Presentation given at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ( CHI ) 2013 conference: http://chi2013.acm.org/ Building Open Bridges: Collaborative Remixing and Reuse of Open Educational Resources across organisations Tim Coughlan (University of Nottingham, UK) Rebecca Pitt & Patrick McAndrew (The Open University, UK) Paper available from: http://oro.open.ac.uk/36473/

1. Building Open Bridges
Collaborative Remixing and Reuse of Open
Educational Resources across Organisations
Tim Coughlan
Horizon Digital Economy Research
University of Nottingham, UK
tim.coughlan@nottingham.ac.uk
@t1mc
Rebecca Pitt & Patrick McAndrew
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University, UK
patrick.mcandrew@open.ac.uk, r.e.pitt@open.ac.uk
@BeckPitt , @openpad

2. Overview
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• What practices emerge in using OER across educational
organisations?
• The Bridge to Success Initiative
– Motivations and Benefits
– Observed Practices
• Discussion Points
– Perceptions of Open Collaboration
– Issues Raised

4. Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources are teaching,
learning or research materials that are in the
public domain or released with an intellectual
property license that allows for free use,
adaptation, and distribution
(UNESCO)

5. • Demand for education rapidly increasing worldwide
• Costs rising in many countries
• Lifelong learning expected
• So OER has the potential for huge impact
– Lowering costs
– Establishing or raising standards
(Atkins et al. 2007)
Open Educational Resources

6. • Online courses, multimedia, interactive
demonstrations, e-textbooks, lecture videos
• Large-scale sharing of materials
– MIT Open CourseWare since 2002
– Open University OpenLearn
– Apple iTunesU
Open Educational Resources

7. Open Educational Practices
• The use of OER is poorly understood or supported
beyond simple sharing.
• Practices need to be developed to fulfil potential.
(Conole, 2011)
• Reuse is too often conceived as construction with
OER as Lego bricks.
• Openness should support more fine-grained
modification and creativity - remixing content to
be appropriate for particular audiences.
(Wiley, 2009)

8. A Case Study: Bridge to Success

9. Bridge to Success
• Aim: Improve support for
transition to, and completion
of US college education
• Proven introductory online
courses for higher education
in the UK are shared as OER
• Remixed for a US audience
• Encourage and support reuse

10. Organisations Involved
• USA
– Large College
– Public University
– Private Research University
• UK
– Original Authoring University
• Others involved along the way

11. Understanding Bridge to Success
• Research embedded into the initiative to:
– Identify best practices
– Evaluate the impact of the OER
• Interviews with project team pre, mid and post remixing
• Reviewed communications, documentation, meeting notes
• Visits to organisations who are reusing the materials
• Interviews and surveys with educators and learners

12. Motivations and Benefits

13. Common Issues Faced
• Shared issues faced as educators across cultures
• Math(s) is key in college completion and advanced study. But
students in all countries struggle to reach competency
“something that is independent of any particular culture
is…human behaviour and human attitudes towards mathematics”
“There are similarities between the situation in the US and the
UK, in that we’ve got a lot of people who are frightened of
maths, think they can’t do it…but the approach to teaching maths
in the two countries is quite different”

14. Empowerment
• Ability to develop and use resources to fit, without large
initial buy-in from the organisation
• OER as a mechanism for provoking changes to practice
within the organisation
“We were teaching from textbooks, we don’t have our own
materials”… (until now)
“I’m really hoping that it does change some policy”

15. Learning from Each Other
• Through remixing and reuse
– Adapted course development from across the organisations
– Opening up of internal systems and training each other
“the whole philosophy for Open is that you can share solutions, you can share strategies,
and I am seeing that happen”
“initially we were so intent on just making sure that we had a solution… But we’ve learnt
so much along the way that…has really made this a very rich, rewarding experience”
• Serendipitously
“I’ve spoken to two teachers today, who have blind students in their
classrooms…studying science. Now that is key to a project that I’m working on”

16. Remixing the OER

17. Courses and Effort
1 Content Expert (US)
1 Editor (US)
UK-based ProductionTeam
10+ Content Experts
2 Editors
US / UK ProductionTeam
3 Months 9 Months

