Making educational practices more open with OER Professor Andy Lane, Senior Fellow, Support Centre for Open Resources in Education

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 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: sharing knowledge through content

Educational materials can act as a mediating object between teachers and learners Educational material Teachers Learners Open educational practices: using content wisely

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

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

Open communities as much as open content

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.

So why did The Open University make some of its 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

Bridging informal and formal learning

Impacting on recruitment, preparation and progression

Enabling collaboration and cooperation

Allowing experimentation and research