Open Education 2006

I'm here at the Open Education 2006 conference in Logan, Utah. The conference has some of the feel of a celebration about it as the sessions are reporting success with open courseware applications, observations of adoption and use at universities and colleges, and a wildly positive response from learners. In the universe of higher education, opencourseware has a small presence; nonetheless it is significant and growing.

Opencourseware is very different compared to the model of distance learning. Courses in opencourseware sites are free and open to anyone. That one fact alone would be sufficient to kill the idea in a business oriented mind, except that results of opening courses suggest that the model not only works, but makes business sense. Joseph Hardin made this point: the real added value of a degree program is the mentoring received by students. Opencourseware does not give students the mentoring experience, nor does it grant degrees or certification. It does, however, distribute knowledge, knowledge which can lift people up from circumstances that hold them back (like poverty, and who might eventually choose to get credit for their work - at Penn State;-).

What I am hearing is that:

1. Educators love it because they can aggregate and remix content from many sources to serve high quality content;
2. Institutions love it because it puts their best face forward to learners without giving away their most important assets, namely the student-mentor experience and their degrees and certification;
3. It is early in the movement towards open courseware, there are significant technological challenges, and significant cultural challenges.