Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention

Privatisation in education is a contentious issue, inseparable from the shift in focus from community-based education initiatives to individualistic and economically driven ones (Ball and Youdell, 2007). This raises ethical issues with initiatives like the Western Cape Government's Game Changer initiatives, given the range of access issues that learners experience in the pervasive social inequity of South Africa. There is a lack of existing research on privatisation practices in public education in the Western Cape, specifically what linguistic strategies are utilized in the official texts promoting it. The Game Changer initiatives and their associated ‘Roadmaps' promote non-state collaboration in extra- curricular eLearning classes and broader technology rollout in under resourced public schools. Analysis of the Roadmap policy reveals discourses of fast capitalism, skills talk, datafication and digital nativism. These discourses were mirrored in the practices, text and talk generated in an after-school mathematics intervention run by an EdTech company, which I have called ZipEd, in a Cape Flats school between 2017-2018. The company prioritized their funder's mandate and to prove their software's efficacy, spun data to reflect largely positive results. In the rush to provide this data, ZipEd entered several schools without fulfilling ethical clearance requirements. Obtaining access to Game Changer pilot sites ensured ZipEd's product rollout, continued growth, and financial success, revealing the neoliberal approaches which dominate ZipEd's practices. The Game Changer policy texts and the intervention observed, treated languages as silo-ed entities, ignoring family or community approaches to literacy initiatives, curricular reform, trans-languaging strategies and inclusive language learning. While EdTech is a useful teaching tool, this promotion of “exogenous” (Ball and Youdell, 2007) privatisation in the Western Cape, blurs the lines between state and non-state involvement, ultimately resulting in the commodification of public schooling

Conference Proceedings SINO/NZ TVET Educational Research Forum - Tianjin, P.R. China

The New Zealand and Chinese Ministries of Education have signed a strategic educational partnership to strengthen the links between the two countries. They have agreed to host an annual symposium, showcasing best practice in the delivery of vocational teaching. This publication provides the papers presented by New Zealand authors to the second Sino / NZ TVET Educational Forum held in Tianjin, P.R. China in November 2014

Exploring Classroom Practices in Collectivist Cultures Through the Lens of Hofstede’s Model

This study explores beliefs and classroom practices of teachers from collectivist nations through the lens of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. In this grounded theory study, an in-depth investigation of the ways in which six teachers from five different collectivist countries described their beliefs and classroom practices was carried out. Through the constant comparative method, the two authors grouped the findings into categories of beliefs and practices which were then examined through the lens of the six dimensions of Hofstede’s model of cultural difference. Six categories of classroom practices, Pedagogy, Interaction, Student Role, Teacher Support, Differential Assessment, and Behavioral Management and three major beliefs, Importance of Teacher-Student Relatedness, Teaching: a Social Responsibility, and Learning for Life Skills emerged from the findings. The comparison revealed a multi-dimensional structure of teachers’ practices with strong evidence of both traditional and constructivist practices. Our findings indicate that collectivist teachers will embrace individualistic practices of teaching which are congruent with their own cultural beliefs. Thus, the findings will add to the literature on cultural beliefs that affect teaching and learning. The findings will have implications for teachers, researchers, and policy makers in refining their perception of collectivist teachers

Language learning and technology

By and large, languages, both as first, second or foreign languages remain one of the most important core subjects at every educational level. In early stages, their inclusion in the curriculum is intricately connected with (pre-)literacy practices, but also as a main driver for the successful integration of minority students learning a second language. In addition, the attainment of a certain level of a foreign language by the end of compulsory education is a common goal in most educational systems around the globe. Arguably, the key drivers of success in learning a language range from motivational to attitudinal, but ultimately they also have to do with the amount of target language use, the access to quality input, and especially language teachers' readiness to incorporate the latest educational trends effectively in the language classroom, educational technologies amongst them

Exploring the experiences of instructors teaching massive open online courses in tourism and hospitality: a mixed methods approach

