Open Educational Resources for Development

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Running head: OER FOR DEVELOPMENT: AN EVALUATIVE FRAMEWORK 1

Open Educational Resources for Development: An Evaluative Framework

by John William Medendorp

for Dr. John Kerr

in partial fulfillment of the course requirements for

ACR 826

December 15, 2010


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OER FOR DEVELOPMENT: AN EVALUATIVE FRAMEWORK 2

Introduction

Since Peter Drucker heralded the rise of the knowledge society (Drucker, 2001), there has been

growing consensus that knowledge is the resource of choice in todays globalizing economy.

Conventional wisdom says that without knowledge, societies cannot develop (Brodnig & Mayer-

Schoenberger, 2005; Murphy, 2007; OECD Forum for the Future & Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development, 2000; OECD Forum for the Future. & Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development., 2001; Sacchetti & Sugden, 2009). The dissemination and acquisition of

knowledge has become, therefore, a focus of development thinkers and agencies. While investments in

traditional vehicles of knowledge dissemination, such as publications, mass media, brick and mortar

educational systems, and community organizations continue apace, attention among development experts

is turning increasingly to the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) as purveyor

of the educational needs of the 21st century (R. B. Davison, 1983; R. M. Davison, Harris, Qureshi, Vogel,

& Vreede, 2005). Differing views on ICT for education often creates a paradoxical set of opinions. ICT

networks depend on significant capital investment, yet costs for running new educational programs can be

lower than programs with conventional methods of schooling. Despite limits to the reach of ICT

networks in rural and poor areas, the open access nature of many distance learning opportunities and the

seemingly limitless supply of content on the internet make open education an attractive option for those

seeking to solve the intractable problems of knowledge dissemination, and therefore of development

(Perraton, 2007; Wilson, 2010).

Within the broader field of ICT and open education, open educational resources (OER) hold

promise as the new, preferred vehicles of knowledge dissemination and acquisition (DAntoni & Savage,

2009; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007; Smith & Casserly, 2006). OER,

in addressing shortages and shortcomings in the authorship and publishing of content, differ from

preceding elements of the open education movement which emphasized access only. The promise of

OER lies in the loosening of legalistic permissions embedded in publication allowing for what has come

to be known as the four rs of OER reuse, revise, remix, redistribute (Hilton, Wiley, Stein, & Johnson,


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2010; Wiley, 2010). OER are intended to alter the way scholarly work and educational content is created

and disseminated.

The Problem: Overproduction and Underuse of OER

In the early and lingering euphoria of the movement, OER are touted as the solution for the

educational needs of a knowledge hungry society and, in particular, for economic development

(Johnstone, 2005). At the onset of OER, publishing houses and universities had reached the point of

crisis, with complex and perhaps insurmountable economic forces requiring reform (Houghton, 2001). As

Lessig (2010) notes around the world, even the nominal cost of getting access to these journals is

prohibitive, blocking the spread of knowledge globally to people who could depend and build upon that

knowledge if they had free and fair access (p. 29). OER was seen as a solution to this crisis, a harbinger

of the flat world of equal opportunity (Friedman, 2007), a panacea that would right the economic wrongs

of a spikey world (Florida, 2005), the revolution that would turn center to periphery and periphery to

center (Galtung, 1971; Galtung & United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 1979;

Wallerstein, 1991; Wallerstein, Martin, & Agartan, 2008).

To date, OER has not lived up to these aspirations and caveats have been expressed. In 2006, the

OECD report on OER noted the troublesome imbalance now existing between the provision of OER and

its utilization (2007, p. 106). This imbalance was attributed, in the OECD report, to other barriers for

lower-income countries such as poor connectivity, inadequate infrastructure, funding constraints, local

resource shortages, technical inadequacies, and lack of training and support (p. 106). Receiving less

attention in the OECD report but of more significance is the lack of cultural adaptation of OER to local

needs and knowledge frames. As the UNESCO report on OER cautioned, Open Educational Resources

are cultural objects as much as educational ones, in that they give users an insight into culture-specific

methods and approaches to teaching and learning (DAntoni & Savage, 2009, p. 75). That same report

goes on to add, There is a risk that language barriers and cultural differences could consign less

developed countries to the role of OER consumers of rather than contributors to the expansion of

knowledge (DAntoni & Savage, 2009, p. 75). The problem lies in the fact that the vast majority of OER


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are produced in developed countries but are distributed across cultural and often linguistic divides in

developing countries (Joyce, 2006).

