open educational resources + social software
DESCRIPTION
Presentation from the CNIE conference at Banff, April 2008. Overviews Open educational Resources and (briefly) the role of social software in expanding use, and produser constructionTRANSCRIPT
Open Educational Resources Plus Social Software: Threat or Opportunity for Distance Education Programming?
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.Canada Research Chair in Distance [email protected]
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Vision + Affordance
“At the heart of the open educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that;– the world’s knowledge is a public good in
general– the World Wide Web in particular provides
an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge.”
• Hewlett Foundation Smith, & Casserly. The promise of open educational resources. Change 38(5): 8–17, 2006
OER Defined:
“open provision of educational resources enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes. Includes:
– UNESCO 2008 http://www.unesco.org/iiep/eng/focus/opensrc/opensrc_1.htm.
Types of OERs
Learning objects, units, textbooks, scholarly articles IRRODL.ORG
Courses, programs full curriculum
Tools, FOSS,
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Issues of Granularity
OER comes in many sizes:– Diagrams, photos– Articles (Open access publications)– Games, simulations, activities– Units of learning (IMS LD)– Units and courses– Programs
OER’s are Open (Mostly)
Meaning they can be:– Augmented– Edited– Customized– Aggregated and Mashups– Reformatted
See Scott Leslie’s 10 minute video at http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/opened.htm
4 R’s of Functionality of OERs
Reuse - Use the work just exactly as you found it.
Rework - Alter or transform the work so that it better meets your needs.
Remix - Combine the (verbatim or altered) work with other works to better meet your needs.
Redistribute - Share the verbatim work, the reworked work, or the remixed work with others.– Dave Wiley http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/355
OER as Motivator
Goal of developing together a universal educational resource available for the whole of humanity… hope that this open resource for the future mobilizes the whole of the worldwide community of educators”. UNESCO 2002
Hundreds of thousands of OER available today
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Rationale for Open University’s Development of Open Learn
Opportunity:– The risk of doing nothing when technology and globalization
issues need to be addressed.– A testbed for new technology and new ways of working – way to work with external funders who share similar aims
and ideals– A chance to learn how to draw on the world as a resource.
Brand Promotion – A route for outreach beyond our student body– Demonstration of the quality of Open University materials in
new regions.
Ownership and Licensing
Familiar problems– Who owns resource - educators or the institution?– inflated expectations
New problems– OER’s are not journal articles
• Articles are not “reworked”• Is attribution critical?• What defines commercial exploitation?
4 Ownership Models
Institutional ownership– Default under most ‘work for hire’ law
Shared institutional and Academic– Often unworkable– Tragedy of the anti-commons
Individual (academic ownership)– Rights of succession? Multiple authors?
Produsage– Assume that each producer does not enforce their
rights, all can treat product as a private good• (copyleft, public domain)
Funding Models (from Downes, 2007) Endowment model (Hewlett Foundation) Membership Model - Merlot Donation - Wikipedia Producer contribution - Publishers
dream! Sponsorship - Itunes University Government funding
The Creative Commons License‘Some Rights Reserved’
Attribution? Derivatives? Commercial Use?
Get Creative Flash Intro
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Major Problems with OER
Little take up by conventional teachers Too little reward and recognition for authors Too few learners actually engage with the
content Business case Too few teachers remix and repost content
Solution?? Vibrant communities of Produsers??
Open Learn Examplehttp://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
402 educational units
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402 units
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Social Software Tools that allow users to get to know each
other, produce artifacts, share information and generate knowledge together.
Learners Teachers
SocialSoftware
OER
The Political Economy of Peer Production Michael Bauwens
“produce use-value through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital
a 'third mode of production' different from for-profit or public production by state-owned enterprises.
Its product is not exchange value for a market, but use-value for a community of users.
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499
Prod-Users - From production to produsage - Axel Bruns 2008
Users become active participants in the production of artifacts:
Examples:– Open source movement– Wikipedia– Citizen journalism (blogs)– Immersive worlds– Distributed creativity - music, video, Flickr
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Produsage Principlesprodusage.org Community-Based –the community as a whole can contribute
more than a closed team of producers. Fluid Heterarcy – produsers participate as is appropriate to
their personal skills, interests, and knowledge, and may form loose sub-groups to focus on specific issues, topics, or problems
Unfinished Artifacts –projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths.
Common Property, Individual Rewards – contributors permit (non-commercial) community use, adaptation, and further development of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital they gain through this process
Over to you
Do you use OER products in your teaching programs?
Have you created an OER product and provided it for use by others?
Why don’t your colleagues use OER resources at your school?
Will students use OER and avoid using your programs?
Commonwealth of Learning this summer and will be called - Education For A Digital World: Advice, Guidelines And Effective Practice From Around The Globe.
Will Educators and Learners Produse? Social software affords, but “build it and they
shall come” rarely works Is recognition by peers enough reward for
educators? Will students use OERs with accreditation?
Further Exploration
A Rice University Connexions Moodle course on OER at http://cnx.org/content/m15211/latest/
Cider example Workspace, discussion forums, RSS
alerts, research spaces, Ciderpedia Over 1,000 members, but all resources
lack critical mass
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Over to you
Have you used or contributed to an OER?
Will social software use provide the incentive for use and contribution to OERs