Open Educational Resources: What Happens When Knowledge is Free?

What Happens When Knowledge is Free?
Open Educational Resources in a Changing World
Implications of OER
in Post-Secondary Education
Corey J. KnoxUniversity of Arizonacknox@email.arizona.edu
By PresenterMedia.com

What is OER?
(Open Educational Resources)
Also Referred to as:
Open source educational content
Open content
Open educational content
Open courseware
Open teaching

What is OER?
1) Digital Objects/Resources
2) A Philosophy/Movement

1) Digital Objects/Resources
What is OER?
Digitized information and educational resources that are made available at no cost for use and revision by students, educators, self-learners and others for teaching, learning and research.

What is OER?
2) A Philosophy/Movement
A “new educational perspective”. (The New Horizons Report, 2010)
“Knowledge as a collective social product” (Prasad & Ambedkar)

Who is currently using OER?
Life-long learners.
Students
Educators & Educational Institutions.

NGO’s Teachers Without Boarders
Government’s and Economic Institutions & Organizations (UNESCO, World Bank)
For Profit Businesses

Opencourseware Consortium: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
(Open Source Resources, Repositories & Consortia)

Academic Earth: http://www.academicearth.org/

Who is currently using OERs
Open Education Resources: http://www.oercommons.org/

The Open University: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

Who is currently using OERs?
MIT OpenCourseWare: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

The Innovators: The next level of OER, schools and programs, organizing around OER as a philosophy

Selected Statistics (Open Source Resources)
3,000 open courseware courses available from over 300 universities worldwide. (2007, OECD)
OER Commons: 70 institutional partner collections 20,000 resources (2009)
Connexions: 16,471 reusable modules in 1005 collections.

MIT Open Courseware Users: 9% educators, 42% students enrolled at other institutions, 43% percent are independent learners
The Open University: 16 million downloads, 89% of those downloads outside the U.K.
Who is currently using it?
Selected Statistics (Continued)

Benefits of OER
Collaboration and innovation in learning materials and teaching methods
Increased engagement by teachers
More learners control and flexibility
More teacher control and flexibility in teaching
Decreases costs of educational materials
Access to up to date and cutting-edge information in learning materials
Accessible and affordable education to more students

Challenges to Widespread OER Implementation
Technical
Economic
Social/Cultural
Legal
Quality Control/Organization

Technical
Interoperability between formats, software, platforms
Broadband Access (international)

Economic
Resources to support development of material. (Yale has spent $30,000 to $40,000 for each online course)
Sustainability of repositories of resources
Costs for broadband, software, hardware.
Competition between education institutions (public and private)
Licensing Issues/Copyright
Loss of business, revenue to some sectors of publishing industry

Social/Cultural
Resistance to technology in learning contexts
Unwillingness to share or use resources produced by someone else (Individual)
Institutional induced barriers related to providing “free” content.
“Knowledge Colonization”

Legal
Prohibited use of copyrighted materials without consent/alternate forms of legal permission types

Quality Control/Organization
Need for centralized/sustainable repositories
Effective search and discovery tools
Quality Management of resources
Ways to award “credit” for engaging with and completing open courseware
Accreditation for open courseware and free educational programs
Methods for connecting
Human support availability in open courseware

The Future of OER
Forces Propelling OER
1) Cost of Secondary Education

The Future of OER
Forces Propelling OER
Worldwide Poverty/Lack of Education
Increasing demand for technological and scientific expertise
Globalization/Interconnectedness
Availability of Technology that allows for collaboration and communication
Financial strains of educational institutions

The Future of OER
Changes in Institutional (Colleges and Universities) Roles and Structures

Coursework structure
“Unbundling” of traditional University roles
Development of alternate signals of competence

The Future of OER

Coursework structure

The Future of OER

2) “Unbundling” of traditional University roles

The Future of OER

3) Development of alternate signals of competence

The Future of OER
Widespread Free & Lower Cost Education
Widespread free education to developing world:
From the Capetown Declaration ()
“We are on the cusp of a global

Cape Town Declaration, 2004
“We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.”

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