1. Open educational resources Dr Ester Ehiyazaryan School of Humanities, Education, Social and Sports Science, University Centre Doncaster SCORE Fellow, Open University
2. What are Open Educational Resources? “OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge”. (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) From Banksy shop
3. What are Open Educational Resources? Ten key points: 1. OER are free to use and publicly available. 2. OER can be used in teaching and learning (usually with attribution to the original creator). 3. The majority of OER can be altered and adapted (‘repurposed’.) 4. Using OER is not cheating; in fact it can improve the quality of learning experiences by building on other people’s work. 5. OER development is a global movement – don’t be afraid to search global OER repositories. 6. OER materials are not necessarily just teaching materials; there are a number of student support materials available as OER. 7. OER are not just for teachers to use or repurpose; students can be encouraged to use OER to support their own learning. 8. Many institutions now have OER repositories available through their VLE. 9. JISC and the Higher Education Academy have developed a number of UK-based OER repositories as part of a pilot study, including specific repositories for Academy Subject Centres. 10. Don’t knock it until you have tried it. (Leeds Met, A Staff Guide to Open Educational Resources)
6. Address issues such as IPR and support the establishment of a legal framework for rights management
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8. Should we create or reuse? Students expect greater flexibility in Provision It is essential to understand the rapidly changing needs and expectations of current and future students. Learners are increasingly able to navigate high quality, open and online resources and can do this through social networks, which in some cases are more supportive contexts in which to develop skills. New broadcast and distribution channels such as iTunes U, Youtube and Wikipedia demonstrate this trend. Learning environments and contexts are becoming increasingly participative and the learner’s contribution is highly valued by teaching professionals. However, students also need to develop their skills in digital and information literacy – for example, evaluation of the usefulness of varying types of web sources/information. Online Learning Taskforce report to HEFCE: ‘Collaborate to compete’
9. OER repositories http://www.jorum.ac.uk/ http://www.humbox.ac.uk/ http://www.slideshare.net/ http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ http://www.merlot.org/ Jorum, University of Manchester HumBox- humanities teaching resources on the web SlideShare – sharing presentations online iTunesU – OER available through the iTunes store Merlot – multimedia educational resources for learning and online teaching (peer reviewed), California State University
10. OER development tools Xerte – a suite of tools for the development of interactive learning resources; Nottingham University http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/ LabSpace http://labspace.open.ac.uk/ Examples of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) developed with Xerte: Introduction to qualitative data analysis A classification of qualitative research methods
11. Intellectual property rights (IPR) Creative commons licenses: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ CC licenses explained: http://creativecommons.org/videos/creative-commons-kiwi Courtesy of Flickr: by Giuli-O <http://www.flickr.com/photos/giuli-o/> Web2Rights - a JISC funded project which supports creators of digital content to understand licensing and IPR: http://www.web2rights.com/resources.html
14. An OER research methods collection:http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/5548
15. Selection criteria Criteria for selection By Masked-Bob http://www.flickr.com/photos/29602148@N08/2760640158/ By Profound Whatever http://www.flickr.com/photos/hoyvinmayvin/4177413458/ By Bruce Fingerhood http://www.flickr.com/photos/springfieldhomer/39079430/ 16. GRANUALITY 18. CONTEXT-FREE 21. INNOVATION Does size matter? Is it easier to reuse small bits of content (assets), or is it preferable to search for big, significant resources? One theory is that stripping out context-specific information makes resources more easy to reuse. What do you think? Resources which make innovative use of technology can be difficult to produce. Is this is a good reason to reuse them? Purpose Purpose Purpose Concerns Concerns Concerns Quality Quality Quality Technology Technology Technology Resources Resources Resources (Chris Pegler, ORIOLE project) Chris Pegler’s reusable card game is available here: http://orioleproject.blogspot.com/p/shop_16.html
16. Selection criteria Interactivity (no interactivity >50% of RLO is interactive) Media richness (no visual or audio elements Media elements are of exceptional quality) Feedback (none included Feedback is adaptive to learners needs) (Learning Object Attribute Matrix (LOAM), Windle, Nottingham University)
17. What we found… The interdisciplinary nature of OER aids narrative construction; allows learners to internalise knowledge (constructivism); has the potential to address some of the difficulties which learners have with research methods learning. Questionnaire design R2: I think it is useful as yet another source, not only for research modules – what I found pretty much with all of these that I looked at is that there are uses in other modules as well.
