Posted at the request of Paul West:
Christine
You have touched on a few interesting points. We need new methods of reaching more people and it will take more than one world project to accomplish this. There should be space in this “market” for many providers from free, informal, non-formal and every kind of formal education imaginable - from government to non-profit and for-profit. Lifelong learning is all very nice for all of us wanting to learn something, but a lot of people I meet want to get a qualification from an institution and they want that qualification to mean something when they apply for a job in another country.
The Virtual University for the Small and Island States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC - http://www.col.org/vussc ) is a network of Ministries of Education of the small states to help build capacity of national institutions to introduce new courses and add capacity to institutions. It should also help to provide for the transfer of courses, qualifications and learners between countries. Therein lies another of your points - the qualifications framework. Many countries have or are working on a National Qualifications Framework which is normally run by a National Qualifications Authority. With the VUSSC initiative, we hope to support the further development of national qualification frameworks (especially in countries where these are not as advanced) and to improve the transfer of qualifications between countries. The aim of the “Transnational Qualifications Framework” is to provide a translation point between national qualifications frameworks. This could help to reduce the need for bilateral agreements, thereby potentially speeding the process.
I injected the concept of an open version of qualifications standards to the expert team working on the concept and also with few ministry officials involved in these authorities. This open concept as an alternative to national standards did not seem to be a credible alternative. Not knowing who set the standard and having a standard that could change at any time seemed to be a damper. You can understand that national qualification authorities help to root out fly-by-night and vapourware institutions. Expecting a national government to suddenly accept a standard that anyone can change at any time without control mechanisms that they control, seems a little out of range - for now. I do think we will be able to create an open equivalent system that can operate in parallel. If it proves itself, it may then receive better consideration.
One thing I'm pretty sure of is that any major, world-wide system will need to encompass a diverse range of needs of very diverse partners. Insisting on sets of rules and setting strict requirements for governments and institutions to follow, is likely to stunt the sharing of OERs. We need to find ways to accept the differences in circumstances and needs of countries, institutions and individuals; trying to limit the ways or circumstances under which people share OERs may be seen as a power play (“play in my sandpit or I won't play with you”) and treated with suspicion.
I've heard said that we run the risk of OER sites becoming large vanity-press websites, storing content that almost no one uses. The quality of materials on some of the wiki sites may contribute to the skepticism of OERs, and that much of these materials will remain in various stages of draft, never receiving the attention to quality and finish that proprietary, institution-generated content might receive. The use of OERs already created depends now on these being found useful by those who the authors thought would like to receive them. Have the potential users already started creating their own OERs from scratch?
The success of the OER movement will depend on reaching across the borders and divides rather than setting up more divides. We need “go betweens” or “bridgers” that help teachers and learners combine materials with all kinds of copyright licenses and websites that make materials in open formats accessible to the majority of computer users without the need to download and install different programmes and drivers than the ones they usually use. Trying to get the majority of computer users to change software before they can use OERs may be another barrier; people seldom have the connectivity,skills and authority to install and change software. We need to adapt to “where people are” rather than insisting on people “changing their ways”.
Finally, the most repeated request I've heard amongst senior managers from small states has been to provide complete courses that can be customised rather than a range of resources that a teacher might find useful. This might be one of the most pointed guidelines to making OERs more useable.
Paul
Commonwealth of Learning
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