Case Studies

A collection of case studies about MIT OpenCourseWare

In 2008-09, Creative Commons commissioned a study from a professional market research firm to explore understandings of the terms "commercial use" and "noncommercial use" among Internet users when used in the context of content found online. The empirical findings suggest that creators and users approach the question of noncommercial use similarly and that overall, online U.S. creators and users are more alike than different in their understanding of noncommercial use. Both creators and users generally consider uses that earn users money or involve online advertising to be commercial, while uses by organizations, by individuals, or for charitable purposes are less commercial but not decidedly noncommercial. Similarly, uses by for-profit companies are typically considered more commercial.

This study reviews the current use of Open Educational Resources in Adult Education, assesses its potential and makes recommendations for policy interventions, taking account of the European Commission’s policy frameworks. It incorporates new research on over 12 Member States, leveraging on a synthesis of existing research from a range of projects including POERUP (Policies for OER Uptake) and a 2014-15 study on Shared OER for the Joint Research Centre, augmented by two more recent studies for JRC and LLP.

Partly because the development of open educational resources (OER) is a relatively new field that is just now receiving more widespread attention and study, there have been few opportunities to share knowledge across program, organizational and national boundaries. This paper presents a study of the OER project Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) as the first of a series of steps meant to advance and support the sharing of knowledge about effective strategies and models for developing open educational resources both locally and globally.

Household-level Canadian meat purchases from 2002-2008, household-level egg purchases from 2002-2005 and Food Opinion Survey in 2008 were used to understand how consumers who have different concerns about nutrition react to BSE events and how beef consumption after BSE discoveries were shaped by consumers concerns of food safety and their trust of government and the industry decision makers. Three measures of beef purchased were used to explore consumers? reaction. A random effects logit model was applied to test whether any beef purchased during a given month. Consumption in terms of unit purchases was measured with a random effects Negative Binomial model and consumption in terms of beef expenditure was measured with a standard random effects model. Consumer behaviors in Alberta differed from Ontario. Consumer reactions to BSE in Alberta were stronger than Ontario. Overall, the more risk consumers attached to BSE, the less beef they purchased in both provinces. Random effects in the three models controlled for unobserved but persistent aspects of households and changed the sign of estimated effects of demographic variables.

Considering the challenge of providing quality, cost-effective learning resources, it made sense that UNIMA should experiment with using OER. Through grants from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the International Association for Digital Publications and OER Africa, an initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education, were able to facilitate these projects.

• The first project, conducted at Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN), aimed at training staff to source, evaluate, and adapt OER for an e-learning University Certificate Midwifery Course.

• The second OER project, conducted at Bunda College of Agriculture (BCA), called for the use of OER to compile a first-year communication skills textbook.

• A third project, also running from Bunda, was designed to provide Post Graduate students with access to copyrighted ebooks, a component of IADP’s Affordable Access programme.

This case study is the result of semi-structured interviews with teaching faculty, other staff and students involved in health OER activities at UG. The interviewees (listed at the end of this study), gave their consent for the author to use their names and direct quotations, and their words are included here verbatim. This case study explores CHS’s experience with OER, highlighting strategic priorities, perceived benefits, achievements, challenges, production process, lessons learned, future plans and participants’ advice for others interested in creating their own institutional OER initiatives.