Open Learning Initiative Research Articles

Leadership, excellence and the marginalisation of refugees in Higher Education

In this article we trace the changing fortunes of an education initiative for refugees and other displaced people located at Central European University (CEU). The programme (OLIve - the Open Learning Initiative) has shifted: instead of being celebrated as an innovative response to the 'migrant crisis' of 2015 it was marked for closure by CEU's leadership in 2023. We locate this change in OLIve's fortunes in CEU's adaptations to the changing conditions of higher education, not least the potent combination of dynamics of marketisation and managerialisation. We suggest these have produced a reorganisation of power and authority within the university, encapsulated in the person of the Leader - and the organisational phenomenon of 'leaderism'. The Leader both announces and embodies the pursuit of 'excellence' as the core mission of the university, underpinned by the accumulation of financial and cultural capital ('prestige'). We trace some of the ways in which this mission reorganises the landscape of the university, marginalising those deemed non–excellent and the programmes that might support them. We suggest that these dynamics remain contested and contestable in important ways

A Web-Based Program About Sustainable Development Goals Focusing on Digital Learning, Digital Health Literacy, and Nutrition for Professional Development in Ethiopia and Rwanda: Development of a Pedagogical Method.

East African countries face significant societal challenges related to sustainable development goals but have limited resources to address these problems, including a shortage of nutrition experts and health care workers, limited access to physical and digital infrastructure, and a shortage of advanced educational programs and continuing professional development. This study aimed to develop a web-based program for sustainable development with a focus on digital learning, digital health literacy, and child nutrition, targeting government officials and decision-makers at nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Ethiopia and Rwanda. A web-based program-OneLearns (Online Education for Leaders in Nutrition and Sustainability)-uses a question-based learning methodology. This is a research-based pedagogical method developed within the open learning initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, United States. Participants were recruited during the fall of 2020 from ministries of health, education, and agriculture and NGOs that have public health, nutrition, and education in their missions. The program was conducted during the spring of 2021. Of the 70 applicants, 25 (36%) were selected and remained active throughout the entire program and filled out a pre- and postassessment questionnaire. After the program, of the 25 applicants, 20 (80%, 95% CI 64%-96%) participants reported that their capacity to drive change related to the sustainable development goals as well as child nutrition in their organizations had increased to large extent or to a very large extent. Furthermore, 17 (68%, 95% CI 50%-86%) and 18 (72%, 95% CI 54%-90%) participants reported that their capacity to drive change related to digital health literacy and digital learning had increased to a large extent and to a very large extent, respectively. Digital learning based on a question-based learning methodology was perceived as a useful method for increasing the capacity to drive change regarding sustainable development among government officials and decision-makers at NGOs in Ethiopia and Rwanda.

ÎNVĂŢAREA COLABORATIVĂ ÎN CADRUL UNEI CERCETĂRI ACŢIUNE DEZVOLTATĂ PENTRU A RĂSPUNDE PROVOCĂRILOR IMPUSE DE ŞCOALA ONLINE

The measures put in place to stop the spread of the Covid-19 have had a major impact on the organization of educational processes. School teachers have been faced with overnight digitalization of their activities without always receiving adequate support with this transition. The present paper reports on a participatory action research project in the form of a tutoring program that sought to understand and respond to these challenges. The project took the form of an open learning initiative addressed to teachers in April – June 2020, followed by a data collection and analysis phase. 37 teachers in four Romanian counties benefited from personalized forms of support offered by 20 student- tutors enrolled in the Educational Sciences Department at the West University in Timişoara. All project activities were carried out at a distance, in the vast majority of cases, online. In analyzing the data produced by the project (tutor reflection log entries, qualitative interviews and focus groups with teachers and tutor students) we seek to answer the following research question: How did a collaborative learning process emerge as part of a participatory action research project carried out during the onset of online teaching and learning practices?. The collaborative learning responded to teachers’ immediate and individual needs regarding the development of digital competences, as well as related to pedagogical and emotional support. Through the tutoring program, the expected roles of the educational actors were reversed: since the undergraduate students were not primarily beneficiaries of the educational processes, but took on an active part as facilitators of the teachers’ learning processes. Thus, a competence transfer from the university to the pre- university environment took place, at a faster rate than it would usually happen.

