iNACOL survey: An Inquiry into OER projects, practices and policy in U.S. K-12 schools
1. iNACOL survey: An Inquiry into OER projects,
practices and policy in U.S. K-12 schools
2. The group that conducted this survey is iNACOL, the International Association for K-12
Online Learning. iNACOL is a non-profit membership association based in the Washington,
DC area with 3,100 members. Its members include K-12 school districts, charter schools,
state education agencies, non-profit organizations, research institutions, corporate entities
and other content and technology providers. iNACOL and its Executive Director Susan
Patrick have been key contributors to the OER policy work in Washington, DC. Susan
asked me to come talk about some of the findings from the inquiry iNACOL made to its
members about their involvement with Open Educational Resources.
3. Plan for today
First I can discuss the goals of iNACOL survey. Then we’ll look at some of the trends,
policies, and challenges that were heard from the respondents in regard to their knowledge
and involvement with OER. After we do this, it’d be fantastic to hear reactions from you,
especially in offing some models from around the world in working to adopt OER in K-12.
4. Goals of the survey
The audience for the survey was state virtual schools, districts, and higher education
institutions that provide online courses. The purpose of the survey was to identify how OER
are used in online and blended learning programs in K-12 education by addressing two
overarching questions: 1) How is OER being used in K-12 online education, and 2) What
are existing OER models at the state, district, and school level? While there are varying
definitions of Open Educational Resources, iNACOL said OER are “openly licensed
learning materials that permit educators to share, access, and collaborate so they can
customize and personalize content and instruction.”
The survey was sent via email to 1084 of iNACOL’s institutional members, a subset of all
iNACOL’s membership. These institutional members are people involved in administering,
teaching, or working in a program that offers online courses, thus were identified as those
most likely to be using OER. As a result, the survey is not setup to determine OER
penetration across all types of schools or grades. Nor is it a scientific inquiry; for example,
nearly all respondents had at least heard about OER. We’d expect a much lower
knowledge of OER from a random sampling of K-12 teachers. Instead, the survey was
used to identify projects and policies in place and determine how they are working. Eighty-
eight responses were collected over a 14-day period.
5. whatʼs_up_oer?
prof_dev
$$$
models
oer_should_be
Many of the responses were interesting, and we’ve gathered them into the following
categories:
1) What do you know about OER and what sorts of projects and organizations do you
collaborate with?
2) What sorts of professional development programs and resources are there to educate
teachers about OER?
3) How is OER funded and how can it be sustainable?
4) What policies and models for OER are in place or being considered?
5) Looking to the future, where should we place our focus in OER within K-12 education?
6. What is the familiarity of
and involvement in OER?
In K-12 online schools, there is a high level of general familiarity with OER, and a moderate
level of direct OER involvement. Ninety-four percent of the respondents had heard about
OER, and 40% work directly on OER initiatives at their schools. Thirty-three percent of
respondents do not work directly on OER, but knew about OER projects going on in other
schools.
The most popular uses of OER in the schools were for distance or online learning,
curriculum development, and use of OER in blended learning environments. When asked
to identify OER partners from a short list that was provided by iNACOL, many respondents
mentioned MITE, (Monterey Institute for Technology and Education) a popular educational
non-profit in the U.S. that develops and distributes OER content and courses; CK-12, a
nonprofit open textbook publisher, and Connexions, a platform for OER content for k-12
teachers with over 17,000 openly licensed teaching modules. Respondents mentioned
other groups like Moodle, Thinkfinity, MERLOT, iTunesU, Edutopia, and others. One
interesting component of the responses was the fact that almost half of the respondents
said they don’t any partnerships or other relationships with organizations working to
develop or provide OER.
7. What kinds of professional
development are there around OER?
When we look at professional development for OER, the types and scope varied widely.
Some respondents noted that there are projects to inform teachers about OER, but that
these are not necessarily OER specific, and teach general technical skills and working in
the online environment. An interesting, yet ultimately unsurprising point was the ongoing
confusion about the difference between educational content that is simply online and
content that is released under an open license aligned with the definition provided of OER.
Perhaps training about how to implement and use OER could be meshed together with this
more generalized technology professional development.
Many respondents noted that while teachers want to know more about OER, there’s no
formal training or professional development for OER because there’s no funding to do it.