And so, a two-tiered reaction to the problem of underuse has developed, with producers and

providers focusing on access to OER and recipients and consumers of OER pointing to the lack of

cultural relevance of much of the material that is produced. An example of the latter is the critique of

Nsamenang, who argues that projects like OER will hype Africas cultural alienation by proselytizing

mainly foreign values (Nsamenanga, 2005, p. 278). His further comments are worth quoting at length

because they articulate an important reason for the disuse of readily available and cost effective OER:

By undermining African patterns of knowledge construction and human differentiation, [OER]

education instead gives primacy to the technical acquisition of information. . . . By not meshing

effectively with stark African realities, present systems of [OER] education somehow

decontextualized their African learners. (p. 279).

While one may argue that the case here is overstated (there are only so many ways to milk a cow,

for example, no matter what culture you are in), nevertheless, the lack of consumption of OER is

testament that in some aspect, OER is failing to engage the learner in developing countries.

The Research Question: How Can OER Be Evaluated for Impact on Development?

In order to address these barriers, which have the potential to undermine the applicability of OER

for development, in what follows, I construct attempt to construct a framework for evaluating the impact

of OER resources on development. My research questions are, 1) how can the impact of OER resource on

development be measured, and 2) how can one, then, evaluate OER for impact on development. In order

to answer these questions I will first clarify what I mean by development. I will then develop a model

for cross-cultural knowledge flow in order to better understand how OER might affect development. I will

then propose a model for evaluating OER for development.

How Do OER Impact Development?

There is no easy way to define development. In the wake of World War II, development was

understood chiefly in economic terms (Agarwala & Singh, 1958; Rist, 2002). By the 60s and 70s, there


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was consensus that a broader approach was needed. In 1974, Gunnar Myrdal, defined development

broadly as a movement upward of an entire social system (Myrdal, 1974). He included in this definition

not only economic criteria GNP, levels of consumption but also social criteria, such as education,

health, the internal distribution of power, institutions, and values. It is this broader sense of development,

encompassing both economic and social factors, which became the foundation for the United Nations

Human Development Index in 1990 (ul Haq & United Nations Human Development Program, 1990),

which included indices for health and education in addition to economic indices. When referring to

development, I apply this broader sense of the notion. Development includes not only progress in

economic indicators, but also advances in institutional culture, governance, health, education, and

ultimately freedom, or self-determination, to borrow a notion from Amartya Sen (Sen, 2000).

Since, however, a direct impact of OER on development so broadly conceived is difficult to

define, it is more fruitful to focus on how well OER cultivates patterns of thought that are conducive to

development. Recent discussions on cognitive patterns for development have focused on

entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, and adaptability as essential qualities for a culture of

development (Heck, Hoy, Poutziouris, & Steier, 2008; Kuratko, 2005; Naud, 2008; Shane, 2007;

Wennekers, Van Wennekers, Thurik, & Reynolds, 2005). Evaluative frameworks that focus on how well

OER is able to cultivate these qualities in its users would contribute greatly to our understanding of how

OER contribute to development. It is to that task that I now turn.

OER and Cross-cultural Knowledge Flows

In their report to the William and Flora Hewlett foundation, Atkins, Brown, and Hammond

briefly touch on a revolution in our understanding of pedagogy. While more traditional pedagogy focuses

on learning about, recent pedagogical theory has focused on the internalization of knowledge in a way

that makes it both personally meaningful and applicable to new situations (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond,

2007, p. 44). After reviewing the ways in which these new pedagogical insights have been sharpened by

experience in OER, the authors conclude:


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All these examples point to expanding learning theories that include situated learning and

learning-to-be (within an epistemic frame) rather than just learning about. The stage is being set

to reformulate many of Deweys theories of learning informed by and leveraging newer cognitive

and social theories of learning and delivered in computationally rich experiential learning

environments. (Atkins, et al., 2007, p. 45)

Knowledge management theorists have long understood this need for situated learning and their

insights are valuable for understanding the creation and application of OER as well. Fundamental to the

field of knowledge management is the knowledge creation spiral developed by Ikujiro Nonaka. According

to Nonaka, knowledge creation comes as a result of an ongoing, self-generating circular process that is

spiral-like in its ability to generate new knowledge from existing knowledge. Arguing that information is

not knowledge until it is situated in context, Nonakas bases his spiral on a movement from tacit to

explicit knowledge (Nonaka, 1994, p. 20; see Figure 1). Tacit knowledge is defined as the inarticulate and

therefore often unexpressed knowledge that comes from experience in context. This form of knowledge is

acquired through the process of socialization in context. Because it is tacit, rather than explicit, it is often

overlooked in the knowledge creation process. Nonaka points out that knowledge creation requires an

interplay between tacit and explicit knowledge. Unless this interplay takes place, transferred knowledge

never becomes contextualized and valuable contextualized knowledge never becomes explicit.

