EDULINK-SideCAP Cascading EventEDULINK-SideCAP Cascading Event

University of the West IndiesOpen Campus

12 May, 2010Cave Hill, Barbados

Session 1

Introduction to Open Education ResourcesIntroduction to Open Education Resources

Session 1

Embracing new ways of engaging in education and thinking about our resources

From the e-zone o-zone

Open education

Open content

Open courseware

Defining Openness

Open courseware

Open knowledge

Open school

Open campus

Open university

Open source

Open education resources

Defining Openness

David WileyLarry Lessig

MIT OCW

Historical Background

Course materials freely available online

1998

20012001

Defining Openness

The goal of the Open Educational Resources(OER) movement is to equalize access toknowledge worldwide through openly andfreely available online high quality content.

2002

Definition: Something is open when it is freely

available over the Internet with as few

restrictions (e.g. technical, legal, cost) as

Defining Openness

possible on its use.

Purpose: Increasing access to educational

opportunity for everyone around the world.

Underlying Philosophy

• The world’s knowledge is a public good

• Knowledge can and should be free and open

• Educational opportunity is a right not a privilege

Defining Openness

• Educational opportunity is a right not a privilege

• Academic progress is nourished by the free flow of

information

• Access to knowledge is critical in our era of

knowledge economies

• UN Millennium goal - Education for all

Underlying Philosophy

• Our education system can and should evolve to both

utilise and support OER (OECD, 2007)

• Teaching and learning should be creative acts, free of

Defining Openness

• Teaching and learning should be creative acts, free of

unnecessary legal constraint

• The content producer-content user divide is now

blurring or narrowing. We are all creators and

consumers

• Content should be amenable to adaptation and

improvement

Social

Considerations

Freedom to use

Freedom to contribute

Freedom to share

Defining Openness

OpennessTechnical

Considerations

Interoperability and

functionality (use of open

standards and open software)

Resource

Characteristics

Open content

• Content that is licensed in such a way that

users are given the power to utilise the

material in more ways than normally

Defining Openness

material in more ways than normally

permitted under normal copyright law - at no

cost to the user.

• The fewer copyright restrictions the more

open the content is.

Open content is concerned with 4 basic usage

Rights (the 4R activities)

1. The right to reuse

Defining Openness

2. The right to revise

3. The right to remix

4. The right to redistribute

Content is open to the extent that its license

allows users to engage in the 4R activities.

Open Education Resources (OERs)

“digitised materials offered freely and openly for

educators, students and self-learners to use and

Defining Openness

reuse for teaching, learning and research”.

UNESCO, 2002

Types of OERs

OER

Tools Content Implementation Tools

Open Source Software for development and delivery or

resources

Content Management Systems

Learning Management Systems

Social Software

Content

Materials published for learning or reference

Learning resources

Courseware

Learning objects

Reference collections

Implementation

Resources

Licensing tools

Best Practices

Interoperability

Repositories

OER is also a process dependent on producers and users

Who produces OERs?

• Institutions (e.g. MIT OCW, Open Learn,

University of the Western Cape)

• Communities (e.g. Wikipedia, Connexions,

Who provides OER?

• Communities (e.g. Wikipedia, Connexions,

MERLOT, ARIADNE, CommonContent)

• VUSSC

Who provides OERs?

• US: MIT – 1700 courses

• - Rice University, John Hopkins Bloomberg

school ofpublic health, Varnegie Mellon

university, Yale University, Utah State university, Yale University, Utah State

University

• China: 750 courses made available by 222

university members of the China Open

Resources for Education (CORE) consortium

Who provides OERs?

• Japan: 400 courses (Japanese OCW

consortium)

• France: 800 educational resources from 100

teaching units made available bu 11 member teaching units made available bu 11 member

universities of the Paris Tech OCW project

Who produces OERs?

• An alternative to rising education costs

• Exposes new ways of teaching and learning

• Engages students in producing content

Why OERs?

• Materials are flexible / adaptable

• There is increased collegiality among

educators

• Anyone can contribute to the global

knowledge community

Who produces OERs?

• Altruistic argument: Sharing knowledge is a

good thing

• By sharing and reusing, the costs of content

development can be cut, thus making better

Why OER?

development can be cut, thus making better

use of available resources

• Quality of the resource will be improved over

time

• Good for public relations (e.g. MIT)

Who produces OERs?

Drivers

• Technical:

- Increased broadband availability

Why get involved?

- Increased hard drive capacity and processing

speeds coupled with lower costs

- Rise of technologies to create, distribute and

share content

Who produces OERs?

Drivers

• Technical cont’d

- Provision of simpler software tools for

creating, editing and remixing

Why get involved?

creating, editing and remixing

- Decreased cost and increased quality of

consumer technology devices for audio, photo

and video

Who produces OERs?

