Problem of Sustainability

The success of early OER projects such as MIT OCW rely in part on funding, some of it massive. For example, MIT OCW began with grants totaling $11 million, contributed in equal amounts by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and committed $1 million of its own funds during the first two years of the project. Yet such grants may be drying up (ref needed), regardless increasing interest and participation in OER projects will heighten competition for and further limit availability of such funds. On their own few public institutions could be expected to come up with that money, and currently many US institutions, particularly state institutions, are facing budget cuts that threaten to limit, decrease, or prevent local OER projects.

The OER Handbook describes the problem of sustainability in context of successful open source software projects:

In open source software projects, money is raised by soliciting donations, selling manuals, training, software development and providing technical support. While some of these methods can be applied to OER, some can not, and some funding methods remain largely untested. Few of the well-known OER projects exhibit the same vibrant communities of contributors that well-known open source software projects have. This issue is one of the most serious the OER community faces.

Though others have found fault with it I was encouraged by the Cape Town Declaration’s suggestion that the open education movement “[has] the opportunity to engage entrepreneurs and publishers who are developing innovative open business models.” Further, some may disagree and even convulse with the idea of linking OER projects with commercial ventures, even as a means of providing sustainability. As a strong-minded capitalist, I do not. Rather, I look forward to working examples of such innovative business models (e.g. Flat World Knowledge), and anticipate innovative adaptation to what I believe is a fundamental shifting of the (sometimes conflicting, often confusing) relationship between creator/consumer/copyright holder.
However, as the OER Handbook describes, such approaches remain largely untested.

Mainstreaming Openness

At UVU I’ve maintained the mindset that long-term success of OER will depend upon mainstreaming it, integrating the mentality of authoring for OER and the activity of publishing as OER into the normal course development and teaching processes. In taking this position I merely echo what others have said, e.g. David Wiley, as in On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resources (2006), Stephen Downes, as in Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources (2007), and Andy Lane, as in Sustaining OERs: a brief and provocative road map (2008), albeit from my own perspective of being in an institution interested in OER projects, but with no explicit funding for it.

For distance learning programs the goal of integrating OER activities is most feasible. Quality digital content production is part of the practice, and distance learning programs should already be auditing third-party copyright materials. Another approach could be to set a goal of zero third-party copyright content from the course design phase onward, ensuring that no new course includes copyright content. UVU we have played with hosting course content on a public server (called “Shadow Files”) and “mixing” it with copyright content and “private” course activities via the learning management system (LMS). Further, the LMS may be used as the OER publishing platform itself, technology provided (as I’ve prototyped on Moodle with the OpenShare block). However, in such a case the ability to release just parts of the course as OER is necessary, and most LMSs are void of such features.

OER investments may interweave with distance learning initiatives in other ways as well. Terri Bays, Dan Charchidi, Sunnie Kim in presentation Open Sharing, Local Payoff note, “OCW can complement a distance learning initiative, taking content from and directing learners toward an … e-learning curriculum”. It’s a two-way street: developing OER can result in distance learning; developing distance learnign can result in OER.

Additionally, many of the same justifications for distance learning as a cost-reducing and education-enhancing vehicle apply to OER. Mark Pesce notes, “Recording is cheap, lecturers are expensive, and students are forgetful.” Capturing teaching materials in a digital form has perhaps the highest potential for institutional ROI. Reuse reduces redundancy: capturing allows reuse, and access to reusable materials has the potential to dramatically reduce redundancy, diminish the cost of lecturing both in the expenditure of dollars and time, and improve student learning. Stephen Downes argues that “non-economic definitions of ’sustainable’ should not be dismissed lightly”. He mentions that different organizations will have different objectives for practicing distance learning, and some are not cost-saving. Indeed, OER provide a potential means of relieving faculty lecture time for other teaching activities, such as actually interacting with students and providing more feedback.

