![YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic:
their openness.
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of
their work and can specify how open they want their resources
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of
the users.
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as
it becomes known or available.
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation.
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or
Economics, etc.
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and
programmes.
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets).
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses
and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources
and replacing them with OER.
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important
for learning. They want to:
• use affordable (free) learning resources;
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources;
• have updated content;
• translate resources into other languages;
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to
the public.
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which
is an important component of any educational experience.With OER,
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover,
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an
OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps
increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects.
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist
or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the
needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide
range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising,
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts.
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt,
improve and deploy open content.
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and
student completion rates when students can readily access the
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER,
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER.
And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential.
When many different educators are working on developing and
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes.
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content.
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a
particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability.
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds,
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used
in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful.
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing,
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish
to share the course materials.
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC)
licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes
without permission (non-commercial); or,
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course
specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications.
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are
available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can
find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the
only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative
merits of different approaches, techniques and content.
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions.
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students
to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules.
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING.
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course
materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier.
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their
course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example,
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of
instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons
licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple
commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language.
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures
that disable many functions and that are commonly known
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically
control how, when, where and with what specific brands
of technological assistance users can access content and
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different
devices, operating systems and applications.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/coloer1-241103172933-05a5b258/85/COL_OER-1-jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2-320.jpg)
![YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic:
their openness.
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of
their work and can specify how open they want their resources
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of
the users.
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as
it becomes known or available.
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation.
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or
Economics, etc.
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and
programmes.
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets).
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses
and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources
and replacing them with OER.
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important
for learning. They want to:
• use affordable (free) learning resources;
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources;
• have updated content;
• translate resources into other languages;
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to
the public.
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which
is an important component of any educational experience.With OER,
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover,
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an
OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps
increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects.
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist
or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the
needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide
range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising,
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts.
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt,
improve and deploy open content.
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and
student completion rates when students can readily access the
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER,
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER.
And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential.
When many different educators are working on developing and
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes.
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content.
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a
particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability.
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds,
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used
in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful.
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing,
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish
to share the course materials.
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC)
licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes
without permission (non-commercial); or,
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course
specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications.
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are
available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can
find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the
only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative
merits of different approaches, techniques and content.
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions.
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students
to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules.
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING.
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course
materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier.
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their
course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example,
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of
instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons
licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple
commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language.
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures
that disable many functions and that are commonly known
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically
control how, when, where and with what specific brands
of technological assistance users can access content and
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different
devices, operating systems and applications.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/coloer1-241103172933-05a5b258/85/COL_OER-1-jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-3-320.jpg)
![YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic:
their openness.
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of
their work and can specify how open they want their resources
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of
the users.
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as
it becomes known or available.
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation.
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or
Economics, etc.
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and
programmes.
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets).
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses
and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources
and replacing them with OER.
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important
for learning. They want to:
• use affordable (free) learning resources;
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources;
• have updated content;
• translate resources into other languages;
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to
the public.
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which
is an important component of any educational experience.With OER,
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover,
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an
OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps
increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects.
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist
or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the
needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide
range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising,
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts.
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt,
improve and deploy open content.
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and
student completion rates when students can readily access the
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER,
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER.
And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential.
When many different educators are working on developing and
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes.
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content.
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a
particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability.
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds,
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used
in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful.
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing,
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish
to share the course materials.
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC)
licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes
without permission (non-commercial); or,
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course
specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications.
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are
available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can
find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the
only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative
merits of different approaches, techniques and content.
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions.
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students
to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules.
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING.
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course
materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier.
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their
course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example,
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of
instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons
licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple
commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language.
