This article is a reflective essay on teaching a large class of undergraduate students at the University of Durban-Westville. The class consists of 280 students in the fourth year of university training for the teaching profession.
This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all.
Two of the major challenges to international students' right of access to higher education are geographical/economic isolation and academic literacy in English (Carey, 1999; Hamel, 2007). The authors propose that adopting open course models in traditional universities, through blended or online delivery, can offer benefits to the institutions and to the open education movement itself, in particular with non-Anglophone students. This paper describes the model and an implementation with undergraduate students in Canada, Mexico, and Russia. The implementation of the model was examined in three studies, which relied on data collected from student interviews, instructor observations and reflections, instructor interviews, course documents, and discussion forum transcripts. The authors note that the main benefit of an open course model is the development of academic literacy for students of English as an Other Language (EOL). Other benefits include 1) international course transfers, 2) breadth of professorial exposure for the students, 3) flexibility in professors? employment and professional development, and 4) course credits for students. Some of the challenges include 1) varying levels of Internet access, 2) coordination of the participation of the instructors, and 3) different teaching and learning practices. The authors conclude that an open course model might be applied in various contexts, such as in disciplines where global perspectives are important, in applied/professional programs, and in distance or face-to-face courses. Also, the model is useful for students working together on research, case studies, or joint projects, and it could be applied within an institution to enhance inter-disciplinary content and approaches.
This article examines Utah residents' views of incentives and disincentives for the use of OpenCourseWare (OCW), and how they fit into the theoretical framework of perceived innovation attributes established by Rogers (1983). Rogers identified five categories of perceived innovation attributes: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. A survey instrument was developed using attributes that emerged from a Delphi technique with input from experts in the OCW field. The survey instrument was sent to 753 random individuals between 18 and 64 years of age throughout Utah. Results indicated that the greatest incentives for OCW use were the following: (a) no cost for materials, (b) resources available at any time, (c) pursuing in depth a topic that interests me, (d) learning for personal knowledge or enjoyment, and (e) materials in an OCW are fairly easy to access and find. The greatest disincentives for OCW use were the following: a) no certificate or degree awarded, (b) does not cover my topic of interest in the depth I desire, (c) lack of professional support provided by subject tutors or experts, (d) lack of guidance provided by support specialists, and (e) feeling that the material is overwhelming. The authors recommend that institutions work to transition some OCW users into degree-granting paid programs as well as adopt a marketing campaign to increase awareness of OCW. Additionally, OCW websites should make their content available to recommendation engines such as ccLearn DiscoverEd, OCW Finder, or OER Recommender and should link to one or more of these sites.
In an attempt to understand the potential of OER for change and sustainability, this paper presents the results of an informal survey of active and inactive collections of online educational resources, emphasizing data related to collection longevity and the project attributes associated with it. Through an analysis of the results of this survey, in combination with other surveys of OER stakeholders and projects, the paper comes to an initial conclusion: Despite differences in priorities and emphasis, OER initiatives are in danger of running aground of the same sustainability challenges that have claimed numerous learning object collection or repository projects in the past. OER projects suffer from the same incompatibilities with existing institutional cultures and priorities that have dogged learning object initiatives, and they face the concomitant challenge of gaining access to the operational funding support that experience shows is necessary for their survival. However, through a review of one of the most successful of OER projects to date, the MIT Open Courseware Initiative, the paper ends by augmenting this significant caveat with a second, more hopeful conclusion: OER projects, unlike learning object initiatives, can accrue tangible benefits to educational institutions, such as student recruitment and marketing. Highlighting these benefits, it is argued, provides an opportunity to link OER initiatives to core institutional priorities. In addition to providing a possible route to financial sustainability, this characteristic of OER may help to foster the significant changes in practice and culture long sought by promoters of both learning objects and OERs.
