It’s About Access, Right?
One of our goals at Penn State is to increase access to online courses, programs, and services for a broad spectrum of students, including students confronting barriers related to disabilities. In fact, as is the case with many distance education providers, access has historically been at the very center of the World Campus’s purpose and self-identify.  Online education may provide a perfect opportunity for students dealing with barriers related to mobility; however, for other kinds of disabilities, online learning may actually present barriers of other kinds. You may be surprised to discover that copyright considerations may complicate serving students with disabilities.

Accommodation is a Feature of Access
As we incorporate larger amounts and more diverse kinds of media in online courses, related considerations may include how to achieve the necessary accommodations when a student with a disability needs access to the course materials. Text is pretty easy, but online courses may utilize music, video, and graphic files offered in various file formats, including streaming media; textbooks (including e-texts) and online resources provided by publishers and others; and learning management systems, WIKIs, blogs, and software to support real-time interactions. A typical accommodation needed by a student with a disability may include one or more of the following:

• close-captioning of video,
• transcription of audio,
• accessible versions of course textbooks and other ancillary materials, and/or
• more time on timed items (such as quizzes or exams).

Are the media and tools you are hosting and/or linking to accessible? If not, can they be made accessible upon request?  What are the substantive barriers to quickly and effectively meeting the needs of learners who require accommodation?

Copyrights and Accommodations
Although there are numerous technical and financial challenges to making course content accessible, the implications of the restrictive copyright that comes along with the use of proprietary content may present challenges that are frequently overlooked.  Various forms of accommodation require the creation and distribution of derivative works, which is a restriction that comes along with the default copyright license.  On the up side, the materials in question may include intellectual property created and owned by the faculty member and/or educational organization offering the course, in which case you and the learner may be lucky, relatively speaking.  If you had the foresight to create accessible versions of all course media, you are home free. If not, your primary questions may be simply how to find the resources and tools to create accessible versions of these items in a timely fashion, which is a technical and financial issue.

However, a typical online course may also include third-party intellectual property, not owned by the institution offering the course, and potentially offered via media not controlled or supported by the offering institution. What special copyright considerations apply?

What About the TEACH Act?
The TEACH Act (TEACH Act Toolkit and PSU TEACH Act site) allows educational providers meeting certain criteria to host on their course Web sites some media in their entirety, and limited selections of other types of media, to enrolled students provided certain requirements are met. These requirements include limiting access to the material to registered students for the duration of a class session (defined by many as the entire semester of offering), providing appropriate notices and making available access to copyright resources, and making a good-faith effort to provide the material in a format that students cannot retain after the class has concluded.

Thus you may under the TEACH Act provide streamed movie clips, documents in PDF format with save features disabled, and graphics in a watermarked or reduced-quality format. Are these items accessible? If not, can they be made accessible upon request? And does the law allow you to provide the more accessible version (for example, a transcript of an audio or video segment) to all of the students in the course (who may also realize significant benefit from such items), or only to those students who can document a relevant disability need?

Access Accommodation & the “Web” of Content
Have you thought about the third-party materials that you may link to in a course, as well? If you link to a news article, an online film or music clip, or YouTube video, what will your strategy be for providing accessibility to students who need it? In some cases, ownership of the linked item may be unclear, and the rights surrounding its use even muddier. On the Web, some providers take care to make accessible versions of items available; sadly, most do not. So you may find yourself in the unenviable position of taking on responsibility for creating an accessible derivative work of an item you do not own and have previously chosen not to host within the course.

Another (perhaps better) option may be for your organization to skip the copyright quagmire and make the choice to use only open resources for which rights are clear and access does not need to be restricted. Such an approach may seem limiting in the short term, but in the long term (for example, when serving students confronting accessibility challenges, and muddling through questions of copyright and liability), you may be the one having the last laugh!

Proceed with Caution!
As with many copyright questions, the best answer to what is legal is: “whatever your organization’s lawyers are prepared to defend.” So, fellow online course providers: please consult your lawyers, and good luck in working through the legal and logistical considerations related to providing accessible versions of third-party materials – both those imbedded within and those linked-to within your online courses.

We’ve chosen in this posting to ask but not answer a number of questions related to access and accommodation. The last question that we would like to put on the table has to do with the potential for OER to simultaneously enhance access and reduce the need to proceed with caution. The reality is that in the online environment, we frequently learn about accommodation requests at the last minute, and in some courses the implications can be far-reaching.  What can we do to leverage the potential of OER to increase our agility while meeting the needs of learners and faculty?