Some said that “word of mouth” is one way teachers learn about OER. Some teachers
were able to take part limited webinars, classes, or large group training programs offered
by their school or outside the school district. Some schools offered one-on-one help on
curriculum development and even in addressing copyright considerations in OER.
Some respondents said that they used development resources provided by hosting
organizations, such as through MITE’s National Repository of Online Courses. One
respondent mentioned a training handbook that outlines ways to find and incorporate OER
to create lessons, accompanied by a 2 day professional development workshop where a
portion of the time is devoted to teaching teachers how to find and create OER content.
Obviously this sort of professional development resource is the exception and not the rule.
However, it is exactly these types of resources, documents, and best practices guides that
could and should be shared as OER so others can learn about them too.
8. How is OER funded and
how can it be sustainable?
When asked about how OER projects are funded, 22% of respondents said they received
federal funding. Some noted inroads into exploring financial support for OER, such as
through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and Investing In Innovation
(i3) grant programs. Thirty-three percent said they received some state funds used for
OER, while 23% said local funds. About 5% of respondents said they receive OER funding
from foundations. Other funding sources ranged from social entrepreneurship, marketing
revenue, and even enrollment fee income.
As was observed with the funding for professional development, financial support for OER
spans a broad spectrum. This is complicated by the fact that sustainability is always on the
mind--there’s an expectation that after the grant money runs out the OER, those initiatives
should continue. This mindset could be tempered with more support for a long term vision
and reinforcement of the fact that while OER are not free to create, they offer downstream
financial and pedagogical efficiencies because they can be built upon and improved.
It was discovered that respondent knowledge about funding and sustainability mechanisms
is less than ideal. There needs to be better awareness of programs such as the Investing
in Innovation grants, and increased organizational capacity to partner with other groups
and even other states when the time comes to apply for funding. To this end, some
respondents noted that there is ongoing discussion to ensure that OER materials can be
shared within districts in their state. Such sharing would enable cost saving and efficiency
with not having to recreate resources across districts or even states. It was noted that
there is some impetus to do this via the State Common Core Standards for english arts
and math in the U.S.
9. What OER policies or models are
in place or being pursued?
As OER is still a relatively new issue, the survey found that there are few formal policies in
place for OER. Few respondents knew about pilots or models in the state for using OER
as instructional materials. Forty-nine percent of respondents said there was no policy in
place. Seven percent said that they have a “state or district policy,”, while 35% responded
“I don’t know.” Some respondents noted plans to incorporate OER into the state’s
education technology plan in the future. However, this may require significant outreach and
guidance. Other respondents said that their schools are looking toward groups like MITE
as a model for OER adoption.
10. Where should OER focus
be placed in K-12?
The survey generated some interesting responses about which types of OER would be
most useful in supporting K-12 education. The following numbers add up to greater than
100% because the respondents could choose more than one answer. Ninety percent of
respondents hoped for OER to be used as supplemental online learning materials, 71%
said digital textbooks to replace hard copy texts, 71% said use it for building open online
courses, and 61% said OER as a component in building better assessment mechanisms.
Some wanted to see an OER open learning object repository built, while others said OER
should focus on affordability and alignment with standards, such as the Common Core
State Standards. Others wanted to use OER to augment learning materials for struggling
students, credit recovery, independent study, college prep and tutoring, special education,
library tutorials, and to provide opportunities for students to engage in content and classes
that the school doesn’t offer. The general feeling was for supporting OER to be developed
as rich multimedia resources, including audio, video, and and interactive materials.
11. Whatʼs going on around the world?
Lessons learned? Policies to emulate?
-The conference theme for 2010 is OER: Impact and Sustainability; this track is “Open Ed on the cheap”
-I’m Open Policy Fellow for Creative Commons based in Washington, DC
-primarily responsible for supporting the OER policy community with analysis, explanations, metrics, and case studies concerning the benefits of open licensing for OER
-been working with various other organizations working to support the adoption of open educational resources
-general education about OER and Creative Commons for federal and state policymakers, teachers, and others
-iNACOL stands for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning
-iNACOL is a non-profit membership association based in the Washington, DC area with over 3,100 members.
-iNACOL members represent a diverse cross-section of K-12 education from school districts, charter schools, state education agencies, non-profit organizations, research institutions, corporate entities and other content & technology providers.
