What are OER? What is possible with OER, that’s different from fully copyrighted materials? Where can you find OER and how do you assess quality? How do you release your own teaching materials as OER? (Looking at Creative Commons licensing)

1. Open Educational
Resources (OER)
LEVERAGING EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGE
Technology for
Teaching and
Learning Summit
3-4 October 2019

2. A few questions …
 You find a useful resource on the web with no copyright or other
licencing markings displayed …
 Can you re-use the resource? (YES/NO)
 NO – legally you are required to treat it as copyrighted
 How many of you know WHAT OER are?
 Who has USED OER before?
 Who has CREATED their own OER?
 Who has LICENCED and PUBLISHED their own OER?

3. What are Open Educational Resources?
“… teaching, learning or research materials
that are in the public domain
or released with intellectual property licenses
that facilitate the free use, adaptation
and distribution of resources.”
(UNESCO, 2019)

4. OER include:
full courses,
course
materials,
modules,
textbooks,
streaming
videos, tests,
software,
and any other
tools, materials,
or techniques
used to support
access to
knowledge.

5. OER in Africa trailer (OER Africa, 2013)(video 1m 46s)

6. OER in Africa (OER Africa, 2013)(video 11m 44s)

7. Example: A Resource …
Citation: Tony Mays 2011
 What is the name of the bird in the
foreground of the picture?
 Can you name 3 other varieties of this
kind of bird?
Question: Can you re-use this resource?
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Citation: Tony Mays 2011
Example: An Educational Resource …Example: An Open Educational Resource (OER)

8. An adapted & remixed OER
The yellow hornbill shown left is one of
four varieties of hornbills common across
sub-Saharan Africa. The other varieties are
the grey- and red- hornbills and the much
larger ground hornbill.
As the name suggests, the large horny bill
is the key characteristic of the species.
What does this suggest about their typical
diet?
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Citation: John Doe 2012, Photo: Tony Mays 2011

9. OER has the Potential to …
 Increase availability of high quality, relevant and need-targeted
learning materials
 Reduce the cost of accessing educational materials
 Allow adaptation of materials and possibly contribute to enabling
learners to be active participants in educational processes
 Support collaborative partnership of people working in
communities of practice, across & within institutions
 Build capacity in African higher education institutions by providing
educators with access, at low or no cost, to the tools and content
required to produce high quality educational materials.

10. Traditional © designed for old
distribution models
The problem for education:
Previously, copyright was binary: All rights retained or public domain
Now alternative licensing options such as Creative Commons provide a range
of options where:
Public
Domain
Copyright©
Public
Domain
Some rights are reserved
Copyright©
Alternative licensing
Adapted from Glenda Cox (2017)

11. Some rights reserved but sharing made easy and legal
Creators have a choice of conditions:

12. Attribution
Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike
Attribution - NonCommercial
Attribution - NoDerivs
Attribution - ShareAlike
*CC0 (public domain dedication)
Creative Commons Licences

13. Summary – Open Licences

14. Best Practices for Attribution:
✓ Title
✓ Author
✓ Source – Link to work
✓ License – Name + Link
House of Knowledge Variation1
by Adrien Sifre CC BY-NC-ND
Adapted from Glenda Cox (2017)
Using an OER:
Licensing my own OER:
Licensing your work is easy - no
registration is required.
You simply add a notice stating the
licence under which your work may
be reused: ( e.g. CC BY etc.)
Here’s how you do that →
Demonstration

15. Demonstration
http://www.google.com/advanced_search
usage rights:
not filtered by licence
free to use or share
free to use or share, even commercially
free to use, share or modify
free to use, share or modify, even commercially
How to find OER via
search engines

16. OER Repositories & Open Platforms
 Creative Commons Search
 OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Repositories)
 DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
 OER Africa
 Open UCT
Caution! You can only use Resources from these platforms if they show CC Licences
► YouTube (videos)
► SlideShare (presentations)
► Flickr (images)

17. www.khanacademy.org
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/
http://open.bccampus.ca/
https://phet.colorado.edu/ http://bestanimations.com/
http://cnx.org/
www.curriki.org/ https://pixabay.com/
https://www.oercommons.org/

18. What makes
a good OER?
Adapted from:
Open University UK,
Open Learn Creating OER
OER
Findable
Clearly
Described
Clearly
Licenced
Trusted
Source
Easily
modified
Free-
standing
Copyright-
free
Recommended
Imperfect?
No problem!

19. Quality? How to evaluate an OER
Criteria
Do they
meet the
criteria?
(YES, NO,
Partially)
Issues for adapting
Appropriate
content
How closely does the content match:
● your course objectives / activity learning outcomes
● the needs of your students * less close match = more adaptation
Local context ● What changes (if any) will be needed in order to reflect local concepts, terminology and
ways of doing things?
● Are there any topics that need to be included?
Up-to-date How up-to-date are the materials you want to adapt?
How long will it be before your materials needs updating?
Accurate and
authoritative
Too many inaccuracies means more adaptation.
Does the OER match subject matter expertise at the right level in your discipline?
Prior knowledge
or skills
If the prior knowledge assumed is more than your learners will have, then you may need to
produce a pre-course supplement to bring your learners up to the starting point of the course.
Appropriate
Language Level
For example, is the vocabulary appropriate and are the sentences not too long or complex? If you
will need to translate the text, will this present any special problems?
Learning Activity If the activities are few or of poor quality, you will have to create new ones.

20. Thank You
for your time and attention.
QUESTIONS?
BRENDA MALLINSON
brenda.mallinson@gmail.com
SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/brenda6
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License