The innovation du jour for teaching and learning, OERs are at their core of some of the largest grant-funding sources for new courses and course materials— including the Department of Labor's TAA grant which provides $2billion for community colleges and workforce development. What are OERs? What makes them unique? A phrase that was coined in 2002 at a UNESCO forum, OERs are defined as “educational resources—lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.—that are freely-available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing.” Why should faculty and educational technologists care? This workshop is designed for faculty and educational technologists using existing and developing new OERs, but elements will be useful for administrators who have faculty and staff who are using or developing OERs. Attend this workshop to: understand the OER landscape; learn how to find, critically evaluate and use OERs developed by others; identify and select open educational resources for use in discipline-specific courses; understand Creative Commons licenses; learn what resources exist for developing and/or adopting OERs; and learn about the issues involved in adopting OERs and localizing them. Presented by Brandon Muramatsu and Jean Runyon, at Elearning 2012 preconference workshop on February 18, 2012

1. 1
DEMYSTIFYING OPEN
EDUCATIONAL
RESOURCES
Brandon Muramatsu and Jean Runyon
Citation: Muramatsu, B., & Runyon, J. (2012, February). Demystifying open educational resources. Preconference
workshop at eLearning 2012, Long Beach, CA.
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2. Outline
2
 Howdy y’all
 By the end of the workshop…
 Thinking about OERs differently
 What’s the big deal about OERs?
 The mechanics of OER
 An OER walks into a bar…
 Set them freeee…
 They’re just looking for a good home
 Wrapup
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3. 3 Howdy Y’All
Introductions and Expectations
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4. Expectations
4
 I know nothing, I expect to learn a lot
 Finding current material (MBA in Sustainability)
 Beg, borrow, steal great ideas
 Started exploring, felt like dove into ocean, so much out
there—how to control it, where is the quality
 Developing workshops to help faculty understand some of the
newer things to help engage students
 How to find OERs
 Leverage open resources
 Liberal arts degree—resources to support
 Leverage OERs—try not to recreate the wheel, quality for
accreditation and transferability
 Faculty culture is to buy courses, find more than what she
found on her own
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5. 5 By the end of the workshop…
Outcomes
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6. Workshop Outcomes
6
 Develop a working definition of OERs
 Understand the implications and importance of
OERs
 Take it with you…
How will you adopt, produce, or encourage the
use of OERs?
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7. 7 Thinking about OERs differently
What are OERs?
Interactive Exercise
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8. How do you define
8
“Open Educational Resources”?
 Something puts out in the “open”
 Not contained, not password protected
 Interoperable, use in a number of systems
 Open = “not copyrighted”?
 Creative Commons
 Easy to find, reusable learning objects
 Free or low cost
 Available
 Digital, assumed to be online
 Idea generating
 Modifiable
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9. OER: l’innovation du jour?
9
 What are Open Educational Resources?
 We’re going to talk about OER writ large.
 We’re not going to bore you with definitions!
(Well, we’ll try!)
 We’re not going to get all religious about
OERs!
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10. OER: l’innovation du jour?
10
 We’d like you to think about OER as an
entrée to a conversation
A conversation about teaching, crafting
courses, & sharing course materials
A conversation about collaborating with peers
and even students
This doesn’t sound like it’s specific to OERs
does it?
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11. Poll: Do you (or your faculty)…
11
 Talk about courses with peers?
 Borrow course materials, teaching
techniques, sources?
 Share materials back with your peers?
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12. OER is all of these things!
12
 At it’s heart, OER is about doing these
sorts of things!
 And, it’s about encouraging sharing of
materials and practices…
 And, it’s clearly communicating what
others are allowed to do with the
materials…
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13. Ok, let’s get a bit more formal
13
Photo: Flickr @mringlein, cc-by-nc-nd
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14. OER: A Definition
14
OER are teaching, learning, and research
resources that reside in the public domain or
have been released under an intellectual
property license that permits their free use or
re-purposing by others. Open educational
resources include full courses, course
materials, modules, textbooks, streaming
videos, tests, software, and any other
tools, materials, or techniques used to support
access to knowledge.
Atkins, Daniel E., John Seely Brown, Allen L. Hammond. (2007-02). “A Review of Open Educational Resources
(OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities.” Menlo Park, CA: The William and Flora
Unless otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United Foundation. p. 4.
Hewlett