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures
that disable many functions and that are commonly known
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically
control how, when, where and with what specific brands
of technological assistance users can access content and
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different
devices, operating systems and applications.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/coloer1-241103172933-05a5b258/85/COL_OER-1-jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-4-320.jpg)
COL_OER(1)jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
- 1. CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES series knowledge S K N O W L E D G E S E R I E S FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED) SIMPLE GUIDES Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/ resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364 Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357 OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk. jiscebooks.org/ccguide/ Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to- finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/ Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323 RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/ detail.aspx?PID=436 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/ Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons). The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year. Editor: Lesley Cameron Designer: Denise Tremblay All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time. Commonwealth of Learning, 2013 Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: [email protected] | WEB: www.col.org PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER also available at www.col.org/knowledge MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES Academic Earth houses US college courses. http://academicearth.org Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content in many languages. http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER. http://cnx.org/ Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content. www.curriki.org The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain but not all. http://free.ed.gov JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free repositories. www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images- online/#creative-commons Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER. http://www.jorum.ac.uk MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources,but some are subject to copyright restrictions. www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India contains a wide variety of OER types. http://nroer.in/home OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research and reports about OER. https://oerknowledgecloud.org Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science and technology. Sign-up is required. http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages. www.wikiversity.org A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational resources. http://creativecommons.org/education Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies USEFUL TOOLS CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website. http://creativecommons.org/choose Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr. http://compfight.com OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/ pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work. http://openattribute.com MOOCS AND OER Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead participate according to their personal needs and preferences.MOOCs have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of knowledge among participants.However,both types may or may not use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible on the Internet. HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST OF RESOURCES OER are available in repositories on the Internet. SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED SEARCH ENGINES The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories. http://doer.col.org Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links to open content of all sorts. http://search.creativecommons.org http://open4us.org/find-oer Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and Open Courseware sites. https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399 0:e40rcqv1bbo OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. www.oercommons.org OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house various OER. http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER SEARCH ENGINES Computer Science OER Portal http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.” www.opentapestry.com/courses TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools. www.temoa.info Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. Note that not everything is openly licensed. www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert Creating, Using and Sharing Open Educational Resources A T O P I C A L , S T A R T - U P G U I D E T O D I S T A N C E E D U C A T I O N P R A C T I C E A N D D E L I V E R Y
- 2. YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET INTRODUCTION Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup- port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi- nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: their openness. OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of their work and can specify how open they want their resources to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners and teachers: • They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of the users. • They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as it becomes known or available. • They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ- isation. • They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis- tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or Economics, etc. In addition: • OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and programmes. • Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). • Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from a variety of sources. These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon- ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources and replacing them with OER. WHY OER? OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important for learning. They want to: • use affordable (free) learning resources; • have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; • have updated content; • translate resources into other languages; • broaden access to learning; and • ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to the public. There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which is an important component of any educational experience.With OER, the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name internationally. As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. This freedom is also important for the training of course developers within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, improve and deploy open content. OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces- sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and student completion rates when students can readily access the course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. When many different educators are working on developing and improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and can support constant improvement and updating of the resources not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments and essays. QUALITY OF OER Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe- less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda- gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub- ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important indicator of quality. Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur- able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER and receive thousands in return. COPYRIGHT ISSUES In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex- ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish to share the course materials. Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos for their classroom. CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use by others. With CC creators can: • ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it (attribution); • they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want to modify the resource) (no derivatives); • ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed (share-alike); • ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes without permission (non-commercial); or, • employ any combination of these options. In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do- main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others. OER DEVELOPMENT OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to- face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom- mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL. Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy- right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link. 2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE AROUND IT. This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com- puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http:// developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)? 3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH. Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules can be used to promote effective learning experiences. 4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY BORROWED FROM THERE.” Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative merits of different approaches, techniques and content. It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt- able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS. OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self- contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of visual impairment. 6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES. Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units. 7. BUILD TO STANDARDS. When the technical resources are available, course materials should be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources should conform to the international metadata standards for learning objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/). Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it! David Wiley PROBLEMS WITH COMMERCIAL CONTENT DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES) Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures that disable many functions and that are commonly known as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically control how, when, where and with what specific brands of technological assistance users can access content and applications. These restrictions include: • restricting accessibility to one format and one device; • disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and printing options; • disabling audio and video applications used by those with audio or visual impairments; • prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug- menting of the resource; • geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot be used outside of a certain region; and • removing content when monthly payments stop or licences expire or at the company’s discretion. RESTRICTIVE LICENSING When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial content, you have agreed that: • you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM restrictions; • you cannot share the content with anyone else; • you do not buy the product but merely purchase the privilege of using it; • you waive any rights including ownership, resale and fair dealing or fair use rights; • the owner can control how, when and where you access the resource; • the owner has the right to access your device and disable applications; • the owner can access and use your personal data without further permission; • you accept that the company has no liability to ensure that the product works; and • you accept that the licence can be changed by the company at any time. With OER, you have none of these technical and legal restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education. OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different devices, operating systems and applications.