Drivers

• Economic:

- Opportunities to reduce costs by co-operation

and sharing

Why get involved?

and sharing

- Lower cost of broadband Internet connections

Session 2

The Edulink-SideCAP ProjectThe Edulink-SideCAP Project

Session 2

UWIOC OER Case Study

The Context: The Existing course development process

Course plan

Draft Script

Second Draft

Peer Review

Further Revisions

Produc-

tion

Sign-off

& Deliver

revisions

The Context:

• Courses created from scratch

• Lengthy course development

UWIOC OER Case Study

development time

• High production cost

• Predominantly print format

The Context:

Production Team

• 1 Programme Coordinator

UWIOC OER Case Study

Coordinator

• 1 Course Writer

• 1 Curriculum Development

Specialist

• 1 Production Assistant

Campus Needs

• More quality courses

• Higher student enrollment nos.

UWIOC OER Case Study

enrollment nos.

• Increased graduation rate

• Rapid response to funding agencies

Solution?

• Reuse existing OERs

• Special Project Department

UWIOC OER Case Study

Department

• Rationale for Course selection

Course Writer

appointed

Production

Assistant

UWIOC OER Case Study

Course plan

drafted

Finding & Evaluating

OERs

Re-

Purposing

OER

Peer Review & Revision

Advantages

• Shorter development time

• Reduced burden to develop entire course

Course Development

develop entire course from scratch

• Availability of an appropriate OER

• Lower production cost

Challenges

• Sourcing appropriate multimedia resources

• Mixing OERs with non-OERs

Course Development

OERs

e.g. using copyrighted readings, definitions / excerpts from copyrighted texts

The OER

Masters in Bus. Mgt(Units used)-Preparing a project-Planning a project-Managing projects through people-Implementing the project-Completing the project

Cert. in Project Mgt(Units developed)- Intro. to PM- Planning the project- Implementing the project- Case study- Proj. Man. HR- Proj. Communication- Closing the project

Under consideration

• Developing policies

• Revising course development model

Course Development

• Training in the repurposing of OERs

• Engageing in collaborative authoring using wikis (e.g. wikieducator)

Session 3

OERs: The IssuesOERs: The Issues

Session 3

Copyright protections: All rights reserved

Copyright Issues

Copyright protections: All rights reserved• Creative works are automatically endowed with all-rights-reserved

copyright

• Sharing is not permitted without explicit permission

• Adapting exiting works to new contexts or new purposes is forbidden (all-

Copyright Issues

• Adapting exiting works to new contexts or new purposes is forbidden (all-

rights-reserved) unless permission has been granted

• While there are copyright exceptions (e.g. fair use) we cannot rely on this

to open up educational materials

• However, today, the Internet has transformed the way knowledge is

communicated, shared and built upon …i.e. having all rights reserved is

often no longer ideal especially in the education context

Copyright Issues

• Copyleft

Copyright Issues

• Creative Commons Licenses

• Premise: Many users of the Internet want to share their work

and want to have the power to reuse, modify and distribute

their work with others

• CC licenses may have “some rights reserved” as opposed to • CC licenses may have “some rights reserved” as opposed to

all-rights reserved”

• Creative Commons – increasing the creativity in the commons

(the body of work that is available to the public for free and

legal sharing, use , repurposing and remixing

• CC licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They apply on

top of copyright, so you can modify your copyright terms to

suit your needs

Open Content Licenses: Some rights reserved

• Open licensing is at the core of OER

• Open License are critical for defining OERs

Copyright Issues

• Licensing choices would be based on their

potential to improve the availability and

quality fo educational materials

Open Content LicensesQ: When creating an OER, what other rights should one consider?

A: If you are using your own original content, artwork, photos etc. Not to

worry

- Incorporating materials taken from other sources. However, short

Copyright Issues

- Incorporating materials taken from other sources. However, short

quotations from others may be allowed under fair use, or work where the

copyright has expired or if they have been dedicated to the public domain

- Photos of individuals who have not given you their consent

Copyright Issues

• Licensing Choices

Access

• OERs must be easy to find.

This depends on:

- Access to the Internet

- Access to Computers- Access to Computers

- Training and support

- Bandwidth

- Metadata / tagging

- Editable formats

Adaptability

• OERs must be easy to adapt

- Open vs. proprietary formats

Quality

• Producers market

• Need to develop quality control mechanisms

e.g. peer review, user testing etc.

• Evaluation instruments• Evaluation instruments

• Can be costly

• Must also consider the learning outcomes of

individuals using OERs

Sustainability

Definition

• The long-term viability and stability of the

open education programme

Sustainability

How can we make an OER programme

sustainable?

• Increased awareness

• A quality brand• A quality brand

• Users

Who will pay for OERs to be created, improved,

stored and transmitted over time?

Localisation / Contextualisation

• Cultural Context

• Language

• Level

• Content • Content

(breadth and depth)

Session 5

Discussing the IssuesDiscussing the Issues

Session 5

• The creation of OER must not be viewed as an added

responsibility or task

• The practice of publishing OER by faculty must be

Discuss

The practice of publishing OER by faculty must be

seamlessly interwoven with the roles and

responsibilities of academic staff as with the vision

and mission of the institution

• What would be you major concern(s) re OER? How

can this concern be addressed?

• What could the university do to encourage to share

your teaching and learning resources and to revise

the resources of others?

Discuss

• What are the institutional barriers?

Future Directions?