18. Envisaging the Audience
• Extensive work to identify and elaborate on the envisaged audience.
• Do not expect a tutor to be available, it is a bonus if they are.
• Maintaining consistency is essential, so changes create overheads.
the “important angle… (to view the process from) …is as the student who is
seeing it for the first time, and that is critical in maintaining the instructional
integrity,…consistency both in tone and in the actual instructional processes”
“you know the fact that it’s difficult to ‘get’ maths online, and you know
…(creating the right materials) takes time to do”

19. Collaboration in Remixing
• Individuals had difficulty in distinguishing cultural
difference from other’s beliefs in best practice
• Team decision making approaches emerge
“It was a right, if two people object, their names are on this
project… it’s not going to be suitable”

20. Changes Made in Remixing

21. Changes Made in Remixing

22. Changes in Size and Unit Structure
Before:
54,000 words
After:
45,000 words
- 9,000

23. Changes in Size and Unit Structure
Before:
82,000 words
After:
92,000 words
+ 10,000

24. Changes in Size and Unit Structure
Before:
82,000 words
After:
92,000 words
+ 20,000

25. Adaptive Remixing
• Efficiently make the resource suitable to the
envisaged audience
• Judgments made as to whether contextual
differences were problematic
• If in doubt about content, just remove it

26. Creative Remixing
• Taking existing work and building on it
• Creating and integrating multimedia & interactive
content
• More time consuming than expected
• Concerns for ‘exuberance’ in integrating external
resources – potentially detrimental to quality and
out of the team’s control.

27. Reusing the OER

28. Reuse
• 16+ US-based organisations have used the materials
in less than a year
– Colleges
– Distance learning organisations
– Charity initiatives for the long-term unemployed and ‘at
risk’ parents drop-in centre
• 8000+ unique visitors
• 1100+ registered users
• Evidence of positive impact across contexts

29. Contextualisation
• Organisations found diverse ways to utilise the OER
in their context
– Provide to newly enrolled students to fill the gap before
the begin classes
– Identify struggling students through data and present this
as an alternative approach to improve skills
• Support needed for sharing these innovative
practices and evaluating success

30. Wrapping
• Not changing the resource itself
• Educators often combine various resources in teaching
• Different styles of use and support needs
• Success where combined with initiatives for improving access
and skills with technology
• Support needed for individual ‘wrapping’ of parts of OER with
directions for learners

31. Discussion Points

32. Expectations of Open Collaboration
• Numerous individuals
• Voluntary effort
• Largely independent work
• Spontaneous actions
(e.g.Yamauchi et al. 2000)

33. Openness Evolving

34. Evolution of Open Collaboration
• Around 45% of those involved in Open Source
software projects are paid by companies to be
(Crowston et al. 2012)
• Open Hardware projects are generally undertaken by
small groups, and well planned in advance, because of
the nature of the product
(Mellis and Buechley, 2012)

35. So…
• Openness is increasingly intertwined with other
organisational models and practices
• Open collaboration varies from our original
expectations across domains and cultures

36. OpennessAcross Organisations
• Openness legitimises new ways of working in and across
educational organisations
• New practices of taking ownership emerge
– Individuals and organisations put their name on it
– OER becomes ‘our’ resource as individuals work on it
– OER can empower: Changing a lot with little cost
• Maintaining some control in the open
– Consistency and continuity of materials seen as essential
in remixing
– Use of external resources and large or loose collaborations
seen as problematic

37. Tensions in Conceptions of the
Audience
• Collaborative remixing involved developing a strong,
shared perception of the intended audience
• But openness leads to valuable reuse emerging in
circumstances distinct from these original
expectations.
• Contextualisation and wrapping occur in response,
but systems and practices are immature.

38. Open Collaboration…
but not as we know it
• OER is an example of the evolving nature of
practices around openness
– In domains with different cultures and outcomes
– As it interacts with organisational processes and demands
• Creative and adaptive remixing, contextualisation
and wrapping require further support
– Balancing ownership and control with openness
– Maintaining continuity and consistency
– Varied use contexts lead to creativity in reuse

39. Thanks!
The Bridge to Success initiative was funded by Educause. Further research
was supported by RCUK, via Horizon Digital Economy Research
Tim Coughlan
Horizon Digital Economy Research
University of Nottingham, UK
tim.coughlan@nottingham.ac.uk
@t1mc
Rebecca Pitt & Patrick McAndrew
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University, UK
patrick.mcandrew@open.ac.uk, r.e.pitt@open.ac.uk
@BeckPitt , @openpad
Creative Commons images courtesy of bdesham and mag3737