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OER stories/OpenER

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1 Setting the scene: the challenge
2 Actions and experiences
3 Lessons learned
4 Next steps
5 References/Website
6 Other OER stories

[edit] Setting the scene: the challenge

Mid 2006 we have started the OpenER-project at the Open University of the Netherlands. The objective of this project is that by offering short courses on the level of Higher Education users will be attracted to following a formal education on that level.

When the project succeeds in reaching her target, it contributes in fulfilling the Lisbon Agreement of 2000: in 2010 at least 50% of the working population of the Netherlands between 15 and 45 years old will have at least a higer education level.

The project aims to offer at least 16 courses, each of 25 study hours (about 1 EC) through the Web. These courses would have been assembled out of existing regular courses. It is all selfstudy course material.

This project has received grants from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

[edit] Actions and experiences

Because the faculties had to deliver the courses to the project, a first visit was made to all deans. Two deans pointed at two short courses already available, although there was doubt about the suitability of one of them "because it is only text without any interactivity. For this course, the Web is only a means of transport, not a learning environment". For the other faculties, the throughput time between this first visit and the first ideas with which faculty members contacted us was about two months. The two courses directly available gave us the possibility to find out a standard, convenient way of processing the material and the best choice of menu items for a course (we aimed at a small, standard set of menu items for each course). It also gave us the experience to find out what was needed to convert this source material into a format suited to be published through the Web. And thirdly, it should have given us the experience how we should have done publicity of these courses. "Should have", because the way we had planned it was a little different than the actual process. A week before the actual launch, an article appeared on the front page of one of the leading national newspapers. This led to numerous other newsitems, both in other papers as on national and local radio and television. This resulted in 7,000 unique visitors the first day, 25,000 the first week and, after the Dutch online newssite with most visitors (nu.nl) had published a news item, 25,000 unique visitors in one day.

One of the courses first published was a course on Java programming. For this, a programming environment (size 62 Mb) had to be downloaded and installed locally. This gave no problems on decreasing access times because of excessive use of bandwidth, nor resulted this in feedback by users, complaining about its size. The first month, it was downloaded about 7,000 times. Other feedback was for the most part enthousiastic. The most complaints came from visitors not using a Windows platform (6% of the visitors), because they were not able to install the Java environment (the Computer Science faculty has strategically chosen for using the Windows platform for their course tools, because the vast majority of their students use this). Until now, complaints of this kind were only received from users of the Computer Science courses.

One of the key issues of the experiment was the possibility to do a formal examination for some of the courses. When a user succeeds, s/he will get a formal certificate (value 1 EC (European Creditpoint, about 25 hours study)) that can be converted into study points when s/he actually will start some formal, official trajectory at the Open University. This part of the experiment was closely linked to formal procedures at the Institution, because of the official value a certificate possesses. It therefore needed some persuasiveness before this was actually made possible. Doing an formal exam is not for free. The user has to pay €50. Until now, only few users actually register for such an exam.

The system we use is the eduCommons system of the Utah State University. A lot of valuable support was given by people of the USU, including a full install from distance and several visits to the Netherlands to educate and support the system developers.

One of the features of eduCommons is to register yourself as a user. This did not give a user any added value, but we had linked a mail service to registered users. Each time a new course was added, registered users received a mail. This feature resulted in over 4,000 registered users. We will also approach these users with a survey at the end of the project. One disadvantage is the addition of several users (about 30-40) with no-existent mail addresses, although a verification mail is sended to verify registration. When using the

On several places, we have added short surveys. One general survey is about the background of the users. Each course also has added two different surveys, one type aiming at users who do not want to study the course (e.g. after reading the introduction) and one type aiming at users who do study the course. Goal is to find out more about the motives users have to come to the go-no go decision.

At this moment (November 2007), 18 courses are present on the site, mainly 25 hours duration per course. It is expected to end the experiment with 25-30 courses published. We have attracted about 450,000 unique visitors, of which an increasing part is returning (momentarily about 13%).

[edit] Lessons learned

Summarized, the following lessons were learned:

Using both a top-down approach (visiting the deans) and a bottom-up approach (contacting enthusiastic employees for delivering courses), supported by internal communication via the intranet (among which a weblog), helps in acceptance of the project and getting the material.
Having a board member as an OER advocate helps in cases of conflict. Because this experiment was set up as a project, I, being the project leader, had no power to force people to perform activities for the project. In fact, I am dependant on the willingness of people to join. In some cases this was not enough. The project father can pull some strings then to make things happen.
Not everything can be foreseen. The publicity in national press was coincidental, but gave the project a boost. This boost initiated a momentum that convinced the employees who doubted about the project, that this project was a good thing to support.
For contributions, I only expected a plan and an idea of the content. The way of delevering the content and the demands on the content were set free by me. This because I am aware of the high awareness of quality by the authors. Acting this way, authors were eager to deliver materials. In a few cases, material was created especially for this project. OpenER became a kind of experimental channel for them, which in my opinion creates a win-win situation for both the authors as the visitors (learners). For the future, this should be unchanged. The OER-site should be as loosely coupled as possible with the "regular" site of the Open University.
The different, approachable, ways people can give feedback do provide very valuable data. Most important are the findings about the use of the course material and the motives for users to (not) study the material. It is not the only means though to collect data. Intervieweing people or sending out a mailing to all known visitors are other ways that we will start with in a short time.

[edit] Next steps

The experiment was planned to finish at the end of 2007, but it is extended to mid 2008. After this, we will at least continue the way we are working now, so delivering short courses (about 10 a year). We will pay the expenses out of pocket. Currently, there are also consultations with several partners in education to broaden this experiment. At this moment, no further information is available about this.