Welcome to the OER Summit
Wayne, Nebraska
February 2013
Education budgets
Rapid scale
Economics of
disruption
Rapid scale
Economics of
disruption
Education budgets Moody’s Investors Services downgraded the
outlook for all of higher education to
“negative.”
1. Tuition revenue
2. State
appropriations
3. Federal spending
4. Endowments
5. Philanthropy
Education budgets
1. Tuition revenue
2. State
appropriations
3. Federal spending
4. Endowments
5. Philanthropy
Education budgets
Federal appropriations per FTE are at
their lowest point in 40 years.
SOURCE: The College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2011, Figure 10B.
Education budgets
Economics of
disruption
Rapid scale
Time to Reach 150 Million Users
1994-1998 The Internet
4
2004-2009 Facebook
5
2001-2008 iPod
7
1983-1997 Cell Phone
14
1928-1966 Television
38
1876-1965 Telephone
89
0
20
40
60
80
100
With 2.4 billion accessing the Internet
• LinkedIn has 220 users sharing
professional profiles and networks
• Twitter has 500 million users, and sends
175 million tweets each day
• Facebook has more than 1 billion active
users. 618 million on Facebook daily.
Education budgets
Rapid scale
Economics of
disruption
Can we create a
deliberate, planned and effective
approach to disruption?
The Kaleidoscope Context
1. Content as infrastructure
2. Innovation capacity as infrastructure
3. Discerning scale
4. Discerning disruption
The Kaleidoscope Context
1. Content as infrastructure
2. Innovation capacity as infrastructure
3. Discerning scale
4. Discerning disruption
The Kaleidoscope Context
1. Content as infrastructure
2. Innovation capacity as infrastructure
• Licenses for sharing (Creative
3. Discerning scale
Commons)
4. Discerning disruption
• Processes for sharing
• Relationships for sharing
• Investment models for sharing
• Institutional support for
Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative
Charles Snare, VP Academic Affairs, Chadron State College
Amber Gilewski, Assist. Professor Psychology, Tompkins Cortland
CC
Before $2B in Department of Labor grants…
Before the California open textbook bill…
Before the British Columbia open bill…
Private foundations had invested well over
$100 million in open content
Hewlett. Gates. Saylor. Lumina. Shuttleworth. CK12. Kresge. Spencer.
Walter S Johnson. Moore.
Open Educational Resources
Freedom to reuse, revise, remix and
redistribute
Project Goals
Use open educational resources to
improve student success
1. Eliminate textbook cost as a barrier
2. Drive assessment-driven enhancement of
course designs and materials
3. Create a collaborative community to share
learning and investment
Why Kaleidoscope?
Collaboration #1 – Valuing teaching
• “We must change the status of teaching from private to
community property” – Lee Shulman
• Shulman argues the reason teaching is not more valued
is “because the way we treat teaching removes it from
the community of scholars”
Collaboration #2
Minimize loss of intellectual work on teaching and learning
“To me the most important benefit of creating a community
[around teaching and learning] is that we no longer lose a great
deal of intellectual work that is regularly being done. Talented
people find ingenious solutions to problems in learning every
academic term, and traditionally most of that work is lost. When
people know that there is a community of people who will look at
their work, especially the cumulative intellectual work of several
offerings of a course, they will be willing to take the modest extra
steps of recording and reflecting on what they are already
accomplishing as teachers. As a result there will be a large
community of teachers whose decisions about how to teach will
be informed by the collective effectiveness of the work.” D. J.
Bernstein
Collaboration #3
Moving from the “deficit model” of teaching (Randall) to the
creative problem approach
“One telling measure of how differently teaching is
regarding from traditional scholarship or research within the
academy is what a difference it makes to have a ‘problem’
in one versus the other. In scholarship and research,
having a ‘problem’ is at the heart of the investigative
process; it is the compound of the generative questions
around which all creative and productive activity revolves.
But in one’s teaching a ‘problem’ is something you don’t
want to have, and if you have one, you probably want to fix
it. Asking a colleague about a problem in his or her
research is an invitation; asking about a problem in one’s
teaching would probably seem like an accusation.” Randy
Bass
Collaboration #4
Post-Moneyball approach
• Heuristics applied by computers and humans
• Computers and humans employ different heuristics
• Each produce biases and blind spots
Implications for student learning
(engagement; retention; graduation)
• Identify “moments of difficulty” – inability to
understand (Salvatori)
• Blockage points in courses and programs (Tinto)
• Predictive analytics
 Advise students
 Early alert – students not succeeding
Cost Savings?
• Don’t worry about the scoreboard (Wooden)
• May come in other ways




