A kink in the cyclone fence
Mozilla, P2PUni and CCLearn teaming up to offer a free course is interesting.. I wonder if this sort of thing is set to grow? Last year a less formal international group teamed up on Wikiversity and ran the free course, Composing Free and Open Educational Resources attracting almost 100 people. Before that was David Wiley’s free course Introduction to Open Education – attracting a similar number, and of course most people know of Downes and Seimens massive (in terms of participation) course on Connectivism. Following this model are our free courses, Flexible Learning and Facilitating Online.. we are soon to adopt Composing Free and Open Educational Resources to our folio too, and quite a number of progamme coordinators at Otago Polytechnic seem to be building up to the model as well.
What I’m wondering is that all these free online courses might be setting a trend and developing a market and model maturity. We (Educational Development at Otago Polytechnic) have worked out how to run these courses with a return, and are approaching agencies to see if we can attract further income for offering these courses free, relating to other incentives.
What you send appears to be following the trend, the same examples that many others in the sector have already cited and discussed with interest (as yet no backlash). This recent addition to the model of free and open access online learning is no doubt looking into ways on how to make it pay as well.. I hope we will all continue to share what we find out on this question. It appears now more likely that the model will flourish outside the traditional educational institutions. Although we are working hard to keep Otago Polytechnic in the game. These free courses might grow to a point of becoming a direct challenge to the user-pays educational model, especially when some of those institutions start recognising these free courses in their assessments and certification processes, and other agencies and sectors start appreciating the indirect returns that are possible.
Will this model scale outside the media and online learning sector? Will we start seeing quality and recognised free online courses in business admin? human resource management? the humanities? the sciences? Even the trades! I know we are working on it…
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March 19, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Gary Lewis
Hi Leigh – It is all very encouraging. Wonderful, really.
But I would add one cautionary note. I’d expect the most dramatic impact of free learning innovations to come from somewhere far removed from traditional education institutions.
Here’s a thought experiment. Pick some group of people grossly underserved or totally unserved by education. Make it a group you know so you can attach names and faces and history to them. Then imagine what kind of free learning might work for these folks.
Free learning should be for everyone. When we take seriously the “everyone”, then we’ll also be forced to re-think the limits imposed by current institutions.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s wonderful and necessary to make changes from the inside. But it’s also important to make changes from the outside. It’s my guess that the latter will have the more profound effects.
Gary
March 20, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Alexander Hayes
Check out the implications of this – http://www.bitsbook.com/2009/02/watching-the-lawmakers/
The book might be worth downloading also – http://www.bitsbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/B2B_3.pdf
August 11, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Mac.William
Online schools cannot actually replace the typical brick and mortar schools!! However I totally agree the technology advancement and internet can be leveraged highly as supplemental method of studying, I can only put in few words here, to see the real benefits you must visit http://www.funnelbrain.com.