DIY OpenCourseware Evaluation
Skip Via made an interesting observation in response to my post on Visualizing OpenCourseware:
…the question of who values what seems to loom pretty large in any sort of comparative evaluation of open courseware implementations. If I were looking for a source for open courseware or myself, I don’t think I’d place much value on whether or not the structure of the courseware allowed for an integrated learning community. I’d probably just want to jump in, learn what I need, and get out.
Since the goal of my research project is to create a specific plan of action for CDE’s contribution to OpenCourseware, my calculations are based on the features that CDE deems valuable (as Skip noted). As a byproduct, however, it seems valuable to create artifacts that might be useful to others. I worked up a streamlined spreadsheet that allows users to identify their own values before rating an OpenCourseware course. See the preview here. The spreadsheet is completed in two steps:
- Read down the column of features and enter a value of 1, 2, or 3 into the first yellow column to signify how important each feature is to you. (Three is high).
- Locate an OpenCourseware course that you wish to review, and enter 0, 1, or 2 into each row of the second yellow column. Zero indicates that the feature does not exist in the course, 2 indicates that the feature is fully implemented, and 1 represents a partial implementation.
The spreadsheet will calculate the quality of the OCW course based on the criteria you established with your customized value system. If you’d like a copy of the spreadsheet, leave a request in the comment field, or send me an e-mail (carol.gering [at] uaf.edu).
Addressing the question of why CDE values the Community of Learners so highly… well, that’s a topic for another blog post altogether!
This is a terrific idea, Carol. I hope I didn’t create additional work for you, as I thought your original evaluation was thorough and thoughtful. But we don’t all hold the same values. If I felt like I had to be part of a learning community and that that community might hold me back or cause me to investigate questions that didn’t interest me, I’d probably look elsewhere.
I’d love to see a copy of the spreadsheet.
Comment by Skip Via — September 26, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Buried in these questions is a lot of underlying philosophy. There are hundreds– maybe thousands– of places that are creating open ed resources that are not designed to create rich, end-to-end experiences and which do not challenge the learner, reinforce learning, and promote higher-order skills and abilities in ways that being part of a community can. I see nothing particularly interesting in providing resources for the hit-and-run, snatch-and-grab kind of learning/information access. For one thing, that’s a heck of a lot like corporate training, which is profoundly uninteresting to me! More importantly, it’s been done a lot and is being done still more by many others. I’m interested in providing something rich and deep for independent learners just as I provide that in the classroom. Skip’s objection, such as it is, is meaningless to me in this context just as it is irrelevant if a student voices that opinion in the face-to-face classroom.
There’s a lot of philosophy tangled up in here… why should I care if a student doesn’t want to be a part of a learning community any more than I should care if they do or don’t want exams, presentations, tests, or papers? It’s my experience that there is a sizable group of students that complain about– and even resent– being challenged in ways that I believe are fundamental to a quality learning experience and that ultimately benefit them. And what does one feel distinguishes an information resource from an educational one? Open materials are, so far, vastly focused on the former. Which stands to reason since it’s easier and it requires lower expectations all the way around. I was gratified to hear that the winds of change were blowing at the recent Open Ed conference w/r/t these very issues.
Comment by Chris L — September 26, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
Another way of putting this is that CDE is not likely to be making materials that would be targeting Skip, so I don’t see it as a flaw that your research reflects those priorities (if the list of characteristics is useful to others, that’s good, but that’s not the meaty part of what you’ve done).
But that’s OK– almost no one is serving the audience we are thinking about; there are scores making the kind of thing Skip appears to be looking for.
Comment by Chris L — September 26, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
One of our basic problems–as I see it–is finding a way to motivate community in an open courseware environment. I agree that learning community has potential for providing a better learning experience for independent learners. But as you observe, Chris, many students complain and even resent that type of challenge. In the classroom, we overcome resistance with the motivation of grades. With open courseware, we don’t have that leverage. That’s one element that makes our vision of open courseware so challenging.
Comment by carol — September 27, 2008 @ 1:06 am
And that’s not the most significant problem by any means. However, I don’t know that we should care about addressing it in the first place. Unlike traditional students, I would maintain that we can accept that motivation as a given. We aren’t in a position to *need* to motivate. If a student is resistant to the challenge, they can stop or find something else– we aren’t losing and neither are they.
An analogy would be publishing sheet music. Many publishers don’t choose to put in tablature or other things of simplified notation that make it easy for a certain kind of player on a certain kind of instrument to use. Their market isn’t that casual player, but someone who wants and needs the full expressiveness and subtlety of the more complete product.
But you don’t see them trying to motivate, entice, coerce, or persuade people to use their system in the way it sounds like you are talking about motivating potential users of an open education course. Those users are simply a different market.
I don’t see what we would lose if unmotivated students don’t use the materials, unlike learners in a classroom, where both parties are, in effect, punished. From a marketing standpoint having too-rich and too-demanding courses would probably be a good thing (in that perverse marketing way).
I suspect there are some ways to work on motivation– and from another angle, support– that might be more or less relevant for different courses. For instance, I haven’t anywhere been talking about the courses designed to comfort and prepare a user for the real thing on campus, in which case support and guidance are more critical…
Comment by Chris L — September 27, 2008 @ 1:26 pm