NETWORKENABLED OPEN EDUCATION NEOEd

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• Open Educational Resourcesfor National
  Development
• in India
• Vijay Kumar
• Senior Associate Dean Director
• Office of Educational Innovation Technology
  MIT
• Honorary Advisor
• National Knowledge Commission, India
• EADTU, UNESCO, March 12-13, 2009

A Collaborative Publication Project
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NKC on OER

• Our success in the knowledge economy hinges to
  a large extent on upgrading the quality of, and
  enhancing the access to, education. One of the
  most effective ways of achieving this would be to
  stimulate the development and dissemination of
  quality Open Access (OA) materials and Open
  Educational Resources (OER) through broadband
  Internet connectivity.
• knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/wg_
  open_course.pdf

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Context

• Need for fast expansion of Higher Education (HE)
  Opportunities
• Enrolment in HE is 6 of the relevant age group
  in India, as compared to 30 in Europe and 50 in
  North America. This needs to be doubled by 2015.
• Growing shortage of capacity in HE
• In 2003-04, 1.2 Lakh (105) students went abroad
  for HE
• Quality an Issue
• Few Islands of Excellence

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Global Challenge Too Many on the Outside,
Looking In
Photo by Shavar via Flickr
Photo by joepub via Flickr
Photo by Felipe Pimentel via Flickr
Photo by kawaface via Flickr
Photo by mathew ramsey via Flickr
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The Challenge Scaling Excellence

• Quantum leap in scale and quality of educational
  opportunity
• Significantly increasing gross enrollment
• (12 millilion more students in next 5 years)
• More excellent institutions like IITs, IIMs,
  IIIT, etc.
• Building new institutions (additional IITs)
• Improving existing institutions (NPTEL, TEQIP)
• Extending distance education initiatives (IGNOU,
  EDUSAT)
• Faculty/Teacher dvelopment
• Alternative opportunities for flexible and
  continuous education.

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National Knowledge Commission (NKC)

• Appointed in 2005 by the Prime Minister
• (Chair Sam Pitroda)
• TERMS OF REFERENCE
• Build excellence in the educational system to
  meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century
  and increase Indias competitive advantage in
  fields of knowledge
• Promote creation of knowledge in ST laboratories
• Improve the management of institutions engaged in
  intellectual property rights
• Promote knowledge applications in agriculture and
  industry
• Promote the use of knowledge capabilities in
  making government an effective, transparent and
  accountable service provider to the citizen and
  promote widespread sharing of knowledge to
  maximize public benefit

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Accelerating Global Movement
Higher Education
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Making a Difference Educator Use
Professor Richard Hall LaTrobe University in
Melbourne, Australia, now teaching information
systems, beginning microprocessors, and advanced
computer-aided software engineering. OCW saved
him an enormous amount of time and stress. I
was delighted by the way the material is so
coherently presented. It is truly inspiring to
see this level of excellence.
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Making a Difference Student Use
Kunle Adejumo, Engineering student at Ahmadu
Bello Universityin Zaria, Nigeria Last
semester, I had a course in metallurgical
engineering. I didnt have notes, so I went to
OCW. I downloaded a course outline on this, and
also some review questions, and these helped me
gain a deeper understanding of the material.
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MIT Online Laboratories
If you cant come to the lab the lab will come
to you!
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iLabs at MIT
Dynamic signal analyzer (EECS, deployed 2004)
Shake table (Civil Eng., deployed 2004)
Polymer crystallization (Chem. E., deployed 2003)
Microelectronics device characterization (EECS,
deployed 1998)
Heat exchanger (Chem. E., deployed 2001)
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The iLab Vision

• Order of magnitude more lab experiences
• More lab time to users/researchers
• More sophisticated labs available
• Communities of scholars created around iLabs
  sharing educational research content

Campus network
Internet
Client
Service Broker
Lab Server
University Databases
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iLabs Elsewhere

• University of Queensland
• DUT iLabs- Several in EE
• Zhejiang University
• 50 Net Labs today (Electronic, Power and
  Automation/Controls)
• Strong interest in adopting iLabs

elevator system
electromotor system
triple-tank system
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Influences

