Open Educational Resources

In a trajectory that did not simply begin from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), via Open Educational Resources (OER), and latterly arrive at a promised land of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a plethora of institutions, organisations and individuals have attempted through various and numerous interventions to ‘open up’ the education landscape to a wider range of travellers, inhabitants and tourists. And in a way, the question of quality has always dogged open education’s steps. Would open universities attract ‘quality’ students? Would open resources and courses be of good enough quality, and how could we be sure? Open, it seemed, might pose a threat to quality, or at least place a question mark over it. Yet, as openness has gained traction, it has also been suggested that quality might be bolstered and supported through the wisdom of crowds.

„OER“ hat sich in den letzten Jahren, auch im deutschsprachigen Raum, als Abkürzung für „Open Educational Resources“ (engl. für offene Bildungsressourcen) etabliert. OER-Schulbücher bieten unter anderem die Möglichkeit der rechtssicheren Nutzung, des kostenlosen Zugangs auf die digitale Version sowie die Möglichkeit der Modifikation und Wiederveröffentlichung der Materialien. Von OER-Schulbüchern wird erwartet, dass sie sich mittelbar auch positiv auf die Bedingungen, Gelegenheiten und Möglichkeiten des Lernens und Lehrens und damit auch auf den Wissenszuwachs und Kompetenzaufbau von Schülerinnen und Schülern auswirken. Zudem eröffnen sie mithilfe digitaler Unterrichtsmaterialien vielfältige Gestaltungsspielräume für innovative Pädagogik. Die Machbarkeitsstudie zu OER-Schulbüchern in Österreich zeigt potentielle Veränderungen, Chancen und Herausforderungen sowie mögliche Szenarien für die Einführung von OER-Schulbüchern auf. In der Machbarkeitsstudie werden dazu sechs Szenarien für OER-Schulbücher in Österreich, ausgehend von möglichen Aktivitäten der zuständigen österreichischen Bundesministerien, beschrieben. Darauf aufbauend geben die Autorinnen und Autoren der Studie auch Empfehlungen für eine nationale Strategie zur Umsetzung von OER-Schulbüchern und OER allgemein. Die Studie wurde von der Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft m.B.H. in Kooperation mit der Universität Innsbruck und der Technischen Universität Graz im Auftrag des Bundeskanzleramts und des Bundesministeriums für Bildung durchgeführt. Sie erscheint als Band 6 der Reihe „InnovationLab Arbeitsberichte“, herausgegeben vom Forschungsbereich InnovationLab der Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH (Salzburg: Salzburg Research) und gleichzeitig als Band 15 der Reihe „Beiträge zu offenen Bildungsressourcen (O3R.eu), herausgegeben von Martin Ebner und Sandra Schön.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching assistants. MOOCs have recently received a great deal of attention from the media, entrepreneurial vendors, education professionals and technologically literate sections of the public. MOOCs will provide free to access cutting edge courses to students of higher education in university system. Across the world, premier universities have put their courses online by setting up open learning platforms, such as edX. Commercial start-ups such as Coursera and Udacity have also been launched in collaboration with prestigious universities, offering online courses for free or charging a small fee for certification. The rapid expansion of MOOCs has sparked commercial interest from venture capitalists and major corporations who want to enter the Higher Education (HE) market using a MOOC approach. Students’ motivation to participate in MOOCs is a significant area of interest. Factors that influence students’ motivation to learn include future economic benefit, development of personal and professional identity, challenge and achievement, enjoyment and fun. What motivates the MOOC learner? Surveys conducted by researchers at Duke University show that student motivations typically fell into one of four categories viz. a) To support lifelong learning or gain an understanding of the subject matter, with no particular expectations for  completion or achievement b) For fun, entertainment, social experience and intellectual stimulation c)  Convenience, often in conjunction with barriers to traditional education options d) To experience or explore online education (Belanger  and Thornton, 2013). In order to investigate the usage and effectiveness of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) of edX, Coursera, Udacity and Udemy in university system in India, a qualitative study was employed by the authors and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with students of higher education in Indian universities and teaching professionals in university setups. The authors interviewed the participants based on a list of questions expanded from the three primary research questions based on the awareness, content, usage and learning outcomes. The questions were open-ended, which allowed the participants to freely express their experiences, thoughts, and feelings about the use of MOOCs. This study demonstrates the awareness, usage and effectiveness of MOOCs among students and teaching professionals of Indian University system.