Next week, on January 28, the Penn State World Campus island in Second Life will officially open.  Our space in Second Life has already allowed us to connect with students, staff and faculty from World Campus and other Penn State campuses.  We have hosted a virtual tailgate during All University Day at Penn State, we’ve gathered together to watch a live webcast of the Penn State homecoming parade, and we’ve listened to amazing live musicians at benefit concerts for the Penn State Dance Marathon - and we haven’t even officially opened yet!

Providing this virtual space for our campus allows us an additional opportunity to build community among our students, faculty, and staff. Just as students gather together in student centers on our residential campuses, they can now do the same on our virtual campus.  I’ve met prospective students, graduate students, undergraduate students and alumni on our Second Life island.  Each and every time I meet someone new, I’m reminded just how powerful meeting and connecting with others can be in this sort of environment.

Our goal in creating this space in Second Life is to connect our students outside the classroom so that we can begin to build a community of engaged, active learners who feel connected not only to the experience, but to the university.  Distance education students can feel disconnected and at times less a part of the university than their counterparts who may be studying on a residential campus, but using tools like Second Life, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, we can begin to give them different ways to connect with us, and with each other.

If you are in Second Life and available next Wednesday, January 28, please come and say hello! We’ll be at “PSU World Campus” in Second Life and we’d love to meet you.

When the Open University (OU) in the UK was founded in 1969, ‘open’ had a rather specific meaning in education. It meant open access, and this was realised through part time study and open entry. In choosing the term ‘Open’ the university’s founders chose wisely as it is a term which has, if anything, gained in currency. When we think of openness in education now we probably think of open source software, open educational resources, open APIs, open journals, etc. In this post I want to highlight how the OU is embracing these different forms of openness, and to make the argument that it is doing so through technology projects. In this sense, openness is not just a technical or pedagogic decision even, but rather a fundamental mindset, and one which we need to continually reinterpret in the light of changing technology and society.

I will concentrate on the project I am currently directing, SocialLearn, which aims to build a social network for learning. This project comes on the back of two other major OU ventures, namely the OU adoption of the open source platform Moodle as its learning management system, and the OU’s Hewlett Foundation funded open educational resource initiative, OpenLearn. My colleague Andy Lane will talk about the latter in detail in his post, which will be posted on this blog soon after mine. The adoption of Moodle was significant for the OU for two main reasons: firstly, it signaled to the education community that we believed open source was a robust and sensible option; secondly, it gave out a strong message that the OU was still current and willing to take risks. In this sense it was as much a political decision as a technical one.

SocialLearn is the latest in these types of initiatives. Its aim is to develop a social network for learners, which is based around an open API, thus allowing any application to write to it. In this sense it could be one form of the almost mythical ‘eduglu’ that binds together a range of third party applications to create a Personal Learning Environment. What is perhaps more intriguing, though, is what will happen when we can mine the social graph data to help structure a learner’s experience. When a learner creates a goal, similar goals, relevant resources, and potential third party offerings (eg mentorship, tuition, formal courses) can all be assembled. The system, in effect, can do much of the filtering process that is currently performed by an educator (although it does not seek to provide the support or expertise of the educator, filtering is only one function). The potential of this is that the currently top-down, restricted curriculum is democratised. People learn about whatever is of interest to them - in effect we have an open curriculum.

Currently the project is under development, with a beta launch planned for early 2009. As well as the technical development, which is being informed by pedagogic theory, the project is also developing new business models, on the assumption that truly open education will need to find sustainable models, if the conventional funding from governments does not apply. The project is seeking to understand how socially data driven learning can be used to support alumni, informal (or leisure) learners, and those seeking career development. The current support and accreditation practices we have in higher education will need to be rethought to meet the needs of these groups in society at large and SocialLearn can be viewed as the OU’s means of understanding, and influencing, these changes.

In undertaking all three of these projects the OU is seeking to remain relevant in a rapidly changing society. The projects are both a means of developing a new profile, but also of understanding how learners behave and what their needs are in a digital society. But they can also be seen as a means of reinterpreting what open means - from Moodle we have come to understand how to operate in a large open source community and from OpenLearn we have investigated what an open approach to content means, both for the institution and learners. From SocialLearn we hope to understand what openness means in terms of subject area, technology and business models.

