understanding the role of oers in open educational practices

Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices

Helen BeethamJISC UK OER Evaluation and Synthesis Team (Allison Littlejohn, Lou McGill, Isobel Falconer)

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11Open content and open learning

Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications for education, that is for relationships between teachers and students, between students and institutions, and between knowledge and society... not because content itself is decisive, but because knowledge relations are embodied in knowledge artefacts and in how they circulate and are exchanged.

The open content movement partakes of profound change in knowledge practices, including open data, open scholarship, open organisations, open qualification frameworks and standards, open technical standards, and open source

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Open content and open learning

Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications for education, that is for relationships between teachers and students, between students and institutions, and between knowledge and society... not because content itself is decisive, but because knowledge relations are embodied in knowledge artefacts and in how they circulate and are exchanged.

The open content movement partakes of profound change in knowledge practices, including open data, open scholarship, open organisations, open qualification frameworks and standards, open technical standards, and open source

Information by default is openly available in digital networks. 'Open' is a label for

emerging practices of learning, working, researching, sharing and teaching in this

context.

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Expectations about learners, their objectives and contexts of use are inscribed into (educational) content

Content resources may support some learners, learning activities and contexts better than others

OER as 'triggers' for open practices

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11 Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges

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Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges

Openness is the enemy of knowability

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Hard to track quantitative use: what gets used and when?

Harder to evaluate qualities of use: who uses and why, with what educational purposes and outcomes?

Uses and impacts in project-funded contexts may not be highly transferable (??)

Release for re-use offers a different model from open sharing in communities (different impacts??)

Authentication supports tracking and commenting but presents a barrier to openness

Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges

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11Approaches to thinking about impact and use

3. Deconstruct the qualities of 'open' content

4. Deconstruct features of 'open' practices/ experiences

1. Track specific OERs in use

2. Investigate the experience of specific users

Direct approach Indirect approach

Content focus

Use/practice focus

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111. Tracking OERs in use (UK OER)

Google analytics, log files and repository/host reports; some use of search for resource tags

Typically ~20-100 views per resource per month, some in 1,000s (Engineering resources on slideshare and Oxford resources on iTunesU)

Concerted effort by some HEIs is leading to aggregated iTunesU hits in the millions (OU 34m, Oxford 8m, Cov 3m)

Downloads and uses differ: re-use often on invisible web (e.g. VLEs) or personal downloads

Very few feedback comments or ratings from users

Currently analysing metrics, questionnaires, follow-up interviews at project level e.g. 'Listening for Impact' at Oxford

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Vision Extending reputation

Users 'in the wild' typically have a low awareness of 'open' content as a category

OERs can be very intensively re-used with teacher endorsement or brand/individual trust

SO effective re-use can be small-scale and local

BUT Web 2.0 visibility critical to scale of re-use

Sharing/re-use are influenced bydigital literacies – prior experiences – perceived quality/brand of OERs – perceived benefits/risks to practice/reputation

Release/repurposing/re-use/sharing are potentially related but we lack evidence from practice

Impacts of OER have an ethical dimension, in the context of a global market for education

Evidencing use (UK OER pilots)

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11

Vision Extending reputationAn aside: UK OER ii

NewRelease

12 projects

Teaching in HE

11 projects

CascadeSupport

5 projects

Impact of OER study

ThematicCollections

6 projects

Programme support, evaluation, synthesis & communications

Case studies

Tracking

Programme management

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Vision Extending reputation

Who are OERs used by and why? What are the benefit models for users, e.g. productivity gains?

How do learners make use of OERs, including sharing content? With what skills/strategies/attitudes?

How are OERs used by academics in their own teaching? What new skills and expertise are needed?

How do OERs influence pedagogies in use?

What if any educational information/metadata/rationale supports effective use of OERs? What hosting and communication strategies have most impact on use?

What kind of communities benefit from OER sharing/reuse? How can OERs enhance existing open practices in learning/teaching/research communities?

Evidencing use: things we still don't know

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11 2. Investigating specific users

Oxford TALL project: assessing impact of (UK) OERs

ORIOLE project: role of open content in online learning

Research study: impact of OER on learning and teaching practices

Specific UK OER and SCORE projects

...

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11 3. Deconstructing 'open' content

Capetown DeclarationOpen educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Whenever possible, they should also be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who do not yet have access to the Internet.