18. What we found… The size of the resource (granularity) …influences learner autonomy; …affects perception of the resource by tutors (academic credibility); …determines the level of work the tutor will have to do in introducing the resource in a programme of study. Large: http://onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/index.php Small: http://www.arasite.org/mmedia/addvalquaire/index.htm
19. What we found… Context and level specificity – rigid level specificity detracts from the flexibility and reusability of the resource. Level and context specificity is where the real work for the tutors comes in when reusing resources.
20. What we found… R2: Either in a seminar or if they are going to listen to it at home developing the blogs. Now we do have a discussion board on blackboard although I don’t think the students tend to use that I think they prefer to use facebook. Blended learning R1: Good basis for collaborative activity – making use of the tutor-learner created scenarios. You could create scenarios – like ‘you have been given the task to conduct action research into this…how do you go about doing it. These are the features, these are the people involved, these are the problems and whatever and then something like that would be great to link with it. What it does is that it kicks off a lot of creative ideas and follow-ups. R3: I would say for next session please listen to Frances Rogers and see what he has to say about research and we’ll discuss this in next week’s seminar. So they’d have to listen to it in their own time but then as a class we’ll come back together discuss what they found about the research, strengths and weaknesses.
21. Real-life data in teaching Attitudinal Economic and social data service (ESDS): Free access to significant datasets (British Crime Survey, Millennium Cohort study, British Social attitudes survey) Teaching and learning resources including research methods guides, data analysis guides, case studies of teaching use. http://www.esds.ac.uk/resources/teaching.asp Browse by subject here: http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/browsebySubject.asp
1. Res Intensive institutions have a responsibility to create OER – to address widening participation; 2. You have to engage in reuse before creating OER – otherwise ho would you know what is out there and what is yet to be developed? You may be duplicating effort if you create without being aware of what is available for reuse3. Creating is scholarship – as much recognition as publishing in peer reviewed forums. Movement towards peer reviewing OER.
Chris Wardle Cousins working on setting up a Xerterepository for DC.
IPR are important to be aware of both if you are creating and reusing open content – if creating you need to know how to protect your work; if reusing you need to be aware of what you are allowed and not allowed to do with the open content available to you. Creative commons is a non profit organisation set up to expand the range of digital material which is openly and freely available to legally share and reuse. It provides a range of license types which creators of OER can use to license their work before making openly available online. Most of the material in web2rights features videos of Naomi Korn, an IPR and licensing consultant, who speaks in a very accessible language about basic terms such as IPR, CC licensing, copyright, using third party content.Other resources available (show risk management calculator)
The RM collection was a point of initial engagement for colleagues in the disciplines. The potential of this collection is that we can continue to add to it as we reuse as well as add commentary on what has been useful and in what context.
How were resources selected for evaluation? I looked at some of the broad areas of concern in reusing resources. The Oriole project is concerned with how online resources are reused and what are some of the issues which emerge from this. In Chris Pegler’s card game each card represents an issue – blue cards – motivation; pink cards – quality; grey cards – technology. (ask audience to play the game to get a sense of the issues emerging in reuse)
LOAM is learning design tool which allows the user to evaluate the pedagogical attributes of reusable learning objects (OER).Using the LOAM tool pedagogical attributes in mind, I was selecting resources which scored highly in some of the attributes, particularly those attributes which printed, non interactive resources were less likely to offer, for example interactivity, media richness, feedback.
This is what creates a clash with the assumption of time saving – the time will still have to be put in, in making the resources context and level specific, but not in creating of new content – moving away from creating content and towards designing learning.
These resources are most effectively used when they sit in a framework of dialogue and interaction with other students and tutor. Even the resources which are available for learners to take away and use as revision material need some form of follow up. Some intended uses: as part of a seminar, as a basis for online discussion; as part of a workshop; a dialogue and discussion needs to evolve as a result of using the resource, and this is where the tutor’s role is important. Whether as moderator of discussion forums or facilitator in seminar sessions. The tutor’s role is still in inducting the learner into a way of thinking and a community of learning – the resource on its own cannot do that.
The ESDS provides free access to original datasets collected as part of large scale studies in a number of subject areas. The ESDS collections provide the data in SPSS format, but besides the data they provide documentation around how the data was collected, what research instruments were used, what sample was used. Some significant datasets are made available such as the British crime survey, British social attitudes survey.You would have to record a teaching use ( similar to the info you give out when requesting an inspection copy – which students will use it, what module etc).You would have to do the work around embedding these datasets in teaching – as part of an SPSS session; a research methods session, inked to specific subjects etc.While these are not OER, they provide open access for institutions and students. If you are the creative type you could develop OER for your specific subject around your use of these datasets.