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have existed as a disruptive educational phenomenon for nine years. Grounded in the roots of distance education, open education, Open Educational Resources, and OpenCourseWare, MOOCs have now survived various critics and have continued growing globally. Reports about MOOCs in both the press and scholarly publications began to grow significantly in 2013 (Sánchez-Vera, Leon Urrutia, & Davis, 2015; Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017) and, since then, more and more researchers have joined the discussions, developing them to explore various new topics. To contribute to the literature of MOOC studies, this doctoral thesis begins with an in-depth analysis of the background, history, growth, and vision, and proposes a tentative definition of MOOCs. Meanwhile, by conducting bibliometric research to review MOOC studies conducted between 2015 and 2017, this thesis fills in the gap that has existed due to a lack of systematic reviews of MOOC literature since 2015. The results of the bibliometric research summarised the relevant MOOC research into nine categories, including learner focused, commentary and concepts, case reports or evaluations, pedagogy, curriculum and design, course object focused, provider focused, technology, systematic review of literature, and learning analytics and big data. They also suggested a limited amount of provider focused research, which became the research interest and focus of this thesis. In the centre of the Europe, Swiss universities have marched forward in the MOOC movement, together with other over 550 universities (Shah, 2016) around the world. Università della Svizzera italiana (USI; Lugano, Switzerland), a Swiss public university, became a MOOC provider in 2015 and offered the first MOOC in the topic of eTourism: eTourism: Communication Perspectives. This doctoral thesis is closely related to this university-level initiative, which was dedicated to producing the first pilot MOOC at USI. Therefore, the cases chosen by this thesis are positioned in the discipline of tourism and hospitality. The first MOOC with a large audience taught artificial intelligence in 2011 (Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017). Nowadays, MOOCs have broken the barrier of space and time to educate the masses in a wide range of subjects. However, the provision of MOOCs in the subject of tourism and hospitality did not appear until 2013, when two MOOCs from two American universities became available. In the past four years since these MOOCs were launched, the number of tourism and hospitality MOOCs available in the market has remained limited (Tracey, Murphy, & Horton-Tognazzini, 2016). This scarcity contradicts the fact that tourism and hospitality is the field that contributes the most to the employment of the global workforce. Pressing problems, such as high turnover, seasonality, and new global challenges have urged for solutions to quickly training people working in this area to become available (Cantoni, Kalbaska, & Inversini, 2009). A call for more studies about tourism and hospitality MOOCs has emerged. The combined reality of the lack of studies regarding MOOC providers, opportunities for first-hand experience of producing a tourism MOOC in a university, and the deficiency in both the research and practises of tourism and hospitality MOOCs has inspired the direction of this thesis in regard to exploring MOOC instructors’ experiences, using cases in the field of tourism and hospitality. It cumulates six studies, using a mixed methods approach, to tackle the two main research objectives: to investigate at large the tourism and hospitality MOOC provisions between 2008 and 2015 and to report the experiences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) when producing the eTourism MOOC. In order, the first two studies in Chapter 3 of this thesis focus on tourism and hospitality MOOCs in general and produce a big picture context for the other four studies in Chapter 4. The first study proposes a conceptual framework through which to describe and analyse the course design of a MOOC and applies it to 18 tourism and hospitality MOOCs produced between 2008 and 2015. The second study then continues to interview six tourism and hospitality MOOC instructors, to describe their experiences and perspectives of teaching MOOCs. After exploring a holistic view of the overall development of MOOCs in tourism and hospitality and gaining a deep understanding of the instructors behind these offerings, this thesis introduces the experiences of one single MOOC provider: Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Chapter 4. It first introduces its overall implementation process (Study 3), and further elaborates three phases of this process: how it selected a suitable MOOC platform at the beginning (Study 4); how it assessed learner engagement in the MOOC (Study 5); and, eventually, how it evaluated the performance of the MOOC (Study 6). This thesis was written mainly from the perspective of eLearning, with the intention of benefiting its community of scholars and practitioners. It has contributed to the literature by developing a framework with which to review MOOCs (in Study 1), the implementation process of producing MOOCs (in Study 2), practical review schema of MOOC platforms (in Study 4), the MOOC Learner Engagement Online Survey (in Study 5), and how to use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate MOOCs (in Study 6). These conceptual frameworks and experiential tools can benefit future researchers and practitioners. Meanwhile, due to its intimate connection with the field of tourism and hospitality, by directly using its cases, the research outputs of the six studies can also benefit the tourism and hospitality education and training sector as a reference for further action

Training, Education and Research in COVID-19 Times: Innovative Methodological Approaches, Best Practices, and Case Studies

The global COVID-19 pandemic has posed a major challenge in all aspects of life, including how graduate training of healthcare practitioners is conducted. In Saudi Arabia, there were over 14,000 graduate health professional trainees in different stages of their training in various specialties distributed in many healthcare facilities across the country. The vast geographical distribution and diversity of health specialties training programs and activities have remarkably magnified the challenge posed by the pandemic. However, recently, the SCFHS implemented a health training governance reform that granted more autonomy to accredited training facilities in supervising training activities according to preset policies. This autonomy was crucial for mitigating various risks imposed by the pandemic, especially during the extended periods of strict lockdown. The ultimate mandate is a knowledge management primer. We need to once again focus on the basics of human creativity and knowledge creation: Create the content/knowledge; Utilize knowledge; Document knowledge; Communicate knowledge; Enable an integrated training, education, and research ecosystem; Utilize the integrated platform. Our volume is a contribution to the scientific debate for the added value of COVID-19 to our training, education, and research capabilities. We continue this debate with a new Special Issue in the Sustainability journal. We look forward to your contributions to this discussion