Open Scholarship in the
Early 21st Century
Joseph Hardin
Mujoresearch.org
Ontario College of Art and Design

Open Scholarship
Ian talked about a number of “Open” efforts

Open Source Software like Sakai

Open Access to scholarly work

Open Data to improve scientific processes

Open CourseWare and Open Educational
Resources

Open Textbooks

Open Teaching

Focus Of This Talk

Open CourseWare and Open Educational
Resources

Recent research on OCW/OER among faculty and students

The recent interest in Open Teaching in the form of MOOCs

How OER and MOOCs build on each other

How a commitment to Open Initiatives can become part of education's Core Business, and can move us forward in the coming years

OCW - Faculty Studies

An ongoing series of studies looking at what faculty and students think about OCW/OER and whether or not they plan to use or contribute

Do they see some aspects of OCW as valuable?

Would they use OCW?

Would faculty contribute their own course materials to a local OCW site?

The Four Surveys

Danubius University of Galati, Romania

Severin Bumbaru, severin.bumbaru@univ-danubius.ro
Andy Pușcă, andypusca@univ-danubius.ro


Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain
Aristóteles Cañero, acanero@asic.upv.es


University of Cape Town, South Africa

Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, cheryl.hodgkinson-williams@uct.ac.za
Glenda Cox, glenda.cox@uct.ac.za


University of Michigan, USA
Joseph Hardin, hardin@mujoresearch.com

See http://mujoresearch.org
5

Instructor Potential Use
55% to 92% would use Open CourseWare in their class materials
6

Student Potential Use
72% to 87% of students would use OCW materials in their studies.
7

Intention to Contribute/Publish – Teaching Staff
45% to 86% would contribute their course materials to local OCW site.
8

52%
Teacher Contribution
GSI
40%
Tenuretrack
48%
Clinical
42%
Lecturer
9

'Contribution Willingness' vs 'Time as Faculty'
UM 2010 survey
Younger faculty more willing
Publish vs Age
3.7
3.5
3.3
3.1
More Willing
To Publish OCW
2.9
2.7
2.5
<=1 2-5
More Time as Faculty
6-10
Years
11-20 21-30
10
>30

Participation increases Interest
Statistically significant, increasingly positive correlation between familiarity and intention to contribute for Tenure-track, Clinical, Lecturer faculty (older instructors)
The more faculty know about OCW/OER the more interest in it they have, and the more willing they are to participate.
We will see this in Open Teaching/MOOCs also.

Key Survey Results

There is a considerable base of support among teaching staff at schools for OCW use and contribution

Participation increases interest – virtuous circle
Now, what about Open Teaching, and how does
OCW/OER relate to MOOC creation?
First, How is a MOOC different from traditional Distance
Education?
12

Traditional Distance Ed
Student as Isolate
Graphic: John Seely Brown

MOOC = Social Ed = P2P
Student as Co-Participant
Graphic: John Seely Brown

“Social” = P2P

When you think about the emergence of social tools or media or applications, you are seeing the power of Person To Person (P2P) methods

Finding each other... one of the powers of the net

Then working with, helping, learning from, impressing, motivating each other

Think of what makes FaceBook, or WikiPedia work – finding a group of people with similar interests, and letting/helping them participate

MOOCs Experiences

Students learn by interacting with other students


“the discussion lists were the most important part of the experience” - (Johns
Hopkins MOOC teacher)
“The ones I have study groups with people, those are the ones I finish,”(MOOC student)


We've always known that students teach each other – study groups, recitations
“Even more remarkable were the 270 selfdirected teams that formed to work on their course projects and share ideas.” (Stanford

MOOCs Amplify P2P
Where before you had 10-50 possible partner participants, now you have 500-5,000-10,000

OCW/OER Foundation of MOOCs
Building the culture for one prepares the ground for the other.
John Seely Brown

Survey of
MOOC
Teachers
Original video
+
OER
=
MOOC http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview

Changing Minds By Participation

Participating in Open activities can change faculty minds – we saw this in OCW, so it is with MOOCs


By the time his six-week course was over, the
Princeton professor had changed his mind about what online education could do.
Mr.
Sedgewick now classifies himself as "very enthusiastic" about virtual teaching, and believes that soon "every person's education will have a significant online component."
“Nearly one-third of professors surveyed were
"somewhat" or "very" skeptical about onlineonly courses before teaching a MOOC. Now

Participation Increases Interest

This also reflects back on classroom teaching
And, remember, these teachers usually had NO previous experience with online teaching. See above.

Goal Also to Improve Residential Ed

In May 2012, when the presidents of Harvard
University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology announced that they would enter the
MOOC fray with $60-million to start edX, they were emphatic that their agenda was to improve, not supplant, classroom education.

"Online education is not an enemy of residential education," said Susan Hockfield, president of MIT at the time, from a dais at a hotel in Cambridge, "but an inspiring and liberating ally."

MIT and Harvard see this as crucial to their educational future it’s worth the investment to see where this goes, and be on the leading edge of it
They see it as Core Business effort

MOOCs for “non-consumers”

Open Teaching also has other clients

"What we need to bear in mind is that the
MOOCs are trying to make better quality education available to a great mass of people who are currently “non-consumers” of education and such quality is currently superior by far to whatever they may be getting right now.

The MOOCs are not aimed to people who are willing to cheat but to those willing to learn."
Wayan Vota via Steven Downs


MOOC as Open Source using AGPL
EdX releases Open Source under AGPL - open service stipulation; must release modified service under AGPL -
“service provider copyleft”




In March 2013, EdX, (the nonprofit MOOC platform from MIT and Harvard) released part of its code under an open source license. The OSS Watch blog reported:
EdX, the nonprofit organization set up by MIT and Harvard to provide a MOOC platform, released part of its code under an open source license
– the Affero GPL.
This is a form of “service provider copyleft” that ensures that EdX will have access to any improvements on their platform used by third parties.
Otherwise you could use the software to provide an online service and, never
'releasing' the software, just using it, not have to contribute changes back to the commons

MOOC development pushing on open innovative boundaries in many ways, including open source licensing

Credit is coming

In a major step for MOOCs, the first five courses were evaluated and deemed worthy for credit by the American Council on
Education in February. About 2,000 colleges and universities consider the organization’s recommendations in determining whether to use online courses.

Dr. Agarwal predicts that “a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates.” He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way

Conclusions from Overview

An open culture is becoming more and more important – to provide best services, to anticipate the future


Faculty are ready to participate in OCW/OER and that will increase their desire for participation in the future – same for MOOCs
Building a “Culture of Contribution” is good business for HE

And, there are open resources to help with that, including doing your own surveys

Interested in the Surveys?
Mujoresearch.org

Do Your Own

Lists of Questions to Use

Step-by-Step Procedures

Building the Culture


Research - Understanding and giving voice to your own community of scholars on Open issues
Gather your own data and make it open – from your own campuses and OER/MOOC efforts

These efforts help us understand and generate the local culture of contribution

They provide resources for local innovation efforts and contribute to the global conversation

Maintaining leadership in educational futures will require looking at Open Initiatives as Core

Thanks - Gracias