Proposed policies to foster open educational resources and practices in UK higher

education

Paul Bacsich – Sero Consulting

OER14, Newcastle 29 April 2014

Just one slide on POERUP

follows....

Achievements

• Inventory of more than 400 OER initiatives worldwide – map to come

• 30 country reports (11 major) – and 3 more at least – all being updated

• 7 case studies including Wikiwijs, ALISON (Ireland), OER U (global) and FutureLearn (UK mostly)

• 3 EU-level policy documents for universities, VET and schools

• In progress: 9 policy documents for UK (England, Wales, Scotland), Ireland, France, Netherlands, Spain, Poland – and Canada

KA3 ICT

This presentation

• Summarises our ongoing policy recommendations for HE – localised to UK

• Within the wider context of formal education• Correlated to the European Commission’s

Opening Up Education policy recommendations

Prior policy context in and within UK• Wales: new! Open & online: Wales, higher education and

emerging modes of learning: Report of Online Digital Learning Working Group (set up by Minister)

• Scotland: new! Open Scotland Declaration: from a Working Group

• England: Report to BIS (Maturity of the MOOC) and UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report – even Online Learning Innovation Fund – and does anyone remember Measures of Success?

• UK-wide: newer! Current work by HEA consultants on updating Flexible Learning Summit report 2011 (chs. 3,4)

Flexible to open learning• Recommendation 1. Governments and the UK Funding Councils are encouraged to

consider the scope for developing funding mechanisms which support institutions in promoting greater openness in the pace, place and mode of learning.

• Recommendation 7. National bodies such as UCAS, HEA, QAA and JISC are encouraged to collaborate to produce separate evidence based guides for potential learners and institutional staff on open learning provision.

• Recommendation 8. The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and the Higher Education Academy should collaborate to provide targeted support for senior managers in leading the development of institutional strategies for opening up learning.

• Recommendation 9. The Higher Education Academy should support the development of higher education CPD programmes which promote best practice in open educational practices and pedagogies in alignment with the UK Professional Standards Framework.

• Recommendation 11. Senior institutional managers are encouraged to lead on effective resource allocation to, and realistic costing and pricing of open learning, taking into account changing market conditions, the new higher education funding contexts, the potential for income generation over the longer term and the need to provide value for money for all categories of learners.

POERUP Opening Up Education• Three sets of policies• Sector-specific wording e.g.

Bologna, ENQA• EU level but mainly as a generic

Member State template• Vary in applicability at MS level

(size, etc)• Focus more on OER but in a much

wider context• Evidence base possibly more

global?

• One set of policies• Uniform thus generic wording

• Mainly EU (Erasmus+ and H2020) with some on Member States

• Vary in applicability at MS level (size, etc)

• Focus on a somewhat wider context (of OUE)

• Evidence base more EU-focussed?

POERUP: Three types of intervention

• interventions that link OER to open access (to research and to standards)• interventions that foster important phenomena (including

access, cost and quality; but also others such as development and informed citizenry) that OER is said to facilitate • interventions that serve to reduce or dismantle the barriers

to creation of innovative institutions and innovative practice (including OER, MOOCs and open educational practices).

Recommendations A (#1–#7)

• Innovation• Accreditation of institutions (2)• Quality agencies• Competency-based education• Accreditation of Prior Learning (2)

Recommendations B (#8–#18)

• Funding (4), mainly EU-level• Intellectual Property (4)• Teacher training (2)• Further research

Innovation

The keybut only at scale

Innovation – innovative institutions

• Since the era of building open universities there has been little visible activity in creating innovative institutions (in terms of e-learning)

Whole institutions opening up education

Innovation – recommendation• Each home nation, within its financial capacity, should set

up a competitive innovation fund for institutions to set up at least one new programme each year with a commitment to “low-system-cost” accredited online education around a core proposition of open content.• OUE: Support innovative teaching and learning environments,

including through the use of structural and investment funds (ESIFs)

• OUE: Establish a European Hub of Digitally Innovative Education institutions... complemented by a specific European Award of Digital Excellence

Opening Up Education

Accreditation and quality

“Outside the rules”or

“Within the (new) rules”

Accreditation of institutions – new accrediting bodies and mutual recognition

• The Quality Assurance Agency should continue to work to uniformise the regulatory apparatus forall kinds and modes of HE providers (especially online, for-profit, from outside the country, consortial, etc)– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition instruments

for formal education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Master text usually based on Wales version

Quality agencies

• The Quality Assurance Agency, taking a lead within ENQA, should continue its focus on integration of new modes of learning and removing implicit mode-based bias from regulations– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition

instruments for formal education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Accreditation of prior learning• Governments should recommend to universities that they should

work to scale, improve and proceduralise their activity on APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning, in its various submodes) and in particular to accredit knowledge and competences developed through all kinds of online study, informal and work-based learning, including but not restricted to OER and MOOCs, within agreed limits.

• England should set up an Open Accreditor to assist small and specialist institutions to handle APL for students – other home nations should consider the value of OA– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition instruments for formal

education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

THIS INEVITABLY LEADS TOCompetence-based, not time-based assessment

• QAA should lead the European debate about a more flexible approach to measuring credit ratings of modules, less based on study times, drawing on the UK home nations’ experience with credit transfer, WBL, flexible learning and APL (both APCL and APEL): leading to the development of a Bologna-bis framework based primarily on competences gained not duration of study– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition instruments for formal

education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Funding and costs

Still neglected....

Funding mechanismsGeneral agreement with OUE but we recommend also:• Home nations (e.g. HEFCW with HEW) should continue to consider

whether there are programmes or specific teaching situations (e.g. first year studies, pre-university studies) where a common approach to provision makes sense across the sector, and in the light of a successful outcome to such initiatives, foster the developments of common bases of OER material to support such provision

• The Funding Councils perhaps via TRAC should look again at the cost basis for university teaching across all its modes, old and new– they may wish to consider the benefits of output-based funding for

qualifications when they next review their funding and loan schemes– HEPI study?

Other important issues

Intellectual Property/CopyrightTraining/Staff Development

Research

Intellectual Property Rights• Standard Creative Commons license should be agreed UK-wide.• Jisc and the Sector to consider whether there is need for additional

technological methods to provide more and standardised information on IPR to users of digital educational content

• There should be a UK-wide initiative to upgrade the level of knowledge of university staff on IPR issues, perhaps as part of some wider initiative e.g. on MOOCs so as to give context and applicability for the knowledge. MOOC?

• A team need to make a short study of the issues around the non commercial restriction and make appropriate recommendations. This is particularly urgent for England with its plethora of private HE providers and commercial links in the public delivery chain to students

Initial academic training and CPD

• The Higher Education Academy should encourage the development of online higher education CPD programmes which promote best practice in open/online learning pedagogies in alignment with the UK Professional Standards Framework – perhaps in association with ALT. MOOC?

• OUE: Support teachers in acquiring a high level of digital competences and adopt innovative teaching practices through flexible training, incentive schemes, revised curricula for teachers' initial education and new professional evaluation mechanisms

Innovation and research into the benefits of OER

• Working as far as possible in concert with UK-wide bodies (JISC, HEA, ESRC etc), home nation governments should fund continued research into the verifiable benefits of OER, with greater efforts to integrate such analyses with ongoing research on distance learning, on-campus online learning, and pedagogy– OUE: European Commission support for better knowledge

and stronger evidence-based policies (four detailed points)

Thank you for listening

Paul BacsichFor the POERUP policy team

Policies in preparation for/with England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Netherlands,

Spain, and Poland