15. U.S. Department of Education
15
Open Educational Resources (OER) are
an important element of an infrastructure
for learning.
Department of Education. (2010). National Education Technology Plan: Transforming American Education:
Learning Powered by Technology. http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010/open-educational-resources
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16. OERs in the Modern Era
16
“Open Educational
“Open Content” Resources” Open University OpenCourseWare Open Course Library
David Wiley Coined By UNESCO OpenLearn Consortium MITx
1998 2002 2006 2008 2011
2001 2000s 2007 2009
Wikipedia William and Flora Hewlett Cape Town Open High School of Utah
Creative Commons Foundation Declaration American Graduation Initiative
MIT OpenCourseWare Support & $2B in funding
University of the People
Unless otherwise specified, this work WikiEducator. (2012). OER Timeline. http://wikieducator.org/OER_timeline
Source: is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United

17. OERs are a part of Open
17
Education
 OERs focus on resources
 They have been getting a lot of attention at the
federal and state levels
 They are primarily course materials and open
textbooks
 Open Education is the bigger concept
 Sharing, availability and access
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18. 18 What’s the big deal about OERs?
Importance of Open Educational Resources
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19. Importance of OERs
19
 Cost / cost savings
 Flexibility: mix and match, select
pieces, you’re in control
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20. b2s.aacc.edu
Impact of OERs on Bridge to Success

21. 21 The mechanics of OERs
Understanding licenses
Demonstration
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22. Poll: When borrowing
22
resources…
 Do you look at the license or terms of
use?
 Do you provide attribution for those
resources?
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23. What are you allowed to do?
What might you allow others?
23
 Instead of “All Rights Reserved”
 Can someone else use the materials?
 Can someone build upon or modify the
materials?
 Can they use those materials commercially?
 Do they have to share any materials they
develop the same way the materials were
originally shared?
Do these sound familiar?
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24. Creative Commons: Enabling
24
OER
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25. creativecommons.org
Creative Commons Licenses
25
 A “standard” way providing permissions to your work
 The easiest way of communicating your resource is
“open”
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26. Applying a license to this
26
presentation
 Ok, so how do I do it?
 Select a license
 Add Creative Commons logo to the title slide
 Add a license statement to the title slide (and
notes field)
 Add an attribution statement
 Add metadata to Presentation properties
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27. Creative Commons: Pick a
27
License
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28. Creative Commons: Attribution
28
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29. Creative Commons: CC-by License
29
Deed

30. 30 An OER walks into a bar…
Finding and Recognizing OERs
Demonstration / Interactive Exercise
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31. Finding OERs
31
 How do you find out about them?
 Talking to peers in your department?
 Through ITC? Other professional
organizations?
 Looking through digital repositories?
 Google searches?
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32. Recognizing OERs: Examples
32
 Flickr (www.flickr.com)
 MIT OpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu)
 MERLOT (www.merlot.org)
 OER Commons (www.oercommons.org)
 Open Course Library
(www.opencourselibrary.org)
 Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)
 Crowd choice (what will it be?)
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33. Pattern
33
1. Check out the site
2. Search for resources
3. Look at detailed results
4. Review the resource itself
5. Is it an OER?
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34. Have you used Flickr?
34
 Did you know that Flickr allows photo
sharers to indicate a license?
 And that you can search for Creative
Commons licensed photos?
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35. Searching for Openly Licensed
35
Photos at Flickr
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36. Flickr Search Results
36
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37. CC-Licensed Math Photo
37
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38. MIT OpenCourseWare
38
 ocw.mit.edu
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39. MERLOT
39
 www.merlot.org

