User:Mackiwg/Sandbox/Australian National OER Symposium

Flipping your university with the OERu
The history of education is littered with the failed corpses of technology-enabled fads destined to transform higher education. Today, in many parts of the industrialised world, student debt is reaching the affordability threshold for those who are benefited with a place in higher education. On the other hand, millions of learners will be denied the privilege of a tertiary education for lack of funds or lack of access in their home countries.

A return to the core values of the academy, namely to share knowledge freely combined with the community service agenda modelled on the modern Humbolt tradition of the university may be the catalyst for more sustainable education futures. Is it possible to flip the university using open online courses for social inclusion?

The Open Educational Resource universitas (OERu) is an international collaboration of universities, colleges and polytechnics spanning six regions of the world which will provide free learning opportunities using open online courses based solely on Open Educational Resources (OER) with pathways to obtain credible degrees. The OERu offers a philanthropic alternative to the commercial Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) startups with the added value for learners to gain formal academic credit.

During this workshop we will:


 * Introduce the OERu model
 * Collectively reflect on the challenges and opportunities for the design of an international open collaboration
 * Conduct a mini design simulation for specifying the optimal design solution for establishing an international collaboration like the OERu
 * Share OERu experiences of how the network is addressing these challenges
 * Conduct a critical friend review of the OERu's progress.