I’ve presented these endeavours as a positive action, but they are not without risks or significant issues. Is a university the best place to create a social network site? Does this type of activity lead to the commercialisation of education, or is it a response to it? Can learners really learn effectively in this manner? Does it mean learners are challenged less during the learning process?

In thinking about the issues, my general view is that higher education needs to adapt to remain relevant to a society which is changing rapidly. I want to avoid accusations of technological determinism by suggesting that digital technologies themselves are changing society, but they are facilitating new types of behaviour and communication. As Clay Shirky says in Here Comes Everybody, ‘when we change the way we communicate, we change society.’ But, I do have a concern that if we begin to disaggregate higher education, we will lose some of the subtle benefits the existing model provides to learners, educators and society itself. Although I feel that the OU, and other educators around the world are right to pursue these new models, occasionally the words of British singer/songwriter Billy Bragg come to mind: “The temptation to take the precious things we have apart, to see how they work, must be resisted, for they never fit together again.”

Penn State University recently celebrated “All University Day”.  This day brings together students from all of Penn State’s campuses and recognizes those students and campuses during the halftime celebration of a Penn State football game.  Penn State World Campus participated in this event and ten of our amazing students traveled from their homes in Texas, California, South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with us here at Penn State’s University Park campus.

Our students arrived on Friday afternoon and evening and we welcomed them with a tailgate featuring local BBQ, great conversation, and the opportunity to mingle and meet World Campus staff members and the Nittany Lion himself.  Saturday’s events consisted of a rehearsal for the halftime celebration, a tailgate for all the participants, and a fantastic football game between Penn State and Illinois that evening.

This year’s event also featured something else - a virtual component. For the first time, All University Day was also celebrated in a virtual world.  Penn State World Campus now has a private area in the virtual world of Second Life and the All University Day celebration there consisted of a virtual tailgate, guided tours, a live musical performance from a former World Campus student, and the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to meet and mingle with each other.  Throughout the course of the day, visitors included Penn State faculty members, staff members, World Campus students, prospective students who were considering attending Penn State, and Penn State graduates. It was truly an amazing day and wonderful experience.  Hours after the “official” event concluded in Second Life, several staff members and students remained watching the Penn State vs. Illinois football game online while discussing the game with others in Second Life.

Second Life and education have been hand-in-hand for years and this environment certainly provides us with the opportunity to experience our learning in ways not possible in the physical world.  These virtual spaces are not limited to classes, however, and Penn State World Campus plans to use Second Life as a way to provide our students with a way to connect with their education in a very different way.  Online students face different challenges than resident students not the least of which is developing a sense of belonging and pride in their campus experience.  Creating a virtual campus space for our students is the first step in personalizing online education, unlocking the power of informal learning and connections, and building a community of learners.  We’re looking forward to meeting you there.

-Shannon

This is what happens when thoughtful people start seriously exploring a concept. I recently came across Pat Masson’s Mastering Openness Project, which serves not only as a brilliant play on words, but as a combination journal, portfolio, workspace, and open collaboratory for his entire Masters program. Incidentally, his program focus is on the topic of Openness and his study is online at Empire State College. He outlines why he is mastering openness where he provides a little of his rationale for opening his studies and some background information. Note that everything that goes up is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Honestly, for me, this reinforces my faith in what many of us have been writing and reading about. Not only will Pat’s approach to his studies provide insights into online learning, generate open content, and potentially illustrate the value of open learning, but it really signals a new way of articulating educational processes. Oh yeah, he is also helping to define a new academic discipline – “Openness Studies.” This development leaves me excited because it is much more than OER, it is about open creation and points to something akin to Generative Open Education.

So as this unfolds, I see this as a great learning opportunity. I already find myself asking all sorts of questions.

• What if we consciously developed program curricula and designed courses around the assumption of “Openness?”
• How would we prepare faculty, students, and learning designers to facilitate “Generative Open Education?”
• If even 1 of every 1000 learners Opened their studies in this manner, what would that mean for our communal stock of OER and would it increase the value of the OER that is already available?

Feel free to share what you think. You will note too when you visit Pat’s Opening My Masters site, there are all sorts of opportunities to contribute, which I take to be an open invitation.

I want to welcome Martin Weller and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software and Open Educational Resources on Education series on Terra Incognita.  Martin will be discussing the SocialLearn project, which is the Open University’s attempt to create an open API-based social networking system for learning. He will look at some of the motivations behind the project, what it hopes to achieve and how the technology is being used as the medium through which the institution itself comes to understand the changes happening in society and in education as a result of digital technologies.

