OCL4Ed Course Reflection 2

The course has raised some interesting thoughts re the barriers and opportunities of OER (Open Educational Resources)  beyond my philosophical position, of sustainability and equity. This is important as others within our institutions need to see some advantages, if the concept is to find fertile ground.

OER defined as 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others (Creative Commons^[3]). 

Cited possible advantages 

• The direct cost per institution of developing high quality learning materials is cheaper when shared across multiple institutions.
• OER provides unique opportunities for all institutions to diversify curriculum offerings especially for low enrollment courses in a cost-effective way. 
• Open textbooks reduce the cost of study for learners.

From a personal perspective as a classroom teacher it also allows resources to be tailored to local contexts and individuals, through remixing and revising.

It was interesting that universities involved with OER reported  

• Enhancing of reputation 
• Extended reach to communities
• Increased recruitment of students
• Accelerating uptake and use of new technologies
• Acting as a catalyst for less formal collaborations and partnerships.

These last two are of particular interest being involved in facilitation of professional development around eLearning.

I assume that the increased uptake of new technologies is related to the 4R's 

Reuse - the right to reuse the content in its unaltered / verbatim form (e.g., make a digital copy of the content) Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language or modify a learning activity) Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup) Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

—David Wiley[4]

All of these require some degree of ICT skills. OER would appear to be providing some motivation, through a authentic need, (the production of quality resources), with tangible rewards, ( time saving and improved quality). The tangible rewards, presumably are also be driving the informal collaboration.


There are also real issues that need to be addressed,

The first.

There are often no tangible institutional rewards for sharing outside the institution, in fact there is the real possibility of breaching the copyright of the institution. There are many boards, my own included, while having never enforced their legal copyright over educational materials produced by their employees; they have not adopted a creative commons policy either.

The second

There is a certain reluctance to expose ones self, professionally, in a very public arena. Perhaps we need to get over that in the interest of learning, ours and our students, but it is still are real issue.