# Upcoming: A theoretical approach to accreditation of Open Education


I've been interested in accreditation/evaluation of Open Education for a
long time, and when we discussed a number of different theoretical
approaches to the purpose of schooling, and the purpose of
accreditation, in class, I realized that it would be very interesting to
try to apply these theories to the problem of accreditation of open
education. The [Dean's Graduate
Conference](https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/ocs-2.0.0-1/index.php/oise/)
at [OISE](http://www.oise.utoronto.ca) is an annual event where graduate
students get to present on their on-going research to their peers and
people from the community who are interested. This year, we put together
a panel on OER, and there will be two other speakers besides me.
Hopefully this can begin to raise the status of OER at our school, both
as an activity, but also as something that can be researched. Below is
my abstract (the conference is in the beginning of May in Toronto).

**A theoretical approach to accreditation of Open Education**

It has always been possible to gain advanced learning outside of the
formal academy, through libraries and book-clubs for example, but the
open-education movement has radically increased the feasibility of
informal learning. Through the proliferation of open-access journals,
open-educational resources (such as MIT OpenCourseWare), collaborative
authoring such as Connexions and WikiEducator, and peer-to-peer learning
systems such as Peer2PeerUniversity and Wikiversity, determined students
with internet access can achieve learning outcomes similar to university
courses.

How can such knowledge be accredited and proven? Some of the
possibilities currently being explored range from the traditional
methods of challenge exams and competency-based accreditation
institutions, to attempts at applying peer-based accreditation from the
open source world, and portfolios. However, these attempts need to be
informed by sociological theories of schooling and accreditation, and I
will use human capital theory and credentialism to analyze accreditation
of open education.

Stian

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