1. SIP TEL Innovation Report 1: Open Educational Resources
Summary:
This briefing paper is the first in a series that will be produced as deliverables from the
Enhancing Institutional Capacity to Develop Technology Enhanced Learning SIP project. The
purpose is to evaluate the Jisc Advance resources that are available to inform and guide
institutions about the latest developments in technology enhanced learning. It will enable
conclusions to be drawn about how Swansea Metropolitan/UW Trinity Saint David and
other institutions can apply and benefit from these developments.
There will be three reports in the series. They will focus on current TEL innovative
developments and debates and will use key Jisc Advance resources as part of that. The
reports will cover:
1. Open Educational Resources
2. MOOCs
3. The Impact of Social Media and Personal Technologies on the Future of TEL
In each case the reports will present speculative, but evidence-based and realistic, future
TEL scenarios intended to inform and assist institutional planning.
1. Open Educational Resources
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education1
through their OER
Commons project2
describes open educational resources in the following way:
Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials freely available for
everyone to use, whether you are a teacher or a learner. This includes full courses, modules,
syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials,
games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from
around the world.
The creation and use of OER represents a shift in education that supports shared teacher
expertise and peer-based learning. Free and open content is not only a new economic model
for schools and students, but also a primary vehicle for disseminating flexible, adaptable
curricula that support learner-centric approaches.
This movement has come about as a result of educational materials being made available
globally online. There is a compelling rationale that says that, where rich and varied learning
resources are already available, there is no point in each individual teacher or institution
serially creating their own versions. They can contribute to improving it and keeping it up to
date, of course, but not waste time and money redeveloping what already exists.
For academics however, particularly in Higher Education, this requires a significant and
potentially problematic cultural shift. Traditionally the learning materials developed by the
individual academic are seen to be ‘owned’ by them, have IPR, and to have monetary value
if published. Also perhaps, they may be seen to define the academic prowess that the
academic wishes to demonstrate.
1
http://www.iskme.org/
2
http://www.oercommons.org/

2. This paper reviews the current development, status and use of OERs with particular
reference to the Jisc Advance/InfoNet Open Educational Resources InfoKit3
. The InfoKit not
only provides an up-to-date picture of OER development, it also provides links to a wide
range of valuable documents and other resources for anyone looking for detailed
information.
The paper will conclude with some recommendations for institutions on the use of OERs in
delivery and also some comments about what the future OER landscape might look like.
2. The Open Educational Resources Movement
The OER movement came to the general attention of academia when MIT began their Open
Courseware4
initiative in 2002, making the courseware for 50 courses available online for
anyone to freely access. By 2007 over 1800 MIT courses were available in 33 disciplines.
The movement rapidly became global with institutions from China to Europe now making
materials available online, including the UK Open University with its OpenLearn initiative5
.
This soon led to collaborative initiatives between institutions such as the Open Courseware
Consortium6
, and the creation of digital content archives such as the Open Content Alliance7
and, in the UK, Jorum8
.
At this time learning materials were still considered as having commercial value with ROI
potential and the concept of a standards-based ‘re-usable learning object’ design model was
in favour. Both of these ideas have since disappeared off the radar.
Over the same period online access services were developing. Institutions were making
learning materials available online for their students internally through their chosen learning
management systems such as Moodle, but also externally through social networking
applications such as YouTube9
and iTunes10
. Although the latter have typically been a way of
marketing the institutional offer, they do point to a different way of delivering learning
content.
Another very significant development has been the emergence of global information search
applications with an educational agenda such as Wikipedia11
, Wikiversity12
, Google for
Teachers13
and Google Scholar14
. These resources, particularly the basic Wikipedia and
Google applications, are often dismissed as generating unverified content of dubious
academic value, but it doesn’t take much thought to work out why that view does not make
sense. Kernohan15
observes that the more conventional ‘quality assured’ content
repositories have struggled to make a case for viability against the intelligent and informed
use of mainstream search engines and – latterly - social medial hosting.
3
https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24836480/Home
4
http://ocw.mit.edu/help/get-started-with-ocw/
5
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
6
http://ocwconsortium.org/
7
http://www.opencontentalliance.org/
8
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/
9
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOpenUniversity
10
http://www.open.edu/itunes/
11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
12
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page
13
http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/
14
http://scholar.google.co.uk/
15
http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/4915/

