Creating a Culture of Openness: Institutional Support for

Open Education

Tom Mackey, Ph.D.

Dean

Center for Distance Learning

Empire State College

Empire State College as an Open Institution

NEW UNIVERSITY COLLEGENEW UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

19711971

An Open Community of Learning.An Open Community of Learning.

experimental skillsexperimental skills

structure if necessarystructure if necessary

transcends constraints ofspace, place and time.

transcends constraints ofspace, place and time.

transcend conventionalacademic structure.

transcend conventionalacademic structure.

Former President and Chief Executive Officer Commonwealth of Learning

Sir John Daniel

“These dimensions of openness that were introduced by the UK Open University and Empire State College remained the principal expressions of openness in higher education for the next thirty years. Two dimensions – open admissions and distance learning – were widely copied and there are now millions of students in open universities around the world.”

Open Curriculum: Multiple Ways of Knowing

Open Curriculum

• Mentor-Learner• Individualized Degree Planning• Prior Learning Assessment

(PLA)• Guided Independent Study• Group Study• Online Study • Blended study• Residencies• Emerging open formats:

MOOCs, Open Courses, OERs

MOOCmania: Explorations in Connectivist Massive Open Online

Courses (cMOOCs)

“The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.”

George SiemensConnectivism:A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

“In a connectivist MOOC, people get out of it what they put into it,” said Stephen Downes of the National Research Council of Canada, a pioneer of the early MOOCs. “It’s something like a Yahoo group or other interest-based community. But it has a start date and an end date, and it pulls people out of different networks and plops them into a new one, which results in new connections and gets people hearing new voices.”

"Online Mentors to Guide Women Into the Sciences”TAMAR LEWINSeptember 16, 2012

Empire State CollegeMOOC

Dr. Betty Hurley Dasgupta and Carol Yeager

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/

Creativity and Multicultural Communication

• 492 registered participants (387 still registered)• 14 Registered for credit (13 completed)• 2 Registered in summer and completed• 136 tweets• 36 registered blog feeds• 78 blog posts• 36 discussions• 96 comments• Facebook group started by participants continues to be

active

Dr. Betty Hurley Dasgupta and Carol Yeager

Participant Feedback

• “Thank you, CMC11, I never would have started a blog without you (I always kind of thought they were silly), but I’m really starting to enjoy this and see it as a creative outlet!  So I guess the class has been quite successful for me!”

• “It felt effective and comfortable for me to work collaboratively with others through a combination of different Web tools”

• “I LOVED this course! … What an eye opening and invigorating course ... Hope there are many to come!”

Dr. Betty Hurley Dasgupta and Carol Yeager

http://math.cdlprojects.com/

Dr. Betty Hurley Dasgupta and Carol Yeager

Next MOOC for fall 2013:

#L4LLL Literacies for Lifelong Learning

(a Metaliteracy MOOC)

Mackey, Thomas P. and Trudi E. Jacobson. “Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy” January 2011 College & Research Libraries vol. 72 no. 1 62-78

Integrating Moodle/Mahara as an open platform for learning

Online Learning Environment

Migration from Angel LMS to

Moodle

Migration from Angel LMS to

Moodle

19

Learning environment design: Ellen Murphy and Kathleen Stone

Every learning activity in Moodle can be exported to Mahara ePortfolio

20

-Ellen MurphyDirector of Online Curriculum

PLA to support open learning and degree completion

Credit for Prior Level Learning – Empire State College

• Overall goals of grant project:• Scale PLA to 64 campuses within SUNY • Develop assessment structures to evaluate college level prior

experiential and emergent learning for college credit (including OERs)

• Recruit and train faculty and expert evaluators to conduct assessments

• Transcript approved college level learning• Conduct research on PLA practices to maintain quality and

consistency• Develop process to conduct PLA for non-matriculated

learners

Office of Research, Innovation, and Open Education

http://www.esc.edu/news/releases/2012/lumina-500k.html

• Phases and goals:• Year 1: Develop rubric and process for evaluating open

resources (OERs, Saylor open courses), internal faculty group, external expert panel

• Year 2: Conduct assessments in Humanities and STEM with internal faculty group and review by external expert panel

• Year 3: Summer Institute with 20-40 participants to share processes and assessments; build a consortium around shared assessments.

Office of Research, Innovation, and Open Education

Interim Vice Provost Robert J. Clougherty

From original Open SUNY proposal, Empire State College

Chancellor’s Online Education Advisory Team Recommendation

The Advisory Team recommends “Open SUNY” be officially adopted as the name of SUNY’s new online learning initiative. The term Open SUNY represents an opening up of the educational opportunities that SUNY can provide through the enhancement of existing—and development of new—online education resources, courses and degree programs.

Getting Down to Business: Interim Report of the Chancellor’s Online Education Advisory Team

• Increase student access, time to degree; completion• Chancellor’s Online Education Advisory Team • OpenSUNY Online Consortium • 10 new online Bachelor degrees in high need areas• Online opportunities at every SUNY campus (64)• 100,000 online learners SUNY wide in three years• SUNY REAL (recognition of experiential and academic

learning) to accelerate degree completion; 3 year degrees with SUNY REAL

• Built on “systemness” and integrating common systems throughout SUNY

1. Open SUNY Consortium 2. Open SUNY Degree3. Open SUNY Complete4. Open SUNY Resources5. Open SUNY REAL 6. Open SUNY Workforce7. Open SUNY International8. Open SUNY Research9. Open SUNY Learning Commons

SUNY REAL

• Recognition of Experiential and Academic Learning

• Links the academy to the workplace and to the community, and OERs to academic credit

• REAL assesses, others accept: use SUNY faculty

• Provides an E-Portfolio for life • Develops Open Assessment Resources

From original Open SUNY proposal, Empire State College

Tom Mackey, Ph.D.

Dean

Center for Distance Learning

Tom.Mackey@esc.edu