1. HippoCampus and the Value of Open Educational Resources Gary Lopez, Ph
HippoCampus and the Value of Open Educational Resources Gary Lopez, Ph.D. Executive Director Monterey Institute for Technology and Education March 15, 2009
Who is familiar with OER?
If YES: Do you use OER? How do you use it?

2. NROC is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, a 501c3 in California funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The first goal of NROC is to assemble a library of high-quality general education content for high school and college gathered from educational institution across the US.
We then invest in the content to insure editorial rigor and curricular completeness.
We also invest in the technology to allow the content to operate with the various CMS.
The second goal of the project is to make the content available at no cost to individuals worldwide; students, teachers, and the general public.
We do that via public website including HippoCampus which I will talk about in more detail a bit later. 2

3. Open Educational Resources
First some background about OER:
The term “Open Educational Resources” was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the “Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries.”
Major funding for support of OER has come from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
One of the OER project with which you may be familiar is Creative Commons. 3

4. OER Providers
There are a number of OER projects, each with their own approach and their own user base.
Probably the best known is MIT’s Open CourseWare. Course materials from 1,800 MIT courses have been made available. More than 1.2 million people visit the site each month, mostly students and faculty from research universities, and mostly outside the United States.
Another popular OER site is Connexions developed by Rice University. Connexions is an open repository where anyone can post material and anyone can download it and modify it. The content runs the range from “signal processing engineering” to “the best way to cook a steak.” Over 600,000 users visit Connexions each month.
HippoCampus is one of the sites where NROC content is made available. The content at HippoCampus for high school and general education courses in colleges. We currently offer content for 34 courses in 8 discipline areas. Subjects include physics, US History, and algebra. The content has been vetted and is regularly maintained. The HippoCampus site is designed for student homework support and study, and for individual teacher use. Any teacher can customize HippoCampus for their students.

5. why isn’t everyone using it?
Living Up to the Promise
So, if OER is GOOD, and its FREE,
So, this begs the question, “If OER is so good, and its free, why isn’t everyone using it?”
For those in the audience that know about OER and don’t use it, why not?
Hard to use
Uneven quality
Not curricular
Time-consuming to search
Can’t adapt the content easily
why isn’t everyone using it?

6. What you are looking for in OER . . . curricular complete quality
OER Check List
What you are looking for in OER . . .
curricular
complete
quality
easy to use
teaching tool
So ideally, what are you looking for?
Curricular- content objects offered in the context of a course and supporting the state standards
Complete- while I might not want to use all of it, I want everything I might need for my course, including assessments and activities around the material
Quality- Vetted, high quality of both presentational and editorial value
Easy to Use- should be easy to find and easy to integrate in my class
Teaching Tool- want a teaching tool, not just a collection of media files that I have to make useful

7. We have been listening to you!
NROC is unique among OER initiatives:
Curricular content for both higher education and high school
Complete course foundations with a flexible learning object structure
Customizable by an instructor, a district, or a state
Correlated to popular textbooks and (soon) to state standards
Classroom and online teaching tools
The NROC project has been listening to teachers and administrators.
Curricular content- many general education subjects
Complete course content- including presentational material, assessments, teacher’s guides, problem sets, etc.
Customizable- learning object architecture allows customization
Correlated- to popular textbooks and state standards
Teaching tool- not just stuff, intended to achieve defined educational outcomes 7

8. Quality Media rich Editorially rigorous Instructionally sound
Media rich- video, audio, text, graphics, animation, simulation all blended together to create a learning experience
Editorial rigorous- editorial oversight by NROC and SME’s from around the country
Instructionally sound- designed with widely accepted instructional design principles

9. CHALLENGE: NROC Network Case Studies Offering Course Content Statewide
Offer high-quality online course content statewide
“The (NROC courses) were a unique find. The quality is extraordinary, the flexibility is exceptional, and the feedback we’re getting from our teachers is the content is amazing.”
Steve Nelson
Chief Information Technology Strategist, ODOE
Oregon’s Department of Education was looking for a way to centrally deliver robust online content to teachers and students across the state. They set up a Moodle repository and incorporated the NROC objects and courses. They are anxiously awaiting new mappings of NROC content to state standards to make this initiative even more useful to teachers (coming summer 2008). They appreciate the affordable membership model that does not increase in cost with increased usage.
In fact, NROC encourages broad usage as part of its outreach mission.
Needed course content for online and classroom teaching, HS (and ultimately CC)
Difficult finding affordable course content for so many students
Providing high-quality online courses to 205 high schools and 125,000
students statewide

10. Flexible Can be used within popular CMS’s and repositories.
Learning Object architecture allows for maximum flexibility
Compatible with popular CMS’s
Customizable for a teacher or an institution
Customizable by a teacher, a district, or a state.