Martin Weller serves as a Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. He chaired the OU’s first major online course with 15,000 students, was the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Project Director and is now Director of the SocialLearn project. His interests are in elearning, web 2.0 and the implications of new technologies for higher education. He blogs at The Ed Techie.

I have been following Martin’s work for some time through reputation and through his many open blog contributions.  I am very excited about having Martin contribute to the Impact series and look forward to some active participation and development of dialog.  Martin’s post is scheduled for October 15, 2008.  Please feel free to comment (early and often!), ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.

I want to announce 3 authors who will be posting in 2008 as part of the Impact of OSS & OER on Education Series. I am excited that Martin Weller, Cole Camplese, and Andy Lane have agreed to share their insights and time with our community on Terra Incognita. Feel free to mark these dates:

• October 15th: Martin Weller of the SocialLearn project (among other things) with the Open University UK
• November 5th: Cole Camplese of Penn State’s Educational Technology Services
• November 26th: Andy Lane of OpenLearn with the Open University UK

It struck me though, as I was putting this announcement together, that the Series title is becoming just a little dated. It seems that many of our recent postings and those coming up during the next months will be addressing issues about some emergent quality that happens at the intersection of education, learning, and open access, with OSS and OER providing some spoken and many unspoken principles that might guide behavior. If anybody has thoughts or suggestions for a better Series title, please feel free to share.

Well it is not exactly uncharted waters, but I do think that Kent State’s plan to pay bonuses to faculty for meeting institutional goals is very interesting, and perhaps a step down the less traveled path in public higher education. Right now the administration is incentivizing fund raising, research grants, and student retention. The formula for all three areas is that faculty will equally divide a cut of the additional revenue that flows into the university if a specific goal is reached or exceeded. In a nut shell:

• Student Retention:
  • Incentive = 40% of additional revenue
  • Goal = 0.5 increase
• Research Grants:
  • Incentive 10% of additional revenue
  • Goal = $2-million increase
• Fund Raising:
  • Incentive 2% of additional revenue
  • Goal = $2.8-million increase

Some information can be found at Kathryn Masterson’s, September 5th news item in the Chronicle of Higher Education, If Kent State Beats Goals, Professors Will Profit. You can do the math, but I think that at most institutions, nobody is getting rich.

So what are the potential upsides and downsides for the major stakeholders here?

• Faculty
• Learners / Students
• Parents / Partners
• Kent State
• Other Higher Education Institutions
• Administrators (Development Officers, etc.)
• Society in General (including tax payers)
• Donors
• Research Funding Agencies and Foundations
• Etc.

I would imagine, that even though executive leadership at Kent is talking in terms of sharing the wealth and success, I would think that the numbers of dollars shared with faculty will serve more as an artifact that illustrates some form of institutional community for the University rather than an opportunity for faculty to enjoy a significant income stream. It will also provide some focus on what the institution values. Tying some form of very low risk personal gain to student retention, research, and fund raising will keep those goals “front and center,” which is not where they would be if they were just listed as part of the University’s strategic plan, some presentation materials, etc.

Who knows, this bonus scheme might also raise some provocative and important questions about how “Retention” is measured and who (which learners, programs, and divisions) ought to be included in the measurements. Who qualifies as a member of the faculty? Why would it only be faculty who are included? This of course raises the question of who at the institution is included and excluded from the community, which might erode some of the culture strengthening benefits that could be attained, if a culture of shared success is being sought at all.

This approach has some connection with some industry practice of using bonuses as motivators and enculturation tools. I have spent most of my adult life serving higher education institutions, and all of my career I have been involved in education more generally. I have made brief forays out of the academy and into “industry.” For a while I served Harcourt Higher Education, which had its ups and downs, the last word is articulated pretty well in the BNET article Thomson buys, then shuts down Harcourt’s Higher Education web site, and then I served Spotfire, which in my opinion was a very well run (led and managed) organization that used personal and organizational performance bonuses very effectively. I have some thoughts on the matter of effective performance bonus practice in general, but am very interested in what others think of the application in higher education generally and how Kent State is applying their bonus incentive structure.

In any event, good on Kent State for “sticking it out there” and trying this. Whether you like the idea or not, this is something that I think we can learn from as it unfolds. Why are they doing it, would they be doing it, and does anybody know of other institutions that provide faculty bonuses through revenue sharing?

