Friday, February 25, 2011

Keeping OER Accountable

By: Rebecca Arnall

In any worthwhile enterprise, accountability is crucial. Open Education Resources, or OER, should be no exception. With the growing mass of resources available through OER, it is becoming more important that a standard of reliability be enforced. While most of the Global Text Project's textbooks have been previously published and/or peer-reviewed, this is not always the case with OER materials. Some questions that need to be addressed are: how can a reader know whether the open education resources they choose are current (is the country of Czechoslovakia in the text?), who has created the resource, and has it been peer-reviewed before publishing?


Though currently no such thing exists, a possible solution is to establish an overarching accreditation system for OER resources. I am not sure exactly how this would happen, yet as more and more OER organizations collaborate with one another, the idea is becoming more of a reality.


One such collaborator is the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER).Teaming up with College Open Textbooks, the organization provides its own accreditation system, complete with over 150 institutions in 16 states (see: CCCOER members list ). Their strategy is: “providing training for instructors adopting open resources, peer reviews of open textbooks, and mentoring online professional networks that provide support to authors who open their resources.” With a continuing emphasis on quality resources and peer-reviews, this organization has created a network of academics that can help identify textbooks and provides guidelines for others to produce reliable resources.


According to a UNESCO forum that was held in May 2010, there was discussion about acquiring some kind of auditing or accrediting systems like this since 2004. Although helpful ideas were presented in these forums, (read the summary report here: UNESCO forum) there has been no implementation.


Of course, there is no easy solution to this situation. Any new development will take time, but it is certainly a problem worth reflecting upon.


Rebecca Arnall is a sophomore at the University of Georgia. She working towards her B.A. in English and is an active member of the Demostenian Literary Society.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Questioning eligibility for US federal OER funding

By Jon Durden with Marisa Drexel


In the US, the government just made a huge commitment to the OER community. The US Department of Labor announced a solicitation for grant applications that will award two billion dollars in US federal funding to OER programs working to improve higher education.


The Department of Labor's solicitation in Section III. A., states, “Eligible institutions are institutions of higher education as defined in Section 102 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1002) which offer programs that can be completed in not more than 2 years.”


This grant solicitation is a sign that the government has decided to embrace open textbooks. However, I am concerned that limiting funding to community colleges may not fully utilize the whole OER community. Some four-year institutions have OER programs already in place. The Global Text Project working through the University of Georgia is such an example. Other institutions also maintain resources like OpenCourseWare and digital repositories. Are two-year institutions going to build programs from the ground up when there are strong foundations or programs already housed at four-year institutions?


In the grant solicitation, eligibility is available for “consortia” to work with two-year institutions, but that generates even more questions in my head. Will the OER community be able to work together effectively enough so that program development will not be redundant and the money will not be wasted? Or, are eligibility demands stifling the effectiveness of government money?


At present, it just seems unfortunate to know that UGA's Global Text Project cannot immediately participate. Maybe we will find out more collaboration soon.


Regardless of my own queries and GTP's interests, a government pledge like this is truly commendable. It aligns with the Global Text Project's goal to make textbooks available to everyone. If this sort of funding model initiates more interest and the promotion of OER (in the US and around the world), in the future everyone will have better access to higher education.


For more information see:

Department of Labor's news release (http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/eta20101436.htm),

Jan. 20, 2011 Creative Commons blog that included PDF program announcement (https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/26100)


Jon Durden is a junior at the University of Georgia. He is studying New Media and working towards an B.A. in English.