USU Rocks! - COSL Conference 2008

I attended a number of classes on Thursday, as I was the room-dude. I learned something from each one. There were two, however, that were especially good.

 

Funded by the Hewlett Foundation, Yale made some very interesting decisions in producing Open Courseware.

First they felt their strength was not in a particular format but in the teacher themselves and their presentations. So they decided to record actual class sessions for an entire semester in 8 different classes. They chose teaches who were particularly popular for their engaging and unique presentations. This choice came with a unique set of requirements.

 

1) They needed to have a good planning session with the instructor. For the most part, the professors gave the time.

2) They invested in an expensive Sony Camera that also had a wireless two channel microphone pickup. Good video with poor audio is not acceptable.

3) They needed to do a run through with the professor, working out the logistical issues relating to miking them, where the camera would be and what kind of material they must NOT tape, to avoid copyright issues, and how they would help the students get used to the idea, so that the classes were as authentic as possible

4) The decided on doing transcripts of ever session, word for word. This required sending the video out to California to a group that returned raw transcripts. From there, they went through the raw transcripts and applied style sheets to them, and corrected details like formulas, etc. 

5) The included syllabi, text books and reading schedules, test sheet with answers. Basically, they wanted in every way to provide the most realistic experience they could. 

 

The samples they showed us were indeed of very high quality. There is no doubt in my mind, that anyone "taking" this course, would  get a very realistic experience. They have plans for more sessions of the same quality. Quality improvements for the next round include, close captioning to meet ADA requirements, a more economical way to process transcripts and showing more material that in the first round they thought might be questionable "license-wise". 

 

After doing a serious forensic cost accounting audit, the determined a cost of approximately $25,000 for each class. They stressed that this number was for them a VERY solid number. 

 

Of course, this approach, while extremely high quality, requires a serious funding commitment. Currently the plans for the University are to continue this approach only as long as Hewlett Funding continues. 

 

This was a theme that I ran into over and over again. it was one of the main underlying themes of nearly every presentation I was lucky enough to attend. Sustainability financially. I finally figured out what Wiley was trying to say when he spoke of the difference between FREE courseware and Open Courseware. None of it is FREE except to perhaps an end user. Just as in open source software, SOMEONE with deep pockets is always behind the effort or it eventually dies a slow death. 

 

Another question that kept running through my mind had to do with the production of the courseware itself. I kept saying to myself that the real ticket was to have a piece of software used by selected agreeable professors or teachers, that would allow them to create the content for their normal class teaching AND at a touch of a button, convert that same work to a professional and high quality open courseware offering.  Not even my own idealism would allow me to believe that every professor would buy in to using such a piece of software. However, hitchhiking on the Yale model, where they were selective in their approach, I CAN see that being selective in offering such a piece of software to a few, would yield enough cooperation to get the ball rolling.

 

I kept asking myself "Where is such a tool". The Yale presentation was the closest that I saw to accomplishing this. Their presentation included several great points that I think apply equally to USU. Since Penn State too, is a land grant school, they have been involved in  a form of distance education for a long time.  I think they mentioned it this way, "Research, Teaching, Extending the knowledge into the community. What they meant was that for years, the extension services of most Land Grant colleges have been in place to "extend" the information out to the people it was meant to assist, mostly in the agricultural realm. So the idea of modernizing this concept and "extending" the reach of the mission of the school, was not a hard sell. It was natural. Their original idea was to get professors or TA's to become familiar with "Dreamweaver" and put their courses together that way. The Dreamweaver files then were "wrapped" in official  headers and footers for Penn State and published.  Of course this idea had problems when courses needed to be revised. That meant a complete revision in DreamWeaver and then a complete rework of all wrapped headers and footers. The have now developed a new system that is coming on line shortly that not only does away with this problem, but also encourages tagged metadata to be embedded from the beginning, making searching, indexing and organizing much easier. IN the previous system, tagged metadata was so labor intensive it was often not done at all. 

 

Another ideal that is part of their system, is that they refuse to build dependancies into the system, such that if something crashes, the entire thing crashes. The all or nothing approach by so many schools, makes moving into open courseware a high risk venture. It is like betting the farm. Their approach is to try things, in small increments. Try experiments of this and that and see where it takes them. If something crashes, they learn from it and move on. This made a ton of sense to me, as that is how we always developed emerging markets in the company I left a few years ago. Always planting a few new ideas and growing them,  knowing that they might not all mature, but enough might  develop to be the next big thing 4-5 years from now. In fact, that is one reasons why our company remained viable for 30 years. There is built into the Penn State mentality a tolerance for potential failure, along with high standards for doing what it takes to make give the best chance for the attempt to succeed. This seemed perfect to me. 