Learning through Osmosis: A global Wikipedia editing course for medical students.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Problem: Wikipedia is a ubiquitous source of information for patients, medical students and junior doctors alike. This is despite medical educators discouraging students from Wikipedia as a source of medical information. Intervention: To address this disconnect, Osmosis' Director of Open Learning Initiatives created a novel Wikipedia-editing course structured to leverage the global network of Osmosis-subscribing students. The course was entirely video-conference based and lasted 4 weeks in July 2019. Students typically worked on an article by themselves though one article was selected by two students. Towards the end of the course, each student peer-reviewed another student's edited article. Outcomes:Twelve medical students, from 11 different medical schools across 3 different continents, enrolled in the course and 11 articles were assigned. A total of 8,775 words and 119 higher quality references were added whilst 35 lower-quality references were removed. An exit survey showed students had increased confidence in their ability to contribute to Wikipedia. Students also enjoyed collaborating with a global diversity of peers. Lessons Learned: Numerous students wished that the course had a longer duration. A couple students recommended more groupwork to be incorporated into the course. The global nature of the course meant that time zones proved a challenge to scheduling. Conclusion:Decentralized courses can leverage the large user bases of medical education companies, such as Osmosis, to teach students analytical approaches to online resources as well as improve the quality of publicly available health information on Wikipedia.

ВІДКРИТІ ЦИФРОВІ ОСВІТНІ РЕСУРСИ У ГАЛУЗІ ІТ: КІЛЬКІСНИЙ АНАЛІЗ

Стаття описує результати кількісного аналізу відкритих освітніх ресурсів у галузі інформаційних технологій. Дослідження ґрунтується на вивченні вмісту десяти платформ, що надають доступ до відкритих ОР. Проведено аналіз та узагальнення інтернет-джерел для визначення популярності освітніх платформ та ресурсів на них. Здійснено кількісний аналіз даних для визначення відносної частки курсів галузі ІТ за різними параметрами: відносна частка курсів галузі ІТ загалом і на кожній платформі зокрема, мова викладання, кількісний вміст за тематичними напрямами. Кількісний аналіз проведено для окремих платформ, де передбачено доступ до відкритих освітніх ресурсів: Coursera, Edx, Udemy, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenLearn, Intuit, Prometheus, UoPeople, OpenLearningInitiative, Відкритий Університет Майдану (ВУМ). Коротко описані вказані платформи та загальна характеристика їх вмісту. За аналізом назв курсів та анотацій до них визначено 10 узагальнених тематичних напрямів, які пропонуються платформами для галузі ІТ: програмування та розробка програмного забезпечення; алгоритми та структури даних; комп’ютерна безпека та мережі; комп’ютерна графіка, дизайн та візуалізація даних; Веб-дизайн та інтернет-технології; СКБД та SQL; штучний інтелект та робототехніка; блокчейн і криптографія; операційні системи. Доведено популярність курсів з програмування та розробки програмного забезпечення та курсів з комп’ютерної графіки, дизайну й візуалізації даних. Надано загальну характеристику українським платформам Prometheus і ВУМ. Сформульовано висновок про перспективність їх розвитку. Серед відомих освітніх платформ найбільш заповненими різними курсами є закордонні Coursera, EdX, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenLean та Intuit. Очевидними є лідерські позиції ресурсу Udemy щодо кількості курсів загалом – 82943 та кількості курсів з галузі ІТ – 35727. Надано пропозиції щодо вдосконалення професійної підготовки фахівців ІТ-галузі: організацію самостійної роботи, проходження відкритих ОР як курсів підвищення кваліфікації, поширення авторських методик при розробці власних курсів та просуванні їх на відкриті платформи.

