusively so. Students are assigned internet-based homework. Tax filings and applications for government programs or student loans are more commonly done online—and are processed more quickly than via snail mail.
    1. Despite its high price, it has glaring flaws. It doesn’t seem to communicate with other software, like Moodle, the open-source learning platform that provides students with resources for their modules. There are disparities between the number of students registered on each module and the number this system says attend classes. This disempowers lecturers from properly monitoring attendance – especially that of the more elusive students.

      More privatization of HE..

    1. “the opportunity for us to be able to allow them to supplement the OER with premium content and help them improve their in-class experience.”Students will still be charged for the company’s premium products, which includes Test, which costs $10 per four-month term to build tests and quizzes, and Classroom, a platform where teachers can check attendance and engage with students in various lessons, assignments and activities. (Pricing for Classroom varies, with students paying either $26, $38 or $75 depending on the duration.)
    1. adaptive courseware approach involves using software to guide students along their own particular learning pathways, with assis-tance often provided by intelligent tutoring software, which uses artificial intelligence to deliver customized responses
    1. Psychology in Modules (Myers & Dewall, 2015). This textbook was at the campus bookstore in print, loose-leaf format, but could be ordered in electronic or bound formats. In the preface of the Worth Publishers’ textbook, 77 reviewers and consultants from a variety of institutions were listed. The open-source textbook was the 1st edition of OpenStax College’s Psychology (OpenStax College, 2014)
    1. Teachers I’ve spoken with have said that online courses can “run themselves,” and that students get higher grades in online courses because it’s easier to game the system when no one’s watching.

      20 years is a long time to generalize about the nature of online courses. I've been in the business just as long and worked with hundreds of teachers. In the last 5 years, I haven't met one that said teaching online was easier, took less time, or that they "run themselves."

  3. Mar 2018
    1. The new Wisconsin plan is stratification and inequality within the system. This will intensify growing income inequality outside, and inject lower qualifications into a rural economy that needs exactly the opposite.

    1. they will willingly work harder and harder to buy more “labor-saving devices,” instead of using their potential liberation from labor to embrace (non-productive) political action and freedom.  The moderns have lost their taste for, even any understanding of, “freedom,” and are addicted to “necessities”—ever more elaborate meals, houses, clothes etc.
    1. "The challenge with leaving Facebook is that it's a collective-action problem," Green said. "Lots of people may want to leave, but since there is not a clear alternative platform that everyone can move to at once, it's hard to give up those connections." In short, there just aren't any usable alternatives for the masses at this time.
    1. A few hundred thousand Americans delete their profiles, doesn't matter because, you know, a few hundred thousand people in India just signed up for Facebook.

      This is akin to saying your vote in a U.S. presidential election doesn't matter. And yes, the irony is disheartening.

    1. The genuine alternative: We can declare it’s time for communication platforms to be recognized as essential utilities for modern society; and like other such utilities, they should be regulated, subject to robust public scrutiny and accountability.

      Newspapers too? Radio programs?

    2. how important Facebook and other social media were in organizing the West Virginia teachers’ strike, or the wave of student mobilization after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, right up through this coming weekend’s march on Washington.

      And you think FB isn't influencing the messaging? For better or worse?

    1. quality of the educational experience at a university: (1) the expertise and dedication of the faculty, (2) the engagement and effort of its students, and (3) the institutional support received for carrying out this educational experience.
    1. Changing accessibility needs in the age of digital learning: In the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiatives’ Survey, The 2018 Key Issues in Teaching and Learning, accessibility and universal design for learning ranked as the second most pressing concern.
    1. A $3,000 award is available to faculty who adopt open access course materials by incorporating previously published open access materials into their classes, thereby eliminating the need for students to purchase textbooks or other course materials. A new, $4,500 award is now available to faculty who adapt open access course materials by choosing existing Open Educational Resources and significantly altering them to update the material or to fit the needs of the course. A $7,500 award is available to faculty who create open access course materials. At least 75 percent of the course content must be original, with the remaining 25 percent or less being adopted open access materials.

      OER Stipends

    1. Can you imagine a day when many of the most important contributions to many of the most important OER and open textbook projects are made by people who work for for-profit publishers and other companies, and who contribute to OER as part of their formal job responsibilities? Can you imagine a day when many of the world’s most-used OER were originally published by companies, who continue to invest in their ongoing updates and maintenance? Can you imagine a day when companies are releasing millions of new words, images, videos, and interactives under open licenses each year?

      Sounds a lot like the move of corps to contribute to open source code community.

    1. The books produced and hosted on OpenStax are now used in 47 percent of all degree-granting institutions across the United States. Despite this, overall awareness and adoption of OER remains low, according to a late 2017 report.
    1. It is linked to the exclusion of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans from the high-paying jobs in technology sectors. It is a result of digital redlining and the resegregation of the housing and educational markets, fueled by seemingly innocuous big-data applications that allow the public to set tight parameters on their searches for housing and schools.
    1. By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
    1. To be told that bacon had given millions of people cancer was a bit like finding out your granny had been secretly sprinkling arsenic on your morning toast.

      Noooooo....

  4. Feb 2018
    1. The goal of these changes, according to Rakestraw, was to centralize the institution’s commitment to helping faculty improve pedagogy and acknowledge that technology is but one piece of that puzzle.

      downplay technology

    1. Some benefits of inclusive teaching are:You can connect with and engage with a variety of students.You are prepared for “spark moments” or issues that arise when controversial material is discussed.Students connect with course materials that are relevant to them. Students feel comfortable in the classroom environment to voice their ideas/thoughts/questions. Students are more likely to experience success in your course through activities that support their learning styles, abilities, and backgrounds.How can you teach inclusively?Be reflective by asking yourself the following:How might your own cultural-bound assumptions influence your interactions with students? How might the backgrounds and experiences of your students influence their motivation, engagement, and learning in your classroom?How can you modify course materials, activities, assignments, and/or exams to be more accessible to all students in your class?
    1. The purpose of these four summits is to create a community of practice focused on developing a culture of shared norms and values that establish an inclusive learning environment, one that prohibits anyone from being disadvantaged or unjustly treated because of social identity or status. The Student Success Summits will offer information, strategies, and guidance to support the identification, integration and implementation of inclusive pedagogical methods that promote discipline-specific learning objectives.
    1. The Hawaii bill, introduced Jan. 19, would have required all faculty members in the university system to teach with OER beginning in the 2020-21 school year. The use of any instructional materials, including textbooks and online tools, that cost students money would be prohibited. Where there were no suitable OER materials existing, the bill said that instructors would have to create their own and offer them to students free.

      a good case of too much "top down"

    1. The results of data analysis in this study showthat there isthedifferencein the gain score of knowledge on normal distribution application between students wholearn online tutorial content in non-linear learning model and thosewho learn online tutorial content in conventional learning model.
    1. Second, helping people understand that courseware is a combination of content and platform – each of which is licensed separately – may reduce the confusion expressed in the question “why are people charging for OER?”

      Openwrapping might be helpful way to explain the relationship between content and platform and reduce some confusion