Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices

Understanding the
role of OERs in
open educational
practices
Helen Beetham
JISC UK OER Evaluation and Synthesis Team
(Allison Littlejohn, Lou McGill, Isobel Falconer)

Open content and open learning
Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices

Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications
LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11

for education, that is for relationships between teachers
and students, between students and institutions, and
between knowledge and society... not because content
itself is decisive, but because knowledge relations are
embodied in knowledge artefacts and in how they
circulate and are exchanged.

The open content movement partakes of profound
change in knowledge practices, including open data,
open scholarship, open organisations, open
qualification frameworks and standards, open technical
standards, and open source


Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications

for education, that is for relationships between teachers
and students, between students and institutions, and
between knowledge and society... not because content
Information by default is openly available
itself is decisive, but because knowledge relations are
embodieddigital networks. 'Open' and label for
in in knowledge artefacts is a in how they
circulate and arepractices of learning, working,
emerging exchanged.
researching, sharing and teaching in this
context.
The open content movement partakes of profound
change in knowledge practices, including open data,
open scholarship, open organisations, open
qualification frameworks and standards, open technical
standards, and open source

LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Open content and open learning


Expectations about learners, their objectives
and contexts of use are inscribed into
(educational) content

OER as 'triggers' for open practices

Content resources may support some
learners, learning activities and contexts
better than others




Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges




Openness is
the enemy of
knowability


Hard to track quantitative use: what gets used and

when?
Harder to evaluate qualities of use: who uses and why,
with what educational purposes and outcomes?
Uses and impacts in project-funded contexts may not be
highly transferable (??)
Release for re-use offers a different model from open
sharing in communities (different impacts??)
Authentication supports tracking and commenting but
presents a barrier to openness

Approaches to thinking about impact and use

Content 1. Track 3. Deconstruct
focus specific OERs the qualities of
in use 'open' content

Use/ 2. Investigate 4. Deconstruct
practice the experience features of
focus of specific 'open' practices/
users experiences

Direct approach Indirect approach

1. Tracking OERs in use (UK OER)

Google analytics, log files and repository/host reports; some

use of search for resource tags
Typically ~20-100 views per resource per month, some in
1,000s (Engineering resources on slideshare and Oxford
resources on iTunesU)
Concerted effort by some HEIs is leading to aggregated
iTunesU hits in the millions (OU 34m, Oxford 8m, Cov 3m)
Downloads and uses differ: re-use often on invisible web
(e.g. VLEs) or personal downloads
Very few feedback comments or ratings from users
Currently analysing metrics, questionnaires, follow-up
interviews at project level e.g. 'Listening for Impact' at Oxford

Evidencing use (UK OER pilots)
Vision Extending reputation

Users 'in the wild' typically have a low awareness of

'open' content as a category
OERs can be very intensively re-used with teacher
endorsement or brand/individual trust
SO effective re-use can be small-scale and local
BUT Web 2.0 visibility critical to scale of re-use
Sharing/re-use are influenced by
digital literacies – prior experiences – perceived quality/brand of
OERs – perceived benefits/risks to practice/reputation

Release/repurposing/re-use/sharing are potentially
related but we lack evidence from practice
Impacts of OER have an ethical dimension, in the
context of a global market for education

An aside: UK OER ii
Vision Extending reputation

New Impact
Release of OER
Cascade study
12 Support Thematic
projects Collections
5 Case
projects studies 6 projects
Teaching in
HE
11 projects
Tracking

Programme support, evaluation, synthesis &
communications
Programme management

Evidencing use: things we Extending reputation
Vision still don't know

Who are OERs used by and why? What are the benefit

models for users, e.g. productivity gains?
How do learners make use of OERs, including sharing
content? With what skills/strategies/attitudes?
How are OERs used by academics in their own teaching?
What new skills and expertise are needed?
How do OERs influence pedagogies in use?
What if any educational information/metadata/rationale
supports effective use of OERs? What hosting and
communication strategies have most impact on use?
What kind of communities benefit from OER
sharing/reuse? How can OERs enhance existing open
practices in learning/teaching/research communities?

2. Investigating specific users

Oxford TALL project: assessing impact of (UK) OERs

ORIOLE project: role of open content in online learning
Research study: impact of OER on learning and
teaching practices
Specific UK OER and SCORE projects
...

