Open Educational Resources

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in recent years in making educational content freely available. Terms such as ‘open content’ and ‘open educational resources’ have gained currency, and there is now a well-established international community of those interested in producing, using and researching open educational resources (OER). This chapter gives an overview of the growth of the OER movement and summarises some of the issues, highlighting key references.

Appendix: The Broader OER Landscape

United Kingdom

• Openlearn³⁰

• SCORE³¹

• UK—JISC/HEA OER phase 1 programme³²

• UK—JISC/HEA OER phase 2 programme³³

• POCKET³⁴

Ireland

• NDLR³⁵

Holland

• OpenER³⁶

• Wikiwjs³⁷

Germany

• Akleon³⁸

• KELDAmet³⁹

• CampusContent⁴⁰

• Podcampus⁴¹

• Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien (ZUM)⁴²

• Dual Mode Technische Universität Darmstadt⁴³

• MatheVital⁴⁴

• Skriptenforum⁴⁵

Austria

• EducaNext⁴⁶

• eLibrary Projekt⁴⁷

Switzerland

• GITTA⁴⁸

Brazil

• UnisulVirtual⁴⁹

North America

• CCCOER/CCOT⁵⁰

• BC campus⁵¹

• MIT OpenCourseWare⁵²

Finland

• EDU.Fi⁵³

• AVO-SOMETU⁵⁴

• Le Mill⁵⁵

Estonia

• Estonia National Network⁵⁶

Portugal

• INTERACTIC⁵⁷

• Casa das Ciências⁵⁸

Community Sites

• Peoples open access initiative⁵⁹

• The peer to peer university⁶⁰

• Wikieducator⁶¹

• Connections⁶²

• Merlot⁶³

OER Research Groups

• Organisation for economic cooperation and development (OECD)⁶⁴

• OER Commons⁶⁵

• Open eLearning Content Observatory OLCOS⁶⁶

• Open Learning network (OLNET)⁶⁷

International Agencies

• OER AFRICA⁶⁸

• The Commonwealth of Learning (COL)⁶⁹

• UNESCO: open training platform⁷⁰

Translation Organisations

• Opensource opencourseware prototype system⁷¹

• China open resource for education (CORE)⁷²

• Creative commons⁷³

• Universia.net⁷⁴

Emerging Institutions

• Technologica de Monterrey⁷⁵

• University of the western cape⁷⁶

• Universiade do sul de santa catarina: unisul⁷⁷

Established OER Projects

• A number of funders (such as the Hewlett Foundation, Shuttleworth and UNESCO) have had and continue to have a significant influence on the nature of OER initiatives, both in terms of the funding they provide and also through other forms of promotion and support. Examples of different types of initiatives include EADTU/MORIL,⁷⁸ the EU-funded FP7 programmes, for example, ICOPER,⁷⁹ STELLAR⁸⁰ and the OpenScout initiative,⁸¹ investigating various aspects of OER movements. The nature of these different initiatives is a combination of a number of factors:

  • The nature of the type of funding which supports them

  • The vision and motivation behind them

  • The nature of the organisation or organisations involved (face-to-face/distance, subject-based, institutionally or nationally focused, single- or multi-partnered)⁸²

The following alphabetical listing outlines a selection of these varied projects sourced⁸³:

• Anadolu University, Yunus Emre Lifelong Open Learning Portal,⁸⁴ Turkey offers 149 content-rich courses free through its Yunus Emre education portal. The courses include the following components: e-books, e-courses, e-TV, e-audio books and e-practice.

• Athabasca University—Open University, Canada.⁸⁵ The University aims to remove the barriers of time, space, past educational experience and, to a great degree, level of income. Individualised study courses allow learners to learn at their own pace. Flexible instruction frees learners from the demands of specified class times and rigid institutional schedules. For undergraduate individualised study courses, there are no admissions deadlines; learners may enrol year-round.

• Budapest Open Access Initiative, Hungary.⁸⁶ The Budapest Open Access Initiative aims to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the Internet.

• Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, Global.⁸⁷ The Berlin Declaration promotes the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.

• Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment—BELLE, Canada.⁸⁸ BELLE was a $3.4 million shared-cost project (2002) funded under the CANARIE Learning Program. BELLE’s objective was to develop a prototype educational object repository.

• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI).⁸⁹ Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a collection of ‘cognitively informed’, openly available and free online courses and course materials that enact instruction for an entire course in an online format. The vision is that the courses developed and delivered through the OLI project will be used by instructors and students in colleges and universities throughout the world as well as individuals seeking education who are not affiliated with an institution.

• Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Global.⁹⁰ The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Two online databases of learning content provide support to commonwealth countries free of charge. Institutions or governments can use these repositories to access a range of free learning content.

• Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (DRIVER).⁹¹ DRIVER aimed to establish a cohesive, pan-European infrastructure of digital repositories for both researchers and the general public. It set out to build an advanced infrastructure for the future knowledge of the European Research Area.

• European Schoolnet (EUN), Europe.⁹² European Schoolnet (EUN) is a consortium of 28 ministries of education in Europe. EUN provides major European education portals for learning, teaching and collaboration and leads the way in bringing about change in schooling through the use of new technology.

