Consortium debrief

29th April 2010 Manchester

OU representatives:

Sandy Smith: Earth Sciences

Martin Reynolds: Communications and Systems

C-Change

OERs in context of OpenLearn

• OpenLearn project established in 2006 for the development and sharing of OERs using extracts from established OU courses.

• Experienced team of media developers and copyright clearers to transform OU materials into OER and publish on the OpenLearn website:

• OU secured funding for a 3-year programme effective from late 2009 Shared Solutions £7.8m over 3 yrs. One of the three projects is for the OU to provide a ‘support centre for open resources in education’ (SCORE)

C-Change at OU• Cross-Faculty initiative

– Science: Sandy Smith– Maths, Computing and Technology: Martin Reynolds

• 5 OU courses – 2 level two (undergraduate)– 1 level three (undergraduate)– 2 postgraduate

• 24 OER units of study – 10 science– 11 systems– 3 humanities

• 36 credits of study– 24 undergraduate– 12 postgraduate

• OpenLearn repository for Jorum repository

OpenLearn production process

C-Change OER materialsmultimedia: text, video, audio, images, structured content (self-assessed questions etc.)

Total study credits: 36

Science and climate change• S278* Earth’s physical resources: origin, use and environmental impact involves sustainability of

physical resources. This part would be the two Blocks water resources and energy resources (14 credits)

Systems and climate change• T214* Understanding systems appreciating styles of thinking about sustainability (6 credits)• T306* managing complexity: a systems approach further material specifically on sustainable

development (4 credits) • T863** Environmental Decision Making: A systems approach: introducing systems thinking in

relation to proposals for airport expansion case study (6 credits)

Humanities and climate change• TD866** Environmental Responsibility: ethics, policy and action : introducing ethical dimension to

issues of climate change (6 credits)

* undergraduate

** postgraduate

C-Change materials – ScienceJorum link

Total study credits: 14

C-Change materials - Systems

Total study credits: 16

C-Change materials - Humanities

Total study credits: 6

Actual vs Planned delivery

• 5 OU courses – 1 out of 2 level two (undergraduate)– 0 out of 1 level three (undergraduate)– 1 out of 2 postgraduate

• 24 OER units of study – 10 out of 10 science– 2 out of 11 systems– 2 out of 3 humanities

• 36 credits of study– 14 out of 24 undergraduate– 4 out of 12 postgraduate

Problems

• Change from OL to SCORE• Significant sick leave with key player• Attempted launch of SocialLearn initiative• Demand on personnel for launch of 10 year creative

climate project with BBC• Demand on personnel for CoP15 Copenhagen

involvement• Technical: “A lot of our systems are down and

running really slow (something to do with an upgrade and its made the systems go down” (editor)

• Rights clearance: difficult tracing some originators

Licensing on OL • Wholly owned OU stuff is made available under a share-alike CC Licence. • Third party materials are not subject to CC licensing - So whilst can be used in the context it was

originally placed - cannot be taken out of that context • Third party still needs clearance on basis of ‘no derivative’ creative commons… ie. not allowed to share

or alter or adapt. Costs vary but usually not much• OU operates an acceptable level of risk - where if unable to clear – items might be released on await

claim (e.g. reading for TD866 Unit, Eric Higgs). Often best to go directly to author.• Many online journals do not like (and indeed have policies) licensing for whole articles for other

websites - and prefer links to their sites - or may allow abstracts.

• Changing uncertain publishing environment - issue is negotiating and recognising that Publishers are businesses

• more thought needs to be put into how publishers are approached and if the request is too bland and standard - then will not get the results hoped for. Not everyone is on same wavelength.

• OU has different relationships with publishers as we clear all our stuff and always have done - whereas most HEI institutions rely on blanket arrangements with say CLA (copyright licensing agency)

• ‘Take-down’ policy exist with all OL material. Only used once with a third party owner not wanting her stuff up for open access.

Rubric for inviting rights clearance• The Open University has identified some extracts … for use in its OpenLearn initiative.  The project

aims to reach individuals and communities as part of its widening participation objective.  • You kindly provided permission for the OU to use one of your images in its teaching materials …

and I am now asking if you would permit us to retain use of that image in the same way for this new initiative.  It is hoped you would support us by extending your permission and supporting this very fine initiative which aims to reach individuals and communities who for various reasons (poverty for example) would find themselves unable to access such quality materials as produced by The OU. 

• All third party materials used in OpenLearn is not permitted adaptation of any sort.  The exercise is completely non-commercial.  The photograph already licensed to us is an aerial picture (las plazas).  I provide some information below of OpenLearn which I hope meets with your support.

Going Global 4 Conference 24-26 March 2010 London

• As the learning content in universities is rapidly 'commoditised', with lectures cheaply or freely available on the internet, the question posed at the Going Global conference session on higher education in a Web 2.0 world was, "What value do institutions bring when everything is on the web?"

• Britain's Open University, for example, sees 360,000 downloads of its iTunes lectures a week, 88% of them from outside Britain, without having to promote them in any way.

• In future, the value of an institution would not be its course content but how it motivated and supported students, said Martin Bean, Vice-chancellor of Britain's Open University.

"Students crave discussion," said Bean who is also a former education products manager at Microsoft in the US. "What education really is, is discussion, debate, discourse, challenges."

The personal interaction was what was most important in universities, Bean said. But he admitted universities would have to rethink what those personal characteristics were as learning moved from 'content-centricity' to 'people-centricity'.