Action Steps Towards Open Access Higher Education

The second Open Educational Technology Summit wrapped up yesterday with the adoption of eight action steps or goals that define a vision for open access education. The event brought together 40 participants from around the world with expertise in different areas of education. We we worked in teams of ten to brainstorm around four themes:

1. Access to high quality education for all, and the role of open content

2. Informal learning, and the role of the mentor in choice making

3. Personalized learning, and learning standards that work across borders

4. Applications of digital video, mobile devices, social media, and the global network

The idea was to think about how these themes could be incorporated into a hypothetical new post-secondary institution with a mandate to provide high quality education in an environment of open access. The event was organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the New Media Consortium.

The summit settled on eight action steps:

1. Annotate, index and share rich media

2. Move to a paradigm of mobiles as personal learning devices/environments

3. Base credentials on outcomes not seat time

4. Enable cultures of sharing

5. Develop pedagogical wrappers for content

6. Support leadership that takes risks

7. Extend multiple literacies/digital literacies

8. Create sabbatical experiences for learners

I think it is probably more useful to think of these as the key themes of a vision for this new institution rather than concrete action steps. Clearly each needs some definition to be meaningful as they have multiple interpretations. They each emerged out of the small group brainstorming so they are based on some specific ideas. Over the coming days, the action steps will be elaborated and defined.

More information about the Summit is available from the Open Ed Tech 2009 Wiki