40. OER Commons
40
 www.oercommons.org
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41. Open Course Library
41
 www.opencourselibrary.org
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42. Wikipedia
42
 www.wikipedia.org
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43. Audience Choice?
43
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44. Examples of OERs
44
 Flickr (www.flickr.com)
 Some CC-licensed, find via Advanced Search
 MIT Open CourseWare (ocw.mit.edu)
 One of the granddaddy’s of OERs, CC-by-nc-sa
 MERLOT (www.merlot.org)
 Wide range of resources, complex licensing
 OER Commons (www.oercommons.org)
 Wide range of resources, nearly all CC-licensed
 Open Course Library (www.opencourselibrary.org)
 Open Textbooks, 42 published, more coming, CC-by
 Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)
 Probably the biggest OER, support for attribution
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45. Discussion Questions
45
 What makes a site an OER?
 Did any of the sites surprise you?
 What features make some sites better than
others?
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46. OER Smörgåsbord
 OER as a conversation:
Sharing, access, materials, practice
 OER as a continuum
Individual Standalone Course Materials Whole Courses
Images Modules Open Textbooks
Flickr Open Course Library
OpenLearn Saylor
B2S Courses
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47. Selected additional resources
 Bridge to Success (shameless plug), b2s.aacc.edu
 CK-12, www.ck12.org
 College Open Textbooks, www.collegeopentextbooks.org
 Community College Consortium for Open Educational
Resources, www.oerconsortium.org
 Flat World Knowledge, www.flatworldknowledge.com
 Kaleidoscope Project, www.project-kaleidoscope.org
 Open High School of Utah, ocw.openhighschool.org
 Open University OpenLearn, www.open.edu/openlearn
 P2PU, www.p2pu.org
 Saylor Foundation, www.saylor.org
 WikiEducator, wikieducator.org
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48. 48 Set them freeee…
Producing OERs
Demonstration
Photo: Patrick McAndrew, cc-by
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49. Let’s make an OER
49
 Apply license, citation, metadata
 Share the presentation via Slideshare
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50. Slideshare.net
50
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51. 51
They’re just looking for a good
home…
Adopting OERs
Interactive Exercise
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52. Your turn to adopt an OER
52
 From a course you teach, or one that you’ve
helped a faculty member with…
 What’s an area for which a learning resource
might help explain something, improve student
understanding, etc.?
 Look for a resource that’s an OER that might
meet your needs.
 Describe the problem and the OER to the
workshop.
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53. 53 Wrap-Up
Revisiting Outcomes
Interactive Exercise
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54. Outline Revisited
54
 By the end of the workshop…
 Thinking about OERs differently
 What’s the big deal about OERs?
 The mechanics of OER
 An OER walks into a bar…
 Set them freeee…
 They’re just looking for a good home
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55. Workshop Outcomes
55
 Develop a working definition of OERs
 Understand the implications and importance of
OERs
 Take it with you… How will you
adopt, produce, or encourage the use of
OERs?
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56. Discussion of OERs
56
 It *is* an ocean!
 Conversations: more than
materials, opportunities for sharing and
learning together
 Parameters under which you have to work, it’s
a system
 This should be part of what we do when we
work with faculty to publish courses
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57. Why are OERs Important?
57
 Because…???
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58. What are some of the
58
challenges?
 Accreditation issues: faculty responsible for
creating materials, and teaching and ensuring
student learning outcomes
 Document success, have metrics
 Make sure we serve our students
 Using modern tools and techniques ->
transform faculty practices? Brown-bag
lunches, faculty development
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59. Contact Us
59
Brandon Muramatsu, MIT Jean Runyon, AACC
 mura@mit.edu  jmrunyon@aacc.ed
 @bmuramatsu u
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