11. NROC Network Case Studies
Course Redesign & Blended Learning
CHALLENGE:
Replace some classroom time with online course components
“We chose the NROC content because it is high quality, and includes lessons, learning objects, activities and assessments, all of which may be used separately. The fact that lessons can be “chunked” in ways that work for the individual faculty member make them more desirable than other third party content.”
Michael Anderson, Assistant Director, UT System TeleCampus
UT System TeleCampus found NROC to be a great asset as they approached a university-wide collaborative “Course Redesign” project in Calculus. Like many colleges and high schools, they were striving to replace classroom seat time (particularly lectures) with individually-paced online components. Class time could then to be devoted to more active learning – in this case a math lab setting.
UTTC found the flexibility of the content to be critical in meeting the needs of a team of instructors working on collaborative development of a central course to be offered in this way.
Similar uses of the NROC content has been reported by high schools adapting the material for credit recovery, summer school courses and more. 11

12. Curricular Correlated with state standards and popular textbooks.
Complete teaching materials.
Correlated with popular textbooks and state standards (in the next few months)
Curricular content objects in context of a course. All that you need to teach, both public and secure materials

13. NROC Network Case Studies
Replacing Costly Textbooks
CHALLENGE:
Textbook prices are too high.
On teaching US History without a textbook
“. . . we turned to NROC. I left my discussion questions, midterms, and finals the same as they were when we used the textbook, so I could compare outcomes. I was happy to find that my students are right on track with the digital alternative “
Karen Kaemmerling
Chair of Social Sciences, CCCOnline
CCCOnline courses are taught by adjuncts and courses are centrally developed by CCConline staff. CCCOnline was striving to offer students an alternative to high-priced textbooks in these courses.
They first turned to publishers for online versions of books at half price, but students still spent fortune on printing and course was more text-based than the teacher wanted
Then they found NROC, and at first decided to supplement, but quickly realized it could be a textbook alternative when used with the teachers notes and assignments.
CCCOnline implemented a $20 material charge for students enrolling in these textbook-free courses. This fee now covers the membership fee for all institutional uses of the NROC content across the organization and saves students hundreds.
NROC content also saved on development time and costs for centrally-developed shared content for adjuncts.

14. NROC Library - 2009 College Course Foundations US History I
US History II
American Government
Introductory Physics I (algebra-based)
Introductory Physics II (algebra-based)
General Physics I (calculus-based)
General Physics II (calculus-based)
Introductory Calculus I
Introductory Calculus II
General Calculus I
General Calculus II
Environmental Science
Religions of the World
Elementary Algebra
Psychology
Calculo General I (Spanish)
Calculo General II (Spanish)
Statistics for the Social Sciences
Advanced Placement
Course Foundations
AP Environmental Science
AP Physics B I
AP Physics B II
AP Physics C I
AP Physics C II
AP US History I
AP US History II AP US Government and Politics
AP Calculus AB I
AP Calculus AB II
AP Calculus BC I
AP Calculus BC II
AP Biology
High School
Course Foundations
College Prep Physics I
College Prep Physics II
Algebra 1a
Algebra 1b
Also in Development
Non-Majors Biology
Curso de Algebra 1A (Spanish)
Curso de Algebra 1B (Spanish)
Coming in 2010
Algebra 1 (NEW)
Here is what we have in the NROC today and what we expect to add this year.

15. HippoCampus: Free for Everyone
As I mentioned, HippoCampus is free for individual use.
Let’s take a look at the content at HippoCampus.
Hippo is NOT just for teachers in these discipline areas! (Search feature)
Bookmark assignments to Speech or English . . .
Demo of Public Site: Subjects, Courses, Topics, Course context, Textbook correlation, text view, launch and play object, social book marking, feedback
Demo of Customization of Public Site: Delete subjects, courses, textbooks, use announcements area for assignment (interdisciplinary example, i.e. English/Speech, Education, EdTech), Highlighted bookmarks/labels. 15

16. HippoCampus What People Are Saying About HippoCampus
“I am thoroughly impressed by the content and the presentation of the HippoCampus site.”
“I have just discovered HippoCampus and I am very impressed with the algebra and calculus sections.”
Thank you for such a wonderful tool.”
“Incredible resources!! I did not know these were available for the general public!! Thank you!”
Both teachers and students have been raving about HippoCampus.
“THIS IS RADICALLY AWESOME! This program has helped me a bunch. Please make more of these programs. It is helping me understand concepts much better. Keep up the good work!”
“First of all let me thank you for your efforts in open education! It is really inspiring.”