• Japanese OpenCourseWare Alliance (JOCW), Japan.⁹³ The JOCW is the consortium of Japanese universities that have been providing OCW in Japan.

• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digital Repositories, United Kingdom.⁹⁴ JISC has funded a range of initiatives around the creation and use of digital resources. This has included significant work on digital repositories.

• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) Open Educational Resources programme, United Kingdom.⁹⁵ Between April 2009 and April 2010, the JISC and the HEA funded a series of pilots and activities to promote the open release of learning resources. Projects were required to make a significant amount of existing learning resources freely available online, licensed in such a way to enable them to be used and repurposed worldwide. Twenty-nine projects were funded in total, around three themes (individual researcher, institutionally based and subject based).

• Jorum, United Kingdom.⁹⁶ Jorum is funded by the JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). Jorum is a collaborative venture in UK higher and further education to collect and share learning and teaching materials, allowing their reuse and repurposing and standing as a national statement of the importance of creating interoperable, sustainable materials. Users can access the learning and teaching materials (which cover a range of subject areas) to enhance their students’ learning experience. Materials range from single assets (documents, images, diagrams) to more comprehensive learning objects (interactive units and content packages). Jorum accepts learning and teaching resources across all subject areas for both higher and further education in the UK.

• IIEP-UNESCO Wiki of OER repositories, Global.⁹⁷ IIEP-UNESCO hosts a wiki that offers a list of several portals, gateways and repositories. It offers a list of links to OER initiatives, resources and tools. It offers access to a selection of approximately 30 repositories of open learning objects, mostly at the university level.

• ide@s, North America.⁹⁸ This is an initiative by the University of Wisconsin to identify, evaluate, catalogue and align to the Wisconsin education standards resources that are already on the Internet, such as lesson plans and reference materials. These resources are then made available from the ide@s search engine for prekindergarten to higher education and adult education.

• Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), North America.⁹⁹ The Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) is an electronic warehouse of ideas, examples and resources that support student learning for the state of Arizona Maricopa community colleges. These resources include lessons, techniques, methods, activities and assignments.

• Monterey Institute for Technology and Education National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), North America.¹⁰⁰ NROC is a library of high-quality online courses for students and academics in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement.

• National Learning Network (NLN) Materials, United Kingdom.¹⁰¹ Working in partnership with subject experts and commercial developers, BECTA’s (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) the NLN Materials Team commissioned and managed the development of further education e-learning materials for use in virtual learning environments. The materials cover the UK post-16 further education curriculum and were designed to be fitted easily into existing teaching.

• Open Archives Initiative (OAI).¹⁰² The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. OAI has its roots in the open access and institutional repository movements.

• OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW), Global.¹⁰³ The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organisations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.

• ParisTech, France.¹⁰⁴ ParisTech is a collective entity that includes 12 of the most prestigious French institutes of education and research.

• Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) (MERLOT), North America.¹⁰⁵ MERLOT provides free and open resources designed primarily for academics and students of higher education. MERLOT is a catalogue of online learning materials, peer reviews, learning assignments, and user comments, organised by discipline into specific discipline communities and created to help academics enhance their instruction, and that anyone can use for free.

• OER Commons, North America.¹⁰⁶ OER Commons is a learning and teaching network offering a broad selection of high-quality Open Educational Resources that are freely available to use online and, in many cases, to adapt and support individualised learning and teaching practices.

• Open Courseware Directory (OCD).¹⁰⁷ The Open Courseware Directory is an annotated listing of publicly available courseware (lecture notes, handouts, slides, tutorial material, exam questions, quizzes, videos, demonstrations, etc.) from the world’s universities, colleges and other educational institutions worldwide.

• OpenCourseWare Finder, North America.¹⁰⁸ The OCW Finder aggregates materials across several collections: MIT OCW, Utah State University, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW, Tufts University OCW, Foothill De-Anza SOFIA and Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative.

• SchoolNet, Canada.¹⁰⁹ In English and French, SchoolNet is a partnership with the provincial and territorial governments, the education community and the private sector in Canada, which promotes the effective use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in learning.

• Textbook Revolution, Global.¹¹⁰ Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. The approach is to bring free textbooks together in one place.

• The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (CETL), United Kingdom.¹¹¹ The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in reusable learning objects developed, shared and evaluated learning objects. The aim was to promote innovation in pedagogical design and to encourage more widespread use and reuse of high-quality learning objects.

• United Nations University (UNU) Open Course Ware, Global.¹¹² The United Nations University is a member of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium and is committed to the development of an OCW Website that showcases the training and educational programmes implemented by the University in a wide range of areas relevant to the work of the United Nations.

• World Lecture Hall (WLH), North America.¹¹³ The World Lecture Hall publishes links to pages created by academics worldwide who are using the Web to deliver course materials in any language. Some courses can be accessed as full text. Materials include syllabi, course notes, assignments, and audio and video streaming. The WLH contains links to course materials for university-level courses.

• Wisconsin Online Resource Center, North America.¹¹⁴ The Wisconsin Online Resource Center is a digital library of Web-based learning resources.