Estimating the minimum number of opportunities needed for all students to achieve predicted mastery

We have conducted a study on how many opportunities are necessary, on average, for learners to achieve mastery of a skill, also called a knowledge component (KC), as defined in the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) digital courseware. The study used datasets from 74 different course instances in four topic areas comprising 3813 students and 1.2 million transactions. The analysis supports our claim that the number of opportunities to reach mastery gives us new information on both students and the development of course components. Among the conclusions are a minimum of seven opportunities are necessary for each knowledge component, more if the prior knowledge among students are uneven within a course. The number of KCs in a course increases the number of opportunities needed. The number of opportunities to reach mastery can be used to identify KCs that are outliers that may be in need of better explanations or further instruction.

Interactive Online Learning on Campus: Comparing Students’ Outcomes in Hybrid and Traditional Courses in the University System of Maryland

ABSTRACTMassively open online courses (MOOCs) have received a great deal of attention, but little research exists on how they might fit into the existing system of higher education. We studied the impacts on learning outcomes of hybrid courses redesigned using online materials from MOOCs created on the Coursera platform and digital materials created by the Open Learning Initiative (OLI), relative to existing versions of the same courses. We found that student performance was about the same in both sections, as measured by pass rates and scores on common assessments. This finding held across a variety of disciplines and subgroups of students. We found no evidence supporting the worry that disadvantaged or academically underprepared students were harmed by taking hybrid courses with reduced class time. Despite the similar student outcomes produced by the two course formats, students in the hybrid sections reported considerably lower satisfaction with their experience.

State-of-the-Art in Open Courseware Initiatives Worldwide

We survey here the state-of-the-art in open courseware initiatives worldwide. First, the MIT OpenCourseWare project is overviewed, as it has been the real starting point of the OCW movement. Usually, open courseware refers to a free and open digital publication of high quality university level educational materials that are organized as courses, and include course planning materials, evaluation tools, and thematic content, under a Creative Commons license. OCW is free and open, accessible to anyone, anywhere, and anytime via the Internet. The OCW initiative started in 2002, and it has been followed by many more programs that offer open access to courseware: Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, Harvard Medical School’s MyCourses, Webcast.Berkeley, Rice University’s Connexions, OpenCourseWare Consortium, Open Education Resources Commons, and The Saylor Foundation’s Free Education Initiative, along with other major open courseware projects worldwide. The prospects for futur development of open courseware are taken into consideration, while its potential to provide for both social construction of knowledge and for development of open educational models, and therefore for E-Learning 2.0 and Web 2.0 is emphasized.

Open Learning Initiative

Open Learning Initiative

Using Microsoft Excel ® to Teach Statistics in a Graduate Advanced Practice Nursing Program

This article describes the authors' experiences during 3 years of using Microsoft Excel to teach graduate-level statistics, as part of the research core required by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing for all professional graduate nursing programs. The advantages to using this program instead of specialized statistical programs are ease of accessibility, increased transferability of skills, and reduced cost for students. The authors share their insight about realistic goals for teaching statistics to master's-level students and the resources that are available to faculty to help them to learn and use Excel in their courses. Several online sites that are excellent resources for both faculty and students are discussed. Detailed attention is given to an online course (Carnegie-Mellon University Open Learning Initiative, n.d.), which the authors have incorporated into their graduate-level research methods course.

JIME - The Open Learning Initiative: Measuring the Effectiveness of the OLI Statistics Course in Accelerating Student Learning

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is an open educational resources project at Carnegie Mellon University that began in 2002 with a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. OLI creates web-based courses that are designed so that students can learn effectively without an instructor. In addition, the courses are often used by instructors to support and complement face-to-face classroom instruction. Our evaluation efforts have investigated OLI courses’ effectiveness in both of these instructional modes – stand-alone and hybrid. This report documents several learning effectiveness studies that were focused on the OLI-Statistics course and conducted during Fall 2005, Spring 2006, and Spring 2007. During the Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 studies, we collected empirical data about the instructional effectiveness of the OLI-Statistics course in stand-alone mode, as compared to traditional instruction. In both of these studies, in-class exam scores showed no significant difference between students in the stand-alone OLI-Statistics course and students in the traditional instructor-led course. In contrast, during the Spring 2007 study, we explored an accelerated learning hypothesis, namely, that learners using the OLI course in hybrid mode will learn the same amount of material in a significantly shorter period of time with equal learning gains, as compared to students in traditional instruction. In this study, results showed that OLI-Statistics students learned a full semester’s worth of material in half as much time and performed as well or better than students learning from traditional instruction over a full semester. Editor: Stephen Godwin (Open University, UK). Reviewers: Tim de Jong (Open University, NL), Elia Tomadaki (Open University, UK), and Stephen Godwin (Open University, UK). Interactive elements: A demonstration of the StatTutor statistics tutorial is available for playback from http://jime.open.ac.uk/2008/14/stattutor_tour/ . The demonstration is in Flash format. http://jime.open.ac.uk/2008/14/stattutor_tour/

