Making Education More Open with OER Professor Andy Lane, Senior Fellow, SCORE

The Opportunity: being open to change Open Educational Resources are “… digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research. “ Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, OECD 2007 “The most promising initiative in e-learning is the concept – and the developing reality, of open educational resources.” Sir John Daniel (OU, UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning) “There is no point duplicating effort to create content that is already available and has been proven to work. Institutions can build on the existing open educational resources initiative to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies. In addition they can pull in the best content and openly available learning resources from around the world and adapt them for particular courses.” On-line Learning Task Force, 2011 Image by: mag3737,

The meaning of open in OER? Spend 5 minutes talking to the person next to you about what you believe are the answers to the following questions: Is it enough for resources to be openly accessible online? Should they also be openly licensed? Do you want open resources in open formats? Should you use open source software to create and use OER?

The meaning of open in OER? (Geser, 2007)

A shorter definition (Stephen Downes, 2011) "Open educational resources are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone.“ The statement takes the classic three-part form of a definition: 1. name the entity ("Open educational resources") 2. state what larger class of entity the entity belongs to ("are materials used to support education") 3. state how they are distinct from other members of that larger class of entities ("that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone")

The Four Rs of OER and teaching and learning practices Reuse – Use the work verbatim, just exactly as you found it Rework – Alter or transform the work so that it better meets your needs Remix – Combine the (verbatim or altered work) with other works to better meet your needs Redistribute – Share the verbatim work, the reworked work, or the remixed work with others. David Wiley, 2007 Open educational practices

Educational materials can act as a mediating object between teachers and learners (just as teachers can mediate the interactions between learners and educational materials) Educational material Teachers Learners Open educational practices

The implications of OER for mediating teaching and learning opportunities Granularity– the size and inter-dependence of modules Judging the appropriate mix between: - Pedagogic support (built into content) - Personal support (self reflection and guidance) - Peer support (mutual reflection and guidance) - Professional support (expert reflection and guidance) The use of new social computing technologies in facilitating support and interaction Greater sharing of practice amongst teachers and learners – moving from individual to collective practices

Open communities as much as open content

OER are what you make of them OER can be: –Designed explicitly for educational use –Other content used for educational purposes –Used as an information source Spreading ‘wild’ seeds

For individuals the greater availability and accessibility of resources has been found to help them to: Learn new things or enrich other studies; Share and discuss topics asynchronously or synchronously with other learners; Assess whether they wish to participate in (further) formal education; Decide which institution they want to study at; Improve their work performance; Create or revise OER themselves But … They often need guidance

For teachers, individually and collectively, OER make it possible for them to: Create courses more efficiently and/or effectively, particularly using rich media resources that require advanced technical and media skills; Investigate the ways in which others have taught their subject; Create resources or courses in collaboration with others rather than doing it all themselves; Join in communities of practice which help improve their teaching practices as they reflect on the community use of new open tools and technologies; Customise and adapt resources by translating or localising them; But … They must remember that technology only supports not supplants good teaching.

For educational institutions OER offers up opportunities to: Showcase their teaching and research programmes to wider audiences; Widen the pool of applicants for their courses and programmes; Lower the lifetime costs of developing educational resources; Collaborate with public and commercial organisations, including educational publishers, in new ways; Extend their outreach activities But … Improved practices require supportive policies and strategies

For governments and national agencies OER offer scope to: Showcase their country’s educational systems; Attract international students (to higher education at least); Help drive changes in educational practices; Develop educational resources in ‘minority’ languages that commercial publishers are reluctant to do so; Develop educational resources that reflect local cultures and priorities; Cooperate internationally on common resources to meet common needs; But … They need to provide seed funding and supportive policies.

Stages in open educational resources development in institutions 1.Legal: release of copyright through creative commons 2.Practical: provide access to content 3.Technical: develop an environment for open access 4.Pedagogic: understand the designs that work 5.Economic: devise a model for sustainable operation 6.Transformative: change ways of working and learning

So why make educational resources open? A growing momentum behind OER worldwide and emergence of creative commons licences Consistent with the OU’s commitment to social justice and widening participation Helps build markets and reputation Bridges the divide between formal and informal learning A test bed for new e-learning developments and an opportunity to research and evaluate them A way of drawing in materials from other organisations Provides the basis for world-wide collaborations

OpenLearn is … An institution-wide programme; A sub-brand for OU’s open educational media Making some of the OU’s educational materials freely available in a web-based open learning environment; Seeking to advance open educational practices by: –Deploying leading-edge learning management tools for learner support; –Encouraging the creation of non-formal collaborative learning communities; –Encouraging other institutions to reuse and rework the content; –Enhancing international research-based knowledge about modern pedagogies for higher education.

OpenLearn’s website architecture Long form content for learners Long form content for educators Information and short form content Researcher network External sites YouTubeEDU iTunesU Facebook

Bridging informal and formal learning Learner comes first Content is the hook Flexibility Mix and match Self pacing

Impact on recruitment, preparation and progression

Designing for open learning Volunteer students Use exercises and submit work Custom portfolios for skills development Whole courses with pay-as- you-go, on-demand accreditation Social learners Extending learning into social networks Store and reveal the actions of learners Self certification using data on user interaction

Collaborate and cooperate Preparation Curriculum extension Professional development Narrow the digital divide Work based learning A common knowledge base Remote communities

A test bed Different cultural settings Informal collaboration Experiments Uptake of new technologies Supporting other universities