Brainstorming Institutional Changes Towards Openness

I’ve collected the following ideas on how to successfully mainstream and integrate OER across the institution. Many of these are based on the practices of other institutions, and conversations with colleagues and the OER community. These ideas are based on the need to grow positive attitudes toward OER support across the institution, and the fact that different institutional staff may require different arguments to catalyze support (here especially I welcome feedback, altertions, or additional ideas from the community).

• IT should be encouraged to work with OER advocates to find streamlined technology solutions for publishing OER, and then budget for maintenance of these solutions.
• IT may need proof that OER will either not overload hardware, or be worth the increased load. Also, discussions on whether or not OER may increase susceptibility to malicious attacks.
• Administration may need evidence that OER does not diminish profitability or marketability of institutionally-own content, and in fact may provide satisfactory ROI through PR, student retention, quality improvement, international competitiveness, adaptation to changing cultural and educational paradigms, etc.
• Student services and advisement may need education and training on the potential value to students of OER, and how to access and utilize OER in a manner similar to that in which they access and utilize course catalogs and descriptions
• PR should be educated on the goals, scope, and potential impact of institutional OER efforts that they might better.
  Faculty may need reassurance that the value of opening and sharing is competitive with the value of locking down and isolating learning materials.
• Faculty and technology support staff may need workflows and technology training to facilitate publication of OER.
• Finding, reusing, and remixing of OER should become just another faculty skill set, and trainings should be provided–similar to (now commonplace) trainings on use of word processors, e-mail, and the web.
• Everyone should be involved in discussions of the potential value and responsibility of using non-rivalrous resources to provide access to educational content to a new, broad international audience.

I believe OER can be mainstreamed and integrated into existing processes for course development and publishing, but the needs identified in this list above require organizing, supervising, supporting, and proselytizing. Institutions serious about engaging in open education would be well served by funding at least one full-time position, such as “OER Coordinator”, if not a small team. Such a position may be situated in context of campus IT, faculty development and training, or distance learning. Investment in such a position could cohere OER efforts and reduce waste, redundancy, poor planning, and, perhaps most significantly, mis- or failed communication. At the very least, an existing staff member should be appointed as OER coordinator, and responsibilities shifted or condensed to allow for these needs.

My experience with the OER community has shown me that the passion, reasoning, and ideas of individuals will fuel and maintain the global effort regardless–Andy Lane states that “the success of OERs is also dependent on a thriving and healthy OER movement”. But to foster the movement in the long-term it behooves us to focus on the immediate needs of local sustainability. Unlike purchasing computers or licensing an LMS, with OER we are not buying a solution, we are building a solution. In doing so we are investing in the people of the institution, and can obtain a new kind of ownership: a grassroots, shared ownership of the learning materials cultivated by access to and encouragement of open and shared learning resources.

So I’ve collected here a bunch of quotes that speak to the good and the bad of Edubloggercon in it’s first two years that I personally am going to think about as we begin planning TTIX 09. As I said, I wasn’t at Edugbloggercon so I can’t speak to the accuracy, yet I do think they communicate something about ed tech conferencing in general.

Content

Didn’t we talk about this stuff last year? And the year before? Not to mention in many places online in the interim?

Tim Stahmer

[Get] outside the echo chamber… I look at the title of the session above and think: Yeah…we know that.

Jeff Utecht

[This year's conference was] more about tools and vendors than about the real work of getting our brains around how learning and networks and the very essence of how teaching and schools are being pushed by the shifts that are occurring.

Will Richardson

Structure

Start … with a set of questions, and then ask attendees … to collaborate in answering those questions from what they’ve learned from the conversations

David Warlick

Set up a space with two (or more) mini-presentation areas (not unlike the bloggers cafe actually), many “round tables” for people to retreat to for further conversation (this is key!), and plenty of power and wi-fi. … [Impromptu facilitators] sign up for [5-15 minute] time slots at the presentation areas

Mark Wagner

Engagement & Participation

…the breakout groups were too large which turned what should have been conversations into something more like panel discussions

Tim Stahmer

[In the informal area of the Blogger's Cafe] multiple conversations could occur and overlap – and we were able to ‘play’ in a serendipitous fashion

Mark Wagner

[At Blogger's Cafe] I would engage in a conversation to my right, over hear something on my left and turn and join that conversation.

