In order to achieve the overall impact of the OER for assessment and credit for students project, the logic model illustrated in Figure 4 above is structured according to the required inputs for key initiatives aimed at achieving a number of project outputs on the pathway to achieving the stated outcomes.
Inputs
A number of important building blocks already exist for input into the OER for assessment and credit for students project:
- OER assets: There is a rapidly growing inventory of existing international educational resources, which can be integrated into the open pedagogy model envisaged by the project. These include: open access content, open access journals, open textbooks, and open applications.
- Existing expertise: There is a wealth of transferable experience from distance education and open distance learning to support the design and development of the project. In addition, participants in the free software movement have gained extensive experience in open models and approaches to building sustainable open systems. As an OER initiative, the project would be committed to transparent and open planning thus enabling wide participation by OER thought leaders and practitioners from around the world.
- Financial resources: Financial resources including contributions in time from participating institutions and external donor funding for strategic elements will be needed to address gaps in available OERs and the design of new components for the OER for student assessment and credit project systems.
- Participating institutions: The project will require a critical mass of participating institutions for awarding formal academic credit for OER university courses. Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand and the University of Southern Queensland, Australia have confirmed their participation to award credit for OER learners and Athabasca University in Canada has established formal PLAR and challenge examination processes. As an open project, all post-secondary institutions that care about sharing knowledge as a core value of education will be encouraged to contribute to the project as anchor partners in the planning and implementation of more sustainable education futures.
- ICT infrastructure: Reliable and scalable open source software systems exist for implementing the OER networked collaboration.
Initiatives
To facilitate planning and coordination across national boundaries, the project is sub-divided into a number of initiatives. Each initiative will include a number of activities (with corresponding inputs, outputs, milestones, key performance indicators and outcomes) ultimately contributing to the implementation of the OER for assessment and credit for students project.
The logic model aims to be sufficiently robust to accommodate the requirements for credible certification within the formal education sector so learners and society will have confidence in the qualifications, but also be flexible enough to leverage the potential OER offers for re-use