- 3. YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET INTRODUCTION Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup- port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi- nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: their openness. OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of their work and can specify how open they want their resources to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners and teachers: • They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of the users. • They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as it becomes known or available. • They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ- isation. • They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis- tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or Economics, etc. In addition: • OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and programmes. • Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). • Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from a variety of sources. These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon- ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources and replacing them with OER. WHY OER? OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important for learning. They want to: • use affordable (free) learning resources; • have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; • have updated content; • translate resources into other languages; • broaden access to learning; and • ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to the public. There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which is an important component of any educational experience.With OER, the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name internationally. As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. This freedom is also important for the training of course developers within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, improve and deploy open content. OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces- sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and student completion rates when students can readily access the course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. When many different educators are working on developing and improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and can support constant improvement and updating of the resources not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments and essays. QUALITY OF OER Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe- less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda- gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub- ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important indicator of quality. Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur- able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER and receive thousands in return. COPYRIGHT ISSUES In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex- ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish to share the course materials. Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos for their classroom. CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use by others. With CC creators can: • ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it (attribution); • they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want to modify the resource) (no derivatives); • ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed (share-alike); • ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes without permission (non-commercial); or, • employ any combination of these options. In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do- main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others. OER DEVELOPMENT OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to- face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom- mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL. Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy- right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link. 2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE AROUND IT. This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com- puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http:// developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)? 3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH. Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules can be used to promote effective learning experiences. 4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY BORROWED FROM THERE.” Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative merits of different approaches, techniques and content. It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt- able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS. OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self- contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of visual impairment. 6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES. Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units. 7. BUILD TO STANDARDS. When the technical resources are available, course materials should be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources should conform to the international metadata standards for learning objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/). Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it! David Wiley PROBLEMS WITH COMMERCIAL CONTENT DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES) Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures that disable many functions and that are commonly known as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically control how, when, where and with what specific brands of technological assistance users can access content and applications. These restrictions include: • restricting accessibility to one format and one device; • disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and printing options; • disabling audio and video applications used by those with audio or visual impairments; • prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug- menting of the resource; • geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot be used outside of a certain region; and • removing content when monthly payments stop or licences expire or at the company’s discretion. RESTRICTIVE LICENSING When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial content, you have agreed that: • you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM restrictions; • you cannot share the content with anyone else; • you do not buy the product but merely purchase the privilege of using it; • you waive any rights including ownership, resale and fair dealing or fair use rights; • the owner can control how, when and where you access the resource; • the owner has the right to access your device and disable applications; • the owner can access and use your personal data without further permission; • you accept that the company has no liability to ensure that the product works; and • you accept that the licence can be changed by the company at any time. With OER, you have none of these technical and legal restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education. OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different devices, operating systems and applications.
