News! : Presentation Slides and Audio are available from the Program

Advances in information technology have spread communications capabilities to every clime. There is a great potential and responsbility for educators, instructional technologists, and learning scientists to leverage these advances in order to extend educational opportunity to literally everyone who desires it. As Epictetus said, "Only the educated are free."

This growing field of research and practice is called "open education."

Advancing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education Conference, is the 17th Annual Instructional Technology Institute at Utah State University. It is a multidisciplinary event designed to promote discussion of research and development activities that advance the effectiveness and sustainability of the open education movement. The four conference themes for 2005 are:

• open educational resources - new and old media that provide reusability across a variety of open access environments, including learning objects, knowledge objects, and sharable content objects, as well as "older" media like books and movies
• overcoming barriers to open education - services and tools that make it easier for people to learn using open educational resources in a diversity of formal and informal environments, including wireless infrastructure, blogs, wikis, massively multi-player online games, simulations, instant messaging, texting, and discussion boards, as well as "older" tools like hand-powered radios or televisions
• international issues - including localization of resources, reusability across cultural settings, infrastructure diversity, and differences in copyright and other applicable laws
• policy and administrative issues - including the role of open education programs in the future of higher education (e.g., the 21st Century Land Grant University), funding and sustainability models for open education programs, the relationship between open education and traditional distance education, and inter-organization cooperation in open education undertakings

Please join us September 28 - 30, 2005 on the Utah State University campus to discuss, share, and work together in this important area of educational and technological research. This will be our 17th Annual Instructional Technology Institute. Please help us advertise the conference by using this PowerPoint slide or this flyer. Thanks!