EDUCAUSE closing plenary: The Obviousness of Open, Cable Green

It's the last day, and the closing session, of the 2012 West/Southwest Regional EDUCAUSE Conference.
Some notes...

First Worldwide Open Education Week

http://www.openeducationweek.org/
March 5-10, 2012
Free webinars, videos, materials, links to events around the world

Opening four major universities (30,000 students) every week for the next fifteen years would allow us to meet the needs of the worlds college-age students. Ha! It just won't happen. Open education, open courses are our only hope.


Cape Town Open Education Declaration:

Unlocking the promise of open educational resources

We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go. Read more...

 Free Education through Saylor
Saylor.org is a free and open collection of college level courses. There are no registrations or fees required to take our courses, and you will earn a certificate upon completion of each course. Because we are not accredited, you will not earn a college degree or diploma; however, our team of experienced college professors has designed each course so you will be able to achieve the same learning objectives as students enrolled in traditional colleges. More Information



Creative Commons
OER are educational resources that reside in the public domain or are openly licensed (see Creative Commons) for others to use.

The Iron Triangle

College Presidents Talk about Costs, Access, and Quality

Concept of Rivalrous vs. Non-Rivalrous Resources
If you take someone's newspaper, they lose it.
If you read news on line, others can read it at the same time.

More to come...

Early Learning

Remember those days of singing the alphabet song? This is a very short, "too cute not to share" video of a 2 1/2 year old girl singing her alphabet...well, she gets most of it right! What's remarkable is her articulation. She is, after all,singing in her THIRD language. She speaks Korean with her mom and maternal relatives, and speaks Turkish with her dad and paternal relatives  - the relatives in Korea and Turkey are reached via online chat!
This video is such a clear and simple example of the fact that our community is increasingly a global community, where using technology to connect with others around the globe will be the norm for our generations to come.

Enjoy the video - it's guaranteed to make you smile.

ACE - Diego Novarro - FELI coming to Washington!

For the first time, the Academy for College Excellence will be offering Faculty Experiential Learning Institutes in Washington State. Two week-long FELIS are being planned for June, to be offered at two college campuses. More information to come, as plans unfold.

From EDUCAUSE West/Southwest Regional Conference

Going Google at Portland State University
Going Google
PSU has migrated all 30,000+ student emails to Google
They found cost savings, almost no student calls for support after migration, grassroots heavyy adoption of other collaboration apps
Google groups for courses. Professors use to share documents and communicate with students. Mostly one-way use of groups at this time. Anticipate collaborative student work to occur in Docs.
Communication across campus community was essential.
"Google Guides" type group was essential.
Google was a very responsive partner/vendor.
What's Next for PSU?
Google Apps for alumni
Evaluate Google Additional Apps for the campus
Management of institutional data
Demo of Google sites, integrating docs, calendar, and so forth

ELI 7 Things You Should Know About Flipping the Classroom

Although the author emphasizes the benefits of the online lecture more than the benefits of increased time for one-on-one instructor-student interaction and formative assessment - as well as the increased opportunities for higher-level learning in the flipped classroom (synthesis, application, and evaluation) -  this ELI 7 Things 2-pager on flipped classrooms is a concise handout that could be useful to any instructor or instructional designer.

Fresh from EDUCAUSE

I'm posting this from Portland, Oregon, while attending the EDUCAUSE West/Southwest Regional Conference. Just notes...nothing polished!

Julie Evans - plenary session on The New Free Agent Student
Julie spoke about the findings and reports of National Speak Up.
Findings included K-12 students values of social-based learning, including both communications and collaboration, as well as setting up their own networks including their peers (of course) but also including their instructors and subject matter experts from outside of their school system, often national experts or international experts.
Students also value untethered learning and are frustrated by artificially-created boundaries, such as limits to online access by 1) filters and firewalls, and 2) prohibitions against use of mobile devices in their classrooms.
The three new "E"s of education: enabled, engaged and empowered. Students expect to access information as well as create and share content.

Integrating Information Literacy Across the Campus
University of Arizona librarians presented this session and shared links to their tutorials. Here's an example, titled "Avoiding Accidental Plagiarism."

International Faculty Professional Development

 http://www.mtc.highline.edu/

Marc Lentini,  Samad (Sam) Chakour,  and Ousamma Alkhalili, Highline Community College
 
Egypt -

• faculty development/exchange with HCC
• linking industry and technical training
• Facebook, Skype, cell phones, mailman (mailman "maybe 10 users", Facebook is "smoking!")
• website (in both English and Arabic)

Technology Challenges in Egypt

• bandwidth and power (110 degrees, losing power!)
• equipment (outdated, old software)
• access (5 labs, limited access for students, only 1 lab has internet access)
• Camtasia (used to share what we were doing in our projects)
• digital divide is more evident, especially age
• Example: college faculty teaching programming course in classroom equiped with a blackboard (no, not a whiteboard...) and the instructor brought his own projector. No computers.

Indonesia (just developing a community college system, similar to that of the United States)

• Faculty development/Exchange
• Web site portfoliios, Facebook, Skype (Egypt connecting with Indonesia)

Cultural Challenges and Best Practices

• focus on relationsships (if you do not develop relationship and trust, you will go nowhere)
• much social interaction led to a successful project
• Language Sam and Ousamma are also native Arabic speakers. They presented workshops in both languages. Tip: Have a PPT slide in Arabic, followed by English so that all present could keep on track.
• Idioms and jokes don't always translate well.
• Be very flexible...extremely flexible...REALLY flexible.
• Daily schedule change
• Constant interuptions (cell phones, unannounced visitors, people in and out of meetings, answering cell phones, informal side conversations are the norm, it is not considered rude...be flexible.)
• Cairo traffic (essentially 6:00am - midnight!) any meetings away from the main site meant bring food and water and plan to have your staff meeting in the car
• Expect the unexpected...like riding donkeys.

Important note: translators who understand the context and the culture of the colleges and people involved are essential.
CCID - Community Colleges for International Development http://ccid.cc/programs/annual_conference/index.htm

Afraid of Your Child's Math Textbook? You Should Be.

Here's an editor's inside perspective on the declining quality of publisher textbooks: http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/02/17/afraid_of_your_childs_math_textbook_you_should_be
On the flipside, it's interesting to see publishers like Pearson now incorporating OER into their materials. It seems the tables are turning, and I hope this eventually improves broader faculty perceptions of quality around open educational resources.

Tom Caswell
Open Education Policy Associate, SBCTC
(w) http://opencourselibrary.org (p) 360-747-7301
(b) http://tomcaswell.com (t) @tom4cam