Very late Milestone Report to AKO, regarding the Measure of Otago's Open Education

Terry Marler alerts me to an over due milestone report for the Ako Aotearoa project where we are attempting to evaluate the impact of open educational developments at Otago Polytechnic. Up until now, I expected that the my blog postings on the project and the wiki that documents the project, were acting as continuous progress reports. But it turns out that there is a word processor template that needs to be filled in! Blogging is beyond what is required, so this post is for me and you I guess, and I will attempt to squeeze it into the template provided.

Progress so far:

Reports
All reports are categorised and fed through RSS on the tag word project-ako

15 September 2009
Measuring our open education, finishing stage 1: Usage
Reporting initial findings on the costs, savings and gains of using social media platforms. Comments from peers were left, resulting in minor changes to the equations, and a finished stage 1 evaluation published on the project wiki.
16 comments to date from peers.

13 August 2009
Models of open education
Reporting on the talk given in Vancouver for the Open Education 2009 conference. Includes a video recording and key points and links made in the talk:

• 4 stories
• 4 models
• Policy and support
• Questioning

2 comments to date from peers.
17 July 2009
Measuring open education: How we value it?
Reporting on the second meeting with ethnographers being engaged to assist with evaluating the impact open education has on staff values and perceptions of performance. Report includes confirmation of a research plan.
0 comments to date from peers

7 July 2009
Measuring open education
Reporting on research direction after meeting with external and experienced ethnographers.
14 comments to date from peers.

Since the conference, stage 1 of a 2 stage evaluation was completed finding that:

It costs $4000 to train one person how to use social media to source, produce and publish open educational resources for their teaching practice. That person will go on to return $4542 per year worth of brand awareness for their organisation, $1031 per year in quality gains by sampling and reusing free content, and up to $3615 per year worth of savings in infrastructural and support costs by using free media publishing services.

How this approach to teaching practices impacts on senses of job satisfaction, motivation, and perceptions of teaching and learning performance is yet to be determined. We are waiting for reports from an ethnographic study to be conducted by external researchers. We also hope to gain insight into subjective perspectives on the impact the practice has on learning outcomes and satisfaction.

If it is agreed that these returns are tangible and useful, it will be recommended that a committed training regime (one that compensates for teacher time) be implemented, and that incentives and rewards be put in place for teachers that go on to use popular social media for open educational practices.