Here’s something you probably never thought you’d see: a list of 100 colleges and universities where you can earn your degree without paying any tuition. Most of the programs on the list look legitimate. And yes, they all have some qualification criteria you must meet to get the free goods.

If open educational resources, open learning support, and open accreditation are just too hard, why not simply participate in one of these programs? After all, isn’t our ultimate goal to provide access to educational opportunity to those who go without?

Yes, but our goal is more than simply being free or inexpensive. For example, we need to remove entrance requirements, we need to provide rights to make local adaptations to the curriculum, etc. In short, we need to be able to scale open education to everyone. Even if there were no entrance requirements at all, 100 tuition-free universities will bless some people’s lives but will not address the larger problem. And the answer isn’t to build more free universities.

To borrow and adapt a analogy (originally a critique of AI) from Dreyfus, building universities to educate mankind is like trying to climb trees to get to the moon. Once you reach the top of a certain tree, you say to yourself, ‘this approach isn’t going to get me there… I need a radical new approach!’ So you climb down, find a different tree that looks taller, and begin climbing it. The trouble is, of course, no matter how many trees you find and climb, while each of them will get you slightly closer to the moon, none can actually get you there. You need to give up tree climbing and start developing space flight.

Another analogy I really love comes from Richard G. Scott. Speaking of the favorite Utah irrigation analogy of “getting the water all the way to the end of the row,” Elder Scott suggested that we should instead focus on getting it to rain.

What these analogies tell us about universal access to education is that we cannot simply scout out taller trees or increase the water pressure in our canals - we need to find completely different ways to approach the problem and abandon bankrupt techniques. And Elder Scott’s analogy reminds us that we should not hesitate to call on God for help - after all, these are His children whose lives we’re trying to bless.

The Open High School of Utah, the first high school to commit to using 100% open educational resources across its entire curriculum, has opened its enrollment application process and received its first application! I’m giddy with delight. If you know someone who lives in Utah, will be a 9th grader next academic year, wants the flexibility of attending an online high school, the privilege of being loaned a laptop for the duration of their studies, and the freedom to forever keep a copy of all the curriculum materials s/he uses throughout high school, invite them to enroll today!

And that’s why students rock is the title of a fabulous new post from Philipp describing the Rip Mix Learners project at UWC, which is supporting a very grassroots approach to open educational resources.

I’m starting to get a little bit worried about the rash of strangely written and borderline grammatically incorrect advertising slogans in the media. This is especially true of fast food advertisements. The slogan that bothers me the most is McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it.” I understand how dropping the g makes the slogan less impersonal and more relaxed, but the lowercase i really irks me. What’s the point?

Other celebrated and effective examples include Apple’s classic “Think different,” and their more recent description of the new iPod touch as “The funnest iPod ever.” Even the Obama campaign’s “Change we can believe in” ends in a preposition.

The worst thing about these slogans is that the television viewing public is exposed to them on a daily basis. Many of these slogans are not necessarily incorrect, but they violate several rules we try to teach our students in efforts to improve the clarity and effectiveness of their oral and written communication. I can’t help but wonder about the extent to which these slogans are negatively impacting the communication skills of the viewing public. The advertising industry seems to be on a mission to legitimize incorrectness.

The California bill I covered a few weeks ago, authorizing the establishment of “a pilot program to provide faculty and staff from community college districts around the state with the information, methods, and instructional materials to establish open education resources centers” has inspired me to do finally do one of those things on my “one of these days…” list.

As we drafted the language for the Cape Town Declaration’s Strategy 3 on Open Education Policy, I worked to champion the idea that ‘taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources.’ This is the line of argument that helped secure legislative funding for the Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance. This language and other great ideas did eventually make it into the Strategy:

3. Open education policy: Third, governments, school boards, colleges and universities should make open education a high priority. Ideally, taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources. Accreditation and adoption processes should give preference to open educational resources. Educational resource repositories should actively include and highlight open educational resources within their collections.

So now what is obviously needed is some legislation that makes these policies real! Borrowing and improving the definition of OERs from the California bill, I’m thinking something along these lines:

Open educational resources are curriculum materials or learning resources whose copyrights have expired, that have been placed in the public domain, or that have been released with an intellectual property license that permits their free use, reuse, revision, and redistribution by others without further permission from the original authors or creators. Open educational resources include items such as courses, course materials, textbooks, lesson plans, videos or podcasts of classroom lectures, homework assignments, activities, tests, and any other tools, materials, or techniques that have an impact on teaching and learning.

