OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
We have reviewed all of the funded projects to varying depths and have reflected upon the extent to which the portfolio of projects cover the original theory of action. As we discuss in Section 2, we find that it has covered quite well the activities above the dotted line. The impact on the developing world is still modest with respect to the enormous need.
The four activities below the dotted line were initiated more recently and are sometimes supported jointly in the Instructional Improvement component of the Education Group and the OER Initiative. For example, Hewlett is now heavily involved in a language learning project call Chengo—Chinese–English on the Go. It has committed to completing the project in cooperation with the Ministry of Education in China. Hewlett will also fund a version for Spanish speakers and is attracting interest from many other language groups. The Foundation intends to develop an open language platform and a half dozen or more open, free English teaching programs for other languages. Hewlett reports that a variety of countries are very interested in cooperating. Most of the work it is funding for formative assessment is currently not focusing on open resources but likely eventually will.
We have decided, however, not to dwell on a detailed analysis of the original plan, but to base our review on the triad model featured on the Hewlett OER website and illustrated here in Figure 2. A theme and implicit goal of this model is to build a community so that the emerging OER movement, stimulated by the Hewlett Foundation, will create incentives for a diverse set of institutional stakeholders to enlarge and sustain this new culture of contribution.
Figure 2—Current Open Educational Resources Logic Model.
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