#oersymposium2014 S2K MM Pant

"The impact of OER in the

education and training sector in

India: from content to an inclusive

learning ecosystem" Hindsight, insights and foresight!

Flow:mmpant.net/flipMOOC

• Drivers of the OER movement

• The Sharing Economy

• The OER Community

• The Indian OER initiative

• Expectations from OER

• Creating an OER ecosystem

• Capability Maturity Model

• Questions for research and exploration

• A big challenge

Drivers of the OER

movement:

• The story of OERs is the drive for liberation from

stringent punitive copyright regime to a Creative

Commons licensing system for easily sharing

increasingly more educational content.

• The 3Vs of Big Data, that is variety, volume and

velocity make this a very vibrant movement.

The 2nd Strand:

• But running alongside during the same timeline is a

track of technological developments

• of lighter, portable, low power consuming, access

devices such as Tablets, SmartPhones, wearable

devices and mobile Internet

• Crowd-sourcing, crowd-funding

Thingiverse for example:

• Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of

user-created digital design files. Providing primarily

open source hardware designs licensed under the

GNU General Public License or Creative Commons

licenses, users choose the type of user license they

wish to attach to the designs they share.

• 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines and

many other technologies can be used to physically

create the files shared by the users on Thingiverse.

The 3rd one:

• The 3rd track is adoption of innovative pedagogies of

• MOOCs,

• Flipped Classroom,

• Learning Analytics,

• Open Badges,

• Gamification and Storification

The impact of OERs:

• Is to deliver a far superior education and training

model

• One that develops, thinkers, tinkerers and makers

• Innovators, entrepreneurs and idea generators and

not passive job-seekers

Future of the OER Asia

movement:

• Has the potential to impact 4 billion people to

leapfrog to the new creative economy that works

with hands, heart and minds.

• Large scale manufacturing giving way to co-

operative sharing of ideas, knowledge and products

• Ever thought of a Chemistry of ideas: how ideas

combine to form new ideas ? All of Chemistry is

about electrons hungry for sharing.

Origins of 'the shared

economy' • The term "sharing economy" appeared in the mid-2000s,

inspired by enabling social technologies.

• One inspiration was the 'tragedy of the commons', that

when we all act solely in our self-interest, we deplete the

shared resources we need for our own quality of life.

• The Harvard law professor, Yochai Benkler, one of the

earliest proponents of open source software, posited that

network technology could mitigate this issue through what

he called 'commons-based peer production', a concept

first articulated in 2002

The Sharing Economy:

• The evolution of the social web, first enabled

programmers to share code (Linux), then allowed

people to share their lives (Facebook), and most

recently encouraged creators to share their content

(YouTube).

• Now many products and product services are part of

the sharing economy: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb

• Crowdfunding: Kickstarter ; indiegogo

The OER Community:

• Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay ' The Tragedy of the Commons'

delivered a near death blow to any hope from communities

working together, until the importance of the community was

resurrected by the Nobel Prize (2009) winning work of Elinor

Ostrom,

• Elinor Ostrom identified 10 factors that predict the success of

self-management arrangements: size, predictability, productivity,

resource unit mobility, collective-choice rules, number of users,

leadership/entrepreneurship, knowledge of mental models of the

system, importance of resource and norms/social capital.

The Indian OER initiative: • A national e-content and curriculum initiative was launched in 2008

to stimulate the creation, adaptation and utilisation of OER by Indian

Institutions, in addition to leveraging globally produced OER (

http://knowledgecommission.gov.in).

• The National Repository of Open Educational Resources

(http://nroer.gov.in), came into being in August, 2013. A repository of

digital media content (audio, video, interactive objects, images and

documents) mapped to key concepts spanning of the school

curriculum, as of May 2014 has more than 10,000 registered users.

The software platform hosting the NROER is based on MetaStudio

(http://www.metastudio.org) an initiative of the Gnowledge Labs,

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai. Its beta

version is to be rolled out in July, 2014 and developments will

continue over a period of three years.

The Presidential address:

• The Indian President Pranab Mukherjee addressed

a joint sitting of the newly elected Parliament on 9th

June 2014 wherein at para 12 he refers to MOOCs

and virtual classrooms ; the address also refers to a

national e-library to empower teachers in the

following words" In order to empower school

teachers and students, a national e-library will be

established. " This is expected to become the new

incarnation of the 'National Repository of Open

Education Resources' launched about a year ago

The OER MOOC

• As a non-government initiative, and by seeking co-

operation of like-minded evangelists, the LMP

Education Trust in August 2013 ran a 4 week

MOOC to bring about awareness of OERs. This

OER MOOC, anchored in India had experts pitching

in from several countries with about 1500

participants from about 90 countries and explored

not only Flipped Teaching but also Twitter for class

collaboration.

Popularity of MOOCs:

• Indian students of all ages have enthusiastically

joined the well known MOOCs from Coursera,

Futurelearn and other providers, demonstrating a

great appetite for such learning, but are a

phenomenon that I label as ' education for the

educated'.

Expectations from OER:

• These three driving forces mentioned earlier are

enhancing the impact of the OER movement leading

to an unprecedented disruptive transformation of

education that can deliver massive personalised

learning on the move.

