Open Education 2014

Session focus: Designers for Learning, a volunteer service-learning initiative for college students in instructional design programs, recently facilitated a pilot project to increase the adoption of open educational resources (OER) for adult basic education, an area unserved by existing OER models. This session will examine the tremendous untapped opportunity for OER adoption to support adult basic education, particularly by those outside of traditional educational settings. In addition, the collaborative instructional design process employed within the 100% virtual volunteer service-learning project will be reviewed, and recommendations for further OER adoption in this area will be discussed.

Target population: Adult basic education programs support those over the age of 18 who have not attained a high school diploma, a population of over 30 million adults in the United States alone. A central goal of adult basic education is to help learners achieve high school equivalency, often through successful completion of the General Educational Development (GED) test. In 2014, the requirements for the GED test were revised to align with the 2013 College and Career Readiness (CCR) standards released by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education as a guide for adult education programs that prepare learners for post-secondary college and career training. While the CCR standards align with the K12 Common Core State Standards, the CCR standards are bundled into only five grade groupings.

Informal instructional setting: While adult basic education programs are offered in community colleges, learners pursuing their GED also receive support outside of traditional educational settings within community-based nonprofits and other social enterprises. In these nontraditional settings, learners often study independently, or with the support of volunteer tutors who may not be trained educators.

OER service-learning project overview: Working as volunteers for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation campus for homeless adults, 22 college instructional design students collaborated with the guidance of 19 faculty advisors and other volunteer subject-matter experts to complete five different instructional design projects to support those pursuing high school equivalency. Student designers in one project were responsible for mining and mapping existing OER to the CCR standards, including an analysis of existing OER designed to align with the K12 Common Core State Standards. Three project teams designed and developed a unit of instruction that aligns with one anchor CCR standard. These tutor-supported units of instruction are prototypes for future instructional design and development. In response to the new GED computer-based testing requirements, the fifth team produced instruction that introduced learners to the use of computers for learning. A central goal of all projects was the adaptation of existing OER for this adult basic education focus. In addition, all work produced for this project was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.