17. The Challenge of OER
“ sustainability problems plague open educational resources the inherent contradiction in the idea of sustaining and upgrading a product that is given away.”
The Promise of Open Educational Resources, Marshall S. Smith and Catherine M. Casserly, Change, September/October 2006 .
Since OER is free for individuals, who is paying for it?
Grants from Hewlett and other foundations have supported OER so far, it can’t go on forever. Hewlett has stated that financial sustainability is the biggest challenge to OER.
NROC is the only OER project that was designed with a sustainability business model. 17

18. NROC Network
Educators, designers, technologists, and administrators working together to promote the continuous improvement of online courses through collaborative development of high-quality content and instruction.
While NROC content is free for individuals at HippoCampus, we ask institutions that use NROC to become supporting members of the NROC Network for a nominal fee. As members, institutions can use NROC content to teach courses and support instruction. We can host the content for them or they can install it on their own servers, in their own CMS.
The NROC Network community is committed to continuous improvement of online content through collaborative development. 18

19. Value of Membership Members use NROC in a variety of ways,
Online courses
Traditional classroom use
Hybrid/blended
Select media for iPod downloads
and to address a variety of challenges.
HANDOUT - Membership Options
NROC offers two levels of membership, which are outlined on the HANDOUT along with some of the benefits of membership. For those that are interested, I would be glad to discuss these options in greater detail.
The use of NROC content by our member institutions has varied, from traditional classroom use to courses taught entirely online. A few members have even taken advantage of the iPod version of NROC to conduct iPod courses and homework assignments.
Here are some examples of how a few members have put NROC content to work. 19

20. NROC Network Online Community
While NROC staff help manage the Network, the members are responsible for much of the activity here. The site offers:
monthly webinars on professional development topics.
special interest groups, such as a AP Audit group and various CMS user groups.
social authoring of content: one of the main activities of the community is the maintenance of the existing content and the development of new content via social authoring, a kind of managed-wiki approach. NROC staff manage the collaboration and editorial functions, but the members provide subject-matter expertise and academic review.
additional resources available by discipline; secure assessments, teachers guides
This is also the central tech support site for members. Each institutional member is allowed special administrative access to this site for select number in their organization.

21. Custom Member Sites
One of the benefits of membership is a branded custom version of HippoCampus. This has proven is a powerful way to use the NROC content. Here are a few example of custom site. It is more than just a “skin” over the site. The content at HippoCampus can also be customized for the standards of the institution. NROC can put up a site within a couple of days and will host is free of additional charge and update with any changes or additions to the content automatically.
HANDOUT - Membership Options

22. Network Members, Pilots & Partners
Academy School District 20 Online CO
Adams 12 Five Star Schools CO
Alabama Department of Education AL
Albuquerque Public Schools NM
Anaheim Public Schools CA
AP Prep NY
Aurora Public Schools CO
Bambugare Network NA
Bethel Covenant College (Uganda)
Cal State Fullerton CA
Center to Bridge the Digital Divide WA
Chattanooga State TN
Chemeketa CC OR
Clark County Virtual High School NV
Colorado Community Colleges Online CO
Colorado Online Learning CO
West Virginia Comm. Tech. College WV
Cooperstown Central School NY
CORE
CUDI
Cyberlearning VA
Digital Learning Commons WA
Douglas County School District CO
Eastside Preparatory School NJ
EPC-Summer Academies CA
Esperanza Academy PA
Florida Distance Learning Consortium FL
Florida Virtual School FL
FSS Project T.E.C.H CA
Georgia Board of Regents GA
Georgia Virtual School GA
Greenville County Virtual School SC
Grossmont Union High School District CA
Gwinnett County Online Campus GA
Hamilton County Virtual School TN
Hawaii Department of Education HI
Hudson County Schools of Technology NJ
Idaho Digital Learning Academy ID
iInstructor.net UT
Illinois Virtual High School IL
Indian Prairie School District #204 IL
Iowa Community College IA
Iowa Learning Online IA
Kent Technology Academy WA
Kentucky Virtual Schools KY
Lake Tahoe Community College CA
League for Innovation AZ
Los Angeles Unified School District CA
Louisiana Department of Education LA
Lubbock Christian University TX
Lubbock Independent School District TX
Maryland State Depart. of Education MD
Mason City School District OH
Mead School District WA
Michigan Virtual School MI
Mid-Hudson BOCES Consortium NY
Minneapolis Public Schools Online MN
Minnesota Online MN
Mississippi Department of Education MS
Missouri Virtual Instruction Program MO
Missouri Virtual School MO
Montana State University - Billings MT
Monterey Peninsula School District CA
myHimachal PA
Myron B. Thompson Academy HI
Network for Mercy Education IL
New Mexico Cyber Academy NM
New York Harbor School NY
North Carolina Comm. College System NC
N. Dakota Ctr. for Distance Education ND
Northern Humboldt Con. of Schools CA
Northview High School CA
Omaha Public Schools NE
Open High School of Utah UT
Oregon Department of Education OR
OTAN CA
Partnership for Innovations NE
Petersons
Pierce College WA
Portland State University OR
Poway Unified School District CA
Rochester Public Schools MN
RUSD CA
San Jacinto College TX
San Jose Education Foundation CA
San Luis Obispo Cty. Office of Educ. CA
San Marcos Baptist Academy TX
Santa Barbara Cty. Office of Educ. CA
Saskatchewan Institute of
Applied Science and Tech NA
Silicon Valley Workplace Center CA
Silver State High School NV
South Carolina Depart of Education SC
Southern Regional Education Board GA
Sowelo Technical Community College LA
St. Petersburg College FL
Teachers Without Borders NA
Tennessee Board of Regents TN
Council of Chief State School Officers KY
The Mid-Hudson BOCES NY
Tulare County Office of Education CA
University of California College Prep CA
University of Montana System MT
University of Texas at Brownsville TX
UT TeleCampus TX
Utah Electronic High School UT
Valley Christian School CA
Virtual College of Texas TX
Virtual School Society NA
Virtual Virginia VA
West Virginia University at Parkersburg WV
Western Governors University UT
Whitfield County Career Academy GA
Here is a partial list of member of NROC Network. The Network has been growing strongly. We now have almost 50 institutional members.
Notice that members include Department of Education of more than 15 states, big districts, and a number of virtual schools. There are also a number of international non-profit educational organizations that are Network members.
When should an institution join? Many institution find NROC valuable for supporting broader institutional initiatives like credit recovery and advanced placement preparation. When an institution is relying on NROC for part of their educational support, then it is time to join and help sustain it financially.
For institutions that do not have the financial resources to pay the membership, they can join at no cost. It is our policy that no student or teacher will be denied access to NROC because of a financial barrier. 22

