Hello
I am Erik Christiansen
Assistant Professor/Librarian
Mount Royal University, Calgary
Website: erikchristiansen.net
Email: echristiansen@mtroyal.ca | contact@erikchristiansen.net
Phone: (403) 440-5168

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What Happened to
OpenCourseWare?

Ten years of supporting open ed

Source CC image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

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What I’m going to talk about
Main arguments

The shift of focus to
textbooks

Why refocusing on
OCW is beneficial to
education

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5

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Early days of open
education and open
learning

Why OCW never
went “mainstream”

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I’ve been pondering this for a
while…
Argument in a nutshell
◎ Open ed arguably started with OCW
◎ OCW has been eclipsed by the focus on
other elements of open ed
Why?
◎ Heavy textbook focus
◎ Challenges around ‘going public’ with
a course
◎ Lack of an open source platform
Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Early days of open ed

Source: CC image by Herman on Pixabay

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"OpenCourseWare combines two
things: the traditional openness and
outreach and democratizing
influence of American education
and the ability of the Web to make
vast amounts of information instantly
available.”
"OpenCourseWare is firmly at the
heart of MIT's educational mission:
MIT faculty have a deeply ingrained
sense of service and mission -- they
like to work on big problems and
frankly, they like to influence the
world. There is an incredible idealism
in this faculty.”

Source: OECD. (2007). MIT News, April 4, 2001

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Reasons to support OER
◎ Expanding learning to more people, promoting
lifelong learning, and “bridging the gap
between non-formal, informal and formal
learning” (p. 11)
◎ Altruistic reasons: the idea that sharing
knowledge is consistent with educational
institutions’ missions - that publicly funded
bodies should “leverage taxpayers’ money by
allowing free sharing and reuse of resources”,
and that “quality can be improved and the cost
of content development reduces by sharing and
reusing” (p. 11)
◎ Good for the university’s reputation, internal
improvements to learning, and others
Source: OECD. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources.

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The shift to
textbooks

Source: CC image by Herman on Pixabay

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A few stats on Canadian OER (i)
BC Campus
◎ Approx. 363 open textbooks
◎ 18 “course packs” (OCW)
Open Education Alberta
◎ 45 PressBooks
OpenEd Manitoba
◎ Collaboration with BC Campus
◎ 13 PressBooks

Source: CC image by Lukas on Pexels

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A few stats on Canadian OER (ii)
eCampus Ontario (‘Open Library’)
◎ 458 textbooks listed - approx 900
listed under their PressBooks
network
◎ 156 open courses with
downloadable materials
Atlantic OER
◎ 25 textbooks in their PressBooks
network
Source: CC image by Lukas on Pexels

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Textbook-centric
language
“Find an open textbook”
“Adopt and open textbooks”
“Review an open textbook”
“Browse collection of open
textbooks”
Source: OpenEd Manitoba

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Textbook-centric
language
“New textbook collection”
“Find open textbooks”
“Search the B.C. Open Textbook
Collection”
“Create Open Textbooks”
Source: BC Campus OpenEd

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Easier to measure the impact
of textbooks
Lots of advocacy from students to ease
post secondary costs.
Easier to measure student student
savings.
◎ BC Campus: $34 million since 2012
◎ OpenEd Manitoba: $3.5 million
◎ eCampus Ontario: $12 million since
2017
Open Oregon: $14 million in savings, $12
for every $1 invested.

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OCW has taken a
back seat to the
other ‘opens’

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Going public is hard
◎ Courses have a highly personal element representing years of scholarship
◎ Understanding OCW values requires a
“leap of faith” (Panto & Comas-Quinn,
2013)
◎ Administrative support and institutional
credit matters (Wei, H.-C., & Chou, C., 2021)
◎ The idea of openness is not well
understood and is a charged term (Knox,
2013; Baker III, 2017)
◎ Achieving openness in OCW requires a
willingness and effort (McNally &
Christiansen, 2019)

Source: CC image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay

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Source: Pomerantz and Peek, 2016

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Source: McNally & Christiansen, 2019

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Source: Christiansen & McNally, 2022

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Image by Ahmad Ardity from Pixabay

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Presentation matters

Source: University of Regina

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Presentation matters

Source: Auroux, D. (Fall 2010). Multivariable calculus. MIT OpenCourseWare

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Situates OER alongside open source software and
open access, both of which are tied to technological
developments.
Reasons why people share their content
◎ “...include improved, less costly and more
user-friendly information technology
infrastructure (such as broadband), hardware
and software” (p. 11).

Source: OECD. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources.

