Managing the Digital Enterprise: A 5-Year Experiment in Open Courseware http://digitalenterprise.org Meeta Yadav and Michael Rappa North Carolina State University August 9, 2003 Document URL: http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt Overview Motivation and objectives; Site overview; Site operations; Business model; Some results to date; Future directions. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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). 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Managing the Digital Enterprise 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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) 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Managing the Digital Enterprise 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

“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! 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

“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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Comparison of Student Evaluations with Department and College 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

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. 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt

Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt 12/8/2018 Michael Rappa http://open.ncsu.edu/merlot.ppt