23. CHALLENGE: NROC Network Case Studies
Sharing Through a Central Repository
CHALLENGE:
Promote content sharing and save development costs among 35 member colleges.
"Starting a statewide digital repository is a challenge. At the core of the project, the repository must offer sufficient rich multimedia and high quality resources to attract and motivate faculty to use repository content. In Florida, we are licensing the high quality NROC content library to form that essential content core."
The Florida Distance Learning Consortium has been an active participant in the Southern Regional Education Board (SCORE) initiative, establishing standards for sharing content in federated repositories across 16 states
FDLC’s Orange Grove is first initiative to offer content statewide K20 . They are in the process of porting the NROC content into Equella’s Learning Edge Repository software and metatagging it for the greatest ease of use by teachers and students in the state.
There has been a twofold challenge
Getting teachers to share their own content in the repository
Getting teachers to use the repository as a source when they are preparing lessons.
To motivate teachers to use the new repository, there needs to a caliber of content that exceeds that which any individual teacher can readily create on their own.
There needs to be a substantial quantity to get things rolling. The NROC repository brings nearly 2000 K20 objects to the project.
Susie Henderson, Director, Orange Grove 23

24. CHALLENGE: NROC Network Case Studies Dual Enrollment
High school students wishing to jumpstart their college experience
Many of our members have adopted NROC courses to offer students dual enrollment courses online. Offering these opportunities broadly across a state, despite the size of individual schools, has been a challenge for many.
Offering this content online in cooperation with a local college allows students to earn college credit while in high school and they are able to do it anytime, anywhere
A number of other high schools have adapted the Advanced Placement preparation materials form NROC to increase their AP offerings – sometimes using APIP funds to pay for their membership.
The NROC content is very high quality and perfect for starting our dual enrollment program. Its learning object architecture makes it very flexible and allows us to customize it for our program.
Judy Lowe, Assist Vice President, Distributed Ed and Multimedia 24

25. If you’re interested in membership for your institution . . .
NROC Network Membership
If you’re interested in membership for
your institution . . .
Gary Lopez
Executive Director
Monterey Institute for Technology and Education
Member options HANDOUT

26. Share it---with LEARNERS!
Link to HippoCampus
Make HippoCampus assignments
Blog about it, add links to directory sites
Introduce faculty to HippoCampus tools
Offer feedback on HippoCampus
Know of great content? Suggest HippoCampus as a sharing vehicle
Consider other institutional uses possible through membership
OER success is measured by usage
While we need new members to NROC Network to achieve our goal of becoming financially self-sustaining, our main mission with this project is to get NROC in the hands of students and teachers. So even if your school is not ready to join, you can still help by spreading the word.
Commit to sharing with at least one other person (take two postcards). Get it into the hands of LEARNERS (students AND teachers AND the public)
Discussion of ideas – with prompts from the slide show. 26