The document explores the role of open source hardware (OSH) in the open educational resources (OER) ecosystem, highlighting its potential to foster innovation and education through accessible design and community engagement. It discusses student projects that integrate knowledge through OSH principles, revealing personal and educational benefits, as well as challenges faced in the implementation of OSH in educational curricula. Additionally, it addresses issues related to consent, institutional resistance, and the need for broader support and resources to maximize the impact of OSH.

1. Exploring the role of Open
Source Hardware in the OER
Ecosystem
Beverley Gibbs and David Polson
OER19, Galway, April 2019

2. How we came to be here, talking about this
David Polson: Maker, Open Sourcerer
Bev Gibbs: Rusty but Enthusiastic

3. What is Open Source Hardware?
● ”Open source hardware is hardware (machines, devices, or other physical things) whose design is
made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or
hardware based on that design.” [https://www.oshwa.org/definition]
● Freedom to study, make, modify, distribute
● But what is the ‘source’ in open source hardware?
○ Not straightforward: design files (drawings/circuit board layouts), bills of materials,
manufacturing/build instructions, programming code…
○ What is open enough? The design? Or all of the above, editable?
● Embeds a philosophy of rapid global innovation through sharing of designs
● We also see potential as an educational catalyst

4. Open Source
Hardware
Open Source
Software
Open Design
Open Education Resource

5. How does it work in practice?
● Final Year Projects (BEng/MEng/MSc - 300, 400 or 600 hours)
○ Design-and-build projects: students designing, building things, making them work
○ Examples include:
■ Open source coffee machine
■ Hedgehog feeder
■ RepRap
■ Consumables for dialysis machines
■ STEM outreach (Lego)
■ Precious Plastics (small scale recycling)
● Our journey
○ Department funded website
○ Hackaday (competitions, engagement)
○ Students give comments on each other’s early work

6. Examples: MARC the Panda, Self-balancing robot
● Nowhere else in the curriculum would the students be able to integrate their
knowledge in this way
● Real personalisation, at the point when students have a good foundation of
knowledge to do something with

7. Student Perspectives
“I had strangers looking
through my code and making
suggestions… feels a bit like
cheating”
“I found other students
were studying similar
things to me”
“Blogs help me
organise my
thoughts”
“Improved my mental
health - helped deal
with self-doubt”
“I wish I had started
blogging earlier”
“This really gives you a
chance to bring together all
your learning”
“Really nice to see people
taking an interest in my
project”
‘When it started working
I felt….I felt quite proud”

8. ‘It’s a bit of an
ideology..they’re all a
bit cliquey”
“They assume you live in a
scrapyard and have handy
bits of kit just lying around”
“I feel alot better now its
working...it was getting
me down before”
davehakkens.nl

9. What work does OSH do as an OER?
● Self-sufficiency
○ students who are more active and more confident in reaching for expertise
● Outward facing
○ global problems and connections
● Generation Z
○ different motivation and connections, personalisable
● Democratic
○ government money provides shared technology
● Breaking the walls down
○ Crowd-sourced support and encouragement for students
● Integrative, novel projects
○ Keep teaching staff up-to-date and supplied with project ideas

10. Open source hardware (OSH) in the ecosystem
● What does OSH have in common with other OERs?
○ language/articulating problems
○ Consent and ownership - student signs away before they have created (*not always*!)
○ Institutional resistance (health and safety, IP)
○ Finding the right home is critical to responses
■ Running our own website was only marginally successful - poor publicity on our part led to few (no)
comments from the wider maker community. This year I am suggesting students post on Hackaday (or
similar) or device specific sites
● In what sense might OSH be distinctive?
○ Whilst designs are readily available, the other necessary components can be more patchy - a
fuller resource pack is required to put OSH to use
○ Who is responsible for product liability? Is there a duty of care on the part of the designer?
○ OSH requires physical space
○ Cost - each iteration of an open source hardware design requires materials as well as time