3. Deconstructing 'open' content

Capetown Declaration

Open educational resources should be freely shared
through open licences which facilitate use, revision,
translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources
should be published in formats that facilitate both use and
editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical
platforms. Whenever possible, they should also be available
in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and
people who do not yet have access to the Internet.


offered freely ... for educators, students and self-learners

to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD)
released under an open licence (UK OER)
accessible: meeting wide range of end-user needs?
reusable: carrying educational metadata/wrapper to support re-
use, and/or ‘plug and play’?
repurposable: disaggregable, unbranded, 'translateable'?
open platform: iTunesU??
unfenced: open sharing after sign-in or authentication-free?
high quality: existing peer review/academic quality process or
additional criteria?
designed for learning: do we include content with learning value
that has not been so designed e.g. most student-authored
content? Are OERs just RLOs with open licences?


For all of these features of content we could ask:

- How does this facilitate learning (how does it 'make a
difference')?
- What practices of educational use (learning and teaching)
are implied, supported or 'triggered'?
- What practices of production, release, hosting and sharing
are required?

Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion

'Open' content should be easily adapted to support learner-

xxx

centred approaches e.g. by including relevant texts/tasks
Is 'educational' in the content or in the design or in the
context e.g. sharing community?
'A language teacher can immediately see the potential of a
simple slide with a couple of images and a one line
explanation on how to use this for an ice-breaker. The
teacher will then fill the gaps ...'
Educational value is not the same as production values
(MIT OCW vs Humbox/LORO)
'It's the material that well communicates great knowledge
from the original teacher which seems to work best.'
Open content can support niche/declining subject areas?
(Philosophy, OpenDutch)

4. Deconstructing 'open' practices

Capetown Declaration:

We encourage educators and learners to actively participate in
the emerging open education movement. Participating includes:
creating, using, adapting and improving open educational
resources; embracing educational practices built around
collaboration, discovery and the creation of knowledge; and
inviting peers and colleagues to get involved.
To which we might add:
Open scholarship and research (collaborating openly,
open publication)
Using open platforms, open source tools, open corpora, open
data sets where possible?

4. Deconstructing 'open' practices

Capetown Declaration:

Governments, school boards, colleges and universities should
make open education a high priority. Ideally, taxpayer-funded
educational resources should be open educational resources.
Accreditation and adoption processes should give preference to
open educational resources.
To which we might add:
Open access publishing?
Accrediting to open educational standards?
Open partnerships for content creation and sharing?

4. Deconstructing 'open' practices: benefit models

Individual showcasing

reputation enhancement, personal/prof rewards, individual values (e.g.
openness, public interest, quality), learner benefits, link to open scholarship
Institutional showcasing
marketing and institutional profile, (international) reputation, potential learners
and partners as end-users, open access=new markets e.g. franchising
Capacity building
staff skills, institutional strategies (e.g. LTA, content), change agendas, focus on
preparing for a more open technical and educational environment
Share and share alike
tightly-knit subject/topic communities, focus on sharing practice, open
scholarship, collaborative development, colleagues as end-users,
open=communal
Public interest
generic open ed values and public intellectual life; specific public interest (e.g.
climate change, health), public access to knowledge; open=democratic and
participatory

Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion

Towards wider sharing L&T content (and associated

practices):
By increasing the number of people sharing and the types
of resources being shared, we are being more open.
Towards collaborative development:
Our view of authorship is less proprietorial (at least in the
Department of Languages) than in other institutions.
Towards open conversations about learning and teaching
Humbox, SPACE and LORO as models

What features of open content matter?

free | openly licensed | accessible

adaptable/repurposable | collaboratively designed
communally owned and iteratively developed
designed for open learning

For each of these features ask:
- How does this facilitate learning (how could it 'make a
difference')?
- What practices of production, release, hosting and sharing
support this?

What difference(s) to practice do we aspire to?

collaborative development of content

more inquiry-based learning ('open curriculum')
borderless institutions
segregation of content and teaching (deskilling?)
widening opportunity for independent learners
developing public intellectuals ('open scholarship')
developing public institutions of learning
open conversations about learning and teaching

- Can we develop open content in ways that amplify or
mitigate some of these effects?

Generic synthesis/evaluation framework
Practice change (includes expertise and building capacity;

motivations, roles and divisions of labour)
Development/release issues (includes legal, technical and hosting
issues)
Organisational/institutional issues (includes business cases,
rewards, organisational support)
Cultural issues (includes quality, communities of practice beyond
the organisation)
Impacts/benefits issues (includes benefits realisation, end-user
issues, learning and teaching practice)

Evidencing issues – how do we give coherent and credible
messages to the sector?

Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices

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