The San Diego weather was cooler than usual last week, but an occasional chilly breeze off the Pacific did little to cool the enthusiasm among the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grantees gathered at High Tech High School to exchange ideas and build on one another’s learning. Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) staff joined the gathering because the Hewlett Foundation was a key supporter of NGLC’s first two waves of investment in 2011, “Building Blocks for College Completion” and “Building Blocks for College Readiness.” The Hewlett Foundation supported NGLC’s grants in the areas of open education resources (OER) and deeper learning.
From Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday evening, innovators working to realize the potential of open education resources heard vibrant stories from one another and High Tech High teachers and students about the ways in which OER is improving outcomes and allowing connections. Among Wave I grantee representatives were Patrick McAndrew of the Open University and David Wiley, whose OER research has informed the Kaleidoscope Project. Susan Patrick, iNACOL executive director, offered a featured presentation, “Educating Policymakers about the Benefits of OER,” with Doug Levin and Reg Leichty. In their remarks, these leaders forcefully expressed their conviction that educational resources created with public funds should be freely available to all.
As Barbara Chow of the Hewlett Foundation pointed out in her remarks in an end-of-day general session, OER and deeper learning were separate lines of inquiry for the foundation until a few years ago. This year’s program was the first time that the two groups of grantees in those lines of inquiry had been invited to the same convening. Other foundation officers outlined current issues, such as the big open question of how OER integrates between nonprofits and markets as it expands into the mainstream while simultaneously maintaining integrity and supporting continual growth. Vic Vuchic, associate officer in the foundation’s Education program, cited research showing that the adoption of innovations accelerates after those innovations reach 15%-20% of the market, with significant controversy typically emerging at the moment of acceleration. In his view, this means that the OER movement, now accounting for approximately 10% of the market, is nearing the point of crossing the chasm between early adopters and the mainstream.
On Thursday, the size of the group doubled as the deeper learning grantees arrived. Taking their theme from that 80s commercial featuring “your peanut butter and my chocolate,” grantees in the two areas identified and profiled users from their respective communities and then, working in small teams, prototyped designs that might serve those users. For instance, one group that included NGLC staff and Chris Shearer of the Hewlett Foundation developed a process by which a superintendent could make progress on his goal of moving his already high-performing schools to a foundation of open educational resource use and more comprehensive attainment of deeper learning goals. The group’s design included getting community buy-in and using an RFP process to engage the schools in redesigning themselves to meet the new district goals.
Further information about the Hewlett Foundation’s work on OER and on deeper learning is available on their website.
This post first appeared on the NGLC blog on April 10, 2013 at nextgenlearning.org/blog.