Open Learning Network

  by  Karen Cropper 

Name

Dr David Wiley

Project Title

What are the benefits of OER?

Project Summary

David Wiley's visit was a relatively short stay that allowed him to read, think, discuss and write about his topic of what are the benefits of the openness in relation to OER.  During his visit he had a number of group discussions with academics working in the field of OER, including the OLnet team members and Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE) Fellows.

Dates visited OU UK

22-30 July 2011

Institution

Brigham Young University, USA

Biographic information

David Wiley is Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University, where he also leads the Access to Knowledge Initiative in the David O McKay School of Education's Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling.

David is founder and board member of the Open High School of Utah and Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge. David was formerly Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University. David has been a Non-resident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation's CAREER grant. David is also the Founder of OpenContent.org and was recently named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world.

Main Output

I’ve yet to formally publish anything from my time spent in the UK as an OLnet Fellow, but I have written a blog post as one of the outputs from that period, which is informed significantly by conversations with the brilliant and welcome folks at the OU, as well as past online exchanges with many colleagues in the OER community.

Outputs

• 3 blog posts
• Presentation at OLnet Team meeting and discussion
• Presentation at SCORE Fellows Meeting and discussion
• Video interview (in process of editing to be loaded online)

References

Wiley, D (2011), 'The Primary Challenge for the OER Movement', iterating toward openness, 10 October [online] http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2042 (Accessed 17 January 2012)

Wiley, D (2011), 'On OER – Beyond Definitions', iterating toward openness, 27 September [online] http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2015 (Accessed 17 January 2012)

Wiley, D (2011), 'The General Confusion Around “Open”', iterating toward openness, 16 March [online] http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1800 (Accessed 17 January 2012)

Update Since Fellowship

In January 2012, David was appointed Senior Fellow for Open Education at the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, also known as Digital Promise, a new national center created by Congress to research, develop, and scale up technologies that can transform the way teachers teach and students learn. David will advise the center as it develops policy recommendations through a series of white papers and works to establish a broader Digital Promise Fellows program. (See: sltrib.com)