Open Educational Resources: What Happens When Knowledge is Free?

What Happens When Knowledge is Free?

Corey J. KnoxUniversity of [email protected]

By PresenterMedia.com

Open Educational Resources in a Changing World

Implications of OER in Post-Secondary Education

http://www.presentermedia.com/mspp.html

Also Referred to as: •Open source educational content•Open content •Open educational content•Open courseware •Open teaching

What is OER?

(Open Educational Resources)

1) Digital Objects/Resources

2) A Philosophy/Movement

What is OER?

1) Digital Objects/Resources

•What is OER?

Digitized information and educational resources that are made available at no cost for use and revision by students, educators, self-learners and others for teaching, learning and research.

2) A Philosophy/Movement

What is OER?

A “new educational perspective”. (The New Horizons Report, 2010)

“Knowledge as a collective social product” (Prasad & Ambedkar)

Educators & Educational Institutions.

Students Life-long learners.

Who is currently using OER?

Government’s and Economic Institutions & Organizations (UNESCO, World Bank)

NGO’s Teachers Without Boarders

For Profit Businesses

Who is currently using OER?

Opencourseware Consortium: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

Who is currently using OER?(Open Source Resources, Repositories & Consortia)

Academic Earth: http://www.academicearth.org/


Open Education Resources: http://www.oercommons.org/

Who is currently using OERs(Open Source Resources, Repositories & Consortia)

The Open University: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/


•MIT OpenCourseWare: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Who is currently using OERs?(Open Source Resources, Repositories & Consortia)

Who is currently using OER?The Innovators: The next level of OER, schools and programs, organizing around OER as a philosophy

Who is currently using OERs?The Innovators: The next level of OER, schools and programs, organizing around OER as a philosophy

•3,000 open courseware courses available from over 300 universities worldwide. (2007, OECD)

•OER Commons: 70 institutional partner collections 20,000 resources (2009)

Connexions: 16,471 reusable modules in 1005 collections.

Who is currently using OERs?Selected Statistics (Open Source Resources)

•MIT Open Courseware Users: 9% educators, 42% students enrolled at other institutions, 43% percent are independent learners

•The Open University: 16 million downloads, 89% of those downloads outside the U.K.

•Who is currently using it?Selected Statistics (Continued)

• Collaboration and innovation in learning materials and teaching methods

• Increased engagement by teachers• More learners control and flexibility• More teacher control and flexibility in teaching• Decreases costs of educational materials • Access to up to date and cutting-edge

information in learning materials• Accessible and affordable education to more

students

Benefits of OER

Challenges to Widespread OER Implementation

•Technical•Economic•Social/Cultural•Legal•Quality Control/Organization


Technical• Interoperability between formats, software, platforms•Broadband Access (international)

• Challenges to Widespread OER ImplementationEconomic• Resources to support development of material. (Yale has spent $30,000 to $40,000 for each online course)

• Sustainability of repositories of resources• Costs for broadband, software, hardware.• Competition between education institutions (public and private)

• Licensing Issues/Copyright• Loss of business, revenue to some sectors of publishing industry


Social/Cultural• Resistance to technology in learning contexts• Unwillingness to share or use resources produced by someone else (Individual)

• Institutional induced barriers related to providing “free” content.

• “Knowledge Colonization”


LegalProhibited use of copyrighted materials without consent/alternate forms of legal permission types


Quality Control/Organization

• Need for centralized/sustainable repositories• Effective search and discovery tools• Quality Management of resources• Ways to award “credit” for engaging with and completing open courseware• Accreditation for open courseware and free educational programs• Methods for connecting • Human support availability in open courseware

Forces Propelling OER

1) Cost of Secondary Education

•The Future of OER

Forces Propelling OER

1) Worldwide Poverty/Lack of Education2) Increasing demand for technological and

scientific expertise3) Globalization/Interconnectedness4) Availability of Technology that allows for

collaboration and communication5) Financial strains of educational institutions

The Future of OER

Changes in Institutional (Colleges and Universities) Roles and Structures

1) Coursework structure2) “Unbundling” of traditional University

roles3) Development of alternate signals of

competence

The Future of OER


1) Coursework structure

The Future of OER


2) “Unbundling” of traditional University roles

The Future of OER


3) Development of alternate signals of competence

The Future of OER

Widespread free education to developing world:

From the Capetown Declaration ()

“We are on the cusp of a global

•The Future of OERWidespread Free & Lower Cost Education

“We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.”

Cape Town Declaration, 2004