- 4. YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET INTRODUCTION Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup- port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi- nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: their openness. OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of their work and can specify how open they want their resources to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners and teachers: • They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of the users. • They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as it becomes known or available. • They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ- isation. • They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis- tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or Economics, etc. In addition: • OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and programmes. • Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). • Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from a variety of sources. These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses and programmes.As a start,course designers can begin by“debon- ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources and replacing them with OER. WHY OER? OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important for learning. They want to: • use affordable (free) learning resources; • have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; • have updated content; • translate resources into other languages; • broaden access to learning; and • ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to the public. There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing,which is an important component of any educational experience.With OER, the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an OER is reused,revised,remixed or redistributed.Plagiarism becomes less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name internationally. As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps increasing.There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist or other approaches.And because OER can be changed to meet the needs or requirements of the user,they can be used to support a wide range of learning environments.An important benefit of this ability to change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. This freedom is also important for the training of course developers within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, improve and deploy open content. OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces- sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and student completion rates when students can readily access the course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. And,most importantly,the active sharing of content among scattered institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. When many different educators are working on developing and improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and can support constant improvement and updating of the resources not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments and essays. QUALITY OF OER Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated,but nonethe- less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda- gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a particular course,its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub- ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators.User ratings are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards.Also,thebrand or reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important indicator of quality. Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used in evaluating restrictively licensed content.The ability to update content in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur- able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER and receive thousands in return. COPYRIGHT ISSUES In the Commonwealth (and the USA),copyright law evolved from the Statute of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or“fair use”has been enshrined in copyright law from the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex- ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish to share the course materials. Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos for their classroom. CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) licence (http://creativecommons.org).This licence gives instructors or their institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use by others. With CC creators can: • ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it (attribution); • they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want to modify the resource) (no derivatives); • ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed (share-alike); • ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes without permission (non-commercial); or, • employ any combination of these options. In addition,many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do- main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others. OER DEVELOPMENT OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course specialists become more familiar with the environment.Most approaches to OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to- face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom- mendations,which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL. Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy- right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link. 2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE AROUND IT. This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com- puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http:// developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng).Computer Programming instructors could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are available online.How about a history-teaching module based on the openly licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)? 3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH. Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules can be used to promote effective learning experiences. 4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY BORROWED FROM THERE.” Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can find fault with any course material.“Turf protection” is alive and kicking in many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the only people who care about“perfection”are the curriculum specialists themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative merits of different approaches, techniques and content. It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students to use different devices.Course materials must be reusable and adapt- able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS. OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course materials’ content, features and functionality.They are normally self- contained and portable to different environments.The costs of overall development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and available for use in multiple subject areas and formats.This approach also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their course structures.This is unfortunate,because many materials could be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of visual impairment. 6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES. Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units. 7. BUILD TO STANDARDS. When the technical resources are available, course materials should be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources should conform to the international metadata standards for learning objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of instructions,use of icons,etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons licence to your resources.This can be done easily using the Creative Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/). Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple commands and easily understandable icons.Simple,clean interfaces with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it! David Wiley PROBLEMS WITH COMMERCIAL CONTENT DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES) Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures that disable many functions and that are commonly known as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically control how, when, where and with what specific brands of technological assistance users can access content and applications. These restrictions include: • restricting accessibility to one format and one device; • disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and printing options; • disabling audio and video applications used by those with audio or visual impairments; • prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug- menting of the resource; • geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot be used outside of a certain region; and • removing content when monthly payments stop or licences expire or at the company’s discretion. RESTRICTIVE LICENSING When you click on many,if not most,licences for commercial content, you have agreed that: • you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM restrictions; • you cannot share the content with anyone else; • you do not buy the product but merely purchase the privilege of using it; • you waive any rights including ownership, resale and fair dealing or fair use rights; • the owner can control how, when and where you access the resource; • the owner has the right to access your device and disable applications; • the owner can access and use your personal data without further permission; • you accept that the company has no liability to ensure that the product works; and • you accept that the licence can be changed by the company at any time. With OER, you have none of these technical and legal restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education. OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different devices, operating systems and applications.
