FYI
Flood of Open Education Resources Challenges Educators
With millions of pieces of open education resources flooding the Internet,
educators face a "needle in the haystack" problem of epic
proportions.
Sure, they can find hundreds, if not thousands, of free pieces of content
to accomplish their mission with students, but how to find the right one,
aligned to the right standard, for the right student, at the right time? That
challenge lies at the heart of personalized learning, whether conveyed through
teachers, technology, or some combination of the two.
The Houston schools confronted that issue in the rollout of PowerUp, the district's 1-to-1
digital learning initiative for its 215,000 students.
Planning to move away from traditional textbooks, the district needed to
start "curating, creating, and—where we couldn't create or
curate—procuring" content, said Annie Wolfe, the officer of secondary
curriculum and development. Without providing
curated content, "we knew teachers would just go out and Google for
resources," she said.
That prospect didn't work with the district's commitment to online security
and safety, nor did it reflect the best practices of digital citizenship, she
said. If the district intended to abandon textbooks, officials would have to be
sure content was aligned with state standards, said Michael Dorsey, the
director of secondary curriculum.
Houston turned to Knovation, a Cincinnati-based company providing its
netTrekker application for vetted content already used by Houston's school
library system. The district wanted this curated content to surface in
"itslearning," the name of the learning management system that it
uses, and contracted with Knovation to align 360,000 curated digital resources
to the district's curriculum map.
Each free resource in the collection was selected, evaluated, tagged, and
aligned to Texas standards to make accessing the appropriate items easier.
Pathways to Curating Digital Resources
Organizations that provide curated open-ed content follow certain steps on
a common pathway. While this is a shared journey, each adds its own twists and
turns to bring vetted material to the end user. Here are the general steps
along the way:
·
Discovery
by machine, by educators in classrooms, by employees—often former
educators—paid to do the curation work
·
Content
could be games, videos, text, simulations, interactive activities, and more
·
Using
rubrics/systems established by each organization
·
Decision
point: Is this resource worthy of inclusion?
·
Resources
may be trashed here
·
Type
of content (text, video, game, etc.)
·
Subject
·
Grade
·
Instructional
standards (common core, others)
·
Technical
requirements
·
Keyword
·
Vetted
resources are published on the ed-tech platform
·
Educators
look for content; sometimes students and parents do, too
·
Curated
content is identified
·
Teachers
add selected items to their lesson plans/playlists to sequence learning
·
Based
on educator feedback, usage statistics, and/or effectiveness criteria,
providers remove old/ineffective content from their platforms
Source: Education Week
Using a 120-point checklist, Knovation certifies each piece of content,
said Randy Wilhelm, Knovation's co-founder and CEO. "These are gates the
content is running through; we're assigning it meta-tags or context against the
standards, or aligning within the taxonomy of what's taught in schools,"
he said.
After Knovation tags the content, educators in Houston verify its accuracy,
Dorsey explained.
Houston is moving from a "store and retrieve" setup for digital
content to full integration with the district's learning management system so
that resources will flow to users as needed, Wilhelm said.
Eventually, Houston plans to "have personalized learning like never
before," Wolfe said, taking data from formative and standardized
assessments and linking the findings to curated content to best enhance a
student's learning.
Houston's challenge is being felt across the country. Last year, the U.S.
Department of Education appointed
Andrew Marcinek its first open education adviser to help schools embrace
the use of openly licensed resources to free funding for digital learning.
The department also launched
a high-profile campaign to #GoOpen with digital instruction—encouraging
districts to use open-ed resources. It recruited 10 districts to replace at
least one textbook with free resources and identified "ambassador"
districts that had already done so. It has also established the Learning
Registry as a repository for open-ed resources that can be tapped by educators.
The Education Department's push "will make even more great OER
content" available, said Elisabeth Stock, the CEO and co-founder of
PowerMyLearning, a New York City-based nonprofit that operates PowerMyLearning
Connect, a free platform identifying digital resources for personalized
instruction. "It's not a question of needing more content," Stock
said, "but how do you find it, and how do you use it well?"
Gwinnett County, Ga., is one school system facing that question. "Our
greatest challenge is finding curated content in the format we need it
in," said Tricia Kennedy, the executive director of eCLASS transformation
for the 176,000-student district. (eCLASS is an acronym for its "content,
learning and assessment support system.") Gwinnett wants content delivered
according to interoperability standards, allowing flexibility "so teachers
can select bite-sized learning activities for their students' individual needs,"
she said.
Stock said such "granular content" is in demand as her
organization conducts teacher professional development sessions on blended
learning that highlight curated digital learning activities like interactive
games and videos. "We spent the energy to curate what we think is the best
of the best," she said.
Content can be curated in a variety of ways—from the "high touch"
use of educator evaluation to the "high tech" approach that uses
algorithms, and a range of "tech/touch" combinations in between. The
curators may be educators or former educators paid by an organization, or they
may be in the classroom, uploading curated content into playlists or lesson
plans to be shared.
OpenEd, for example, relies on "machine learning" to determine
what standard a video or educational game is likely to be aligned with, said
Adam Blum, the co-founder and CEO of the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company.
Subject-matter experts are used to confirm the computer's findings and are usually
in agreement with algorithms, Blum said.
Besides online resources, OpenEd includes homework assignments and
assessments.
Each resource gets an "effectiveness rating" so a search for a
learning objective will produce items that data shows will work best.
Another approach comes from Gooru, a Redwood City, Calif.-based nonprofit
that relies on educators as "crowdsourcers." The Gooru platform is
geared toward teachers building collections of open-ed multimedia resources and
students directing their own learning.
With the crowdsourced approach, teachers can interpret the suitability of
resources differently. Gooru recently developed a guide to help standardize
evaluation of resources, said Wendy J.S. Noble, Gooru's vice president of
learning and instruction.
Coverage of the implementation of college- and career-ready standards and
the use of personalized learning is supported in part by a grant from the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation. Education Week retains sole editorial control
over the content of this coverage.
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