1. Managing the Digital Enterprise: A 5-Year Experiment in Open Courseware Meeta Yadav and Michael Rappa North Carolina State University August 9, Document URL:

2. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
Overview
Motivation and objectives;
Site overview;
Site operations;
Business model;
Some results to date;
Future directions.
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Michael Rappa

3. Motivation and Objectives
1998: given the task of developing a graduate course about business and the Internet (or e-commerce).
The problem: textbooks were made obsolete by rapidly changing environment.
The idea: use the Web itself as a source of up-to-date educational content to teach a course.
The challenge: build an user friendly web site that would guide students to the material I selected for the course.
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Michael Rappa

4. Motivation and Objectives
The “big” idea: create a web site for my own class, but make it openly accessible on the web so other students could learn from it, too.
A key decision (which seems obvious now): use hyperlinks to point students to selected material rather than seek permission to redistribute copyrighted works.
Use automated process to continuously check integrity of links
Another key decision: run the whole operation from my office (which is today, the NCSU Open Courseware Lab).
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Michael Rappa

5. Managing the Digital Enterprise
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Michael Rappa

6. Managing the Digital Enterprise
15 topic modules, including links to
Text materials (articles, reports, working papers, etc.)
Current news items (text and streaming audio)
Guest lectures (streaming video)
1000+ links to content on the web.
25 “mini” case studies.
36+ video-taped guest lectures and interviews.
Discussion forum.
Review exercises (via WebAssign)
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Michael Rappa

7. Managing the Digital Enterprise
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Michael Rappa

8. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
“Things to Read”
These are the required readings (usually 3-6 items)
Academic articles and working papers, government reports, studies, etc.
Learning objectives
Review exercises based on these readings.
New items added and obsolete items deleted each semester.
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Michael Rappa

9. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
“Hungry Minds”
Additional things to read.
Usually more advanced materials for students who are already beyond the basics or working at the Ph.D. level.
New items added continuously as they are found.
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Michael Rappa

10. “Case Studies” and “In the News”
Case studies are short descriptions and links to information about highlighted organizations.
In the news items related to the topic module are added throughout the semester.
News comes from all over thanks to the Google news service!
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Michael Rappa

11. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
“Places to Visit”
Relevant web sites that students should explore and be knowledgeable of.
Places where they can find more learning resources, data, guides, on the topic.
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Michael Rappa

12. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
“Discussion Forum”
A place to go to discuss the topic (after reading the assignments).
Students ask questions, offer opinions, and provide links to other materials they may have read on the subject.
Forum participation is graded based on the quality of the student’s contributions over the entire semester.
Because the site is open, students from all over the world participate.
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Michael Rappa

13. “Guest Lectures and Interviews”
Video-taped lectures of invited guest speakers who are experts in the topic. (Great lectures!)
Lectures are streamed on the Web in Real and Quicktime formats.
Beginning to distribute lectures on CDs.
Interviews are conducted and produced by NCSU students.
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Michael Rappa

14. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
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Michael Rappa

15. What is the business model for OCW?
Traditional Model
OCW Model
Open access, free content
“Public Broadcast” model (contributions from users who value the service -- particularly large corporate users).
“Fee for certification”.
Universities as publisher.
Limit access to paying customers.
“Pay-per-view” (tuition).
Purchase content (texts) from commercial publishers.
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Michael Rappa

16. What are the results so far?
~450 on-campus NCSU students over 9 semesters.
~750,000 users each year currently.
>200 university instructors use some or all of the site to teach their own course; ~ two dozen have adopted the course in its entirety.
Corporate education programs that have used the site:
IBM Global Services
Eastman Kodak
Deloitte & Touché / Deloitte Consulting
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Michael Rappa

17. Comparison of Student Evaluations with Department and College
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Michael Rappa

18. How does Open Courseware compare?
DIGITALENTERPRISE.ORG
TEXTBOOK
Passive Learning
Static medium
Discrete improvement
Long pipeline
Secondary source
More costly to students
Commercial model
Selling knowledge
Active learning
Dynamic medium
Continuous improvement
Rapid deployment
Original source materials
Less costly
Community model
Sharing knowledge
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Michael Rappa

19. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
Future Directions
Presently developing a new web site to teach principles of Open Source Software.
Goal to use latest programming techniques to enable: (1) collaboration among instructors at different institutions, and (2) customization of the site by each instructor to meet his or her own needs.
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Michael Rappa

20. Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt
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Michael Rappa