Open Educational Resources in Distance Education:

Exploring Open Learning in Academic Practice

Dr Stylianos Hatzipanagos, King’s College London

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Overview of talkOER and academic practiceKing’s OER projectPhases of the projectEvaluationWhat we learnt

Project Team

Stylianos Hatzipanagos King’sPatricia McKellar UOLIASteven Warburton UOLIA

&Charles Kasule King’s

UNESCO definition

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution.

Value of OERsSecker & Hatzipanagos 2012

Not reinventing the wheelSharing good practiceCapacity buildingBreaking down barriers to learningNetworking between teaching practitionersCross fertilisation of ideas between

disciplinescost‐effective ways of operating / cost‐

saving potential

Notable OER initiatives

MIT’s Open Courseware initiative (2001)Open University’s OpenLearn in the UKJorum is the UK national repository for

teaching and learning materials (many are OERs)

OERs vs. or in support of academic practiceDisplaced from proprietary ‘silos’, i.e. the

institutional VLEs.Copyright ‘free’, as contributions to collective

knowledge.However, most often come against recent

improvements in creation of TEL content: ◦ They are frequently didactic in nature.◦ They are often elliptical shells to fill in with context

and meaning. Context and wrap around activities are missing.

◦ Interactive aspects and their learning design are separated from content and are often implicit rather than explicit.

OERs in DL:adopting a model of open learning in academic practice

A CDE teaching and research award project

Collaborative: King’s and University of London International Programmes (Law)

Aims and purpose

Develop and evaluate a set of OERs in academic practice to be used by ODL Tutors in HE including global institutional providers. 

Investigate appropriate format and environment for sharing the developed OERs. 

Evaluate the quality and uptake of these OERs.Engage users/tutors with the concept of OERs by

exposing them to the concept of open learning. Investigate drivers and barriers in the adoption of

OERs.

What we did?

Audit of resources at King’s/International Programmes

Selected content based on suitability as OER

Converted materialDeposited content - locally and in JorumQuality control and evaluation Dissemination and publicity

http://delilaopen.wordpress.com

Phase One: identified existing institutional teaching resources that can be repurposed into OERs

Phase Two: repurposed the identified teaching resources and developed them as OERs

Phase Three: linked to policies, guidelines and documentation that currently exist in relation to the provision of OER as an online resource for practitioners who want to explore or use OERs.

CORRE framework

Phase Four: evaluated the OERs with an identified group of ODL tutors from the Laws programme. Attributes of quality that will be evaluated include: Accuracy Reputation of author/institution Standard of technical production Accessibility Fitness for purpose Clear rights declarations Uptake and perceptions of teaching practitioners.

Phase Five: devise a set of guidelines for ODL practitioners in using, repurposing and adopting OERs in a disciplinary context. Practitioners’ involvement.

What is your immediate reaction to the resource (in terms of accessibility, layout, intuitiveness, coherence as a package) ◦Is the resource specific and practical? ◦Reusability: can the resource be adapted to suit

others needs? ◦Is the resource accessible and structured

logically? How might you use this resource in your

teaching? ◦Would you adapt it or use it as it is? ◦What issues can you foresee if you used this

resource?◦What advantages for using this resource, as

opposed to creating your own material?  http://delilaopen.wordpress.com

Evaluation

Workshops: most practitioners not familiar with OER: strong academic development aspect of workshops.

Reusabilty/repurposing focus of workshops: preference for ‘useful, specific and practical OERs’.

Survey: “Context often missing”, preference for reusable rather than repurposable.

Survey, main potential benefit of OERs: ‘improved learning’ and less ‘saving on academic time to develop appropriate material/content’.

OERs: some reflections

Major weakness of OERs as often transmissive ‘teaching entities’: how do we reverse this?

Designing OERs to be used by any learner require different design approaches.

MOOCs as a new OER design paradigm?

Shift in focus away from the resources themselves towards open educational practices (OEP).

‘The vision of OEP includes a move from a resource based learning and outcomes based assessment, to a learning process in which social processes, validation and reflection are at the heart of education, and learners become experts in judging, reflection, innovation within a domain and navigation through domain knowledge’ (OPAL, 2010, p. 46).

King’s OER Project website: http://keats.kcl.ac.uk/

Thank youFor comments or questions

email Stylianos

ats.hatzipanagos@kcl.ac.uk