Sadly, decontextualized OER run precisely this risk. Because OER are based on the

communication of explicit knowledge, generated outside the context of the knowledge consumption, they

often fail to engender the knowledge creation process that is essential for development. Again, quoting

Nsamenanga, the lack of contextualization of learning in the African context has converted African

knowledge consumers, into ignorant experts of their own circumstances. Thus, the disjuncture between

educational provisions, existential realities and lived experiences exacerbate Africas sorry state and

highlight its lack of awareness of its own circumstances and the conditions that sustain the status quo.

Herein is the hub of Africas incapacity and failure (2005, p. 280). These same distortions occur in all


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developing contexts where OER fails to engage the knowledge creation process. If OER are to be an

effective tool for development, it is essential that they bring explicit knowledge into interaction with tacit

localized knowledge in order for the knowledge creation process to occur. Whatever metrics might be

developed for the effectiveness of OER, inclusion of measures of the socialization of knowledge and the

subsequent creation of knowledge must be an essential part.

Although Nonakas model of knowledge creation was built with the organizational context in

mind, its application to cross-cultural knowledge creation is evident, as many authors have shown

(Pauleen, 2007). In this vein, author Chern Li Liew added the dimension of hermeneutics, the theory of

interpretation, to Nonakas research (Liew, 2007). Within the field of hermeneutics, translations theory is

particularly helpful for modeling the cross-cultural flow of knowledge, an area which holds much

potential richness for the creation and adaptation of OER (Holden & Von Kortzfleisch, 2004; Zhiyi &

Figure 1: Nonaka's Spiral of Knowledge Creation


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Peter, 2007). Translation theory models the movement of meaning from one linguo-cultural context to

another. As Holden and Von Kortzfleisch point out in their article, translations movement of meaning

across cross-cultural barriers has much in common with cross-cultural knowledge management. They

point out three areas in particular in which knowledge transfer is akin to translation:

y Knowledge transfer, like translation, is a sense making activity.y Knowledge transfer, like translation, is literally concerned with personal cognition and the

interlingual transfer of knowledge from head to head and into social networks.

y Knowledge transfer, like translation, is subject to constraints which affect not just transfer, butrather transferability: the extent to which knowledge can be transmitted to others. (Holden & Von

Kortzfleisch, 2004, p. 133, see Figure 2)

According to their model, the Nonakas knowledge creation spiral must become imbedded in the cross-

cultural knowledge transfer process. This involves both the deconstruction of contextualized knowledge

and its reconstruction in new contexts in order to catalyze the knowledge creation spiral (see Figure 3).

Without this type of contextualization, OER runs the risk of being lost in translation. In order for OER

to be effective, it must take into account both the deconstruction process and the reconstruction process. It

is not enough to simply transfer OER to new contexts. It is not even sufficient to translate OER into the

Figure 2: Holdon and Von Kortzfleisch KnowledgeTransfer Model


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language of destination. More than linguistic contexts must be taken into account in order for knowledge

to find a situated home in the destination culture. This entails a four part process, according to our model:

content creation, content adaptation, content translation, and content application.

Content Creation

The creation of content for OER is always a culturally situated act. Even the best of instruction is

imbued with the culture of origin. This is more so with the social sciences and less so with the physical

sciences. Nevertheless, even with the relatively value free hard sciences, the application of content is

culturally bound (Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999). This means that in order for OER to be successful, it must

recognize from the outset that knowledge creation is a cultural act (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005). This is

not to diminish the power of good content to cross cultural barriers, but rather to make us sensitive to the

Culture

of Origin

Knowledge

Transmitter

Embedded

Knower

Knowledge

Translator

Embedded

Knower

Recipient

Culture

Cross-Cultural

Knowledge

Transfer

Cultural

Divide

Content

Production

ContentAdaptation

ContentTranslation

Content

Application

Figure 3: A Model of OER Cross-cultural KnowledgeTransfer


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situated nature of knowledge. Not all OER are susceptible to cross-cultural adaptation. There must be

some selectivity built into the OER process. Since OER can be more or less situated, it is therefore

important to assess levels of the cultural embeddedness of content and rate its content on that basis. If

an appropriate evaluative framework for OER is to be constructed, it must include at a minimum this step.

Content Adaptation

As content is created, or after it has been created, there is need to make it adaptable to the

destination cultures. As was noted above in Figure 3, this requires a process of dismantling cognitive

schema, the culturally bound cognitive structures by which we organize our knowledge, to the extent

that culturally constructed knowledge can be broken down into constituent parts and reconstructed in

new contexts. While the adaptation of content cannot envision every context into which it might be

introduced, it is possible to construct content in such a way that it lends itself to cross-cultural adaptation.

