An introduction to Open Education Resources ( OER) & Open Practice

1. An introduction to Open Education Resources (OER) & Open Practice Jonathan Darby

2. Open Educational Resources “The most promising initiative in e-learning is the concept – and the developing reality, of open educational resources.” Sir John Daniel (OU, UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning) “There is no point duplicating effort to create content that is already available and has been proven to work. Institutions can build on the existing open educational resources initiative to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies. In addition they can pull in the best content and openly available learning resources from around the world and adapt them for particular courses.” On-line Learning Task Force, 2011 Image by: mag3737, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/1914076277/

3. The Open movement } • Open data • Open access journals • Open science • Open educational resources • Open source software • Open government • Open education Open practice

4. What do we mean by “open” For the best rationale for Open listen to Lawrence Lessig at http://blip.tv/lessig/peace-6226296

5. What’s an OER exactly? "Open educational resources are materials used to support  education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone.“ Stephen Downes, 2011

6. Creative Commons Licences

7. CC choices • Attribution • ShareAlike • NonCommercial • NoDerivatives Choose a licence at creativecommons.org

8. The Four Rs of OER and open practice • Reuse – Use the work verbatim, 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. David Wiley, 2007

9. OER are what people make of them • OER can be: • Designed explicitly for educational use • Other content used for educational purposes • Used as an information source Eric Herot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eherot/4084533928/

10. For individuals • Learn new things or enrich other studies; • Share and discuss topics asynchronously or synchronously with other learners; • Assess whether they wish to participate in (further) formal education; • Decide which institution they want to study at; • Improve their work performance; • Create or revise OER themselves; But … • They often need guidance.

11. For teachers • Create courses more efficiently and/or effectively, particularly using rich media resources that require advanced technical and media skills; • Investigate the ways in which others have taught their subject; • Create resources or courses in collaboration with others rather than doing it all themselves; • Join in communities of practice which help improve their teaching practices as they reflect on the community use of new open tools and technologies; • Customise and adapt resources by translating or localising them; But … • Finding and evaluating OER is no trivial task.

12. For educational institutions • Showcase their teaching and research programmes to wider audiences; • Widen the pool of applicants for their courses and programmes; • Lower the lifetime costs of developing educational resources; • Collaborate with public and commercial organisations, including educational publishers, in new ways; • Extend their outreach activities; But … • Improved practices require supportive policies and strategies.

13. For governments and national agencies • Showcase their country’s educational systems; • Attract international students (to higher education at least); • Help drive changes in educational practices; • Develop educational resources in ‘minority’ languages that commercial publishers are reluctant to do so; • Develop educational resources that reflect local cultures and priorities; • Cooperate internationally on common resources to meet common needs; But … • They need to provide seed funding and supportive policies.

14. Big funders: Hewlett >$100m

15. Big funders: NGLC (Gates plus) $40m to date

17. And the biggest: TAACCCT • US Department of Labor, Employment and Training in conjunction with the Department of Education • $2bn over 4 years ($1bn awarded to date) • OER materials for vocational programmes in community colleges • CC licensing mandated for all projects

18. And of course in the UK

19. OER in practice • Projects that leverage OER • Open innovations • Open practice

31. UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration UNESCO recommends that states: • Foster awareness and use of OER • Reinforce the development of strategies and policies on OER • Promote the understanding and use of open licensing frameworks • Foster strategic alliances for OER • Encourage the development and adaptation of OER in a variety of languages and cultural contexts • Encourage research on OER • Facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing of OER • Encourage the open licensing of educational materials produced with public funds

47. And then there were MOOCs • Massive Online Open Courses • The “Next Big Thing” • Stanford does it so it’s news – Koller & Ng • Spinout companies: • Coursera • Udacity • edX • Optional paid-for credit (3rd party – eg Pearson or own) • MOOC2Degree – MOOCs with free credit

48. “In three years’ time we hope to be offering a level of online learning that we can’t dream about at the moment,” Simon Nelson, CEO

49. Summing up • OER and Open Practice is now widespread • OER works best within recognisable communities • Its impact on the mainstream is small but growing • Business plans for sustaining OER and OP are mostly problematic • It is offering some imaginative responses to the worldwide hunger for higher education • The key to success is being clear on the problem you are seeking to address through OER and OP

50. Thank you Attribution: Some slides derived from those of Andy Lane CC:BY-SA