Creating an OER ecosystem:

• Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) for

autonomous self-directed life-long learners, with

coaching and mentoring support.

• Open Teacher Development Forum (OTDF) for

accredited OER based Independent Educators.

Open Education can support teacher development

so that teachers do get better with time. Teaching is

a performance profession.

Learning resources:

• OERs,

• MOOCs, SOOCs, nano-MOOCs, micro-MOOCs and

mini-MOOCs,

• Educational Apps,

• and other nano-learning objects created, curated

and adapted by educators. Localised in language

and context.

Teaching Learning Models:

• Flipped Learning,

• Adaptive Learning,

• Personalised Learning,

• Heutagogy

New assessment methods:

• Assessment: Open Badges and Backpacks,

Learning Locker an open source Learning Record

Store (LRS) for tracking learning data, de-

materialised degrees/certificates

• Minerva model:

3 more components:

• Physical learning Spaces: connected classrooms,

learning lounges, OER Cafes

• Content access devices: Tablets, Smartphones,

other handhelds

• Mobile Internet access : wiMax, wi-fi, 3G,4G, LTE

etc.

The final 4:

• EdTech Support HelpDesk

• Cloud-based software, search engines, meta-data for

OER resources and database systems support,

including use of Big Data technologies

• Non-formal and life-long learning, including a school for

the 40+ for the second half of life.

• Social Media tools such as blogs and Twitter to support

collaborative and co-operative learning ( jigsaw learning)

The Capability Maturity Model:

Capability Maturity Model is a framework for progression to the

discipline needed to engage in continuous improvement.

The model identifies five levels of process maturity:

Level 1: Initial (chaotic, ad hoc, heroic) the starting point for use

of OERs

Level 2: Repeatable: OERs have been used several times

Level 3: Defined (institutionalized): OERs are part of Institutional

academic policy

Level 4: Managed (quantified): OERs are incorporated into

rewards, promotion nd part of HR systems

Level 5: Optimizing (process improvement) process

management includes deliberate process

optimization/improvement.

A few questions for research

and exploration: • What would be the right size of the learning cohort?

Very small numbers such as 20 would be

meaningless, as would be millions. Is a class of

1000 or 10,000 more viable. Maybe the Dunbar

number (150) is worth exploring?

• What is the best way to cope with linguistic

diversity?

• What skill sets must learners have to benefit most

from OERs?

Research questions...?

• What additional skill sets must experienced

educators acquire to teach effectively with OERs?

What must be done by way of capacity building to

assure quality in the OERs created, curated or

adapted by them?

• Are there programs that can be delivered entirely

with OERs? An MBA, and IT qualification or new

emerging domains such as ' Data Scientist'

Questions? • Can OERs be sustainable for long without a mechanism for

financial contribution by the 'users'. What would be the right

price( if any) for OERs?

• What should be the most appropriate technology platform (

including media formats and other standards) for mass

education with OERs? We have a natural inclination to

support Android on the handhelds rather than the others.

But many specific features to support Open Learning are

perhaps needed.

• Effective models to measure progress and evaluating the

success of these methods and processes.

the Challenge of Reading

Proficiency:

• While pursuing the reasons for the relatively low

adoption of online learning in India, a country where

almost everyone has a mobile phone and online

commerce is flourishing, I realised that it is the lack

of reading proficiency that is the fundamental barrier

to the adoption of online learning.

• Though OERs are not only about online learning, in

practice they go best with online learning.

The ASER Study

• At Std. III, children able to read at least a Std. I level paragraph

has risen slightly from 38.8% in 2012 to 40.2% in 2013.

• Among Std. III children able to read Std. I level text remains

unchanged from 2012 at around 32%

• The ASER reading assessment tool consists of 4 levels: letters,

words, a short paragraph (Std 1 level text), and a longer "story"

(Std 2 level text). The child is marked at the highest level which

she can do comfortably.

• Nationally, children in Std. V who can read a Std. II level text

remains virtually the same since 2012, at 47%.

And in the US......

• "The report also found that many young children are

struggling with literacy. Only about one-third of

fourth grade students are 'proficient' in reading and

another one-third scored below 'basic' reading

skills."

• - Huffington Post, Reading Report Shows American

Children Lack Proficiency, Interest

From providing access to

building capacity...

• There is a surge in STEM-focused curricula,

activities, programs and material for students of all

ages.

• Emergence of a generation who do not, or cannot,

read what is required in the classroom,will create a

compounded deficit once out of high school.

Future Focus Areas:

• to make every learner a better and motivated self-

directed learner, who can access need based

learning, with very few constraints or restrictions.

• to make every teacher a more effective teacher, who

is accessible to learners at remote geographies.

• to provide opportunities for life-long learners,

especially to have an opportunity for 'the school for

the second half of life'

A motivational quote:

• Never doubt that a small group

of thoughtful, committed

citizens can change the world;

indeed, it's the only thing that

ever has.

• Margaret Mead

Thank You !!

• mmpant@gmail.com

• www.mmpant.net

• Mobile: +919810073724

• flipMOOC.wordpress.com

• Twitter: @mmpant