22.1 Can oer really impact higher education and human development  (Page 6/13)

Even with highly regarded open courseware such as offered by MIT’s “international Internet guru” Professor Walter Lewin, [also see (External Link) ]

MIT itself has noted the limitations of this approach and is moving away from it with its residential students. [also see (External Link) ]

What’s disappointing to me about the OCWC and CTOED sites so far is that I did not come away with a clear sense of what kind of impact OERs are making. So, perhaps OERs will have a huge impact for some learners and be an incremental innovation in other respects. Perhaps there are some unforeseen, serendipitous events which will change its effect. But I haven’t yet seen any visible reasons to expect a huge impact. Has someone else?

BTW, I also disagree with the assertions that online learning in the U.S. “has not delivered on the promise of increased access” and has fared better for quality. There are now over three million online learners annually in U.S. higher education and probably over 12 million cumulatively since its inception. The majority of this has happened at community colleges, for which access is an integral part of their mission. How does this not represent an increase in access? While I think that online learning has finally succeeded in establishing a perception and reality of quality, IMO this still lags behind relative to its achievements in improving access. If online learning failed to deliver relative to some of its initial hype, the fault is with the hype.

7. christine geith - february 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm

Thank you all for your comments so far.

I asked this question on LinkedIn and there are some interesting answers there as well, see

(External Link)

Also, Stephen Downes noted the posting in OLDaily yesterday (External Link)

Answering John Sener’s questions about access - yes, the numbers are impressive, but when you dig deeper, they don’t appear to have resulted in any more degrees being produced in the U.S. (one measure of access) - you’ll be able to see our argument when the paper I did with Karen Vignare goes live here in the next day or so at (External Link) and to the international series at (External Link)

Thank you Steve Foerster for suggesting a look at the University of London External Programme - your idea for a consortia of tutorial colleges is a model to consider.

Leigh Blackall makes a bold suggestion and call to action for developing global competency standards - any takers? How about a pilot program - Leigh already has a start on tour guiding using the New Zealand standards at (External Link)

prawstho makes the case for a more robust infrastructure - even if it’s 15 years out - for further thinking here, the Hewlett Foundation report by John Seeley Brown, Dan Atkins and Allen Hammond has a high-level description of what they call an “Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure” (External Link)

Steve Ehrmann, gives us some good advice in the link to his paper - “ Technology and Revolution in Education: Ending the Cycle of Failure .” In it, he suggests 7 strategies for a revolution including #1 Form a coalition - “…campaign to build support for the necessary constellation of changes in curriculum, staffing, faculty development, library resources, technology support, and assessment.” I’d say by the way OER is shaping up, these things are starting to happen which bodes well for OER’s success.