1. OER and the Open Agenda
Dr Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research research
Supporting education and | Slide 1
2. English higher education sector
130 institutions (88 universities plus 42 specialist institutions and general
colleges)
123 directly funded FE colleges providing HE courses
Total HEFCE funding: £7.6 billion
1.04 million full time equivalent students*
International students make up about 15 per cent of the student
population
* Home and EC HEFCE-fundable students
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 2
3. English higher education sector (continued)
Overseas student fee income: £1.6 billion
England remains the favourite destination of international students after
the much larger US university system **
Research productivity: International Benchmarking Study of UK Research
Performance report puts the UK second only to the USA on leading
scientific indicators***
Open University: 180,000 students (150,000 undergraduate and more
than 30,000 postgraduate)
** Student Pulse: i-graduate, Jan 08
*** Department for Business Innovation and Skills 2009
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 3
4. About JISC
Standing committee of the UK higher and further education funding councils
Strategic mission for 2010-2012: “To provide world-class leadership in the
innovative use of ICT to support education, research and institutional
effectiveness”
JISC provides:
– A world-class network (JANET)
– Access to electronic resources
– Innovation in research, learning and teaching, and HE management
– Guidance on institutional change
– Advisory and consultancy services
– Regional support
www.jisc.ac.uk
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 4
5. Three aspects of OER
OER is part of a wider “open agenda”
OER works across educational sectors
OER is a global movement
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 5
6. “Open” – What? Why?
The internet is changing the nature of information,
processes and institutions
Higher education is rooted in information
• its creation, analysis, and transmission
• the development of the skills required to utilize it
for the benefit of individuals and society.
"Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education,"
a report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development
http://www.ced.org/images/library/reports/digital_economy/dcc_opennessedu09.pdf
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 6
7. The Openness Agenda
Open Source – software
Open Standards – interoperability
Open Access – research outputs
Open Data – research data, public data, others
Open Educational Resources – course material
Open Science – and open innovation
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 7
8. Academia and Openness
Collegiality
Communities of scholars
Building on the work of others
Consensus decisions
Collaboration
Reputation built by attribution – and more valuable than material reward
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 8
9. The Business of Academia
Institutional competition (for students, grants, projects…)
Multiple sources of funding
The Enterprise Office – knowledge exploitation and transfer
Employer links and employer “ownership” of information
Short term staff contracts – need to “build a profile”
All these activities can benefit from openness
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 9
10. The OER use case
For prospective learners – to get a sense of what studying a particular
course at a particular institution is like
For formal and informal learners – to get access to a range of material
to complement and inform their studies
For institutions – to allow the world to see the quality of their learning
resources and the learning experiences they offer
For academics – to reuse and repurpose material rather than creating
new material, saving time and leading to higher quality material
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 10
11. And for…
Learners in compulsory schooling
Learners in adult education
Learners in industry
Informal Learners
...
All can benefit from the “taste of HE” that OER in HE can offer.
And other sectors release OER!
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 11
12. The UKOER pilot programme
• HEFCE funded one year programme – run by JISC
with the Higher Education Academy.
subject institution individual
Programme Management
14 projects 7 projects 8 projects
support function – covering technical, legal, strategic
advice, workshops, support for deposit and aggregation
of materials, communities of practice. Based around
existing JISC services and the OU “SCORE” project.
OER infokit – a “how to” guide for future work
13. Unique aspects of UKOER
A collection of small pilot studies
Low level of funding
Embraces plurality of release models
Focus on building sustainable practice
Low (technical) barriers to participation
Projects promoting themselves to their key audience
Rather release than not release, even if only a more
restrictive license is possible
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 13
14. UKOER: new challenges
Need to focus on the discovery and use of OER
Is there a benefit to the learning processes from OER?
Can we use OER availability to support the needs of the sector?
How can we learn from the experiences of the pilot (and other projects)?
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 14
15. UKOER: new funding
£4m from HEFCE over one further year
Will incorporate:
– Cascade model of project support
– New release projects around sector priorities
– Aggregation of OER around thematic areas
– Examination of the effects of OER on pedagogy
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 15
16. Discoverability
A Library Way – a directory/database which uses a common
hierarchical set of vocabularies.
Great when…
you know exactly what you are looking for
Great when…
your conception of what something should be categorised under
matches that of the person who filed it
A Web Way – powerful (and unrestricted) free text search.
Great when…
you are looking for information rather than a particular item
Great when…
you are capable of validating the quality and utility of material for
yourself
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 16
17. Another way?
Minimal metadata (tagging)
Multiple places to deposit material
Multiple methods of finding material (including common search engines)
Recommendations (from peers? from experts?)
Aggregations and collections of material around particular themes
OER as one component of what is available (alongside research outputs,
news stories, websites, people…)
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 17
18. A wider context
OER should be seen as one part of a "layer" of open academic and
scholarly content, alongside:
– research outputs (journal articles, monographs etc)
– research data
– on-line text books
and organised as an international resource to benefit society, education,
research and culture
Resources will be world wide or regional/local depending on language
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 18
19. OER worldwide
Thousands of institutions worldwide are involved in the creation or reuse
of OER
Millions of people
Millions of potential use cases
How can the world’s open educational resources best be exploited for the
good of mankind and society?
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 19
20. Conclusions
OER should be seen as a part of a wider movement making information
and tools widely available for the greater good.
There is unlikely to be one way of organising or discovering OER – we
need to consider multiple structures and working with users.
The “user” experience of OER is under-researched – some work is
ongoing (eg. OlNet) but there is a need for much more.
And we need to identify and replicate low-cost, sustainable models of
release.
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 20