A few weeks ago I participated in my second graduation celebration for World Campus and Continuing Education learners at Penn State. I would have a hard time really explaining why I enjoy the graduation events so much. But really, what is not to enjoy? Learners bring family and friends to spend a few hours with the people who they have grown to know over the phone and through email. In addition to bringing guests, learners can invite a Penn State employee, which tends to be an adviser or member of the faculty. Food and drink is available, we have light live background music, children run around the lobby, the formal part of the ceremony is brief and up beat, photos are taken, and we even include a short induction ceremony for learners entering the Alpha Sigma Lambda honors society.

Everybody, I really mean everybody, seems to enjoy themselves. Hugs are shared between learners and their invited guests, stories are told, and everybody leaves with a smile and some swagger, feeling pretty good about themselves and Penn State. During this Summer’s celebration we had learners who joined us from across the country, making special and expensive trips to be with each other and us. So, and here is the pointed question, why do such a small percentage of our graduating learners join us in person? About 50 percent of learners who study in programs delivered through the World Campus are out of State, many are working adults who would perhaps find it difficult to give-up a Saturday to spend in State College, and some might just not feel “connected” enough to bother.

This last possibility is an important one for Penn State. I am not a Penn State graduate, but I can see what the Penn State experience means to so many students and other members of our community. The connection with the University is an important “asset” that a learner gets beyond their development and degree, it is something that they have for life, and it is troubling that distance learners might be missing out.

So what can we do about this? How can we overcome the barriers of distance, schedule, and organizational isolation to provide the opportunity for “connection?” Obviously connection does not happen at or because of a graduation ceremony. There has to be something else going on. Within the resident world of Penn State very little institutional effort is placed on generating “connection” within classes, while enormous amounts of resources are invested in creating connection outside of the class experience.

We have a culture of Penn State identity that revolves around community events such as football, Thon, All University Day, and hundreds of other University and student activities. In distance education, on the other hand, we have spent a lot of time considering and designing “connection” into class experiences through formal learning design, but relatively little in forming connection through social presence “outside” of class. I guess that this should lead us to ask if “connection” to Penn State is important to distance learners and why is it so evident in some and absent in others?

Given the growing number of learners who are taking online courses and participating in study “at a distance,” should a lack of “connection” be a concern for some types of Universities? I think so. If so, who is doing anything about it? A few months ago I asked the question, Where are all the Global Online MBAs?. Now I am asking, “Where is all of the great online student activity programming for distance learners?”

It has been a very short Summer (June – August), during which Terra Incognita got a bit of a rest. That said, it was always in the back of my mind, but bumped just slightly off the top of the list by planning, hiring, fire prevention and management (putting out and starting some small fires), and travel – the stuff of organizational life. I did have the opportunity to do and learn about some interesting things this Summer and over the next few weeks or so will post on a number of them. Some of the things on my mind include:

• The Flock Browser: I have downloaded and am playing with the Browser and am finding it very interesting and smart.
• Summer Camp and Open Education: That’s right, I went to Summer Camp, courtesy of ETS at PSU, right here at Penn State and had a chance to learn a lot about pedagogical experiments in social networking, while also working with colleagues David DiBiase and Keith Bailey on an open presentation and discussion about Open Education.
• World Campus Graduation Ceremony: Celebrating incredible achievements with learners, families, colleagues, and fiends. Just when you think it can’t get any better, we have another ceremony and it is better.
• Initiating Demonstrator Projects: How do you help promote an environment of discovery? We are thinking that a culture of low-risk ubiquitous R&D approach make some sense.
• Enterprise 2.0: Pat Masson insisted that I read Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent & Integrated, which was distributed under the AIIM Market IQ banner. I am glad that he did and I would like to talk about it.
• Open Educational Resources at Penn State: I think that the dialogue is changing here at Penn State – and that’s good news!

In addition, I am scheduling some more contributions to the Impact of OER and OSS in Education Series. I have a few “hot leads” for great guest postings, and have confirmed with Cole Camplese to author a contribution a bit later in September. Along these lines, colleague and friend Shannon Ritter has agreed to organize and contribute to a set of postings on social networking in education. She is currently one of the prime movers in the World Campus experimenting with and implementing social networking in the area of learner support, advising, and retention.

More coming on all of this … it’s great to be back!