- 5. CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES series knowledge S K N O W L E D G E S E R I E S FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED) SIMPLE GUIDES Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/ resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364 Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357 OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk. jiscebooks.org/ccguide/ Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to- finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/ Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323 RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/ detail.aspx?PID=436 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/ Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons). The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year. Editor: Lesley Cameron Designer: Denise Tremblay All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time. Commonwealth of Learning, 2013 Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: [email protected] | WEB: www.col.org PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER also available at www.col.org/knowledge MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES Academic Earth houses US college courses. http://academicearth.org Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content in many languages. http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER. http://cnx.org/ Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content. www.curriki.org The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain but not all. http://free.ed.gov JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free repositories. www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images- online/#creative-commons Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER. http://www.jorum.ac.uk MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources,but some are subject to copyright restrictions. www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India contains a wide variety of OER types. http://nroer.in/home OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research and reports about OER. https://oerknowledgecloud.org Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science and technology. Sign-up is required. http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages. www.wikiversity.org A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational resources. http://creativecommons.org/education Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies USEFUL TOOLS CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website. http://creativecommons.org/choose Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr. http://compfight.com OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/ pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work. http://openattribute.com MOOCS AND OER Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead participate according to their personal needs and preferences.MOOCs have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of knowledge among participants.However,both types may or may not use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible on the Internet. HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST OF RESOURCES OER are available in repositories on the Internet. SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED SEARCH ENGINES The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories. http://doer.col.org Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links to open content of all sorts. http://search.creativecommons.org http://open4us.org/find-oer Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and Open Courseware sites. https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399 0:e40rcqv1bbo OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. www.oercommons.org OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house various OER. http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER SEARCH ENGINES Computer Science OER Portal http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.” www.opentapestry.com/courses TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools. www.temoa.info Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. Note that not everything is openly licensed. www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert Creating, Using and Sharing Open Educational Resources A T O P I C A L , S T A R T - U P G U I D E T O D I S T A N C E E D U C A T I O N P R A C T I C E A N D D E L I V E R Y
- 6. CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES series knowledge S K N O W L E D G E S E R I E S FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED) SIMPLE GUIDES Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/ resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364 Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357 OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk. jiscebooks.org/ccguide/ Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to- finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/ Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323 RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/ publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/ detail.aspx?PID=436 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/ Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/ Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons). The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year. Editor: Lesley Cameron Designer: Denise Tremblay All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time. Commonwealth of Learning, 2013 Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: [email protected] | WEB: www.col.org PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER also available at www.col.org/knowledge MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES Academic Earth houses US college courses. http://academicearth.org Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content in many languages. http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER. http://cnx.org/ Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content. www.curriki.org The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain but not all. http://free.ed.gov JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free repositories. www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images- online/#creative-commons Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER. http://www.jorum.ac.uk MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources,but some are subject to copyright restrictions. www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India contains a wide variety of OER types. http://nroer.in/home OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research and reports about OER. https://oerknowledgecloud.org Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science and technology. Sign-up is required. http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages. www.wikiversity.org A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational resources. http://creativecommons.org/education Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies USEFUL TOOLS CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website. http://creativecommons.org/choose Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr. http://compfight.com OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/ pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work. http://openattribute.com MOOCS AND OER Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead participate according to their personal needs and preferences.MOOCs have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of knowledge among participants.However,both types may or may not use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible on the Internet. HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST OF RESOURCES OER are available in repositories on the Internet. SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED SEARCH ENGINES The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories. http://doer.col.org Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links to open content of all sorts. http://search.creativecommons.org http://open4us.org/find-oer Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and Open Courseware sites. https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399 0:e40rcqv1bbo OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. www.oercommons.org OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house various OER. http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER SEARCH ENGINES Computer Science OER Portal http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.” www.opentapestry.com/courses TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools. www.temoa.info Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. Note that not everything is openly licensed. www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert Creating, Using and Sharing Open Educational Resources A T O P I C A L , S T A R T - U P G U I D E T O D I S T A N C E E D U C A T I O N P R A C T I C E A N D D E L I V E R Y