This study presents the findings of a quantitative study on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in Higher Education and Adult Learning Institutions.
This book is an introduction to Open Education (OE), giving practical guidance on the design
and delivery of OE courses while wrestling with theoretical considerations of this new and
emerging domain. Educators are the main targets, but it will also be relevant to policy makers,
senior education managers and the learning industry as a whole.
The Lane OER Team (www.bit.ly/laneoer) was charged with researching and assessing the
current state of OERs and providing their findings in a report to the faculty and student body of
Lane. This report includes the analysis of over 50 open educational resource providers,
organizations, repositories, searches, and producers. The team was also responsible for
identifying and recommending actions for Lane Community College to approach the
implementation of OERs. This report describes 15 actionable items available for immediate
approval and execution aimed to empower faculty in the use of OERs in courses.
As a Transversal Action under the European eLearning Programme, the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project carries out a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Europe and beyond. OER are understood to comprise content for teaching and learning, software-based tools and services, and licenses that allow for open development and re-use of content, tools and services. The OLCOS road mapping work was conducted to provide decision makers with an overview of current and likely future developments in OER and recommendations on how various challenges in OER could be addressed.
Start small but think big. That is an attractive approach to innovation and reform for education in Africa, where available resources often cannot meet expanding demand, schools are under-equipped, well prepared teachers and effective instructional materials are in short supply, and both access and quality remain uneven among different segments of the population.
'Going to scale' has proved difficult to achieve. There are few documented cases of pilot education reforms in Africa that have been effectively scaled up to become nation-wide programmes. Our review of efforts to enlarge the scale of education initiatives and reforms across diverse settings in Africa confirms the importance of (a)charismatic and effective local leadership dedicated to scaling up, (b)strong local demand for the innovation at each site, and (c)adequate (not necessarily high level) funding.
Orchestrated replication, however, often fails. That is so for two major reasons. First, enlarging scale may undermine or destroy promising reforms rather than spread them. Like ?appropriate technology,? ?appropriate scale? may be large, small, or somewhere in between. Second, the importance of the local roots of this process suggests that mechanically replicating the specific elements of a reform in new settings will only rarely lead to a viable and sustainable outcome. Rather than reproducing the specific elements of the reform, what must be scaled up are the conditions that permitted the initial reform to be successful and the local roots that can sustain it. That involves finding ways to generate locally rooted demand for the reform and to support an informed and inclusive local participation in specifying the reform?s content and form. That also requires making political space for the reform and protecting it from vested interests who perceive it as a threat and a bureaucracy whose efforts to routinize change often smother it.
This study covers the types of business model used for open access to publicly-funded research
content. Various organizational structures developed to offer open access to publicly-funded
research content are examined from the perspective of publicly-funded institutions and
organizations. Business models for publicly-funded institutions can be built from elements
which a commercial business model may not include, particularly in respect of the inclusion of
non-financial factors. While the cost of open access or any other research dissemination model
remains important, the discussion around research dissemination now includes impact, value
and benefits. Other non-financial factors – such as copyright assignment – are also understood
to be key issues in designing a successful business model for publicly-funded research outputs.
Thus in this document the description of each type of open access business model includes
the factors which will determine the cost incurred in providing open access, the factors likely
to be important in adopting the model, and a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of
each open access model from the perspective of research funding agencies and institutions
managing the funding of research dissemination. Most of the document relates to research
outputs in the form of journal articles but brief descriptions are given of factors important in
open access to research data and research monographs.
This report provides an overview of the findings of the COL/UNESCO survey on OER policies and activity across all countries of the world.
OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has worked on Open Educational
Resources (OER) in the past, which led to the publication Giving Knowledge for Free ? the Emergence of
Open Educational Resources (2007). This working paper thus builds on exploratory and forward-looking
research in CERI and invites countries to consider the policy implications of the expansion of OER, its
benefits and associated challenges.
A small OER expert group was established to discuss the subject, link it to other relevant developments in
the field, and develop a draft questionnaire for member countries in order to collect information regarding
the policy context related to OER. The expert group met in June 2011 and for a second time in September
2011. The questionnaire was sent to the 34 OECD member countries in August 2011. It outlined a short
informative note about the benefits and challenges of OER. The responses to the questionnaire are
analysed in this document.