""This report synthesizes the findings of the "OER4Adults study", a study conducted in 2012-13 by a team from the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, under a contract with the European Commission Joint Research Centre IPTS, and in collaboration with DG Education and Culture. The project aimed to provide an overview of Open Educational Practices in adult learning in Europe, identifying enablers and barriers to successful implementation of practices with OER. The report identifies over 150 Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives, and develops a typology that classifies them primarily by their main activity type. A survey based on the typology drew 36 responses from initiative leaders, and these are analysed against a context of developments in adult learning to arrive at an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing OER in adult learning in Europe. The analysis reveals six tensions that drive developing Open Educational Practices in adult learning; open versus free; traditional versus new approaches; altruism versus marketisation; community versus openness; mass participation versus quality; add-on versus embedded funding. The report recommends: 1. Recognising that ‘learning’ takes place everywhere; 2. Extending the range of people and organisations that produce and use resources; 3. Thinking about OER more broadly than as content; 4. Promoting awareness of open licensing and its implications; 5. Improving the usability of
OER; and 6. Planning for sustained change""

This book focuses on issues related to mathematics teaching and learning resources, including mathematics textbooks, teacher guides, student learning and assessment materials, and online resources. The book highlights various theoretical and methodological approaches used to study teaching and learning resources, and addresses the areas of resources, teachers, and students at an international level.

As for the resources, the book examines the role textbooks and other curricular or learning resources play in mathematics teaching, learning, and assessment. It asks questions such as: Could we consider different types of textbooks and roles they play in teaching and learning? How does the digitalization of information and communication affect these roles? What are defining features of e-textbooks, and how could we characterize the differences between the traditional textbooks and e-textbooks?

As for the teachers, the book discusses the relationships between teachers’ individual and collective resources, and the way in which we could model such relationships. Specific questions addressed are: What is the role of teachers in developing textbooks and other teaching and learning materials? What are the relationships between resource designers and users? What are the consequences of these changing roles and relationships for the teaching of mathematics, and for teacher knowledge and professional development?

As for the students, the book explores how students, as well as their teachers, interact through resources. It raises and addresses questions such as: What are the effects of modern ICT (particularly internet) on students’ use and the design of resources? How do changing patterns of use and design affect student behaviour, learning, and relationships to the subject of mathematics?

In this article, Professors Curtis J. Bonk, Mimi Miyoung Lee, Thomas C. Reeves, and Thomas H. Reynolds discuss the events that led to their recently edited book on “MOOCs and Open Education Around the World” as well as a special journal issue on this same topic. They reflect on the role of MOOCs and open education in the developing world as well as how content from MOOCs might be creatively and effectively be used in any course. In addition, they offer timely guidelines on the design and delivery of MOOCs. Suggestions are also made concerning cultural sensitivity and personalization of MOOCs as well as possible resources and perspectives addressing MOOC quality. Near the end of this interview, Bonk, Lee, Reeves, and Reynolds point to research methods that might help close the many gaps or unknowns related to the effectiveness of MOOCs, important challenges facing MOOC researchers and instructors, and future directions and societal changes that those involved with MOOCs and open education need to take into consideration. They end with a discussion of where their research is headed and possible new directions and advancements in the field as a whole. As part of that discussion, they offer advice for working as a team on such complicated projects as an edited book. They also detail the topics and goals of an upcoming symposium on “MOOCs and Open Education in the Developing World” which they will coordinate in October 2017 at the E-Learn Conference in Vancouver.

Introductory primer on Open Educational Resources (OER)structured as three lessons.

Lesson 1 defines the concept, identifies benefits, outlines the history and development of OER and also identifies some of the challenges facing users of OER. Lesson 1 also identifies those involved and significant initiatives.

Lesson 2 focuses on Copyright and Licensing particularly how Creative Commons differs from full copyright. There is also a section on advocacy strategies to promote open licensing within an institution.

Lesson 3 looks at strategies to find OER and evaluate them for purpose. Use, Reuse and Remix approaches to use are also covered. Finally there are some tips on how to quality assure materials developed using OER.

