Open Educational Resources and the

Future of Higher Education

Gill Ackerman*1, Rachel Lander*2 and Allan Parsons*3

*1 Academic Liaison Librarian, WBS *2 Senior Lecturer, WBS *3 Academic Liaison Librarian, MAD

The Workshop

• Presentation

• Information Sheets

• Online Publications

• Questions

Presentation

• OER Background and History

• OER Issues: Sustainability

• OER: Learning and Teaching

• Intellectual Property and Copyright

• University of Westminster and OER

OER: Definitions

“OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others”

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

“…technology-enabled, open provision of education resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes”

UNESCO

Why OER?

UNESCO meeting October 2002, first used the term OER and defined them functionally as the

“technology-enabled, open provision of education resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes”

(Wiley, 2007)

President Barack Obama, July 14th, 2009 publicly backed the global OER movement

‘Online educational software has the potential to help students learn more in less time than they would with traditional classroom instruction alone.’

Later in the same speech he said,

‘[Online courses] will be developed by teams of experts in content knowledge, pedagogy, and technology and made available for modification, adaptation and sharing’.

World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress UNESCO, Paris, June 20-22, 2012

– Foster awareness and use of OER

– Reinforce the development of strategies and policies on

OER.

– Support capacity building for the sustainability of

quality learning materials.

– Foster strategic alliances for OER.

– Encourage the open licensing of educational materials

produced with public funds.

– www.unesco.org

Public, Open… [From the Public Sphere in a liberal international

(political-)economy…

• Public - National - Print – Broadcast

• Open - Global - Digital – Networked

…to the Digital Commons in a neo-liberal globalisation]

Free

Free as in liberalNot free as in no cost

Seed Funding

• JISC/HEA OER programme

• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Sustainability

• Financial

• Technological

• Human

• Cultural

Cultural Sustainability• Flexible• Re-usable• Context of use• Licence• Modifiable• Adaptable• Co-development• Reliable

• Trustworthy• Authoritative

Trustworthy, Authoritative……in part, initially, becomes a question of brandscape:

Learning and teaching

• Guiding Principles

• Benefits

• Usage and Examples

• Technology - sources

• Roles and relationships

Guiding Principles

• Principle 1: educational futures work should aim to challenge

assumptions rather than present definitive predictions

• Principle 2: the future is not determined by its technologies

• Principle 3: thinking about the future always involves values

and politics

• Principle 4: education has a range of responsibilities that

need to be reflected in any inquiry into or visions of its future

(Facer and Sandford, 2010)

Benefits for Staff – key points from Leeds Met

• Designing learning not creating content;• Get recognition for your own materials by sharing

them as OER and engage in a global community of sharing and using educational resources;

• Encourage your students to search for OER materials to support their own learning;

• Embed the use of OER as part of your module/course review process;

• Get recognition for your work by being attributed by others through OER release.

OER Benefits

• For the individual learner

• For the Educators

• For the Educational Institutions

OER is one component of T & L

OER are not always appropriate

OER Examples and Repositories

• SABE: Building Adaption and Conservation course

• Online Guide to OER in HE

• Scoop.it!

• OER Commons

• Open Scout

Technology

• Technology for producing OER: Tools widely available

• Supporting staff development

• Developing Institutional Repositories of OER

Roles and Relationships

• TEL and HE

• Roles – TEL expert advisors/collaborators to work

with staff

• HEI need to reconsider roles and structure here

• Role of Academic librarians

Role of Academic Liaison Librarians

Bellison (2009) identified the following opportunities for librarians to develop their roles in the development of OER:

• Librarians can help by contributing their own OERs to the commons;

• screening for indexing, and archiving quality OERs;

• using OERs in their own teaching; and• participating in discussions leading toward

responsible intellectual property policies and

useful standards.

IP and creative commons

Creative Commons

‘Creative Commons is a non profit organization that works to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) available in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing.’

Taken from http://creativecommons.org Accessed

May 22nd, 2012

Creative Commons – Brief Explanation

• Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation founded in 2001 in the US with the dedicated aim of making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

• With a Creative Commons licence, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit – and only on the conditions you specify.

Analysis of Institutional Issues

• The University

• Finding and using

• Publishing and repositories

• Shifting roles

• Flexible and lifelong learning

In our end is our beginning…

Utopia: Charles Vest (2006) sees the Open Movement as the emergence of a meta-university “a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms of which much of higher education can be constructed or enhanced”

Community: Co-development; Co-design; Co-construct; Collaborate

Conventional: Producer/Consumer Hierarchical Model

From a provider/user paradigm to a community model of collaborative development

Resources: On line Publication

• Tour our Google site on OER: address in the Symposium abstract • Current Awareness section

• Slide share link for this presentation – we will email all on the contact sheet

• Handouts to take away