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offered freely ... for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD)

released under an open licence (UK OER)

accessible: meeting wide range of end-user needs?

reusable: carrying educational metadata/wrapper to support re-use, and/or ‘plug and play’?

repurposable: disaggregable, unbranded, 'translateable'?

open platform: iTunesU??

unfenced: open sharing after sign-in or authentication-free?

high quality: existing peer review/academic quality process or additional criteria?

designed for learning: do we include content with learning value that has not been so designed e.g. most student-authored content? Are OERs just RLOs with open licences?

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For all of these features of content we could ask:

- How does this facilitate learning (how does it 'make a difference')?

- What practices of educational use (learning and teaching) are implied, supported or 'triggered'?

- What practices of production, release, hosting and sharing are required?

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11 Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion

xxx'Open' content should be easily adapted to support learner-centred approaches e.g. by including relevant texts/tasks

Is 'educational' in the content or in the design or in the context e.g. sharing community?

'A language teacher can immediately see the potential of a simple slide with a couple of images and a one line explanation on how to use this for an ice-breaker. The teacher will then fill the gaps ...'

Educational value is not the same as production values (MIT OCW vs Humbox/LORO)

'It's the material that well communicates great knowledge from the original teacher which seems to work best.'

Open content can support niche/declining subject areas? (Philosophy, OpenDutch)

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11 4. Deconstructing 'open' practices

Capetown Declaration:

We encourage educators and learners to actively participate in the emerging open education movement. Participating includes: creating, using, adapting and improving open educational resources; embracing educational practices built around collaboration, discovery and the creation of knowledge; and inviting peers and colleagues to get involved.

To which we might add:

Open scholarship and research (collaborating openly, open publication)

Using open platforms, open source tools, open corpora, opendata sets where possible?

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4. Deconstructing 'open' practices

Capetown Declaration:

Governments, school boards, colleges and universities should make open education a high priority. Ideally, taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources. Accreditation and adoption processes should give preference to open educational resources.

To which we might add:

Open access publishing?

Accrediting to open educational standards?

Open partnerships for content creation and sharing?

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11 4. Deconstructing 'open' practices: benefit models

Individual showcasingreputation enhancement, personal/prof rewards, individual values (e.g. openness, public interest, quality), learner benefits, link to open scholarship

Institutional showcasingmarketing and institutional profile, (international) reputation, potential learners and partners as end-users, open access=new markets e.g. franchising

Capacity buildingstaff skills, institutional strategies (e.g. LTA, content), change agendas, focus on preparing for a more open technical and educational environment

Share and share aliketightly-knit subject/topic communities, focus on sharing practice, open scholarship, collaborative development, colleagues as end-users, open=communal

Public interestgeneric open ed values and public intellectual life; specific public interest (e.g. climate change, health), public access to knowledge; open=democratic and participatory

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11 Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion

Towards wider sharing L&T content (and associated practices): By increasing the number of people sharing and the types of resources being shared, we are being more open.

Towards collaborative development: Our view of authorship is less proprietorial (at least in the Department of Languages) than in other institutions.

Towards open conversations about learning and teaching

Humbox, SPACE and LORO as models

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What features of open content matter?

free | openly licensed | accessible adaptable/repurposable | collaboratively designed

communally owned and iteratively developed designed for open learning

For each of these features ask:- How does this facilitate learning (how could it 'make a difference')?

- What practices of production, release, hosting and sharing support this?

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11 What difference(s) to practice do we aspire to?

collaborative development of contentmore inquiry-based learning ('open curriculum')

borderless institutionssegregation of content and teaching (deskilling?)

widening opportunity for independent learnersdeveloping public intellectuals ('open scholarship')

developing public institutions of learningopen conversations about learning and teaching

- Can we develop open content in ways that amplify or mitigate some of these effects?

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11 Generic synthesis/evaluation framework

Practice change (includes expertise and building capacity; motivations, roles and divisions of labour)

Development/release issues (includes legal, technical and hosting issues)

Organisational/institutional issues (includes business cases, rewards, organisational support)

Cultural issues (includes quality, communities of practice beyond the organisation)

Impacts/benefits issues (includes benefits realisation, end-user issues, learning and teaching practice)

Evidencing issues – how do we give coherent and credible messages to the sector?