Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources

More information about Esther and the show tonight is at http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/esther-wojcicki-on-creative.  You can also log in directly to the Elluminate session from the link below.

Date: Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Time: 5 pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://www.tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Visit Classroom 2.0 at: http://www.classroom20.com

A recent study by the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) on faculty attitudes toward affordable and open textbooks reveals no surprises, however this information provides greater insight than existing anecdotal evidence. 

The results indicate that faculty need a greater diversity of open textbook choices than what currently exists in order to achieve widespread adoption. The report states: “Faculty expressed concerns about open textbooks as an affordability solution, citing, particularly, issues around remuneration for authors, protection of intellectual property, quality of the content, and overall accessibility.”

ChemWiki is an ambitious project to develop an open textbook for introductory chemistry courses using a collaborative-author Wiki approach.   Dr. Delmar Larsen, Assistant Professor at UC – Davis, acknowleges that “success of the ChemWiki hinges on the open access of a flexibly-built, rigorously-vetted online textbook.”  Nearly 300 faculty and students from universities and community colleges are collaborating in the writing, editing, and vetting of ChemWiki.  Upon development of the textbook, the ultimate goal is the ”formation of a fully integrated Internet system that once complete will, via an automated computer database, portion out personalized learning experiences and formative assessments for each student every week based on their performance and progress.”

Today, an essay was posted to the Publius Project on “A Brief Overview of Public Policy on OER from California’s Community Colleges to the Obama Administration” authored by Carolina Rossini and Erhardt Graeff of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

This excerpt from the essay challenges the recent open textbook feeding frenzy : “OER encourages and enables the open production, sharing of, and access to educational content and resources. This alone is a valuable societal good, increasing the value of investments made in education. But OER creates the opportunity for a more fundamental and transformative change: the move from passive consumption of educational resources to the formal engagement of educators and learners in the creative process of education content development itself. Thus, the core benefits of OER should probably not be conflated with cutting the costs of materials.”