Open Educational Resources and Open Education

A N I T A D E C I A N N I - B R O W N
E M P I R E S T A T E C O L L E G E
Open Educational &
Open Educational Resources

Open Educational &
 What is Open Education (OE) and Open
Educational Resources (OER)?
 Benefits and Issues/Concerns
 MOOCs and the impact on higher education

What is Open Educational Resources?
 Open provision of educational resources, enabled by information
and communication technologies, for consultation, use and
adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial
purposes.1
 Used by teachers, educational institutions and students;
teachers being more primary users, students being
secondary users.
 Include learning objects such as lecture material, references
and readings, simulations, experiments and demonstrations,
syllabi, curricula and teachers’ guides. (UNESCO, 2002)2
1 Neary, M. and Winn, J. (2012) Open education: Common(s), commonism and the new
common wealth. Ephemera articles, Theory and Politics in Organizations. 12(4). P. 406 – 422.
2 Wiley, David (2007) On Sustainability of Open Educational Resources Initiatives in Higher
Education. www.oecd.org/edu/oer

Benefits of Open Educational Resources
 Universal access to learning and enrich the
learning experience
 Assist with both teaching and learning
 Ease of sharing and distributing materials via
sites such as Creative Commons
 Less expensive resources for students
 Continually improved resources

Khan Academy Creative Commons
Khan Academy is a OER that uses videos,
skill assessment and badging to evaluate
skills and learning. This resources is available
for use through funding of the Gates
Foundation. An excellent example of a
educational tool/resource that can help
student learn and assess their learning.

OER and Copyright
Copyright is not necessarily compatible with the
principles of sharing, creativity and learner
engagement
 Knowledge should be free
 Educators use OER to improve educational systems and
learning opportunities
 The line between content producers and users is becoming
blurred
 Should be amendable to adaption and improvement
Bissell, A. Permission granted: open licensing for educational resources. (2009) Open
Learning. 24(1). P. 97 - 106

Creative Commons
Widely used works that allow sharing of cultural,
educational and scientific content
 Free and easy to use
 Gives flexibility to the creator and protects users
 Options for usage: All rights reserved or Some rights reserved
 Licensing Choices:
 Attribution
 Non-Commercial
 Share Alike
 No Derivative Works
Bissell, A. Permission granted: open licensing for educational resources. (2009) Open
Learning. 24(1). P. 97 - 106

Disadvantages of
 Quality and validity issues
 Technological issues
 Intellectual property/copyright issues
 Sustainability

Blogs
Blogs are self-publishing sites where authors
can choose to write and post about
anything: news, personal opinion, pop
culture, education, politics, etc. Most often,
it is is written as a personal opinion or
perspective on a topic. Information, images
and videos taken from these sites may
violate copyright laws.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is not necessarily considered a
reliable source for citing data; however it
does continue to improve. Students can use
data collected from reliable cited sources
within Wikipedia to research topics and
data through journals and periodicals.

Image by Gavin Blake, based on v:Openness and flexibility
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=555325557833359&set=a.555325261166722.1073741825.152524824780103&type=3&theater

Open Educational Resources Movement
Around the world there are currently over 2,500 open access
courses available (opencoureswares) from over 200 universities:
 United States had 1,700 courses made available by seven
university-based projects
 China had 451 courses made available by 176 university
members of the China Open Resources for Education (CORE)
consortium.
 Japan had 350 courses made available by ten universities
participating in the Japanese OCW Consortium
 France had 178 courses made available by eleven member
universities of the ParisTech OCW project
Wiley, David (2007) On Sustainability of Open Educational Resources Initiatives in
Higher Education. www.oecd.org/edu/oer

Advantages for educational systems in developing countries:
 Help save course content development time and money
 Facilitating sharing of knowledge and academic information
and resources
 Addressing the digital divide by providing capacity-building
resources for educators
 Help preserve and circulate indigenous knowledge
 Has the capacity to improve the quality of education at all levels
 Can be reused, mixed, altered, localized and don’t need
permission to use them.
Olcott, D. Reflection OER perspectives: emerging issues for universities. (2012)
Distance Education 33(2). P. 283-290

Barriers:
 Lack of awareness of what OER really is
 University elitism
 Faculty resistance
 Publishers that lobby against OER because of the impact they
have on their business

Issues facing OER movement:
 Open Education Practices (OEP) a set of activities and support
around the creation, use and repurposing of OER.
 Promoting OER to teachers at all levels.

What is Open Education?
 Open education is the efforts by individuals and
organizations across the world to use the
Internet to share the following inside and outside
formal educational settings:
 Knowledge
 Ideas
 Teaching practices
 Infrastructure
 Tools and resources
Murphy, A. (2013) Open educational practices in higher education: institutional
adoption and challenges. Distance Education. 34(2). P. 201 – 217

Bukola, Ope. Why Open Education Matters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQp33rbg5k

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
 According to Oxford Dictionary, a MOOC is a
course of study made available over the
Internet without charge to a very large number
of people
 MOOCs are appealing to the masses
 Can bring a global perspective
Bonvillian, W., & Singer, S. (2013). The Online Challenge to Higher
Education. Issues in Science and Technology. P. 23 – 30.

Plourde, M.. Mathplourde on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/8620174342/sizes/l/in/photostream/

MOOCs Democratize Higher Education
 Represent the latest steps in distance learning
development
 Through the use of social media and Web 2.0, virtual
classrooms have been opened to the masses
 Have been legitimized by the courses offered at
Stanford, MIT, Yale, Harvard, Duke, and Carnegie
Mellon Universities
 Allow educational access to students from around
the world.
 Courses are not constricted by time, place or cost
Carver, L. & Harrison, L. (2013). MOOCs and Democratic Education. Liberal
Education, p. 20 – 25.

Lewin, T. Welcome to the Brave New World of MOOCs. (2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqQNvmQH_YM

Benefits of MOOCs
 How far reaching can MOOCs be? Stanford
University offered a MOOC on artificial intelligence,
which had 160,000 students from 209 different
countries enrolled.1
 MIT and Harvard developed edX, a MOOC platform
available to 27 universities, including 6 Asian
universities. 2
 Offer educational opportunities to individuals who
may not otherwise be able to participate 2
1 Carver, L. & Harrison, L. (2013). MOOCs and Democratic Education. Liberal
Education, p. 20 – 25.
2 Bonvillian, W., & Singer, S. (2013). The Online Challenge to Higher Education.
Issues in Science and Technology. P. 23 – 30.

Disadvantages of MOOCs
 Under current structure, very difficult to sustain over
time a free education
 Poor participation – a MOOC offered at University of
Pennsylvania had only half the students who
registered for the course view the lecture and only 4
percent completing the course. 1
 Loses the opportunity for meaningful discussion and
grading/feedback so students have an assessment
of their work. 2
1 Data Mining Exploses Embarrassing Problems for Massive Open Online Courses.
MIT Technology Review (2013)
2 Heller, N. (2013) Is College Moving Online? The New Yorker.

Educause. MOOCs and Beyond (2013) http://vimeo.com/70811271

Open Educational Resources and Open Education

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