Open Learning Network

Project led by Candace Thille (cthille) and Jim Greeno from CMU.

Call for Faculty Collaboration: We invite proposals for collaboration with individual course faculty or with a group (such as the faculty of a program) who is planning or conducting an effort to use an open educational resource to improve the quality of a course or program of courses in a college or university setting.

We believe that productive use of an open educational resource in a college or university setting depends partly on features of the resource itself, but, also importantly, on how the resource is incorporated into a course or program of course, including how students’ work with the  resource is monitored and evaluated, and whether instructors’ and assistants’ interactions with students changes in ways that are enabled by use of the resource.

Our research goal is to develop a collection of case studies that will contribute both to the knowledge base for designing and adapting open education resources and to fundamental understanding in the learning sciences. We hope that collaborating faculty will contribute as coauthors of the cases based on their adaptation and use of an open education research in their teaching.

Project Mission and Goals: Establish a framework for evaluating and improving the effectiveness of OER in supporting improved teaching and learning in various contexts. Working with OER producers and users from the OCWC and other OER projects as participatory researchers, we will move several representative OER through the OER effectiveness cycle as the OER travels to a new context. We will organize a network of OER producers and adapter/users, who will develop and use evaluation methods, document the evaluation methods, the data analysis and design practices, and the results of the evaluation showing the mechanisms through which the OER supports improved teaching and learning and the conditions and resources that can support effective travel. In at least one case, we will conduct an intensive case study, as an example of organizational learning. In the study we will work with an OER producer and with faculty at an institution that adopts OER, studying the adopting faculty’s discussions and decisions in which they adapt, amend, and utilize the materials that the OER provide.

Goals of this research (both the producer/user network and the case study or studies) include gaining information that can guide the design of resources that can be provided to assist adopters of OER in successfully adapting OER for their local use. Candace Thille will coordinate the network and Jim Greeno will lead the case studies on the mechanisms through which the OER can support improved teaching and learning and on the conditions and resources for travel. The OER producers/users involved in this project will be awarded fellowships to support their participation.

Outcomes on the specific OER level:

1. Data on the effectiveness of the specific OER in supporting improved teaching and learning.
2. Data on the conditions and resources that can support effective travel of the OER.
3. Capacity building in the areas of evaluation and design for the specific OER producers and users.

On the network level:

1. A framework of progressive refinement for evaluating and improving the effectiveness of OER in improving teaching and learning.
2. Contribution to OLnet’s collection of evaluation methods, data analysis tools and design practices.
3. Contribution to OLnet’s evaluation data collection, including an example of a network that provides infrastructure for producers and users of OER to interact and benefit from each others’ experience and learning in adapting OER in local programs and practices.