OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

(OERs)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

By: Dr Samuel Nikoi – OER Evaluator

Q1. What do we mean by Open Educational Resources? (OERs)

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

‘OERs are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute.’ (Wikipedia)

Q2. Why do we need OERs in HE?

Because there are specific gains in sharing OERs and penalties for not sharing.

Pull arguments (Gains for sharing)

• Free sharing reinforces societal development and diminishes social inequalities

Push arguments (threats for not sharing)

• Traditional academic values of openness to knowledge will be marginalised by market forces such as Microsoft or Apple

Q3. What are the benefits of OER for the University of Leicester?• Institutional visibility (http://www.webometrics.info/)• A showcase for attracting new students (MIT and

Openlearn)• Better use of available resources which can lead to cost

cutting of content development• Helps to reach out to new groups of people without access

or prior knowledge of higher education• Can improve the quality of learning materials and stimulate

internal improvement and innovation• Reputation as a socially responsible University

Q4. Which institutions are currently involved in OERs?

UK USA EUROPE ASIA Others

•OU “Open Learn”

• Uni. of Nottingham BERLiN

•Uni. of OxfordOpenSpires

•MIT Open Courseware project

•Rice Univ. Connexions project

•Utah State Uni.USU OCW

ParisTech OCW

project with 11 member Uni.

MORIL project A Pan-European OERs initiative including Russia and Turkey

•China Open Res. for Educ. consortium. 222 Uni. Members

•Japanese OCW Consortium from its 19 member universities

•OER Africa

•UNESCO virtual Uni.

•AEShareNEt in Australia

Over 3,000 courses currently available from over 300 universities. Examples are:

Q5. What’s in it for me?

• Sharing stimulates further innovation leading to recognition by peers

• Publicity and visibility within the academic community

• Potential for collaboration with academics in other institutions around the world

• Potential for commercialising a version of the OER

Q6. Are you saying I should release my materials – i.e. those my studentspay £10K a year for?Yes. Your students do not pay £10K for your materials. They pay for a university experience, including:

• Accreditation • Socialisation• Teaching• Networking • Cultural experience….

Teaching materials are only a small part of the university experience

Q7. OERs for whom?

• Current University of Leicester students

• Potential University of Leicester students

• Independent learners

• Work-based learners

• Educators

• Researchers

• Developing countries

• Global public

Q8. Are OERs sustainable? What is the long-term viability of OERs?

Limited research evidence on sustainability of OERs

Various funding models exist: •Institutional e.g. MIT OCW

•Endowment e.g. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy project

•Membership e.g. Sakai Educational Partners Program

•Donations e.g. Wikipedia Apache Foundation

•Conversion e.g. Elgg educational community

•Contributor pay e.g. Public Library of Science (PLoS)

•Sponsorship e.g. MIT iCampus with Microsoft

•Governments e.g. The United Nations

Q9. How can I be sure about the quality of OERs available?• Assessment of the quality enhancement of the

production process

• Institutional reputation and expertise in a given discipline or subject

• Individual profile and expertise in a given subject area

• Growing community around the OER

Q 10. What other issues are there regarding OERs?

• Keeping materials up-to-date and in multiple repositories

• Interoperability issues

• Metadata standards

• Tracking and assessing the value of OERs

• Copyright

‘OERs will help nourish the kind of participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation that rapidly changing knowledge

societies need.’

(The Cape Town Declaration, 2007)

1.2.3.4.5.

More FAQs?