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OCW

Journals
Data

Textbooks
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June 2017 - April 2023

Source: Dataverse Metrics, Accessed May 18, 2023

June 2016 - April 2023

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Pandita & Singh, 2022
◎
◎
◎

Examined growth in OA journal from 2002 - 2021
In 2002 there were 22 journals in the DOAJ. 16,589 by 2021
Average of 829.45 journals indexed each year

Source: DOAJ, Accessed May 18, 2023

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Value of refocusing
on OCW

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COVID

Source: Google search trends

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COVID

Source: Google search trends

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In the early days of the pandemic, MIT OCW
has 2.2 million visits a month - up 75% from
2019.
◎ Post-pandemic there’s still an average
15% increase in usage
◎ MIT OCW gets approx 22 million visits a
year
◎ 4.5 million YouTube subscribers.
“...massive shift to remote and hybrid
learning over the past year has brought into
sharp relief both the opportunities of online
education and the disparities of access,
technology, and equity for learners
everywhere.”

Sources: MIT Faculty Newsletter, May/June, 2021; The next generation of MIT OCW, YouTube, June 2022\

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Long history of openness in education

Peter and Deimann (2013) examine the
expanding and contracting nature of
openness in education throughout
history.
Late middle ages, “the population was
becoming increasingly mobile and there
was a rising demand for ‘expert
knowledge’, matched by an overall
growing intellectual curiosity (Riddle,
1993; Southern 1970)” (p. 9)

Source: Peter, S., & Deimann, M. (2013)

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Long history of openness in education
“I think the original conception of OCW
was that the majority of users would be
other educators… I think it’s caught
everyone off guard how much hunger
and curiosity there is just from the world
at large for this knowledge. At times, our
estimate is over half of the traffic that
comes to OCW is just from curious
independent learners…”
Source: EdTech Examined podcast, March 2, 2021

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Source: CC image from Wikimedia

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Thanks!
Any questions?
erikchristiansen.net
echristianse@mtroyal.ca | contact@erikchristiansen.net
Phone: (403) 440-5168

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Abelson, H., Miyagawa, S., Yue, D.K.P. (2021, June). On the 20th anniversary of opencourseware: How it began. MIT Faculty Newsletter.
https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2021/on-the-20th-anniversary-of-opencourseware-how-it-began/
Auroux, D. (Fall 2010). Multivariable calculus. MIT OpenCourseWare. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-02sc-multivariable-calculus-fall2010/
BC Campus. (n.d.). BC Campus OpenEd. https://open.bccampus.ca/
BC Campus. (n.d.). Impact. https://annualreview.bccampus.ca/impact/
Christiansen, E. & Hans, K (Hosts). (2021, March 2). 19: Curt Newton [Audio podcast episode]. In EdTech Examined.
https://edtechexamined.castos.com/episodes/19-curt-newton-director-of-mit-opencourseware-1
Christiansen, E., & McNally, M. (2022). Examining the technological and pedagogical elements of select open courseware. First Monday.
https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v27i10.11639
Dataverse. (n.d.). Metrics. https://dataverse.org/metrics
Directory of Open Access Journals. (n.d.). https://doaj.org/
eCampus Ontario. (n.d.). Open library. https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/
Frederick W. Baker, III, 2017. “An alternative approach: Openness in education over the last 100 years,” Tech Trends, volume 61, pp. 130–
140. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0095-7
Jeremy Knox, 2013. “The limitations of access alone: Moving toward open processes in education technology,” Open Praxis, volume 5,
number 1, pp. 21–29.
doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.5.1.36
McNally, M. B., & Christiansen, E. G. (2019). Open enough? Eight factors to consider when transitioning from closed to open resources and
courses: A conceptual framework. First Monday, 24(6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i6.9180
MIT. (April 4, 2021). MIT to make all course materials available free on the world wide web. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2001/ocw
MIT OCW. (2010). Multivariable calculus.
MIT Open Learning. (2022, July 22). The next generation of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itt9lUA8_P0

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OECD. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/38654317.pdf
OpenEd Manitoba. (n.d.). https://openedmb.ca/
OpenEd Manitoba. (n.d.). About OpenEd Manitoba. https://openedmb.ca/about/about-opened-manitoba/
Open Education Alberta. (n.d.). https://openeducationalberta.ca/
Pantò, E., & Comas-Quinn, A. (2013). The challenge of open education. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 9(1).
https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/798
Pandita, R., & Singh, S. (2022). A Study of Distribution and Growth of Open Access Research Journals Across the World. Publishing Research
Quarterly, 38(1), 131–149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-022-09860-x
Peter, S., & Deimann, M. (2013). On the role of openness in education: A historical reconstruction, Open Praxis, 5(1).
http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.5.1.23
Pomerantz, J., & Peek, R. (2016). Fifty shades of open. First Monday, 21(5). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i5.6360
University of Regina. (n.d.). Open Course Ware. https://www.uregina.ca/oer-publishing/ur-opencourseware.html
Wei, H.-C., & Chou, C. (2021). Ready to Do OpenCourseWare? A Comparative Study of Taiwan College Faculty. International Review of Research in
Open and Distributed Learning, 22(2), 118–142. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v22i2.5252

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