This online report from the Babson Survey Research Group is an output on a survey of academic leaders between 2009 - 201 on their knowledge, use and opinion of OER. In addition, surveys were conducted asking faculty in higher education and academic technology administrators their opinions of these resources. Finally, the survey of faculty investigated their use of social media also asked for faculty opinions on OER. This report contains the results from all these data collection efforts.
The quality assurance of post-traditional higher education is not straightforward, because openness and flexibility are primary characteristics of these new approaches, whereas traditional approaches to quality assurance were designed for teaching and learning within more tightly structured frameworks. This guide, structured in the form of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’, grapples with this dilemma, drawing on emerging examples, after putting post-traditional higher education in context and exploring the various new manifestations of openness.
The purpose of this document is to provide a concise analysis of where the global OER movement currently stands: what the common threads are, where the greatest opportunities and challenges lie, and how we can more effectively work together as a community. The first draft was born from a meeting of 26 OER leaders in February 2015. We then shared this document on global and regional OER lists and had in-person discussions with members of the international OER community at the 2015 Hewlett OER grantees meeting, OER15, Open Ed Global 2015, and the CC Global Summit 2015. Comments from all four meetings were integrated into this document.
Open Educational Resources (OER) — teaching, learning and research materials that their owners make free for others to use, revise and share — offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and effectiveness of worldwide education. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO co-organised the World OER Congress in 2012 in Paris. That Congress resulted in the OER Paris Declaration: a statement that urged governments around the world to release, as OER, all teaching, learning and research materials developed with public funds. This book, drawing on 15 case studies contributed by 29 OER researchers and policy-makers from 15 countries across six continents, examines the implementation of the pivotal declaration through the thematic lenses of policy, costs and transformation. The case studies provide a detailed picture of OER policies and initiatives as they are unfolding in different country contexts and adopting a range of approaches, from bottom-up to top-down. The book illuminates the impacts of OER on the costs of producing, distributing and providing access to learning materials, and shows the way that OER can transform the teaching and learning methodology mindset. Recommendations on key actions to be taken by policy-makers, practitioners, OER developers and users are also outlined, particularly within the context of Education 2030. Clearly, progress is being made, although more work must be done if the international community is to realise the full potential of OER.
The Impact of Open Licensing on the Early Reader Ecosystem examines how to use open licensing to promote quality learning resources for young children that are relevant and interesting. Research in early reading tends to focus on traditional publishing value and supply chains, without taking much consideration of new approaches and solutions emerging from the digitization of content and the impact of open licences. Production innovations considered include content creation models, storybook management and storage, and printing and distribution. all of which are evolving rapidly as new technologies are developed and applied. This paper also describes and assesses how major players in the early reader ecosystem impact on the production and utilization of quality resources. These include publishers, NGOs, libraries and literacy organizations, and donors. In addition, because cost models for open licensing any resource are different from commercial publishing, this report examines how open licensing and cost recovery can be effectively addressed in order to promote the long-term sustainability of local content creation, production, and utilization. Finally, this paper offers a detailed set of implications for early literacy content creation and utilization in low-income countries, which should underpin the development of creative ways to deliver books to young children.
This review provides a summary of all known empirical research on the impacts of OER adoption. This version will be updated with new articles as the authors become aware of them.
Despite the benefits to the adoption of open textbooks, other OER, and open educational practices, there has not yet been widespread uptake of these materials and methods. (Paradis, 2014) This paper will serve as a review of existing literature, exploring:
● what open education means in current contexts
● what problems the integration of open educational materials may help negate
● what barriers may be impeding the adoption of such materials
● who the stakeholders are and what their roles are in the integration of open materials and practices.
In addition, the author will propose a research study to examine faculty attitudes toward open materials and practices based on the diffusion of innovations framework.
Saide and Saide's OER Africa Project team conducted a desk top literature review for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project which was a four-year project funded by the IDRC.
Saide and Saide's OER Africa Project team conducted a desk top literature review for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project which was a four-year project funded by the IDRC.
Saide and Saide's OER Africa Project team conducted a desk top literature review for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project which was a four-year project funded by the IDRC.
Saide and Saide's OER Africa Project team conducted a desk top literature review for the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development Project which was a four-year project funded by the IDRC.