Utah’s public schools spend a significant amount of taxpayer money each year purchasing or licensing curriculum materials and other learning resources. Given the limited nature of public funding available, Utah’s public schools can become better stewards of public resources by making greater use of open educational resources. Specifically, in cases where existing open educational resources provide a viable educational alternative to traditional curriculum materials, these should be strongly considered for adoption by the schools and districts. In cases where public funds are used to purchase or license materials instead of adopting educationally equivalent open educational resources, schools and districts have an obligation to justify these decisions to the taxpaying public.

Utah’s public schools also spend a significant amount of taxpayer money each year producing original curriculum materials and other learning resources. In order to provide the largest possible benefit to Utah’s public schools, any time public funds are used to produce curriculum materials these should immediately become open educational resources and be made available for free use, reuse, revision, and redistribution by other public schools and the public at large.

Such measures will create real cost savings for districts and schools. These cost savings can be redirected back into the schools and districts in a number of ways, including supporting teacher professional development regarding the discovery, creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources, summer funding for teachers to improve existing open educational resources, and summer funding for teachers to develop new open educational resources.

I realize right away that a bill espousing these principles may be far too right-headed to have a chance of passing, but as I was recently reminded, “being sure you will lose the fight does not free you from the moral obligation to fight the fight.” And yes, I realize this isn’t the proper format, &c., for a bill, but I’m only testing the ideas at this point. And yes, the ideas in the final paragraph probably don’t actually belong in the bill.

Know anyone who might want to sponsor legislation like this in Utah? Let me know! I’m doing my own searching in the meantime…

The Open Movement and Libraries is a resource-rich course covering a wide range of open topics being offered this fall by Ellyssa Kroski. The course plan linked above is licensed CC By-SA.

I’ve been saying for months now that one of two things will happen during the month of October. Either:

1. John McCain will stand next to President Bush as the announcement is made that the US has finally caught Osama Bin Laden and that our military strategy has been right all along, or

2. Some xenophobic redneck will attempt to assassinate Barak Obama.

I thought that it would be kept a secret until it actually happened, but Palin seems intent on single-handedly inciting “well-meaning” folks into action. According to the Washington Post, today Palin managed to work up a crowd using the “Obama is a terrorist” angle to the point where one of the Palin supporters called out “Kill him!”

Why not just cut straight to the “L-word” (lynch), Sarah? I mean, clearly Obama hates America. Isn’t that what we should do to people who disagree with us and who have destroyed our 15 point lead in Florida? Have them killed by a mob? (At the same rally another Palin supported shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man from one of the networks and told him, “Sit down, boy.”)

If a so-called “normal” person incited this kind of mob mentality, they would be arrested. What kind of world are we living in here?

The full text of the California bill is available online here. Or, for your reading convenience, you can view it below.

BILL NUMBER: AB 2261 CHAPTERED
BILL TEXT

CHAPTER 671
FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
APPROVED BY GOVERNOR SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
PASSED THE SENATE AUGUST 21, 2008
PASSED THE ASSEMBLY AUGUST 28, 2008
AMENDED IN SENATE AUGUST 18, 2008
AMENDED IN SENATE AUGUST 12, 2008
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY MAY 23, 2008
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 16, 2008

INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Ruskin

FEBRUARY 21, 2008

An act to add and repeal Article 2 (commencing with Section 78910)
of Chapter 7 of Part 48 of Division 7 of Title 3 of the Education
Code, relating to community colleges.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 2261, Ruskin. Community colleges: open education resources
centers.

Existing law establishes the California Community Colleges, under
the administration of the Board of Governors of the California
Community Colleges, as one of the segments of public postsecondary
education in this state. Existing law establishes community college
districts throughout the state, and authorizes these districts to
provide instruction to students at community college campuses.

This bill would express findings and declarations of the
Legislature relating to open education resources, as defined. The
bill would authorize the board of governors to establish a pilot
program to provide faculty and staff from community college districts
around the state with the information, methods, and instructional
materials to establish open education resources centers. The bill
would define open education resources for its purposes. The bill
would specify that a lead community college district be selected from
community college district applicants based upon a demonstration of
its ability to accomplish specified objectives. The bill would
require participating districts to report program information to the
Chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges, who would
be required to report the findings to the Governor and the
Legislature on or before January 1, 2012. The bill would specify that
no additional state appropriation may be requested or provided for
purposes of this act.

The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2012.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:

(a) Open education resources are learning materials or resources
whose copyrights have expired, or that have been released with an
intellectual property license that permits their free use or
repurposing by others without the permission of the original authors
or creators. Open education resources include items such as courses,
course materials, textbooks, streaming video of classroom lectures,
tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used
to transmit knowledge that have an impact on teaching and learning.

(b) Community colleges need to take greater advantage of open
education resources, especially for basic skills and general
education classes, including, but not limited to, algebra, that use
course content that remains generally unchanged over time.