Over the last years, the growing ubiquity of Social Media, the emerging mobile technologies and the augmented reality become more deeply integrated into the teaching-learning process and also create new opportunities for reinventing the way in which educational actors both perceive and access learning. The major challenges in education that involve tremendous development and innovation are blended courses/ flipped classrooms integrating Social Media (SM), Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) (Johnson et al., 2014). This paper focuses on evaluating the e-learning experiences of various actors in the Romanian educational system. There is a tendency to use virtual learning environments with increasing frequency in higher education, many participants experiencing both online and blended courses. Another issue approached in this paper concerns the relevance of the components of online/ blended courses. In this context, the paper analyzes the importance of these elements with respect to various fields, such as: exact sciences, social sciences, humanistic studies, medical sciences, etc. In conclusion, we identify the most relevant elements in the development of online/ blended courses for various domains. The results will emphasize the standards required for evaluating the quality of online and blended courses.

At the heart of the open educational resources (OER) movement is the intention to provide affordable access to culturally relevant education to all. This imperative could be described as a desire to provide education in a manner consistent with social justice which, according to Fraser (2005), is understood as "parity of participation". Drawing on her concept of social justice, we suggest a slight modification of Fraser's framework for critically analysing ways in which the adoption and impact of OER and their undergirding open educational practices (OEP) might be considered socially just. We then provide illustrative examples from the cross-regional Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project (2014-2017) to show how this framework can assist in determining in what ways, if at all, the adoption of OER and enactment of OEP have responded to economic inequalities, cultural inequities and political exclusions in education. Furthermore, we employ Fraser's (2005) concepts to identify whether these social changes are either "affirmative" (i.e., ameliorative) or "transformative" in their economic, cultural and political effects in the Global South education context.

Students are usually given research outputs to learn about their subjects, but these have traditionally been journal articles and books, perhaps videos and eBooks when the resources exist and licensing and access are not an issue. In many disciplines, anecdotal evidence from teachers shows that students don’t often see research datasets or the research/lab logs. We suggest these are fundamental tools to comprehend research work, workflow and processes. Students should be given the opportunity to work in groups analysing datasets to conduct discoveries of their own and/or to attempt the replication of research findings. If students are only seeing research results, they have to trust them without having the tools to question or assess the source data directly. We believe that enabling students to understand good practices in data management and to locate, collect, cite and reuse open data resources is a key research skill, and one of the ways in which teachers can ‘flip the classroom’ to facilitate independent research, teamwork and critical digital and data analysis skills. - See more at: http://education.okfn.org/the-21st-centurys-raw-material-using-open-data-as-open-educational-resources/#sthash.PGz22Gwx.dpuf

The past few years have seen increasingly rapid development and use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing countries. These resources are believed to be able to widen access, reduce the costs, and improve the quality of education. However, there exist several challenges that hinder the adoption and use of these resources. The majority of challenges mentioned in the literature do not have empirically grounded evidence and they assume Sub-Saharan countries face similar challenges. Nonetheless, despite commonalities that exist amongst these countries, there also exists considerable diversity, and they face different challenges. Accordingly, this study investigated the perceived barriers to the use of OER in 11 HEIs in Tanzania. The empirical data was generated through semi-structured interviews with a random sample of 92 instructors as well as a review of important documents. Findings revealed that lack of access to computers and the Internet, low Internet bandwidth, absence of policies, and lack of skills to create and/or use OER are the main barriers to the use of OER in HEIs in Tanzania. Contrary to findings elsewhere in Africa, the study revealed that lack of trust in others' resources, lack of interest in creating and/or using OER, and lack of time to find suitable materials were not considered to be barriers. These findings provide a new understanding of the barriers to the use of OER in HEIs and should therefore assist those who are involved in OER implementation to find mitigating strategies that will maximize their usage.

MOOCs have been seen as holding promise for advancing Open Education. While the pedagogical design of the first MOOCs grew out of the Open Education Movement, the current trend has MOOCs exhibiting fewer of the original openness goals than anticipated. The aim of this study is to examine the practices and attitudes of MOOC educators at an African university and ask whether and how their practices and attitudes become open after creating and teaching a MOOC. Activity Theory is used to contextually locate the educators’ motivations and to analyse their practices in terms of striving towards an object. With this lens we describe how educators’ openness-related practices and attitudes change over time in two different MOOCs. Two sets of conceptions of open practices are used to detect instances of change, providing four dimensions of changed open educational practices. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and artefacts provide data for this rare study, which considers these issues from the perspective of the Global South. Through studying the educators’ practices in relation to openness, it becomes evident how open practices are emergent and responsive.
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