One of the projects I am working to get off the ground is a research project looking at what attracts people to open education courses, and how best to fund them. This is an in-house project that aims to inform the move of the Certificate of Tertiary Learning and Teaching (GCTLT) offered by Otago Polytechnic into an open environment.Free, online courses
This project is in part inspired by my own experiences of facilitating the open, online course 'Facilitating Online'. It is also in response to a growing number of free, online courses such as:
- 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' (George Siemens and Stephens Downes),
- 'Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge' (George Siemens and Stephens Downes),
- Digital Story-telling (Jim Groom)
- EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education (Alec Couros).
This project will also tie in with the OER University project led by Dr Wayne Mackintosh, as well as the work carried out by Leigh Blackall: Open Education Practices: A User Guide for Organisations. And finally, this research will be a follow up to the study carried out by Antonio Fini, who looked at the outcomes of the 2008 iteration of the course "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge": The Technological Dimension of a Massive Open Online Course: The Case of the CCK08 Course Tools.
I am really interested to hear from anyone doing work in this area, or interested in the concept of open education. Have you carried out research into open education? If so, what conclusions have you come up with? Do you know of any funding models for open education? Do you know of anyone playing around with similar ideas that I could talk to?
Image: 'iPhoneography: By The Grace Of God'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43433634@N05/4795199901
No comments:
Post a Comment