Open School for Sale

November 1, 2002

Distance Education going Online

The Campbell government's announcement that Open Learning Agency is being closed within two years is only part of the story. Government is counting on technology to reduce the number of people teaching. Reductions will occur first in distance education and eventually in other forms of education.

In her news release Bond says "Online learning is more efficient and more flexible". Bond is really talking about replacing tutors, instructors, professors and other real people with webpages. That might be cheaper but don't count on a website to mark an essay. Learning outcomes are at risk if technology is used to reduce or eliminate the time instructors have for students.

It wasn't included in her news release but the website for what they are calling BCcampus can be found at http://www.BCcampus.ca. An even more interesting site that Bond neglected to mention is a nine minute briefing and slide show at http://www.c2t2.ca/randy/presentations/bccampus/briefing_oct02.html.

In his 1998 article titled "Does Using Technology in Instruction Enhance Learning?," (The Technology Source, June 1998. Available online at http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=464), Ed Neal compared today's infatuation with technology to the hope for instructional television in the 1960s. On line learning may be better for some students but that doesn't mean it should be the only form of distance education. Proponents of online learning will be quick to point out that the technology offers many modes for student-instructor interaction. Reducing the interactions between instructors and students is a policy choice rather than something that follows from the tools offered by online learning software. In a province where K-12 class sizes are increasing, it doesn't take much thought to realize what policy decision is likely to be made in BC on student-instructor contact time.

The core technology behind BCcampus is offered by a US company, WebCT, Inc. Its website boasts that WebCT is in use in more than 2,500 institutions in 81 countries, including most BC colleges and universities.

The BCcampus briefing emphasizes that "courses offered must be able to be taken wholly online". There are currently over 1303 distance education credit courses offered by 25 BC public post-secondary institutions but fewer than half (489) of those courses are available online. Just to catch up to where we are in distance education, BCcampus needs to convert over 800 courses to online learning. Can that be done by the fall of 2004? The BCcampus slide show says there are now 80 online courses and that work is being done to develop a further 24. You don't need online math to realize the extent of the shortfall. That may be why the online briefing describes several "challenges" faced by BCcampus. These include funding and expansion planning.

The key technology for the Open Learning Agency is not "online learning" but tutors supporting distance education students who receive course materials, submit assignments to the tutors and phone or email for assistance when they require it. Educators call that traditional distance education. The print shop and warehouse are a critical component for distributing course materials to distance education students. According to Bond's announcement, those are the first components to be eliminated. In other words, tutor based distance education is finished in BC. That is fundamentally different from contacting a 24-hour help desk because a website won't come up!

The Campbell government has already developed a reputation for blowing technology projects. The Chief Information Officer resigned as did the chair of the Premier's technology council. The Resource Registry project in Stan Hagen's Ministry is acknowledged to be overly ambitious. The latest announcement replaces effective distance education with "online courses" that have yet to be developed, funded, tested or implemented. Tens of thousands of mature BC students will be the losers.

October 4, 2002

Open School for Sale

Closing BC's Open School Want to buy a school? The Open School has been put on the auction block by the Campbell government. Open School hosts online course content for 26 school districts, and provides course content for over 10,000 students in BC's regional distance education schools. It has licence to use and reproduce crown assets consisting of intellectual property represented in K-12 course materials and has licence to market and distribute those assets. It is strange that in the same week that the Minister of Education announced appointments to her task force on rural education she put Open School up for sale. Perhaps she should have waited for advice from her task force before privatizing that part of public education.

In 1997 the Ministry of Education entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Open Learning Agency to transfer some employees to the agency to create the Open School, and to licence intellectual property rights to the agency. The Ministry also agreed to fund further content development by Open School. The agreement with the Open Learning Agency expires in February 2003. Rather than renewing the agreement with the public agency, the Campbell government is auctioning off this public asset.

Open School's website contains an ad for the sale. The "Request for Qualifications and Expressions of Interest" contains a financial summary for Open School that reveals a grant for fiscal year 2002-03 of $2.7 million from the Ministry of Education for K-12 content development. A further $3.06 million is expected to be earned by Open School this year as fees for providing services to the K-12 education system.

All but 3 of Open School's 39 staff are members of BCGEU. The "Request for Qualifications and Expressions of Interest" advises bidders to fully familiarize themselves with the Labour Relations Code of British Columbia and, in particular, the section that refers to Successorship Rights and Obligations. The bidding document also advises: