 Good morning. So that was actually kind of lame, I have to apologize. One more time, good morning. Good morning. So my name is Jim Shelton. As you heard Martha say, I am what's called the Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the US Department of Education, which is way too long of a title. It is my honor and pleasure, and it is actually especially my honor and pleasure to come with Martha. One of the things that's interesting is, as you might guess, we try to divide and conquer a lot. So we actually don't get to hear each other do our things very often. And I love working with Martha. It's great to work with her. She, as you can tell, has a great energy. Makes everybody feel comfortable, but also has a nice firm hand that kind of pushes through all the things that happen to get in the way. And make it possible for the kind of innovative work that you're doing and that we're talking about to happen. I know you've heard from her. And so the big question is, what is this guy got to talk about? And I really am here to do two things. The first is to say everything that Martha said about the context is very true, about our aspirations, about what the president desires, about what we're trying to do with our policy. But the reality is that as federal bureaucrats, what we can do is create the context for great people to do great work. And ultimately, it takes an ecosystem of people who have nothing to do with the government in most cases to actually make everything happen. So the question is, are we going to do what it takes to create that ecosystem? And I have a very particular point of view, given my role, about what it's going to take to have an ecosystem that really drives open educational resources from something that is currently on the fringe to something that actually dominates the sector, that transforms the way our young people learn, that transforms the opportunity across the globe for us to educate people to their highest possible level, for us to accommodate people who are caught in the industries where, in fact, we are finding that the life of industries is getting shorter and shorter every day. This is the opportunity before us. And as you hear from the president on down, we believe even though we talk about America being number one, that this is not a zero-sum game, we believe in the growing the pie. And in fact, all of our economic futures is about growing the opportunity for people around the world. And this is one of the ways in which to do it. One of the things that I want to highlight though is that, as you heard the commissioners say, this has to be about improving teaching and learning. It can't just be about open and free. If we do the same old thing in a cheaper form, shame on us. And so I talked in March at the Hewlett convening on open educational resources about four steps to try and move to this new system with a very clear and intentional focus on actually improving better outcomes, making better teaching and learning outcomes and improving access to effective teaching and learning resources. That is the basic game. Here are the four steps. And what I want to do now is just to do a quick status check on where we think we are and also to get up and new about what's missing and what we need to do and what you're going to do to move things forward. Now I have to say I had two versions of this. One was the high-risk version which had a lot of embedded technology and then I decided that was not a good idea. So you're getting the lower risk version of this so I'll have to voice over a couple of things. I just finished talking about the importance of us shifting the value proposition. OER when people first start talking about it, you heard a lot of emphasis on free. Free, free, free, cheap, great, but it has to shift to OER being better. That it actually is producing better outcomes and that we're, because of the different things that you can do when the resource is open, the access it provides, the flexibility it provides, the timeliness of the resources and the embedded science, we can make it better. We're seeing people move in this direction. I'm sure there are examples throughout this room. Since I'm happened to be here, I figured I'd give a shout out to David to setting the bar on what quality looks like is got to be an important mission for this ecosystem, for this sector to step forward and say, not only are we cheaper, we are better. Currently, most of our resources open or not rely on the old paradigms. I won't go through all this, but if you read it quickly, you'll see that it is mostly true. So then the question becomes, how do we get better as a sector at making educational resources that actually improve outcomes? How do we embed everything that we know about how people learn? How do we advance the science, the science around how we identify and describe what people need to learn? I'll ask this in a number of rooms. How many of you are familiar with cognitive task analysis? In our rooms in the future, all hands need to go up. When you're talking about our standards and the way we set them in education, we tend to ask experts to get into a room and put labels on the wall and figure out the dependencies. Well now, we have the ability to start empirically understanding what it is that experts know and do. And to refine that with our understandings through their interactions, both real and in the context of learning, the next steps. These are things that we can learn. These are things that we can improve. These are things that we can prove. Same with our assessments. Same with our design of instructional resources and other kinds of experiences, whether they be gaming or otherwise, to allow our students to master things. These are all areas that actually deserve significant research and development, whereas we move forward as a sector, we should be creating an infrastructure that allows us to learn much more quickly. We should be putting forward best practice examples. And we're seeing this start to happen with OLNet, which I was gonna take you into, but everybody here already knows about OLNet. But also things like the worked examples, where people are actually in the process of showing their work or creating transparency around how well it's working, what the issues are that they're struggling with and sharing that with a community that can help them refine their work. You all already know about the work that Carnegie Mellon has done, that's gonna came up this morning, but also in partnership with Creative Commons, the support they're providing to the folks that actually won that $500 million in TAA grants that Martha talked about. If we are do this right, the science and research that has come out of all of your work now, the work Carnegie Mellon in that we're starting to aggregate will make its way into that $500 million worth of resources. If in fact we don't do it, shame on us. But the opportunity is to not only build it into what we have this year, but we've got at least three more years. There ought to be a common set of resources that people as they're putting together their applications next year, should be able to draw from. So as they are designing their programs, as they're designing their applications, they are drawing from the best in the world. There are not many things that we have in our resources at the federal level to compliment the things that already exist in the private space in this particular area. This is where we need you to move much more quickly than we can. And then obviously we need many more best in class examples. We'll come up with these investments that we'll make with the TAA and other areas, but that's gonna take time to show up. Your work is showing progress and impact today and we need to figure out how we move that much more quickly. The basic infrastructure to get rid of barriers. How do we make it easier? How do we actually make sure that the precious resource that everyone here is expending is leveraged against the resource that everyone else is spending? How do we put in place the things that make it easy to share data, to share learning objects, to help each other perfect the systems that we're using to deploy and offer these tools? To create utilities that allow us to, as learning registry will do, to find things that actually allow us to find the resources that match our specific needs, that are used in the particular ways that are gonna benefit the most students. There's much work going on in this space. With the work of digital learning now here in this country, we're starting to see a regulatory framework happen at the state levels. Utah is on the cutting edge of setting a frame that lets us understand how you get rid of some of the barriers to open educational resources but to digital learning overall. Some things in the overall platform that I can't agree with but most of it is about how do you create an open space where digital learning can take a foothold and actually gain traction and ultimately transition from the print world that we live in to digital? Similarly, big grant programs like TA are gonna change not only in the K-12 space in the higher ed space but also how we think about training in the workforce and how we actually make the resources available to those community-based organizations that are doing hand-to-hand combat every day trying to help people who are struggling with employment find ways to get connected to jobs. They can't afford to act like big corporate training firms but they still need to be able to access the very best that we have to offer. And then finally, just recently we've been struggling in the past the elementary and secondary education act otherwise known as no child left behind in this country to pass a new version of that. Well, as a sign of good news, last week out of the Senate committee came a opposed bill that included a number of things. One of the important things that it can includes was the inclusion of what's called the Attain Act. It basically is a promise, a promise to invest in the infrastructure that we need to support, especially low-income children in having access to digital technology. The kind of resources that they will need to be able to access these resources that we're all trying to create. That kind of policy framework supported by infrastructure, supported by standards, that ecosystem, which you play an important part in creating, has to be there. Your voice and your expertise will matter. So then we say, so where are we now? What's missing from this picture? Well, Martha talked about how do we create the kinds of private sector, non-profit, for-profit, whatever, enterprises that are gonna help us to figure out, take these things to scale. They're gonna allow it and make it easy for systems to make the adopt these kinds of resources, for teachers to understand how they deploy these resources in their classrooms to the benefit of their students. How do we create the enterprises to actually do that and what else needs to happen for that to happen? What else is missing from the picture? I'd love to hear that from you. You heard Martha talk about what's in the way. Are the things that we're doing at the federal level that are stupid? Are the things that at the state level are inhibiting the progress, like only allowing textbook money to be spent on paper, things like that, seat time, things like that. And more importantly and most importantly, who's stepping up? I gave a few examples. Obviously everyone in this room is a living example of people doing great work in this space and the question becomes, who is doing this work and can carry it forward? President Obama and Martha and Arne are gonna continue to try and create a great context for this work. But ultimately it comes down to every day. What university? What school? What school district? What teacher? What researcher? Is going to do what to add to this ecosystem? How hard are we gonna press? And when the time comes, are we going to raise our voices? And I wanna be careful here, but I wanna make a very specific point. One of the things that is interesting about the education sector, especially when you study innovation, is that our sector does some things that are odd. Just plain odd. Let me give you one example. So can I tell you how many lobbyists, the pharmaceutical industry sends to the hill to get more research and development dollars for the beginning stages of new pharmaceutical drugs, new health interventions. They spend tons of resources trying to get more dollars invested in research and development so that they can take that research and development and create new enterprises from it. Our sector, not so much. In fact, often they send people to say, don't let them spend that money on research and development. That's just not a good idea. They might create things that somehow undercut what we already have, that might push the envelope into what the next generation ought to look like. That is just plain odd. And especially if we wanna make progress, a different point of view has to hit the table. A different point of view that is shared, not only nationally, but globally, about how are we actually gonna advance the field and what the new models look like that are win-win all around. This is not rocket science, folks, but if we don't get on our game, the game will be over before we start. And with that, I'm happy to open up for questions and thank you for your time. Questions, anyone? Anyone? Be a little bit. Yes, ma'am. Your dollars paid for OER. Yes, so, and, Martha, you may wanna chime in on this one. I'll let you hold it. No, no, I got it. Just if I get in trouble, I need, you know. So, recently, as everyone knows, the TAA in particular, as Martha mentioned, had a very particular set of language in it that says everything should be CC by. I was mentioning this peculiar behavior that our sector has. So, there are a set of folks who actually went to the hill and asked for a very particular amendment to be made during the appropriations process, which is when you get money. It basically says that, sure, you can do all this, but you have to do a scan that makes sure that you're doing it in an area where there is nothing that exists today and there is nothing in development that will exist that the thing that you're gonna give a grant to will support. So, in other words, if there is an existing, let's say, developmental math curriculum, for example, this would say, hmm, you can't give a grant to someone who might wanna do some work around developmental math or developmental literacy or if there is a job training program for IT and technical skills, you wouldn't be able to give a grant to that. So, the universe of what you can actually give a grant to do shrinks to maybe not the null set, but pretty close to it. And so, the bill is still there. The law is still there. You can fund it if you still want to, but it won't mean anything. We can't ignore it if it gets passed, but it's only on one side. So, right now, it is only in the house side. It has to get past the Senate to pass. So, for those from not from the U.S., two parts to our legislature. One side proposes it. The other side, right now what we have is the other side definitely doesn't. And then they negotiate to figure out where they land. So, this particular issue was proposed on one side. It will be negotiated. The question is, where is it gonna come out? Martha. I would just add to that that this same language was introduced last year and didn't go anywhere. So, you know, we, at the federal level, you learned pretty quickly, Jim and I have been here about two and a half years now. We learned pretty quickly that, you know, Congress is the ultimate decider. The president does have veto power. We have differences in the Senate and the House. It's very rewarding that an elementary and secondary act bill actually came out with Senator Enzi and Senator Harkin co-signing that to author that. You know, there's no perfect world. There's no perfect bill, but we've seen this amendment before and we're tracking it very carefully. And we hope to get a positive conclusion for our purposes like we did last year. Yep. Yes, sir. Sure. So, one, I would say, I think it's really important for people to pay attention to the recent guidance that we have put out around FERPA. We are very much aware of this particular tension. We're also aware of the urban myth, frankly, that governs FERPA. And so, and for those outside the U.S., FERPA is the law that governs our privacy and whether you can share data. It is interpreted at the state level in some cases in pretty significant ways, like, for example, it's against the laws of privacy to exchange data from high schools to colleges, things like that. And so, what we've done is said, look, one, let's clarify what FERPA actually says and be clear about the ability to anonymize data and use it for research purposes. We're also trying to give examples where we're sharing data in forms that are not personally identifiable, that make it available to developers and researchers to create open tools and resources. And then, third, we're trying to identify folks that have already crossed this threshold, that have identified and created sandboxes for researchers using depersonalized data, also looking to protect against mosaic effects and things like that. So, make sure that everyone's privacy is protected but also empower the actual research that needs to happen using that data. We need to get a lot better at it. We need a lot more use cases. We need a lot more science, frankly, and study around how you do this well and how we enable... And this is what I said in my presentation. Creating an infrastructure that supports this kind of work so everyone's not reinventing the wheel will also be really important. How many foundations are there in the room? One. I know my friends from Gates would be here later. One of the things that I'll say as a former foundation person is that this is a space that will truly benefit from a few strategic common platform and tool place that could release the field dramatically to move forward. And so, I hope over the next three days some of that stuff will come to the surface and as people are putting together plans, they'll think about how to do that. And I will try to figure out how to help from the federal level along with Martha, I'm sure. Sure. The question was, I emphasize in my PowerPoint that we need to shift the value proposition from just free to being better. And what ideas do I have for that to happen? So a number of the things that I actually laid out, I think, are a part of that. The ability to... Some of the things that are obvious, right? Things that don't sit around for seven years could be easily better. Things that allow for the kind of interaction that captures feedback and leads it back to the student and to the teacher should be better. Things that leverage what we know from cognitive science and have taken into consideration things like cognitive load and things of that nature should be better. All of these things are tools and resources that we have at our disposal already today without doing a one cent more research. And if we incorporate them into the design of our resources and get it into the basic DNL of our ecosystem in this sector as we move forward, then what will be created should, by definition, be better than what's out there today because most of it doesn't consider almost any of that. Not to disparage anyone in particular. So those are some of the things. I'm happy to have a broader conversation, but you all are into the work. I'm sure you knew better than I do. Your best ideas will be much better than the stuff I am talking about. And I'll come back to you, sir. Go ahead. What you can do as the government is to set context and create conditions within which the community can operate. So, recommendation, and I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but what the government can do with the optional grants that you release, and you just listed a whole bunch of best practices. So use the Department of Labor grant as an example and sort of a requirement there for an open license. That's extremely positive. There's one of the requirements, but it's not all of it. So there's no requirement to deal with grant, for example, for anything about technical interoperability. So even people who are building things and they're openly licensed with a CC5 license, there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to use it if you don't have a particular proprietary system. Some suggestions in the grant about collection of data analytics, best practices of construction design, but it's not a requirement. So my advice and suggestion would be because you've got the power of the person, the power of the policies around grants in DOE and other agencies, and as grantees who are looking at optional grants where you don't have to give us the money, we don't have to apply for the money, there's a unique opportunity there to set the requirements and then people will either apply to the grant under those requirements or they won't. That's the first thing. In next grant, you can also advantage those who apply that says, I'm going to build on great work of others. So I'm not just going to build from scratch, but I actually acknowledge the best practices and I can see it, it's already been built here in, say, Wave 1 of the DOE grant and so for Wave 2 or the next DOE grant to advantage folks who are willing to say, I've moved beyond not inventing here and I've moved to proudly borrow from there. I'm willing to take other people's grant. One, thanks for that input. I mean, fantastic input and what I'll say is, hear you loud and clear. You hear you loudest during the comment period for these competitions. And here's what I'll say, this is just the real brass tacks of it. Your voice is carried incredibly late. There's a process by which they are heard. They are heard when you speak directly to your representatives. They will believe your stories much more than what they hear from us even when we drag along our data and our thick reports. We will hear, have a mechanism for hearing you through comment periods and we also now are using more and more the kind of websites and blog posts and other more open mechanisms for collecting feedback that the department has. So I'll carry that around, but what happens in the real process is there are a whole set of priorities that lots of people think are important that are getting shoved at any one particular competition. And then the question is, so which of these things are we going to require people to do and which of these are going to be kind of loose? And depending on who and how many people think something is important, plays a big part in how it actually gets shaped in the end. So, appreciate the advice, it's fantastic advice, but as you all become important, increasingly important players in creating this ecosystem, I want you to understand the rules of engagement so you can be as effective as possible. Yes sir. Sure, so the question was two things. One is how are we thinking about common interoperability standards or interoperability standards in general? And the second is how are we thinking about tools and platforms for assessing efficacy? Is that it? Okay, so two things. One is I will say I personally came in with a very, having looked at other sectors, a very light handed perspective on letting industry set the specifications for its interoperability standards, letting these standards body come together and work it out, et cetera, et cetera. And engage many conversations and encourage many folks to try and find commonality with the different standards that exist today. That has not worked. For whatever reason, the folks that are driving our basic, the standards that we have, the primary standards that we have out today, have not been able to come together to work out their differences so we can actually move together as one sector. So I would love any suggestions about how to encourage those folks to have some of the conversations and finish the conversations that need to happen for us to wind up with common interoperability standards that we can use broadly across the sector. The second thing is on the common tools and resources for assessing the efficacy. There are two efforts underway. One is Karen Cader, who Martha mentioned, is driving an initiative where we are looking at, frankly, the broadest question of how do you think completely differently about gathering evidence, giving the new capabilities that we have? What does evidence really mean when you can collect data real-time and at the pace and scale that we can? And how do you use that capability in a very different way to redefine what we're looking for when we define rigor at the early stages and evidence at the later stages? That's a little bit different than the basic assessment of independent learning modules, but what I think is that what it will do is it will allow us to inform the conversation for the people who are actually building those platforms. So like Inter and others, people have heard about SLI from the Gates Foundation and some of the others that are working to collect that kind of information, where they will then be able to plug that into an infrastructure that quickly starts to analyze it and provide feedback on what's working and what's not. The analytic engines are still going to, I think, take a little bit of time to catch up, but I think we'll be well ahead of where we are today. Good deal. I think this is probably the last two questions. We're okay, actually. Let me ask about this. When I met you last at the human conference, we heard from a lot of OCW providers. Now, I'm Peter Ramm. I work with Open Study, and we work with many, many OCW partners. And what I keep hearing from them is very clearly a lack of funds. And you know that Hewlett left the initiative in supporting the OCWs from many institutions. But again and again, I hear from these fine institutions. Even MIT is struggling. That there's just not enough funding to keep growing the OCW initiatives. And I think that's a pretty good deal. I look across the ocean at places like Korea and Japan. The OCW efforts there are just growing like crazy. So what, and since you folks have both said that you value the OpenCourseWare initiative and you work with MIT, what are you doing for my friends in OCW institutions everywhere? So they can grow and thrive in the same way. Fantastic. I mean, I can just tell you, I just came back from two days in London talking with international folks about a different way to look at funding. Because all of the countries, some of the countries like India are prospering, you know, eight, nine percent growth a year, et cetera, et cetera, U.S., we're stagnant. You know, can there be innovation funds created that would be international in scope that business partners would put in a part? Institutions would put in a part? The government's plural would be put in parts. And so I think we need different frameworks because it is not going to be the same game, at least in the U.S., in the next year or two. I hope that we end a war and I hope revenues will come back in and can be used for things like that. But we have to be smarter about what we have. And frankly, you know, I think it's important for us to look at existing funds. Every existing fund we have that we give out, can we do things differently with those funds and can we think differently about them, put different requirements on them, announce them, get the feedback from all of you, and then move ahead. So those are a couple of things that we are doing. Yeah, I mean, Mark has said it all. I mean, the reality is at the federal level, the things that we have are the programs that we run today. As you can tell, we have some tension about how aggressively we are in using those resources. I think the more we get people comfortable with that basic notion and get people to be smart about how they leverage private resources to take advantage of the opportunities, the better off we'll be. And then the thing that's really important is, this is another thing about knowing how to engage, what we don't say is as important as what we do say. So for example, let's say there's a competition that focuses on scaling innovations that are either new or proven. And it's very odd that I don't see more applicants putting in specifically that they are CCed by, for example, which then gives them an advantage, hopefully when explained to peer reviewers, for how they see the ability of something to spread broadly to serve lots and lots of audiences. These basic things that could happen to it that would automatically advantage an applicant if they were doing them. I don't think the community hasn't figured out exactly how to leverage them in their basic applications. Back here and then Frank. Yes. So for those of you who didn't hear, he picked up on this little tension that we have, which is we want to be number one in the world and we want to be open and work and partner with other countries. I was hoping no one would really call us on that. Two and a half years into DC, I'm way past the political life of a normal political pointee. Here's the deal. The deal is, is this being streamed? Not live. Anyway, here's the deal. The deal is, I think every leader in every country talks about their country being number one. Not many leaders get up and talk about, we want to be number five. Right? But when you watch what we do, right, when you watch what we do, when you watch how AID and state are investing in educational resources, how the department is hosting the combined summits with India and others specifically, not only to talk about collaborating on education but collaborating on innovation and education, collaborating on open educational resources. When you hear how we talk about cooperation and collaboration on a global basis on these resources and the standards and all the things that go with them. What you hear is a philosophy. And that philosophy I said when I talked, which is that we believe not in zero sum but in growing the pie. And that, in fact, our economic future is tied to growing the pie in a way that expands opportunity within the U.S. and without. And the one of the reasons that the U.S. is stagnant when other countries are growing in the middle class. What we have not figured out how to do in this country, given the stage of development we are, is how to continue to grow our middle class. What you also need to recognize, and we need to recognize as a country is, and this is why the President has emphasized increasing our exports, is that as other countries increase their middle class, their desire and demand for goods from your country should increase as well. So we see the symbiotic relationship between the growth and the prosperity and the education of people all around the world, especially in those countries that are trying to grow. And having thoughtful partners on the supply side as well as the demand side and in terms of working together to create these things so that they can be made accessible to the broadest amount of folks. We see that very clearly. We're acting on it in our actions and our funding is following our words. But our President is always going to talk about us being number one. And I would hope you wouldn't expect something different. Fair enough? Frank? I have a dicey but simple question. Do I represent one of the funders in the room that the pedagogical movement put to flip the classroom to create efficiencies, pedagogical efficiencies? And I wonder, one of the impediments for the funding community has been policy to possible impediments. And I wonder, are there any movements that put to flip the house or flip the hill? Look for efficiencies that you all are feeling, obviously you're currently objective in a great aspect of the system, the federal system. Is there anything that you can comment on that give us a better sense about the movement for education and the correlation in efficiencies? Sure. You want to start? Okay. I think there's three big things. One is a lot of the things, at least in my mind that are the big levers are state level. Right? So the ability of everyone to be working on resources across the country that are focused on common targets, common standards, like states have to drive that, but that is going to be a policy change that's going to have a significant impact on the ability of people to create educational resources that can scale quickly. The ability to detach seat time from credit, from gaining credit is a state level decision, both on the higher level and in K-12 level. Even in our regs, most recently where we defined the credit hour, which had some components in it attached to time, there's a lot for people to be able to propose equivalencies that would use other kinds of competency-based progression models. And so we're trying to create that space and opportunity. A lot of it has to happen at the state level. So this is why I'm really encouraged because one of the reasons I highlight digital learning now is that that's former Governor Jeff Bush from Florida and Governor Bob Weiss from West Virginia working in a bipartisan way to create the context and set up a state policy framework that says we want to transition very quickly as a country, from print to digital. You states get on board, you governors take leadership, you state legislators get on the ball and the hope is that the folks on the hill that represent these states will follow suit as well. I was encouraged to find that there is a digital learning caucus that is formed on the hill or a learning technology caucus that is formed on the hill that is also bipartisan. So we'll see. Yes, sir. So what I would suggest is to pick a slice. Certainly content of the change. We're guys very good at bringing together folks in the summit of a conference. I make sure that all of the standards, the relevant standards representatives are at the table. They do. There are standard groups of politics that we might incentive for the group to do some sort of a rationalization in terms of what are the strengths and Can I interrupt you? I apologize. Sorry? I just want to interrupt you. I apologize. Because we've been trying that. We've been invited them in together. We've encouraged them to talk to each other. We've tried to create incentives. We don't have a lot to offer them and it hasn't worked out. So my thought is not that we will mandate anything, but my thought is that in fact it's the user community that's going to have a conversation because we are of no consequence to them. The user community on the other hand is a consequence to them and we'll make decisions that will drive their behaviors in different ways. But continue please. So I think that we should provide some justice for why you're making that. And it's perfectly fair for the department to say we're going to derive some sort of maintenance by which we evaluate whether the standard you're recommending is appropriate or if you're trying to start looking for a framework I guarantee that the standards buys will come right. So I'd love to talk to you more about this offline. And would love to learn more about that particular suggestion. I will try whatever it takes. One more question. Yes sir. No. I mean don't want to take anything away from the work that's really important that is happening. Again watching other sectors where when opportunities, especially big opportunities arrive they come to conclusions in months or weeks even not years. I'm just anxious. Just anxious. Not recognizing whether I got 14 months or 62 months to get stuff done. I'm anxious. Good deal. Alright and that was the last question. Thank you everybody for your time. Now you are now free to stand up.