To address the high cost of textbooks, Rice University?s Connexions and the Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept free and open textbook. The proof-of-concept served to document a workflow process that would support adoption of open textbooks. Open textbooks provide faculty and students with a low cost alternative to traditional publishers? textbooks and can help to make higher education more affordable. Connexions provides a publishing platform for open textbook projects. The CCOTP acted as a liaison between community college faculty, open textbook authors, and Connexions. Challenges to the production and adoption of open textbooks include 1) faculty members? and students? expectations of high production quality and ancillaries for open textbooks, 2) methods for documenting and maintaining control over various versions, and 3) the process of converting existing open content to digital and accessible formats. Connexions holds promise as a means to overcome these challenges. Connexions identified lessons learned about open textbook production, such as the importance of a style guide, the advantage of assembly-line workflow, and the importance of naming conventions and standard math authoring tools. Connexions also identified lessons learned about open textbook use by students and faculty, e.g., the value of availability and customizability, the importance of interactivity, the difference in how faculty and students view modularity, and the importance of textbook reading navigational aids. The authors note that the CCOTP recommends using Connexions as the common repository for open textbook content in an effort to provide greater national and international access.
Openness is a fundamental value underlying significant changes in society and is a prerequisite to changes institutions of higher education need to make in order to remain relevant to the society in which they exist. There are a number of ways institutions can be more open, including programs of open sharing of educational materials. Individual faculty can also choose to be more open without waiting for institutional programs. Increasing degrees of openness in society coupled with innovations in business strategy like dynamic specialization are enabling radical experiments in higher education and exerting increasing competitive pressure on conventional higher education institutions. No single response to the changes in the supersystem of higher education can successfully address every institution?s situation. However, every institution must begin addressing openness as a core organizational value if it desires to both remain relevant to its learners and to contribute to the positive advancement of the field of higher education.
Recognition in education is the acknowledgment of learning achievements. Accreditation is certification of such recognition by an institution, an organization, a government, a community, etc. There are a number of assessment methods by which learning can be evaluated (exam,practicum, etc.) for the purpose of recognition and accreditation, and there are a number of different purposes for the accreditation itself (i.e., job, social recognition, membership in a group, etc). As our world moves from an industrial to a knowledge society, new skills are needed. Social web technologies offer opportunities for learning, which build these skills and allow new ways to assess them. This paper makes the case for a peer-based method of assessment and recognition as a feasible option for accreditation purposes. The peer-based method would leverage online communities and tools, for example digital portfolios, digital trails, and aggregations of individual opinions and ratings into a reliable assessment of quality. Recognition by peers can have a similar function as formal accreditation, and pathways to turn peer recognition into formal credits are outlined. The authors conclude by presenting an open education assessment and accreditation scenario, which draws upon the attributes of open source software communities: trust, relevance, scalability, and transparency.
The Houghton and Oppenheim paper and the JISC report focus on three publishing
models: subscription publishing; open access (OA) publishing (often called ?Gold
OA?); and open access self-archiving. The author responds respond both as an academic who conducts research, writes about it and tries to get it published, and as a researcher interested in scholarly communication, publishing and open access.
Houghton and Oppenheim?s cost?benefit analysis of different forms of scholarly
publishing is a major contribution in considering the case for open access and for
open institutional repositories as a standard resource in publicly-funded universities.In what follows, I will draw out some specific aspects of Houghton and Oppenheim?s
cost?benefit analysis in order to explore these wider issues.
This paper defines problem-based learning in the context of open education. Unique challenges are presented and discussed alongside possible solutions, realistic limitations, and calls for implementation in the future to test validity.
This article provides an analysis of the size, shape and model of various OER initiatives.
OER are becoming accepted as part of the range of materials that learners and educators can use. However, the methods and practices that enable learners, teachers and institutions to best engage with OER are not yet established and may well be more important in enabling change in education systems than the availability of the resources themselves. By looking at the experiences that The Open University in the UK has in direct provision of OER and the broader research carried out by the Open Learning Network (OLnet) initiative, several factors and related practices can be identified that should help encourage openness and engagement with OER.
For this study we investigated German teachers to see how they use, reuse, produceand manage OER. The research explored what motivators and barriers effect their use of OER, what others can learn from their Open Educational Practices, and what we can do to raise the dissemination level of OER in schools. The survey revealed some unexpected results, notably the fact that participating German teachers do not to feel they need special OER-licenses, since they consider everything available in the Internet as being public ? even their own products. Regarding barriers, insecurity on the correctness of information was one of the biggest issues and also, a concern regarding the lack of expertise and guidance during the adaption processes.
In preparation for campus-wide e-text adoption, Daytona State College completed a two-year comparative study of four textbook distribution models: print purchase, print rental, e-text rental, and e-text rental with e-reader device.
