Collaborative Development of Open Educational Resources for Open and Distance Learning

Open and distance learning (ODL) is mostly characterised by the up front development of self study educational resources that have to be paid for over time through use with larger student cohorts (typically in the hundreds per annum) than for conventional face to face classes. This different level of up front investment in educational resources, and increasing pressures to utilise more expensive formats such as rich media, means that collaborative development is necessary to firstly make use of diverse professional skills and secondly to defray these costs across institutions. The Open University (OU) has over 40 years of experience of using multi professional course teams to develop courses; of working with a wide range of other institutions to develop educational resources; and of licensing use of its educational resources to other HEIs. Many of these arrangements require formal contracts to work properly and clearly identify IPR and partner responsibilities. With the emergence of open educational resources (OER) through the use of open licences, the OU and other institutions has now been able to experiment with new ways of collaborating on the development of educational resources that are not so dependent on tight legal contracts because each partner is effectively granting rights to the others to use the educational resources they supply through the open licensing (Lane, 2011; Van Dorp and Lane, 2011). This set of case studies examines the many different collaborative models used for developing and using educational resources and explain how open licensing is making it easier to share the effort involved in developing educational resources between institutions as well as how it may enable new institutions to be able to start up open and distance learning programmes more easily and at less initial cost. Thus it looks at three initiatives involving people from the OU (namely TESSA, LECH-e, openED2.0) and contrasts these with the Peer-2-Peer University and the OER University as exemplars of how OER may change some of the fundamental features of open and distance learning in a Web 2.0 world. It concludes that while there may be multiple reasons and models for collaborating on the development of educational resources the very openness provided by the open licensing aligns both with general academic values and practice but also with well established principles of open innovation in businesses

Higher Education: Obligation or Opportunity?

From the beginning of my experience at Marquette, I continually observed students that appeared to demonstrate no enthusiasm for getting an education, reflected in a noticeable lack of participation in class discussions. I felt my expectations of academia being crushed as students boasted about skipping lectures and passively sat in class, seemingly disinterested in the professor and the material. If college was truly regarded as an opportunity for intellectual growth, why did students treat education as nothing more than an obligation? Through mixed-method, qualitative research, combining observation, interviews, and review of scholarly literature, this project examines what factors influence student engagement in the learning environment.https://epublications.marquette.edu/english_3210ur/1021/thumbnail.jp

Who is missing from higher education?

This paper discusses the difficulties of establishing a clear count of UK higher education students in terms of the categories used for widening participation, such as occupational background or ethnicity. Using some of best and most complete data available, such as the annual figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the paper then establishes that there is little evidence of a simple consistent pattern of under-representation within these categories, except perhaps for men, and students of white ethnicity. However, once prior qualifications are taken into account, there is no evidence that potential students are unfairly and disproportionately denied access to HE in terms of occupation, ethnicity, sex or disability. This has important implications for what we mean by widening participation in HE, and how we might achieve it

Open educational resources and widening participation in higher education: innovations and lessons from open universities

This paper, which references a European Lifelong Learning project under the Erasmus Virtual Campus programme, briefly reviews the role of open educational resources, open and distance learning and widening participation within European higher education. It also examines and analyses policies and practices from various European open universities, practices undertaken to widen the audience for higher education knowledge, increase engagement with higher education materials and improve participation in formal access higher education courses and programmes. It presents a framework for understanding the role of open educational resources and open and distance learning in widening participation based on their availability, accessibility, and acceptability. The paper concludes that open educational resources are beginning to influence educational opportunities in Europe, but that new policies and practices are required at all levels in the higher education system to address issues of openness and open educational resources in higher education study and the role that they can play in increasing and widening engagement and participation. There needs to be better collaboration between the various stakeholders if OER are not to be seen as a way of simply widening the audience for higher education knowledge rather than widening participation in formal studies

Federal Policy and Latinos in Higher Education

Describes federal legislation and programs that support higher education and assesses Latino participation in these programs. Provides a statistical review of Latino achievement in higher education, including college enrollment and completion rates

TANF and Higher Education

Welfare reforms in 1996 created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant program (TANF). Under the assumption that a job will provide recipients with a path to self-sufficiency, this program focuses primarily on putting them to work. Unfortunately, this work-first focus has not resulted in a path out of poverty for the majority of recipients. New York State must reform its TANF program to provide relevant education and training for its recipients, equipping them with the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty and maintain a self-sufficient life