3. For a slightly more off-the-planet view of the digital future of education, Kamenetz’s The
Edupunk’s Guide16
makes a good read. In a similar vein, Thiel suggests that to question (the
values, constructs, traditional methods of) education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s
like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus17
.
3. The Open Educational Resources InfoKit
The InfoKit starts with an overview section which begins by defining OERs. It refers to a
number of resources which includes a very useful briefing paper18
by Li Yuan of Jisc-Cetis.
The overview examines evidence of the benefits of OERs to date, given the fact that millions
of pounds have been invested globally. It concludes that the benefits have not always been
well articulated or evidenced and I would agree with that. To some extent this is reflected in
the limited way the benefits are summarised in this section. The benefits listed for the OER
originator (i.e. the academic), for example, are less than convincing.
Barriers to OER development and uptake are covered in a different section of the InfoKit but
they add to the overall message that, although the overarching benefits of efficiency and
cost effectiveness in sharing resources are clear, barriers relating to culture change remain.
In addition to the difficulties of culture change, it is my view that there is a major flaw in the
overall conception of OERs by the educational community. This is the perception that all
open educational resources are created by the educational community for use in formal
educational delivery.
It is clear, however, that significant educational resources are available externally from the
documented work of experienced practitioners in their chosen professions for which
education had a part in preparing them. It is equally clear that the greater part of learning
happens outside the formal educational environment as careers progress and individuals
become more experienced and expert long after they have left university.
This view re-contextualises our ideas about the creation, use and value of Open Educational
Resources. It also obliges us to reconsider our pedagogic concepts and the changing roles of
both teacher and learner in the online learning environment. A focus, for example, on
teaching learning skills rather than subject specific skills, thus enabling the learners to
determine their own learning pathways and choice of resources as they progress beyond
their formal education.
The OER Myths section of the InfoKit19
expands on the ideas expressed above. It attempts to
stimulate debate about a common understanding of the terminology in use: sharing,
exchange, reuse, repurposing, open, etc. It is also characteristic of the rest of the toolkit, in
that it is short, pithy and provides links to related resources.
The Management Approaches and Models20
section suggests, with no small conviction, that
OER business models are in their infancy. There is little disagreement with this view, but the
way it is expressed in the toolkit does, however, reinforce the conventional model which
16
http://www.smashwords.com/books/download/77938/1/latest/0/0/the-edupunks-guide-to-a-diy-
credential.pdf
17
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-
education/
18
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf
19
https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/25228307/OER%20Myths
20
https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24838043/Approaches%20and%20models

4. emphasises ownership, IPR and ROI. If there was ever a reason for thinking outside the box
then this is it.
4. Conclusions and Discussion
The Open Educational Resource movement is a global entity. It does not require a business
model, because it is not a business. It is a collaborative movement where it is more
advantageous to be a partner and contribute than not. Individual institutions can exploit the
resources locally and gain benefit, of course. However, the greater picture needs to be
acknowledged and this is already well expressed by the principles of open source resource
provision generally.
Open source resources may be used by anyone, usually under some form of Creative
Commons license, on the understanding that whatever developments or improvements are
made they are also made generally available under the same conditions. The user
community will decide the value of any developments and will use or discard accordingly.
A key consideration in any educational resource is the degree to which teaching is
embedded. In the simplest form this could be a detailed ‘how to’ guide for some process. In
higher education, however, it may rather involve pointing a learner towards a primary
source where they are expected to have the research skills to investigate, evaluate and
discuss their conclusions.
This, I think, reinforces my previous comments about OER design and usage. Teaching is
good for awareness raising and procedural instruction. It is not as good for the building of
personal meaning and cognition. This requires serious work on the part of the learner. It is
learning skills that are needed here, and those are developed through guided practice.
My general view is that the OER scenario is going to happen anyway. The internet will
continue to develop and be populated by all manner of educational resource. Both
instructional and primary resources will be freely available and it will undoubtedly challenge
the conventional institutional resource provision model (particularly the classroom system).
Physical institutions will continue to exist, of course. They are social centres where people
meet and share their work, learning, sports and leisure. However, the nature of learning will
change because of the internet and the balance of process control between learner and
tutor will also change. Institutions, no doubt, are aware of this and are preparing for it.
Overall, the OER InfoKit is of significant value for anyone exploring the use and potential of
open educational resources. As a resource it embodies much that is good about OER in that
it is structured, usable, understandable, and provides links to enable anyone to drill down to
further detail.
In my view it doesn’t really point to what the future looks like. But that’s just my view.
Tony Toole
June 2013