Though faculty and administrators may embrace e-texts, students often prefer to rent printed textbooks.
Institutions seeking to implement campus-wide e-text adoption should be prepared to address specific concerns, including faculty choice,infrastructure needs, student technological skills, cost savings, and instructional adaptation.
Open courseware and other open educational resources are beginning to draw the
attention of higher education policymakers and other leaders. Why? Simply put, these
web-based educational tools hold the promise of both reducing the cost of higher
education and helping learners to complete their degrees by providing access to top
quality course materials and instruction.
By radically reducing the costs of course content, delivery of instruction, textbooks,
and related materials these open resources can make college more affordable. Further,
by enabling 'learning-from-anywhere' for students who have work and family obligations,
the same technologies provide expanded access to higher education for millions
of nontraditional learners.
This article discusses the different roles of "openness" in education and how African universities can contribute and become more globally visible.
The field of Social Research Methods is shared not only by the social
sciences, but by many other disciplines. There is therefore enormous scope for
the creation and re-use of open educational resources (OERs) in this area.
However, our work with social scientists on a number of recent projects suggests
that barriers exist to OER creation and use in social research methods teaching.
Although there are now a number of national and institutional projects creating
learning resources in research methods and making them openly available for
teachers and students to use, many still use licences that restrict re-use and, in
particular, modification. We refer to these as grey OERs. We also found that, in
contrast to the well-developed practice of citation in research work, academics
and teachers had a narrow notion of licensing and copyright of teaching
materials, consistent with a limited experience of sharing teaching materials.
Academics saw potential users as mainly other academics who were subject
experts like themselves. That meant that they gave little weight to the role of
broad description and metadata in making resources findable. At the same time,
when academics looked for resources, the provenance, quality and relevance of
those resources and the ability to judge that quickly were paramount.
We discuss two approaches that attempt to tackle these issues: first, the
development of a mapping tool that supports those creating OERs to identify a
range of classificatory and metadata in a way that gives those looking for
resources a much wider range of ways of finding them; second, the
development of a website, based on Web 2.0 technology, that exploits the
contributions of academics using and reviewing research methods OERs. We
suggest that the activities on a blog-based website create a cultural context
which constitutes an element of a community of practice of social scienceacademics.
Users can find resources by quality, pedagogy, and other metadata
as well as content and through vicarious learning about the use and reviewing
of resources by other academics, they may develop better practices in their own
re-use and attribution of OERs.
Open Educational Resources, and open education more generally, is considered to have huge potential to increase participation and educational opportunities at large and to promote widening participation and lifelong learning. At the same time the past decade has shown that openness in itself is not enough to unfold these potentials. A number of elements need to be taken into account in order to move from OER to Open Educational Opportunities. These elements and strategies have been the subject of a two year project, the Open Education Quality Initiative, OPAL, the findings are summarised in this paper. The intended audience of this report is policy makers in the field of education, and science and technology. On the basis of the experience of the Open Educational Quality Initiative we are arguing that the focus of OER work to date has largely been on access to and the availability of OER, We argue that t is important to shift the focus more to the actual open practice of using, reusing, or creating Open Educational Opportunities: Open Educational Practice.
This article aims to share experience from a Swedish project on the introduction and implementation of
Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education with both national and international perspectives.
The project, OER - resources for learning, was part of the National Library of Sweden Open Access
initiative and aimed at exploring, raising awareness of and disseminating the use of OER and the resulting
pedagogical advantages for teaching and learning. Central to the project?s activities were a series of regional
seminars which all featured a combination of multi-site meetings combined with online participation. This
combination proved highly successful and extended the reach of the project. In total the project reached
around 1000 participants at its events and many more have seen the recorded sessions.
Several unresolved issues beyond the scope of the project became explicit but which are absolutely crucial
challenges. Firstly, the evolution from OER towards open educational practices (OEP) and open
educational cultures (OEC). OEP and OEC imply the establishment of national and international policies
and strategies where the use of OER is officially encouraged, sanctioned and developed. Secondly it became
explicit that the issue of metadata is crucial for finding OER and facilitating their use and reuse for teachers
and learners. Thirdly, the sustainability of OER must be stimulated by ensuring the creation of material
that can easily be adapted and reused by teachers in other countries and contexts.
