Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices
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Open educational resources (OERs) have wide-ranging implications for education by influencing relationships between teachers and students, students and institutions, and knowledge and society. OERs are part of profound changes in knowledge practices such as open data, open scholarship, and open source. However, assessing the impact and use of OERs is challenging as openness makes quantitative tracking difficult and qualities of use and outcomes are hard to evaluate, especially because reuse may occur in invisible or personal contexts. Different approaches are needed like tracking specific OERs, investigating user experiences, and deconstructing the qualities of open content and practices.
Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices
- 1. Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices Helen Beetham JISC UK OER Evaluation and Synthesis Team (Allison Littlejohn, Lou McGill, Isobel Falconer)
- 2. Open content and open learning Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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
- 3. Open content and open learning Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices Open content has potentially wide-ranging implications LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 for education, that is for relationships between teachers and students, between students and institutions, and between knowledge and society... not because content Information by default is openly available itself is decisive, but because knowledge relations are embodieddigital networks. 'Open' and label for in in knowledge artefacts is a in how they circulate and arepractices of learning, working, emerging exchanged. researching, sharing and teaching in this context. 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
- 4. Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Open content and open learning
- 5. Open content and open learning Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Expectations about learners, their objectives and contexts of use are inscribed into (educational) content OER as 'triggers' for open practices Content resources may support some learners, learning activities and contexts better than others
- 6. Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges
- 7. Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Openness is the enemy of knowability
- 8. Assessing impact and use of OERs: challenges Hard to track quantitative use: what gets used and Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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
- 9. Approaches to thinking about impact and use Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Content 1. Track 3. Deconstruct focus specific OERs the qualities of in use 'open' content Use/ 2. Investigate 4. Deconstruct practice the experience features of focus of specific 'open' practices/ users experiences Direct approach Indirect approach
- 10. 1. Tracking OERs in use (UK OER) Google analytics, log files and repository/host reports; some Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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
- 11. Evidencing use (UK OER pilots) Vision Extending reputation Users 'in the wild' typically have a low awareness of Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 '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 by digital 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
- 12. An aside: UK OER ii Vision Extending reputation Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 New Impact Release of OER Cascade study 12 Support Thematic projects Collections 5 Case projects studies 6 projects Teaching in HE 11 projects Tracking Programme support, evaluation, synthesis & communications Programme management
- 13. Evidencing use: things we Extending reputation Vision still don't know Who are OERs used by and why? What are the benefit Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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?
- 14. 2. Investigating specific users Oxford TALL project: assessing impact of (UK) OERs Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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 ...
- 15. 3. Deconstructing 'open' content Capetown Declaration Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 Open 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.
- 16. 3. Deconstructing 'open' content offered freely ... for educators, students and self-learners Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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?
- 17. 3. Deconstructing 'open' content Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices For all of these features of content we could ask: LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 - 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?
- 18. Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion 'Open' content should be easily adapted to support learner- Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices xxx LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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)
- 19. 4. Deconstructing 'open' practices Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices Capetown Declaration: LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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, open data sets where possible?
- 20. 4. Deconstructing 'open' practices Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices Capetown Declaration: LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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?
- 21. 4. Deconstructing 'open' practices: benefit models Individual showcasing Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 reputation enhancement, personal/prof rewards, individual values (e.g. openness, public interest, quality), learner benefits, link to open scholarship Institutional showcasing marketing and institutional profile, (international) reputation, potential learners and partners as end-users, open access=new markets e.g. franchising Capacity building staff skills, institutional strategies (e.g. LTA, content), change agendas, focus on preparing for a more open technical and educational environment Share and share alike tightly-knit subject/topic communities, focus on sharing practice, open scholarship, collaborative development, colleagues as end-users, open=communal Public interest generic open ed values and public intellectual life; specific public interest (e.g. climate change, health), public access to knowledge; open=democratic and participatory
- 22. Ideas from the Cloudworks discussion Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices Towards wider sharing L&T content (and associated LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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
- 23. What features of open content matter? Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices free | openly licensed | accessible LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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?
- 24. What difference(s) to practice do we aspire to? Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices collaborative development of content LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 more inquiry-based learning ('open curriculum') borderless institutions segregation of content and teaching (deskilling?) widening opportunity for independent learners developing public intellectuals ('open scholarship') developing public institutions of learning open conversations about learning and teaching - Can we develop open content in ways that amplify or mitigate some of these effects?
- 25. Generic synthesis/evaluation framework Practice change (includes expertise and building capacity; Helen Beetham | OERs and Open Practices LORO Event | Milton Keynes | 23/03/11 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?