1. Open Educational Resources: The Way to Go, or
“Mission Impossible” in (German) Higher Education?
Patricia Arnold
Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany
CIRN 2012 Community Informatics Conference: 'Ideals meet
Reality', Monash Centre, Prato Italy 7-9 Nov. 2012

2. Open Education in Germany – some stories to start…
“Even in Germany the
Opening e-portfolio view to
question is ‘which MOOC
the public contradicts
to take?’ instead of ‘how to
university‘s IT policy…
take a MOOC?” (Franz
2012, transl. PA )
„Open Education - Billions
in the US, questions in
Germany” (Dobusch 2012)
“The Edupunks are coming!
” (ZEIT 14.06.2012, transl.
PA )
2012: - one decade of „Open Educational Resources
- Paris OER Declaration (UNESCO 2012 )
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CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu

3. Agenda
1. Some Preliminary Remarks
2. Open Educational Resources – Concept and Recent
Developments
3. Examples – Internationally and in German-speaking Higher
Education
4. Backstage – Drivers and Impediments
5. Conclusions
Questions? – Discussion!
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4. What are Open Educational Resources? I
 No agreed upon definition, coined by UNESCO 2002
 “the 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” (UNESCO 2002, 26)).
 “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and
self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research” (Hylen
2006, 1)
 No or low barriers in terms of costs, technologies or copyrights
 „open“ refers to 4 Rs: reuse, revise, remix, redistribute
 apply alternative licensing such as e.g. Creative Commons Licences)
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5. Whar are Open Educational Resources? II
Source: OECD 2007
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6. What are Open Educational Resources? III
Source:
SURF
2012, 4
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7. Example MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
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8. Example OpenLearn OU
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
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9. Example OER Commons
 Connected to renaissance of the „Commons“
http://www.oercommons.org/
Institute for the Study of Knowledge
Management in Education (ISKME), William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation
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10. Example OpenCoursewareConsortium
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
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11. Example Open Textbook on Learning and Teaching with
Technologies (L3T)
http://l3t.eu
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12. Recent Development: Open Educational Practices
 OPAL-Study 2011: “Beyond OER: Shifting Focus from Resources to
Practices”
 “practices which support the production, use and reuse of high quality Open
Educational Resources (OER) through institutional policies, which promote
innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-
producers on their lifelong learning path” (OPAL 2011, 12).
 Including innovative educational designs, e.g. Massive Open Online
Courses MOOC (learner centered, peer learning, collaborative learning)
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13. Example Peer-to-Peer-University (P2PU)
https://p2pu.org/en/
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CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu

14. Example Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
http://opco12.de
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CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu

15. „X-MOOCs“: Public Ivy League?
source
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15

16. Slow Uptake in German–speaking Higher Education
Proxy indicators
 no national OER strategy, OER research program or OCW initiavive
 1 Austrian University in OCW Consortium
 <5% German-speaking universities in iTunesU
 Few examples in international reports
 Two empirical studies Braun 2008, Deimann & Bastiaens 2010
-> slow uptake
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CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu

17. OER: Backstage – Drivers & Impediments
Drivers Impediments
 Conviction knowledge as a public
good  Complex process of negotiation
between stakeholders
 Better leveraging of public funding
 Lacking sustainable business
 Reach new target groups models
 Reducing costs of content creation  Difficult to reach critical mass
 Internal quality assurance  Lacking support & training for staff
 Experimenting with educational
innovative  Lack of institutional support
 Lack of skills & tools
 Include international perspective
 Lack of trust & time
 Gain access to high-quality
materials  Lack of quality & matching
 Broaden education, autonomous  Matching opportunities
learning, informed choice  Lacking accreditation
UNESCO 2009, OLCOS(Geser) 2007, SIG OER 2012, OECD (Hylen) Slide 17
CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu
2006, OPAL 2011

18. OER: Backstage – Special Barriers in Germany?
Braun 2008 / Deimann & Bastiaens 2010
 Deeply uprooted practice not to employ teaching material other than that
is self-produced (not-invented here)
 Lacking materials that match cultural context and competence level
 Language barrier
 Too few good practice examples
 Legal issues: little knowledge of alternative licensing
 Technical issues: few easy to use repositories and sharing tools
 Federalist educational system -> even more difficult to devise a national
strategy
 Less competiveness between universities
UNESCO 2009, OLCOS(Geser) 2007, SIG OER 2012, OECD (Hylen) Slide 18
CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu
2006, OPAL 2011

19. Conclusions – how to push uptake forward?
 Top-down elements: national and organizational strategies, incentive
systems
 Bottom-up approaches: more good practice examples
 Promote alternative licensing, e.g. Creative Commons
 Further research questions: how to design incentive systems?, how to build
communities around OER-repositories?, actual student use of OER in
German speaking higher education?
 Didderen & Verjans (2012, 15) “The key question here is whether our
higher education institutions and individual instructors can afford to
adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude in the light of these [OER and OEP]
movements. Asking that question in fact amounts to answering it!
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20. Thank you …
Partially funded by
…..for your attention!
Questions? Discussion!
Contact:
Patricia Arnold
Professor of Socio-Informatics
Munich University of Applied Sciences
arnold@hm.edu
patriciaarnold.wikispaces.com
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CIRN 2012, Patricia Arnold, arnold@hm.edu

21. Bezug zur Tagung und Aktualität des Themas II
 „Die Edupunks kommen!“ , ZEIT-Interview mit Ayad al Ani, europe
wirtschaftshochscule Berlin, 14.06.2012, 69):
neue Formen des selbst bestimmten, vernetzten Studierens mit OER
Materilalien wie MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses), iTunes U
 -> Edupunk‘s guide to a D.I.Y credential“ (http://edupunksguide.org /)
 Ende 2011 MOOC mit Stanford Professor Thrun zu Künstlicher Intelligenz
mit mehr als 160 000 Studierenden, zurzeit läuft deutschsprachiger MOOC
zu „Trends im E-Teaching“ http://opco12.de/ mit mehr als 1000 TN
 UNESCO 2012 World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress startet
am 20.06.2012 in Paris
 Der Begriff “Open Educational Resources” feiert in diesem Jahr 10jährigen
Geburtstag
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22. Was sind Creative Commons Lizenzen?
 sechs verschiedenen CC-Lizenzen (deutscher Rechtsraum, Version
3.0)
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23. Was sind Open Educational Resources? II
Quelle: e-teaching.org, in Anlehnung an OECD 2007, 31
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