Jeff Utecht

…the scanty fortunate [engaged in the impromptu 'edupunk-esque' sessions at Blogger's Cafe] … represent less than 1% of the people that actually attended EduBloggerCon. Moreover, as others gradually attempted to join in on this cocktail party of learning, when the party became too large, those that were truly invited quickly dispersed…

Darren Draper

[Last year] the focus was on having conversations with people without the intrusion of [technologically mediated] methods of communication. … The back channel … got in the way.

Vinnie Vrotny

It felt more like Monday than Saturday…

Will Richardson

That last quote is my favorite–I think ed tech conferences should be more fun and relaxed than a Saturday, yet be more productive and enlightening than a Monday.

John K. read these quotes and mused, “Where do we take these ideas?” I’ll think that through myself over the next little while, and let any readers post their comments to assist.

I ask this question without facetiousness, because if we’re talking about a holistic look at individuals learning environment, we certainly don’t want to restrict it to Web, and I even think just brainstorming the variety and interconnectedness of utilities and tools in our non-digital learning environment(s) may validly inform our digital ones, and can provide anecdotes through which we can better adapt (ourselves and others) to the online tools.

As far as my PLE, though I outlined a laundry list in your wiki, I’m now trying to think about it more organically. I’m currently toying with conceptualizing my digital PLE through a metaphor of physical space, with interconnected rooms and even “wormholes” that take me in and out of the “real” world. While at first I imagined this as a house with multi-doored, hexagonal rooms and intermediary halls (plus windows one can jump out of and back into the “real world”),

Walter R. Tschinkel’s cast of an ant colony, The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant

it might end up being more simply sketched as the architecture of an ant colony. This latter metaphor is probably seems particularly apt to anyone who knows me, as my “train of thought” is more akin to a state of ants scurrying from one point to another as they forage with semi-obscured motivations and objectives, constantly adjusting based on new and immediate information.

A couple of ideas for TTIX 2008 specificially:

In addition to the option of Twitter, why not a simple web-based chat room for back channeling? It’s old-fashioned now, but most setups require no user name, and rooms are easily created. Skype is cool too, however.

To that end, we’ll have a presenter-editable web page for each presentation which will host a shoutbox, presentation materials, link to video archive, link to relevant blogs, etc!

We are going to try starting TTIX with a 45-minute pre-conference session for everyone on Twitter and blogging. Just a means of getting people in and familiar with these two powerful social software tools. We’re going to ask for volunteers to each guest review 1 session during the day on our TTIX blog, and so we’ll divvy out users/passes at that time.

More ideas coming soon. Again, I can’t thank Steve enough for his work on Classroom 2.0–even though I haven’t attended this, his passion to making it a better workshop (or an “un-conference”) is inspiring and motivating.

1. TTIX will always be free – no registration fee (and therefore no conference tote bag, low-capacity usb drive, pen, keychain, etc.)
2. TTIX will emphasize 2-part sessions: part 1 is information, part 2 is hands-on application

We’ve added a few other facets, like
presenters are encouraged to make their materials available under a Creative Commons license, videos of presentations should be available for download after the event,
organized social events can help folks make professional connections
And, this year, conference proposals can be rated by the public almost immediately after submission. Admittedly the 5-star rating system is overly simplistic, but we see this as a great way to (1) advertise the possible sessions, (2) give prospective presenters some preliminary feedback, and (3) give the community a chance to make their interests heard to the proposal review committee. Ultimately we hope to go to a fully community-driven conference proposal review system.

