K12 Open Ed

Positioning “open” – Free

In my continuing thoughts on ways to position open educational resources for the K-12 market, I now turn to the issue of “free.”

I have two concerns about using the term “free” in promoting these materials.

First, they aren’t really free. They cost someone something to develop. In fact, they generally cost about as much as comparable proprietary materials. Just because the end user doesn’t absorb these costs doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Perhaps more importantly, end users, in this case districts and schools, do have costs associated with OER (the “free as in puppies” argument). If print materials are required, the printing costs are typically absorbed by the schools. If the materials are used in a digital format, the costs include hardware, software, maintenance, support, etc. And for any use, there are significant professional development and related implementation costs. Beyond this, there are other items that open materials typically don’t include that have to be paid for, such as assessment, customization, differentiation, and ancillary materials.

Second, while “free” gets attention, it also signals reduced value or quality to many. There is still weight to the idea that “you get what you pay for.” In many markets, the argument has been made that a product priced at half the regular price will get more traction than one that is free. Specifically in the education market, the glut of free supplemental materials, some of which is not of the highest quality, has led to these materials not being taken seriously. While free is the standard for digital supplemental materials, core materials are almost always high priced. That is the expectation, and offering free core materials may cause many to wonder what the catch is.

Having said this, it is unquestionable that cost is the biggest differentiator between open materials and proprietary ones, especially in the basal market. “Free” core curriculum in math and ELA was unheard of before EngageNY or the K-12 OER Collaborative. The potential cost savings of something less than $8 billion is astounding. And should those savings be redirected to something meaningful, say teachers, the results could be equally astounding.

(This is a side point but the question of what happens to the potential cost savings is a real one. K-12 education funding is complex with different states handling instructional materials funding differently. In some cases, the savings might go back into a general fund for the district to decide how to use. In others, it could go back into a state general fund. This is very different from higher education, where there is a clear beneficiary of free or lower cost textbooks, namely the student.)

To not tout open materials as “free” may be to walk away from their most sexy aspect.

So is there some middle ground? Instead of “free,” might we talk about “lower cost” materials or “great cost savings?”

I don’t have an answer to this one, but would love to hear your thoughts.

This is a part of a series of posts on the positioning of K-12 OER core curriculum in the market.

Positioning “open” – OER

In marketing most things, including educational materials, positioning is important. Whether it is the short one sentence tag line or the elevator pitch description, how you describe something affects how people view it. I would even argue that coming to consensus on positioning within an organization affects the product or service itself. It becomes the target or the “mission,” if you will.

I’ve been thinking about how to position specific OER curriculum products, especially in the K-12 space.

If you ask most educators if they know what “open licensed” or “OER” or “Creative Commons” is, they will say yes. (This general awareness is fairly new and a triumph for the movement I should note.) But if you ask them more probing questions or more importantly, look at their actual use of content, their knowledge is not evident. Instead, most treat all free and digital materials pretty much the same.

So then the question is how to convey what open really means or what its benefits are. The 5 R’s are useful, but it is a big lift to explain this, and still, I would argue, these aren’t strongly perceived as benefits to many beyond the most innovative teachers. And in fact, to many in the leadership role, they may even be detriments. (That’s another post, I suppose.)

So there is a choice — do you try to educate and convince potential users of the benefits or do you take another path to positioning? Classical marketing thinking would suggest the latter, and I think I agree.

There are many benefits to open educational materials beyond their license — depending on the materials in question, these could include high quality or effectiveness, flexibility (ability to be personalized), ability to empower teachers and learners, cross-platform adaptability (including both print and digital), and of course, being free.

Next post, the pros and cons of positioning OER as “free.”

This is a part of a series of posts on the positioning of K-12 OER core curriculum in the market.

K-12 OER Collaborative enters next phase

[Disclosure: I am part of an advisory group for this project.]

Last week, the K-12 OER Collaborative entered the next phase of their project, awarding contracts for rapid prototypes to the following developers:

As a refresher, the K-12 OER Collaborative is a project to create comprehensive CCSS-aligned curriculum for grades K-12 math and English Language Arts that is open licensed under a CC BY license. Quite an ambitious undertaking!