Creating new demand? The development of out-reach access initiatives in higher education

The provision of out-reach access initiatives constitutes the most recent development in the growing field of access. Initiatives like Work-based access, School-Higher Education links and Community-based access courses, are now viewed as important methods of widening participation in higher education. This development entails something of a transformation in both policy and practice, from a concern with creating new supply to meet existing demand, via adult access, part-time, open and distance learning and other such initiatives, to a focus on creating new demand for higher education, particularly among social classes IIIM-V. This article examines the nature and purpose of out-reach initiatives, via two case studies on school- and work-related access programmes. Attention is paid to some of their more problematic characteristics, particularly in relation to issues of supply and demand, recruitment, ‘partnership’ and conflicting definitions of what counts as access.

The Open Learning Initiative: A successful marketing strategy or a devaluation of the Australian system of higher education?

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) which resulted in the Australian Federal Government setting up a brokering company now known as Open Learning Australia (OLA), first opened its doors in March 1993. Since that time, educators, administrators, politicians and student groups have followed its development with considerable interest. The need to monitor and evaluate this new initiative was given high priority, hence the studies conducted by the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training and the University of Melbourne's Centre for the Study of Higher Education. OLA is now into its third year of operation and its final year of Government financial support. By now it is perhaps becoming more apparent just what are its achievements and what are the areas of concern being raised by critics, observers and stakeholders in relation to its impact on Australian higher education.

Open Learning: The answer to the government's equity problems? A report of a study on the potential impact of the Open Learning initiative on people with disabilities

This paper describes the process and results of a study to gauge the potential impact of the Open Learning initiative on people with disabilities. A problem‐solving approach was employed, using nominal group technique. Due to the nature of the study this was conducted at a distance, by written correspondence. The ideas generated suggested that the Open Learning initiative's impact will lie in its claim to flexibility, with its potential to give all people an opportunity to gain a university degree, to relieve physical access barriers and to reduce geographical isolation. Aspects of Open Learning which may not improve quality and/or access were identified as potential difficulties in gaining access to support and advice services, library and research facilities and academic support. The opinions generated were as much a reflection of the inflexibility of the current university structure as a request to the Open Learning Agency to respond to suggestions for greater accessibility. The Commonwealth's investment in Open Learning could be interpreted as a shift in policy from a belief that access and equity in Australian higher education should be addressed by specifically targetting perceived disadvantaged groups, to a policy encouraging more open and flexible forms of learning.

The open learning initiative: New directions for higher education

<p><span>This paper was Bruce King's Keynote address to the Biennial ASET</span><a href="http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech92/edtech92_contents.html">EdTech'92</a><span> Conference, 1-3 October 1992 in Adelaide.</span></p>

1. Introduction — What is Open Learning?

The growth of open and distance learning initiatives has arisen from the wish of employers to train staff with least absence from work, the improvement of facilities to meet the needs of students studying in their own time and the desire of some teachers to promote learning in areas which would not attract sufficient students for traditional methods. It has also been encouraged by the upgrading of more conventional correspondence courses and pressure from those within training and education establishments who see open and distance learning as a way of promoting their own ideas on how people might be helped to learn. The pros and cons of open and distance learning are discussed and definitions provided. Open learning versus traditional approaches are considered. Evaluation of open learning is discussed and its future direction considered.