Today I was lucky enough to stumble upon Alan Levine (aka CogDog)’s reflections on the EDUCAUSE ELI conference, “On Conferencing”. In this he examined the big questions I always ask myself when I go to conferences: Why do we go? and, Is it worth it? Mr. Levine lays out several complaints and ideas for conferences in general, and this inspired me to think about how we might push TTIX to the next level of meaningfulness and value for our participants. Let me highlight and springboard off of some of Mr Levine’s thoughts (and some of my own) here with respect to TTIX:

1. Online session evaluations. Addition: with immediate results viewable to everyone. With kiosks at the back of the room. Or with “clickers” (as much as I hate ‘em)
2. Learning Circle. Like Cracker Barrels at DT&L in Madison, Wisconsin. I like these a lot, actually, because you get to meet people and talk about related interests, and share experiences. The way I see this working best is someone deemed as expert moderates at small tables, others attend. On cue we all switch tables. I love Mr. Levine’s note that at ELI they used wikis and Google Docs for note-taking; TTIX will have to have this set up in advance for it to work.
3. Post session archives in 24 hours (a/v). We post video archives, but haven’t been able to do it in 24 hours. We probably could if we cut the quality. Addition: make presenter information uploadable during the conference, so presenters can upload their latest slides or materials. On the presentation video and materials download page make participant commentary open, a la a blog. This could be attached to or on the same page as the conference evals for each session! Ooh, but then we couldn’t use a presentation sharing service like Slideshare…
4. Twitter used throughout. ELI had a Twitter account just for the conference, which I definitely want to follow suit with, and many of its participants used Twitter voraciously–I know, I read ‘em! What if we started the first day of TTIX with a Twitter primer/workshop for participants? How to use Twitter, is it good for professional development, is it good for education? I mean, if participants are glued to their laptops for half the conference any way, can’t we encourage them to participate through their laptops? (What other sandboxes can we set up for them?)
5. Do something with the backchannel. No real new ideas here. Chris Lott has suggested “some lamps or orbs which change color and/or intensity according to the back-channel assessment”. Maybe blog up a “best IRC or Twitter quote” per session?
6. Conference blogging. It’s really nice when participants blog up the sessions or even just the conference in general. What if TTIX had it’s own blog that the TTIX committee updated during the conference, or a wiki that everyone could edit on the fly to summarize sessions with. Or, if we aim for something more reflective as Mr. Levine suggests, what if we set up a blog and invited participants to volunteer to author a reflective blog post on one session that they attend? We could have someone in charge of providing those volunteers with an author account on our TTIX blog, and then give them a reward if they post before the conference officially ends.
7. A conference with just keynotes. Last year we ran 4, even 5 sessiosn at a time. Bad move. The sessions were too poorly attended, and we knew some of the sessions were not cream of the crop in the first place. We took notice for 2008 and are trying to limit ourselves to just 3 at a time. But John attended one conference last year that was only keynotes. He loved it. I personally like the variety of being able to choose. But we need to emphasize differentness next year. We need to continue to pushe for, focus on, and applaud the second-day sessions, which is our twist of lime on ed tech conferences. What if we ask 2-day presenters to create an assignment day 1?
8. More hands-on. This is my own suggestion/complaint. Perhaps instead of a conference entirely of keynotes we composed a conference entirely of mini-workshops. That’s the idea behind the 2-part session, after all, but taken to the extreme. Or maybe the regular sessions are all workshops framed in by keynotes (2 per day)? Or a keynote and a learning circle/cracker barrel?
9. More Something Else. At DT&L and many other conferences you have the choice of going to an info session, a panel session, a poster session, etc–all of which are running at the same time. Now I cling to the idea of variety (I’m a session-jumper, remember?), but what if we did 3 sessions at a time, but had an info session hour, a panel session hour, a poster session hour, a workshop hour, etc to force the variety into the day?

These ideas have revved me up. I’m convinced we need to “stir up the stew” as Mr. Levine puts it. The next question is: If TTIX were to implement any 2 of these, which two would you find most valuable? Which would make the conference-going experience more important, more memorable, more applicable to your professional life when you return home?