SEC. 2. Article 2 (commencing with Section 78910) is added to
Chapter 7 of Part 48 of Division 7 of Title 3 of the Education Code,
to read:

Article 2. Open Education Resources Centers

78910. (a) The Board of Governors of the California Community
Colleges is authorized to establish a pilot program to provide
faculty and staff from community college districts around the state
with the information, methods, and instructional materials to
establish open education resources centers. Community colleges
participating in the pilot program shall support program costs
through existing state funds appropriated for purposes consistent
with this program, or through federal and private funding. The
Chancellor of the California Community Colleges may designate a lead
community college district to coordinate the planning and development
of the pilot program.

(b) For purposes of this article, “open education resources” are
learning materials or resources, including, but not necessarily
limited to, books, course materials, video materials, tests, or
software, the copyrights of which have expired, or have been released
with an intellectual property license that permits their free use or
repurposing by others without the permission of the original authors
or creators of the learning materials or resources.

(c) The lead community college district specified in subdivision
(a) shall be selected from community college district applicants
based upon a demonstration of its ability to accomplish all of the
following:
(1) Develop and implement a model for the creation of open
education resources (OER) course content that is pedagogically sound
and fully accessible, in compliance with the federal Americans With
Disabilities Act (Public Law 101-336), by students with varying
learning styles and disabilities.
(2) Develop community college model OER courses and instructional
materials that meet the requirements of the Intersegmental General
Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) or of basic skills education
courses in English, English as a second language, or mathematics, or
that meet the requirements of both the IGETC and the basic skills
education courses.
(3) Develop a community college professional development course
that introduces faculty, staff, and college course developers to the
concept, creation, content, and production methodologies that enable
OER to be offered to students in community college classes,
including, but not necessarily limited to, all of the following:
(A) Substitutes for textbooks.
(B) Addressing issues relating to copyright, the obtaining of
permission for use of material, and other intellectual property
concepts.
(C) Accessibility for students with disabilities.
(D) Delivery options that incorporate multiple learning styles and
strategies.
(4) Create an OER information repository to serve as the single
point of contact for information about community college OER, the
public domain, OER courses and course materials, research and
production processes, and professional resources for creating and
repurposing OER.
(5) Identifying sources of adequate funding to accomplish
paragraphs (1) to (4), inclusive.

(d) Participating districts shall report to the Chancellor’s
office of the California Community Colleges, upon request, on all of
the following:
(1) The number of faculty and students who use OER in their
courses.
(2) The quality of faculty and student experiences with OER
compared to traditional courses.
(3) The grades earned in OER courses.
(4) The cost of OER course materials compared to non-OER
materials.

(e) The Chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges
shall report findings made pursuant to subdivision (d) to the
Governor and the Legislature on or before January 1, 2012.

(f) No additional state appropriation shall be requested or
provided for purposes of the section.

78910.5. This article shall remain in effect only until January
1, 2012 , and as of that date is repealed, unless a later enacted
statute, that is enacted before January 1, 2012, deletes or extends
that date.

As Jane reports on the Creative Commons blog, California’s OER pilot program has been signed into law:

Last week, a bill enabling the California Community Colleges to integrate open educational resources (OER) into its core curriculum was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger. AB 2261 authorizes the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges “to establish a pilot program to provide faculty and staff from community college districts around the state with the information, methods, and instructional materials to establish open education resources centers.”

Hal quotes me as saying that ‘introducing Open Educational Resources into the public education system is the most significant development since the establishment of Land Grant colleges and universities in the mid 1800’s.’ In fact, in my OpenCourseWars future-history, the federal OER bill is actually called the Third Morrill Act. I stand by this statement that OERs will be the most important development for higher education since the creation of the Land Grants, and I’ll go one step further and say that the widespread adoption of OERs by higher education and K-12 will be the most important thing that has happened to formal education since the advent of formal education.

You may think I’m blowing smoke, but OERs represent a mass-democratization of access that goes beyond formal education or even public schooling. Think about it - public schools are available only to (1) citizens (2) of a certain age. OERs, on the other hand, are available to everyone, regardless of nationality or age. As institutions adopt OERs and improve them they will contribute these changes back to the community. Like a feedback loop in a microphone and speaker, more and more OER of higher and higher quality will be increasingly available. Thank God that I’m alive to see this all happening! I’m truly humbled, and I hope to be able to continue to contribute to the advance of the open education movement.

A question Shawn asked in writing about social objects last week made me wonder… What if Facebook worked like Blackboard (or pretty much any other LMS)?

Imagine if every fifteen weeks Facebook:

• shut down all the groups you belonged to,
• deleted all your forum posts,
• removed all the photos, videos, and other files you had shared, and
• forgot who your friends were.

How popular or successful would Facebook be then? How popular or successful is Blackboard now? The closed learning management system paradigm is bankrupt.