-iNACOL and it’s executive Director Susan Patrick have been key contributors to the OER policy work in Washington, DC
-iNACOL is also a partnering organization in the Gates Foundation Funded Next Generation Learning Challenges, which takes a progressive stance with regard to supporting Open Courseware and OER via grants totaling $20M
-iNACOL couldn’t be in Barcelona because they have their annual Virtual School Symposium in 1 week in the U.S., so Susan asked me to come talk about some of the findings from the inquiry iNACOL made to its members about their involvement with Open Educational Resources
-i’d like to give an overview of what we’d like to discuss today
-first I can discuss the goals of iNACOL survey
-then we’ll look at some of the trends, policies, and challenges that were heard from the respondents in regard to their knowledge and involvement with OER
-after we do this, it’d be fantastic to hear reactions from you
-and if you have any specific success stories, challenges, policies, and programs supporting OER at the K-12; it’d be beneficial to hear various approaches
-time for other questions or comments
-sound ok?
-audience was state virtual schools, districts, and higher education institutions that provide online courses
-purpose to identify how OER are used in online and blended learning programs in K-12 education
-addresses questions:
-1) How is OER being used in K-12 online education, and
-2) What are existing OER models at the state, district, and school level?
-diff defs OER; iNACOL said OER are “openly licensed learning materials that permit educators to share, access, and collaborate so they can customize and personalize content and instruction”
-since they were surveying online (virtual) schools, said OER can include: full online courses, digital course materials, online modules, e-textbooks, video, assessments, software, and other tools and materials that are used to support instruction
-funded in part by the Hewlett Foundation
-sent via email to 1084 of iNACOL’s institutional members, a subset of all iNACOL’s membership
-iNACOL said these are people involved in administering, teaching, or working in a program that offers online courses, thus were identified as those most likely to be using OER
-so, the survey is not gauged to determine OER penetration across all types of schools or grade, but simply identify projects and policies in place and determine how they are working, if they are effective, and how they can be extended if they are effective
-important to state this bias up front; not a scientific survey
-e.g., nearly all respondents had at least heard about OER; we’d expect a much lower knowledge of OER from a random sample
-88 responses were collected over a 14-day period
-what do you know about OER and what sorts of projects and organizations do you collaborate with?
-what sorts of professional development programs and resources are there to educate teachers about OER?
-how is OER funded and how can it be sustainable?
-what policies and models for OER are in place or being considered?
-forward looking, where should we place our focus in OER within k-12 education?
-in K-12 online schools, high level of general familiarity with OER, and a moderate level of direct OER involvement
-94% of the respondents had heard about OER
-40% work directly on OER initiatives at their schools
-33% do not work directly on OER but knew about OER projects going on in other schools
-the most popular uses of OER in the schools included:
-distance or online learning (84%)
-curriculum development (57%)
-blended learning (using digital OERs alongside physical media) (40%)
-asked to identify OER partners from a short list that was provided by iNACOL, many said
-MITE (Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, a popular educational non-profit in the U.S. that develops and distributes OER content and courses)
-CK-12, a nonprofit open textbook publisher
-Connexions, a platform for OER content for k-12 teachers with over 17,000 openly licensed teaching modules
-other groups like Moodle, Thinkfinity, MERLOT, iTunesU, Edutopia, and others
-interesting though was the fact that almost half said they don’t any partnerships or other relationships orgs working to develop or provide OER
-generally, the types and scope of PD varied widely
-Some noted that there are projects to inform teachers about OER, but that these are not necessarily OER specific, and teach general technical skills and working in the online environment
-general need for more training around technology for teaching; perhaps training about how to implement and use OER could be meshed together with this type of professional development
-e.g., as teachers learn how to use a wiki for a collaborative class project, suggest websites and techniques for incorporating openly licensed text and multimedia resources, for example from Wikimedia Commons
-also stand-alone “OER about OER” from organizations like Wikieducator, Curriki, Connexions, OER Commons, and P2PU that offer best practices for including open content into courses and lessons and also sharing that content too
-An interesting point was ongoing confusion about the difference b/t educational content that is simply online and content that is released under an open license aligned with the definition provided of OER--essentially that which allows for access AND remix
-while teachers want to know more about OER, no formal training or PD for OER because there’s no funding to do it
-some said “word of mouth” about OER happens; learning how to incorporate OER is up to the individual to learn independently, and spread this knowledge to other teachers
-teachers were able to take part limited webinars, classes, large group training programs offered by the school or outside the school district
-some schools offered technical assistance with using the LMS, some offered extensive curriculum development help, some offered advice and assistance in writing courses for blended/online environment
-some offered one-on-one help on curriculum development and even in addressing copyright considerations in OER--very interesting
-used development resources provided by hosting organizations, such as through MITE’s National Repository of Online Courses
-One mentioned a training handbook that outlines ways to find and incorporate OER to create lessons, accompanied by a 2 day professional development workshop where a portion of the time is devoted to teaching teachers how to find and create OER content
-obviously this is the exception and not the rule
-but these materials and PD resources could and should be shared as OER so others can learn about them too
-how OER projects are funded?
