An outline of the issues facing higher education institutions in the UK in relation to open educational resources

2. 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

3. The Workshop
• Presentation
• Information Sheets
• Online Publications
• Questions

4. Presentation
• OER Background and History
• OER Issues: Sustainability
• OER: Learning and Teaching
• Intellectual Property and Copyright
• University of Westminster and OER

5. 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

6. Why OER?

7. 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)

8. 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‘.

9. 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

10. 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]

11. Free
Free as in liberal
Not free as in no cost

12. Seed Funding
• JISC/HEA OER programme
• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

13. Sustainability
• Financial
• Technological
• Human
• Cultural

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

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

16. Learning and teaching
• Guiding Principles
• Benefits
• Usage and Examples
• Technology - sources
• Roles and relationships

17. 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)

18. 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.

19. 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

20. OER Examples and Repositories
• SABE: Building Adaption and Conservation course
• Online Guide to OER in HE
• Scoop.it!
• OER Commons
• Open Scout

21. Technology
• Technology for producing OER: Tools widely
available
• Supporting staff development
• Developing Institutional Repositories of OER

22. 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

23. 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.

24. IP and creative commons

25. 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

26. 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.

27. Analysis of Institutional Issues
• The University
• Finding and using
• Publishing and repositories
• Shifting roles
• Flexible and lifelong learning

28. In our end is our beginning…
From a provider/user paradigm to a community model of collaborative development
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

29. 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