Especially helpful in understanding how content can be adapted so as to lend itself to cross-cultural

transfer is the concept of cognitive flexibility and the use of hyper text (Rand J. Spiro, Bruce, & Brewer,

1980; Rand J. Spiro & Educational Resources Information Center (U.S.), 1988; Rand J. Spiro, Feltovich,

& Coulson, 1996; R. J. Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1992; Rand J. Spiro, University of Illinois

at Urbana-Champaign. Center for the Study of Reading., & Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Cambridge

MA., 1988). According to Spiro et al., hypertext, when effectively used, has the ability to cultivate

cognitive flexibility in its users (Rand J. Spiro, et al., 1996). Cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt

knowledge to ill-structured domains, is essential for knowledge creation in developing contexts. They

have, in fact, created an index to measure levels of cognitive flexibility in users of hypertext. At a

minimum OER should be evaluated for adaptation to diverse learning environments. Ideally, they should

be evaluated for the effective use hypertext.

Content Translation

In cross-cultural contexts, it is important that OER content be translated. This is not just

linguistic translation. It is also cultural translation. Translation is a skillful art as well as a refined science

(Zhiyi & Peter, 2007). The knowledge translator is someone who not only has a good grasp of linguistic


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nuances, but also one who is immersed in the culture of destination (Brodnig & Mayer-Schoenberger,

2005). The translator of knowledge becomes a knowledge co-creator. Co-creation of knowledge is vital

for absorption of knowledge and knowledge creation in context (Schaffert, 2010). Evaluation of content

translation should include at a minimum a measure of cultural appropriateness of translated material, and

ideally should include measures of co-creation.

Content Application

As part of the knowledge translation process and as its culmination, content application takes the

explicit knowledge that has been deconstructed by knowledge adapters, and reconstructed by knowledge

translators, and introduces it into a new context as part of the new knowledge creation process. This is

best done in community, as a social act, as Nonakas spiral indicates. It makes use of applied learning

techniques such as what has come to be known as mode 2 learning (Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2003,

2006). Finding appropriate contextual application of the transferred knowledge is vital to its value for

development. Evaluation should focus, at a minimum, on peer learning systems and, ideally, should

define measures for mode 2 learning.

Discussion and Policy Implications

When considering the inclusion of OER in a development effort, it is important to remember a few

important truisms. First, information is not equivalent to knowledge (Edwards, 1994), so flooding the

internet with free and open information is only a first step. People must make this information relevant

and contextualized to apply to some activity or need. Policy that establishes OER content creation

activities should look beyond the OER product and concern itself also with the people and processes

creating and adapting the material. It is in the process that people contextualize knowledge, human

capacity develops, and the global knowledge flow gains diversity (Butcher, 2009, July). Cukor &

McKnight (August 2001) remind us that effective knowledge networks in development need to access

not only knowledge available to the developed world but also knowledge appropriate and important for

developing countries such as helping local farmers to improve their practices or aid citizens to participate

in the work of their government successfully (p. 29). Policy that seeks to foster knowledge networks


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that benefit the developing world must take care to engage participative development strategies and seek

key boundary spanners that can help contextualize the knowledge being constructed in the network for

others in the country who can easily and directly transfer information from the developed world.

Second, the application of OER to development problems should not focus on simply providing

easier access to directly applicable basic information, but should be structured in a way that contributes to

double loop learning, that is, learning encourages reflection, critical awareness of underlying issues,

and application in context (Argyris, 1992). Spiro, Feltovich, and Coulson (Rand J. Spiro, et al., 1996)

define an ill-structured domain to be one in which individual cases of knowledge application are

typically multidimensional and there is considerable variability in structure and content across cases of

the same nominal type(p. 51). It is worth noting that, due to a confluence of systemic problems, many

development related issues are by definition ill-structured domains. By encouraging OER that cultivate

cognitive flexibility, sponsors of OER make them applicable to contexts beyond the arena or production.

Finally, OER evaluation regimes should be constructed from the perspective of, and with the

input of, the intended beneficiaries. There is a temptation to construct evaluation regimes from the

perspective of sponsors and providers (Roche, 1998). The concerns of sponsors and providers, however,

tend to focus on creation, delivery and accessibility. Previous studies of knowledge management in

development contexts, for example, have been preoccupied with the impact within Northern NGOs and

on development staff rather than on the intended beneficiaries (Hovland, 2003). The drive for success

stories within the grant-funded project community in order to continue or extend funding for OER

projects can exacerbate the tendency to focus internally, where impact data is manageable and the barrier

of cross-cultural adaptation is low. Such an internal focus can, in fact, hinder proper learning and

evaluation (Roche, 1998). Furthermore, there is a potential paradox between institutions desire for

public-relations benefit of being seen as giving away their property through OER and placing equal value

and respect on the contributions to the body of OER by parties in the developing world. Funding

agencies and governmental sponsors in the sponsoring and beneficiary countries should take care to


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discourage introspective tendencies of universities actively applying OER as part of their development

work of this as scholars and practitioners begin to study the impact of OER for development.

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