Giving Compass' Take:

•  Jennifer Wolfe, writing for The Learning Accelerator, examines how TLA can fix ecosystem gaps in education by using open educational resources so that educators can have more access to high-quality learning materials. 

• How are online resources innovating education? How can donors get involved in helping schools access edtech tools? 

• Read about whether or not open education resources improve learning. 

Sometimes it can be difficult to convey the value of ecosystem coordination. As I reflect on the origin and evolution of Open Up Resources, I realize that the success of Open Up provides a great example of how our work as an ecosystem coordinator at The Learning Accelerator (TLA) created an important and powerful impact.

In our early work at TLA, we identified barriers to blended learning as well as ecosystem gaps. One gap we heard about repeatedly from educators and leaders was the lack of high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials that would enable deeper learning, critical thinking, and effective problem solving as envisioned by new college and career standards.

We understood through conversations with leading organizations and states that open educational resources (OER) had the potential to fill this need and offer districts a better option for instructional materials. We saw enough promise in this idea that we decided to act as the initial funder and incubator for the K-12 OER Collaborative, Open Up Resource’s predecessor.

We dug into this opportunity and developed a framework, together with a group of state and nonprofit leaders, for how OER could offer school districts a better, faster, and less expensive option for instructional materials. It was evident that without TLA, the framing for the project and the project itself would not have moved forward because everyone else in the room had other full-time commitments.

We saw the possible impact of high-potential innovation and acted as the lead coordinator to push forward an idea which had been percolating within the OER/Creative Commons community. In turn, we were able to take this innovative idea to scale by building a set of key partners among states, districts, and nonprofits.

Read the full article about ecosystem coordinators by Jennifer Wolfe at The Learning Accelerator.