“Why it’s OK for HE and FE institutions to provide quality education for free (or nearly free)”

Yesterday, at the #JISC11 conference, something didn’t sit quite right with me. It was the issue of whether students would not perceive a university to be adding good value if it provided free or “open content” using Open Educational Resources (OER).

I woke up reflecting on this, as you do, and am sure most students would be happy to have material that is useful and of quality, regardless of where it emanates from. If you think about it, historically, we’ve all had hand-outs and photocopies that lecturers and teachers have cribbed from useful books – under “fair usage” guidelines. I don’t think students will be concerned so much with who prepared the materials as much as their usefulness.

I believe that the use of free materials and technologies could provide a map to help navigate through these times of cutbacks in the educational sector. It is not really a question of how much the resources cost (Did you ever hear anyone saying when you were at university “Gee, I wonder how much the infrastructure cost to allow us to use e-mail...must be good value." Of course not.); It is rather the pedagogy and deployment of resources and tools that are useful to students that is the essential matter.

Consider this first: what does the modern student need and want?

Here are 10 expectations of the modern HE student:

1. That they can easily access resources when they want (time flexibility)
2. That they can access resources where they need (geographical flexibility)
3. That the lecturer is available digitally and can provide some form of ongoing written or spoken feedback
4. Models that allow student to collaborate together
5. Some kind of support network because the cost of “dropping out” means dropping out is just not an option anymore
6. Useful materials that provide an overview, save time, and help them get up to speed ASAP
7. A realisation that like many urban dwellers, a student’s time is precious
8. To reflect this, reading lists and resources must be highly relevant, practical and targeted
9. Well-designed courses that build confidence through self-regulatory learning
10. E-Portfolios or other VLE support that allow them to build up strong problem-solving skills and examples that they talk about with employers

Do any of the above need to cost money? No, of course not. At the risk of sounding saccharine, students are not dumb and realise that many of the important things in life do not cost anything: love, consideration, or, in the context of learning, lecturers taking the time to comment on their work, encourage them or guide them – or search for valuable materials that can enhance their learning experience.

Technological resources abound and I have run a business for six years teaching students; many of the resources have been free and well-received.

Consider some of these options:

• The Moodle VLE. With Free VLE hosting for Moodle you can have your own Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) hosted and set up for free. A quick YouTube search provided videos, which meant an afternoon’s watching and I could easily navigate it. Simple and a great way to track student progress, assess progress, encourage collaboration and share materials in a secure environment.

• Open Source software: this ranges from the excellent Open Office Suite to Audacity for recording quality audio feedback. Students enjoy getting recorded feedback and I have used Audacity extensively to record personalised feedback and save it as an mp3. Students then have the luxury to listen multiple times to really integrate the feedback when they are ready. It gives a great job of showing a real interest in them. And I have found it quicker and more comprehensive than simply writing up feedback. There are many such tools available than be incredibly useful teaching add-ons – and provide free access to resources that historically would have been too expensive for students.

• Using blogs to share and develop ideas. Students and teachers can have their own “unofficial blogs” where they can push the boundaries of ideas, and stretch themselves. We all know in our souls that reflective skills are at the heart of learning. Why it has taken thousands of years for us to implement this is anyone’s guess. Tools like Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) provide blog hosting for free.

• Public Cloud tools like Dropbox and Google Docs allow students to collaborate together. Teachers and lecturers can also be invited to share and provide feedback on joint projects. If you are not using Cloud tools in your teaching or work, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity to both receive and give feedback. Best practice suggests that these shared virtual documents can be secure to use, as long as users take adequate password protection steps.

• Open Education Resources (OERs). These allow teachers to search through materials that their peers and colleagues have already created: My favourite OER tool is Open Nottingham’s xpert. Whether you teach in schools or any form of FE or HE, it is probably the most comprehensive set of resources you can get access to. As a student or teacher, it provides search engine access to all the educational resources that other professionals have spent considerable time creating. Most of these free resources can be customised, and they are practical, proven and can save you time at xpert.

All the above tools mean that institutions can target what money they have more effectively. In the case of OER, the availability of pre-existing resources can save a lot of “prep time” for lecturers, which allows them more scope for providing the support and feedback that students want.

Students don’t care how much materials or technologies cost: they want to know you care about them, will make time for progress updates, will engage with them, and fully support them to complete their studies - and have a positive experience on the way there. If you can provide clear practical manuals and resources that make their life easier, then you have already added value to them. And they will recognise and appreciate that. We shouldn’t confuse OER with our political concerns about HE institutions feeling obliged to charge more money for fear of not being perceived as cutting-edge ( See “Reassuringly expensive”).

There will always be costs in teaching, and these are set to rise. But we are entering a brave new world, where many of the “free” materials are every bit as good, if not better, than paid for ones. They allow us to collaborate and support each other: it’s a social constructivist’s dream come true. We are entering an age of sharing, co-operation and globalisation. “Open scholarship” is not a luxury or even an option: if we don’t work together, we can’t sort out the pressing global problems we are all part of.

Richard Haggerty, E-Learning Technologist
Twitter: @richardhaggerty)