• The Collectivity Culture
• Participatory, Collaborative practices for
  developing and sharing educational materials
• Social Software, networks
• Wikis Blogs Shared Bookmarks flickr..
• Virtual Environments Second Life.
• Remix
• Technology and Design
• Design
• Agency
• Sustainability
• Open Architecture, Specifications and Standards
  for Interoperability (O.K.I)
• Organizational
• Legal Open Community Source Creative Commons
• Consortia an Communities (Open Courseware iLab
  Sakai)

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Current Initiatives

• Open Access
• 81 scientific journals accessible as Open Access
• Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore along with
  Carnegie Mellon University ( 21 Indian
  institutions )are participating have digitized
  more than 450,000 books, out of which 220,000
  books are now web-accessible.
• Open Educational Resources
• NPTEL
• Kerala e-Grid
• subject-specific portals for science and
  engineering
• Eklavya
• Content in various Indian languages distributed
  over the Internet.
• Open Source Educational Resources Animation
  Repository (OSCAR)
• IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University)
• egyankosh

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NPTEL

• 129 Web based Courses
• 110 Video Courses
• (40-50 hours duration for each course)

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Impact of Initiatives

• Limited!
• Dearth of quality resources (content) and
  practice
• Availability of OER for limited disciplines and
  languages
• Lack of infrastructure for delivery
• Inadequate adoption support
• Need Systematic national strategy for developing
  and delivering open educational resources the
  availability of OER for a wider range of
  disciplines and regional languages as well as
  scaffolding to support greater adoption among
  teachers and students.

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NKC Working Group on OERImplementing Opportunity

• Resources and Opportunities
• Content and Pedagogy
• Courseware and other OER
• Labs and Simulations
• Infrastructure Requirements
• Delivery.
• Pedagogy
• Organizational
• Insitutional framework
• Policy framework (quality regulation)

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NETWORK-ENABLED OPEN EDUCATION (NEO-Ed)
End User Communities
Domain Grids and Portals
Tools/ Applications
EDUCATION SOFTWARE
EDUSAT/LAN/WAN/Wireless/INTERNET2
Communication
Service Interfaces
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NKC Recommendations

• Launch a national e-content and curriculum
  initiative
• Leverage global open educational resources
  movement
• Support the production of quality content by a
  select set of Indian institutions.
• Initiate development of online programmes for
  science and engineering laboratories
  simulations
• Establish 50-100 laboratories (iLAB)
• Undertake a large scale e-Curriculum development
  effort directed toward adaptation and adoption
  support.
• Teacher training/Faculty Development

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NKC Recommendations

• Develop network-enabled delivery infrastructure
• Access High b/w national network establish
  Indian Research and Education Network (IREN)
• Delivery
• Distributed repositories of educational resources
  
• Open, standards-based Service-Oriented
  Architecture
• Educational applications

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NKC Recommendations

• Faculty and Institutional Development Program
• Promote distance and network based delivery
  techniques
• Develop domain competencies and teaching skills
  for quality education using quality faculty and
  high quality materials.
• National Portal for Open Education
• Enabling resources for faculty and resource
  development
• Clearinghouse function and an interaction
  environment.
• Domains Experts and Communities (Grids)
• Set up a National Education Foundation to Develop
  Web- based Common Open Resources.

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Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education
(IUCEE)

• Assembly of courses from content in three
  separate physical repositories
• MIT OCW Repository
• Rice Connexions Repository
• NPTEL IIT Course Website
• Support the Collaborative Development of Courses
  among Faculty Peers.
• The delivery of these courses can use the
  Learning Management System and applications
  chosen.

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End Game Altering the Economics and Ecology of
Education in India

• Greater numbers of citizens participating in
  quality educational opportunities for employment
  or personal advancement.
• Adequate supply of skilled human resources to
  meet the progressively escalating needs of the
  service economy.
• Enable current initiatives to succeed
• Overcome current limitations of inadequate
  content and paucity of good educational practice
  models and infrastructure.

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Open Education Vision Elements

• Blended Learning
• Intelligently combine the physical and the
  virtual (MIRTLE)
• Integrate conventional pedagogy with net-learning
  to deliver quality (relevant) educational
  opportunities
• Intelligent combinations of formal and non-formal
• Boundary-less Education
• Beyond Geo-political
• Research-Teaching
• Disciplines -- Thematic and World Problem based
• Teacher-Learner
• Expert-Novice
• Off-Campus-On Campus
• Living-Learning

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Thank Youvkumar_at_mit.edu
The Carnegie Foundations Book on Open Education
(August 2008, MIT Press)