The project recently issued an RFP for content developers to develop rapid prototypes, the results of which “will be a major factor in determining which content developers are selected to move into the full-course development phase of the initiative.”

Many developers have expressed interest in this project, and 24 groups submitted proposals for the rapid prototypes.

While the task of developing these materials is a daunting one, my mind is already racing forward to when these materials are available. What will make schools want to use them? How will this use be supported? In what creative ways can the savings in instructional materials funding be applied to improve teaching and learning?

This may be the one of the important opportunities for OER, blended learning, and CCSS we’ve seen to date. It is imperative that we “get it right.”

Stay tuned for more on this exciting project as it progresses.

The consequences of success

Today, on the first day of Open Education Week, I am happy to say that OER has gained traction in K-12 over the last year.

More and more people are talking about OER. States and funders are putting serious efforts into OER as core curriculum. More high quality OER content is becoming available, and most importantly, more K-12 schools are using and remixing OER.

With that success comes other side effects. One I’ve noticed is that as OER has come into vogue, people are shouting out its availability and often putting the tag “OER” on things that are not in fact OER.

To be clear, OER is “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” (Hewlett Foundation)

Now I have no interest in acting as the license police, but I think it’s important to use language correctly. Calling things OER that are not open licensed doesn’t serve the movement’s purpose. More to the point, it confuses people.

Sometimes, this mislabeling is merely lack of knowledge on the part of the speaker. Often, when I ask about something like this, I get a response like “Oh, I really didn’t know exactly what OER was. Thanks for clarifying.” Other times, though, it appears to be a blatant marketing attempt to attract more interest through false advertising.

This week and beyond, I’m asking all of us to be precise with our language and to ask about open licenses on materials labeled OER that are indicated as “all rights reserved.” By doing so, we might help clear up some misconceptions, extend awareness of what “open” means, and possibly even get some new materials open licensed.

(Happy post note: I sent a “This looks great, but we don’t see an open license. Are we missing something?” message to someone a couple days ago, and just heard back that they added a CC license to their site. Yay!)

Thinking about open practice

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about open learning and with Open Education Week coming up, thought it would be a good time to explore this in more detail.

To be clear, I am not talking about open educational resources (OER), but rather open learning practices. (Is there a common term people are using for this? Open learning? Open pedagogy? Open practice?)

In my mind, this area is somewhat loosely defined, but may be at the heart of why “open” is important.

I’m thinking aloud here, but I think that open practice includes things such as:

Learner choice and flexibility
This is all about learner agency. In an open learning environment, the learners have authentic choice over what they do both in terms of process and product, and they act in a way that is self-directed. By definition, this means that not every student is doing the same thing at the same time. It precludes things like standardization, whole group direct instruction, and scripted, paced lessons.
Collaboration and sharing
Open practice is about drawing upon and sharing with others. Not only do open learners share their process and end products, but they draw on others in the community and beyond to help formulate and shape their learning. This connectivism makes learning deeper and richer.
Transparency and open access
Open learning is done in a way that is quite literally “in the open.” Anyone is welcome to participate. It isn’t done behind a firewall or a log-in screen. It is publicly viewable and inclusive. (This makes me wonder about an equity component to open learning.)

Elements of open learning probably exist in every learning environment, but increasingly, it seems that many formal learning structures are going more toward closed. I worry that this not only hinders learning, but doesn’t prepare students for the real world. In a world that is constantly changing and requires more critical thinking and self-directed learning skills, the rote facts learned in a closed learning environment may not be very helpful.

This makes me wonder if open learning also has something to do with content. To me, open learning is about learning how to learn, how to think, how to design, how to iterate, and how to collaborate. It is not about memorizing facts that aren’t relevant or that can just as easily be looked up somewhere.

I would love to hear others’ thoughts on this. What is the best terminology for this? (Hashtag, anyone?) What constitutes open learning? What are the benefits? How can we encourage more of it?

We’ll also be discussing this in several forums during Open Education Week, including on Teachers Teaching Teachers on Wed., March 11 at 9:00 pm ET. I hope you’ll join in the conversation there, here, on Twitter or on some other platform of your choice.