Higher retention and graduation rates – cost per
degree attainment measure
Currently treat all activities as having an equal impact
on student learning – everything is high impact
Better understand when student “choice” is a choice
Move away from the “add a course strategy” (Parker
Palmer) to a plan of connected learning (AAC&U)
CSC Institutional Experience
• Student learning does not occur by chance
(Tinto)

Transitional thru Composition sequence
• Faculty professional development and network
within program/discipline/colleges
• Teaching as a community property


Focus on area of expertise in course development
Areas of student learning difficulty points; sequencing
• Textbook/course materials cost savings
• The Six Phases of a Project
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Using OER with the
Kaleidoscope Project
Amber Gilewski
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Tompkins Cortland Community College
Dryden, New York
Impetus for the Kaleidoscope Project
• 70% of undergrads report not buying one or more textbooks
due to cost
• 78% believe they would do worse if they didn’t have their own
copy of the textbook to use
• Cost of textbooks is equal to 26% of tuition at state
universities & 72% of tuition at community colleges (GAO,
2005)
• Major concern for community colleges who have lower
graduation & retention rates
Source: Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGS)
OER in Action:
the Kaleidoscope Project
• Kaleidoscope was a cross-institutional
collaboration
• Course designs used the best of existing
OER
• Course designs used a common assessment
process
• Project Kaleidoscope closed the loop on
improved course design & student learning
Course Design Process
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Define collective student learning outcomes
Create summative assessments
Identify core open resources
Create formative assessments
Identify supplemental open resources
Deliver courses
Evaluate and improve
The Kaleidoscope Project Goals
• Cost Effectiveness Outcomes


Metric: textbook cost/course/student
Goal: $50 average reduction
• Student Success Outcomes




Metric: academically-driven withdrawals
Goal: 5% reduction
Metric: grades of C or higher
Goal: 5% increase
Results in the Kaleidoscope Project
BEFORE/USING
Withdrawals % passed
% of Ws
BEFORE OER
# with C or
better
90/178
15/193
50.56%
7.8%
USING OER
69/127
8/135
54.33%
5.9%
-Compared 6 sections of Intro to Psych classes taught in Fall
2010 & Spring 2011 before using OER to 5 sections of Intro to
Psych classes taught in Fall 2011 & Spring 2012
-Used open textbook written by Charles Stangor from Flatworld
Knowledge, rSmart Sakai learning management system, and webenhanced courses
-Students could read book online for free, could buy a hard copy
that was almost 50% cheaper than typical book, or other formats
Results in the Kaleidoscope Project
• 7.4% increase in those passing my Intro to Psych
classes with a C or better while using OER
• 24% decrease in withdrawals while using OER
• 32% reported using the free online version of the
text, 58% used the hard copy, and 11% used other
formats
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Historical Success
Kaleidoscope
Success in OER Use
• OER are resources that can be used for
free or at lower cost
• Choose OER carefully and remember you
can often edit them
• Using OER can create more accessibility
and affordability for students
Carnegie Mellon CC-OLI
(Community College Open Learning
Initiative)
• Pilot evaluation of effectiveness of online courses
used with F2F classrooms
• For use in Statistics, Anatomy & Physiology, Biology,
and Psychology courses (see http://oli.cmu.edu if
interested in participating)
• Intro to Psych class is based on the Flatworld
Knowledge text used in Kaleidoscope
• Online activities that accompany the reading and
allow students to practice what they are learning
before getting to Checkpoints (quizzes)
My experience thus far….
Benefits
Challenges
•
•
•
•
• Learning curve for learning
new systems
• Initially time consuming for
new developers
• Experimental
• Collaboration
• Getting buy-in from other
faculty
Exciting
Innovative
Advised by experts in OER
Free or low cost
educational resources
• Increasing student success
& retention
• Collaboration
Opportunities to Engage
Kim Thanos
Kaleidoscope Program Manager
Faculty Members
 Adopt an existing course, emphasize support
and ease of use
 Use your own OER
 Use Kaleidoscope as a starting point and
customize your course, with little
collaboration
 Actively engage in the project and
community
Institutional Leadership
 Monitor project leadership and support
local work
 Use Kaleidoscope as a starting point for
institutional open strategy
 Identify areas for shared investment and
deep collaboration
System Leadership
 Monitor project leadership support colleges
 Lead a regional initiative
 Strategically create an open niche for
Nebraska and the system



Bridging programs with high schools
Systematic support for adoption
Textbook Zero programs
 Engage in policy efforts to facilitate and fund
open education