-22% federal funds
-33% state funds
-23% local funds
-5% foundations
-other funding sources ranged from social entrepreneurship, marketing revenue, and even enrollment fee income (OHSU)
-big question raised about where the money will come from to support OER, mentioned before in things like teacher training
-or even encouraging teachers to create and share educational materials as OER? shocking!
-just as we saw with the PD resources (and obviously related) financial support really spans a broad spectrum
-Some respondents worried about the long term sustainability of OER initiatives
-since they realize that there’s an expectation that after the grant money runs out the OER, initiatives should continue
-could be tempered with long term vision and the fact that OER are not free but offer downstream financial and pedagogical efficiencies because they can be built upon and improved
-not reinventing the wheel, not paying over and over again for that new edition of an only slightly changed textbook
-some noted inroads into exploring financial support for OER, such as through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Investing In Innovation (i3) grant programs
-however, the knowledge about these programs for those that need it is less than ideal
-as a result, application to these temporary pools of money--most only tangentially related to OER--are not widespread
-There needs to be better awareness of these programs and organizational capacity to partner with other groups when the time comes to apply for funding
-and also insist that OER be made a priority - the U.S. Dept of Education is thinking about making OER an priority in their discretionary grant programs, some groups commented in support
-some respondents noted that there is ongoing discussion to ensure that OER materials can be shared within districts in their state
-Such sharing would enable cost saving and efficiency with not having to recreate resources across districts or even states; novel idea!
-some critical OER is not a specific priority within their work environment, so many other issues on the plate within schools and that funding is being cut across the board
-need for money (via grants) to support teachers in the creation and sharing of OER, since it was assumed that teachers create the best course materials but have little time or resources to do this
-especially relevant because more teachers and administrators are disappointed with content offered by some third party providers
-not surprisingly, few formal policies in place for OER
-49% of respondents replied “none”
-7% replied “state or district policy”
-35% responded “I don’t know”
-also, few pilots or models in the state for using OER as instructional materials
-interesting were models like the Open High School of Utah, which in their charter says they use OER exclusively - see our interview with DeLaina Tonks
-Even fewer knew of any any state- or district-level strategic plans that incorporate or support OER as a means to improving student achievement
-Some noted some plans to incorporate OER into the state’s education technology plan in the future, but may require significant outreach and guidance
-Some noted that their schools are looking toward groups like MITE as a model for OER adoption
-which types of OER would be most useful in supporting K-12 education?
-90% of respondents said supplemental online learning materials
-71% said digital textbooks to replace hard copy texts
-71% said use it for building open online courses
-61% said OER as a component in building better assessment mechanisms
-using OER in curriculum planning and course development; such as building an open learning object repository
-using OER to augment learning materials for struggling students, credit recovery, independent study, college prep and tutoring, special education, distance learning, library tutorials, and to provide opportunities for students to engage in content and classes that the school doesn’t offer
-OER should be supported right now as supplemental materials and generally should be rich multimedia resources, including audio, video, and and interactive materials.
-should focus on affordability and alignment with standards, such as the Common Core State Standards.
-need better data because the time and cost saving potential of OER is not accurately demonstrated or measured yet
-supporting OER for ability to customize: OER can create a baseline upon which teachers can develop their content and upon which states can customize entire courses to meet the needs of specific populations, noting that digital differentiated instruction can be grown out of OER
-Some respondents were concerned about the need for a repository and or better OER portals for teachers; such as through the iTunes U interface
-Others wondered about the best platform for streamlining the posting and tagging of content