Presented at OER15 in Cardiff. Abstract: Much of the talk about OERs concerns their adoption and use. However, without proper consideration of the different models for their production, it is possible that a OERs will never become available at a volume and quality that makes their adoption a real possibility for institutions looking at a market where cost is only one of the considerations. The typical model is that of an individual content creator (or possibly an institution) who decides to share her materials. However, this rarely leads to sustainable and readily reusable materials. A more likely result is for these materials to languish unused in one of the many repositories. We need to consider alternatives to this and make them explicit when talking about OERs. Luckily, there are several successful models that have worked and can be adopted for OERs. This paper will consider three models of successful open content creation that should be more widely considered and supported by funders. 1) Wikipedia is perhaps the best known example of large-scale creation of open content. However, the way through which it is created and maintained is often confused with ‘crowd effects’. In fact, Wikipedia became successful because its creators are anything but a crowd, but are instead loosely organised into editorial groups with meritocratic responsibilities. 2) Code sprints (books sprints) provide a model for creating large amounts of documentation in short focused working sessions with experts gathered in one space. They have been extremely successful in both creating open source software and documentation for the software. 3) Fan Fiction is another area of content creation where free (although mostly not freely licensed) content is made available at a large scale. While mostly following the lone-creator model, Fan Fiction communities have largely resolved the editorial process through a system of alpha and beta readers as well as a network of reviewers who make content discoverable for others. These models can co-exist and combined with one another. This paper will explore how existing OER projects could benefit from these models and present examples of where it has already happened.

1. Modes and models of production
of OERs: The missing link to wider
adoption
Dominik Lukes
@TechCzech - Researchity.net

2. Attribution-ShareAlike

3. Questions /
comments
@TechCzech

4. When did you last
use an OER?

5. When did you last
produce an OER?

6. Why, how, who
for?

7. Most produced
OERs?

8. Photos? Sounds? Short videos?

9. Why?

10. Easy to produce, modify, reuse!

11. Typical end-user
question about
OER?

12. Is it really free?
Is it any good?
How much work will it take
to use?

13. Typical OER
answer…

14. It is openly licensed.
It is as good as it is.
Community/Contribution…

15. What we need is…

16. Materials that are high
quality, reliable, respectable,
easy to reuse, free/cheap,
…

17. …openly licensed!

18. How are OERs
produced?

19. The lone hero model of OER production

20. Individual (well-meaning)
creator makes their
materials available…

21. …on an individual website,
institutional website, shared
repository.

22. Quality is guaranteed by
crowd curation in the style of
Amazon.

23. Results

24. OERs are hard to…

25. Find
Modify
Integrate
Build on
Trust

26. Crowd is NOT enough!

27. Crowd is NOT what it seems!

28. Questions /
comments
@TechCzech

29. Better models of
creation, curation?

30. 1. Wikipedia model
2. Code sprint model
3. Fan-fiction model

31. Wikipedia model

32. Wikipedia myth: Ant accretion

33. Wikipedia reality: Focused editorial
communities

34. Similarly to academic
journals, OERs need
editorial communities
identifying needs, gaps and
providing work.

35. Code sprint model

36. Code sprints > Book sprints

37. From idea to book in 7 days!

38. 4-10 people get together for
a week, outline work, do
focused writing, edit each
others work, publish results.

39. There are at least 2 Open Source tools

40. Other inspiration from Open
Source software development:
Versioning/Releases
Branches
Maintainers
Patches
Issue queues

41. Fanfiction

42. How does Twighlight Fanfiction become
a popular book?

43. Alpha/Beta readers
Reviewers
Theorists

44. The Fanfiction ecosystem
produces edited novel-
length works, properly
categorised, reviewed, with
interaction between
reader/writer.

45. You don’t need publishers
to produce high quality work
meeting the needs of the
audience!

46. Questions /
comments
@TechCzech

47. What can you do
about it?

48. Funders

49. Require online e-pub books
Fund Wikipedia editathons
Fund topic book sprint series
Fund editorial groups

50. Universities

51. Accept OER editorial work
toward degrees (more than
Wikipedia editing in a
course)
Start Open publishing
houses with Open
production workflows

52. Schools

53. Form OER production and
maintaining collectives
Accept OER engagement as
CPD

54. OER Theorists

55. Redefine success of OERs
by actual usability by
teachers and students not
by license and availability.

56. Quality is relative to use / value, not to
looking like old-style published works

57. Image credits

58. Lone hero by JD Hancock CC BY
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/4713569968
Crowd by Guilhem Vellut CC BY
https://www.flickr.com/photos/o_0/9493106932
https://www.flickr.com/photos/o_0/9493108712
Ant hill by Martin LaBar CC BY NC
https://www.flickr.com/photos/32454422@N00/18070583
77
Wikipedians by Sage Ross CC BY SA
https://www.flickr.com/photos/34166194@N00/21938435
59
Book sprint CC BY-SA 2.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_sprint#/media/File:Adam
_Hyde_and_Alan_Toner_at_Collaborative_Futures_Book
_Sprint,_January_2010.jpg

59. Thank you
@TechCzech