 

After the presentation was over, while I was talking with one of the presenters, she brought up the point that  producing open courseware provides a very compelling artifact useful in the tenure process. I know nothing of what tenure takes, but I could see that if this caught on, it would be a good reason for promoting the development of OCW more generally. However, I still feel a tool is necessary that makes sense in the produce once, deliver many scenario. 

 

There were several ideas, unrelated to the classes themselves, that I pondered as I walked home to our apartment. 

 

PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT

One is the idea that people have a RIGHT to this courseware or to education in general. RIghts need to be protected and protection comes at a cost and that cost when not born by the people benefiting is nearly always unappreciated, undervalued and often become just more white noise. 

 

QUALITY

I noticed at several points that our own Mimi raised concerns about quality of the offering. One other presenter made the point that the wiki model for quality was too cumbersome and frustrating for the learner. The other option promoted  by the people from Monterey CA, was that materials would be submitted to their non-profit and magically it would be reviewed, revised and then go on their servers as available to anyone, including the original submitters. Their model requires that institutions "join" and those fees make the quality work possible. 

 

It seems to me that over the years a lot of assumptions about the quality of materials have been made. In our own YETC, we have nearly every textbook that is approved for use in the State of Utah. A board supposedly read each piece and stamps them with their seal of approval, OR such books are not allowed in the state. I am not sure even that approach assures quality. For me, I need to to a lot more thinking about the issues surrounding the topic. I have some experience with TQM, JIT and other quality procedures used in manufacturing. One of the most enlightening books was a simple one entitled "I Know It When I See It." When our books make it down here after our home finally sells, I might take some time to bring out my quality library, review some of my notes, and see if something there applies. 

 

SUSTAINABILITY

I mentioned this before. This issue if far from answered for me. I guess when you walk around campus and see each and every building named for some person, couple or family, you realize you are in a new environment. An environment where grants, donations, state funding and the like are the norm. And of course for much of the rest of the population, this isn't a normal way of life. So I can see that funding OCW through grants and other "free" money, could be considered what NEEDS to be done to bootstrap an idea. In fact, someone could probably make a long list of contributions to my life that came from such funding. In lots of ways, companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and our own missile company, Thiokol, obtain lucrative government sponsored contracts that to me almost seem like free money. 

 

Still, I have bootstrapped 3 companies from scratch. Undercapitalization was a way of life, and much was learned in the process that led to correct funding, usually through venture capital, if a friendly source could be found, or commercial banks, if a friendly one could be found. You paid interest on that money or gave away contingent ownership of your dream, in exchange for the chance to grow your idea. I have had a ton of ideas go by the wayside, because funding just was not an option at that time. 

 

The other side of the sustainability question, is that free enterprise has been somewhat dependent on a distribution system where multiple people used the opportunity for profit, as incentive to make popular their product. Channels of distribution have been the hallmark of our free enterprise system. What I heard of the OCW model seems to believe that giving it away, will grow it faster. I am not sure I see it that way. While I am still very open to learn,  generally people who give stuff way, do so to draw in other kinds of real revenue. Google, who in our day, have become the great givers of the free, to make a profit from advertising are the prime example.  In the future, we will see more and more their stuff, including phones being given away IF by doing so, the get another shot at advertising revenue. In talking with someone from MIT, they mentioned how counterintuitive it was for them to give the courseware away. But they too had an ulterior motive. Enrollment. And it worked for them. They have been able to track enrollment increases to the OCW effort they mounted. I tool 2 of their courses and said to myself, "Why am I doing all this work and getting no university credit for it? Why not just sign up?" 

 

So I am hoping that my mind will be led to a model where the free OCW leads to real revenue that justifies the effort in such a way, that funding the OCW future is viable. 

 

There are a couple of other themes I will get to later. I need to hit the hay now. I am not done thinking about this. 

 

Mark Weiss

Graduate Student in IT&LS

Utah State University

Every day is another GREAT day at USU for me!

 

Please excuse any spelling errors. My stream of consciousness processor still lacks a spell check module.