OER and the Open Agenda discusses open educational resources (OER) in the context of higher education in the UK. It notes that OER is part of a wider "open agenda" that also includes open source software, open standards, open access to research outputs, and open data. The document advocates that higher education institutions and academics can benefit from embracing openness and sharing OER to reuse and improve educational resources, while also increasing the visibility of their teaching materials and learning experiences. It summarizes the UKOER pilot program funded by HEFCE to encourage British universities to release OER and explores challenges around promoting the discovery and use of OER.

1. OER and the Open Agenda
Dr Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research research
Supporting education and | Slide 1

2. English higher education sector
 130 institutions (88 universities plus 42 specialist institutions and general
colleges)
 123 directly funded FE colleges providing HE courses
 Total HEFCE funding: £7.6 billion
 1.04 million full time equivalent students*
 International students make up about 15 per cent of the student
population
* Home and EC HEFCE-fundable students
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 2

3. English higher education sector (continued)
 Overseas student fee income: £1.6 billion
 England remains the favourite destination of international students after
the much larger US university system **
 Research productivity: International Benchmarking Study of UK Research
Performance report puts the UK second only to the USA on leading
scientific indicators***
 Open University: 180,000 students (150,000 undergraduate and more
than 30,000 postgraduate)
** Student Pulse: i-graduate, Jan 08
*** Department for Business Innovation and Skills 2009
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 3

4. About JISC
 Standing committee of the UK higher and further education funding councils
 Strategic mission for 2010-2012: “To provide world-class leadership in the
innovative use of ICT to support education, research and institutional
effectiveness”
 JISC provides:
– A world-class network (JANET)
– Access to electronic resources
– Innovation in research, learning and teaching, and HE management
– Guidance on institutional change
– Advisory and consultancy services
– Regional support
www.jisc.ac.uk
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 4

5. Three aspects of OER
 OER is part of a wider “open agenda”
 OER works across educational sectors
 OER is a global movement
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 5

6. “Open” – What? Why?
The internet is changing the nature of information,
processes and institutions
 Higher education is rooted in information
• its creation, analysis, and transmission
• the development of the skills required to utilize it
for the benefit of individuals and society.
"Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education,"
a report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development
http://www.ced.org/images/library/reports/digital_economy/dcc_opennessedu09.pdf
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 6

7. The Openness Agenda
 Open Source – software
 Open Standards – interoperability
 Open Access – research outputs
 Open Data – research data, public data, others
 Open Educational Resources – course material
 Open Science – and open innovation
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 7

8. Academia and Openness
 Collegiality
 Communities of scholars
 Building on the work of others
 Consensus decisions
 Collaboration
 Reputation built by attribution – and more valuable than material reward
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 8

9. The Business of Academia
 Institutional competition (for students, grants, projects…)
 Multiple sources of funding
 The Enterprise Office – knowledge exploitation and transfer
 Employer links and employer “ownership” of information
 Short term staff contracts – need to “build a profile”
All these activities can benefit from openness
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 9

10. The OER use case
 For prospective learners – to get a sense of what studying a particular
course at a particular institution is like
 For formal and informal learners – to get access to a range of material
to complement and inform their studies
 For institutions – to allow the world to see the quality of their learning
resources and the learning experiences they offer
 For academics – to reuse and repurpose material rather than creating
new material, saving time and leading to higher quality material
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 10

11. And for…
 Learners in compulsory schooling
 Learners in adult education
 Learners in industry
 Informal Learners
 ...
 All can benefit from the “taste of HE” that OER in HE can offer.
 And other sectors release OER!
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 11

12. The UKOER pilot programme
• HEFCE funded one year programme – run by JISC
with the Higher Education Academy.
subject institution individual
Programme Management
14 projects 7 projects 8 projects
support function – covering technical, legal, strategic
advice, workshops, support for deposit and aggregation
of materials, communities of practice. Based around
existing JISC services and the OU “SCORE” project.
OER infokit – a “how to” guide for future work

13. Unique aspects of UKOER
 A collection of small pilot studies
 Low level of funding
 Embraces plurality of release models
 Focus on building sustainable practice
 Low (technical) barriers to participation
 Projects promoting themselves to their key audience
 Rather release than not release, even if only a more
restrictive license is possible
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 13

14. UKOER: new challenges
 Need to focus on the discovery and use of OER
 Is there a benefit to the learning processes from OER?
 Can we use OER availability to support the needs of the sector?
 How can we learn from the experiences of the pilot (and other projects)?
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 14

15. UKOER: new funding
 £4m from HEFCE over one further year
 Will incorporate:
– Cascade model of project support
– New release projects around sector priorities
– Aggregation of OER around thematic areas
– Examination of the effects of OER on pedagogy
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 15

16. Discoverability
 A Library Way – a directory/database which uses a common
hierarchical set of vocabularies.
Great when…
you know exactly what you are looking for
Great when…
your conception of what something should be categorised under
matches that of the person who filed it
 A Web Way – powerful (and unrestricted) free text search.
Great when…
you are looking for information rather than a particular item
Great when…
you are capable of validating the quality and utility of material for
yourself
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 16

17. Another way?
 Minimal metadata (tagging)
 Multiple places to deposit material
 Multiple methods of finding material (including common search engines)
 Recommendations (from peers? from experts?)
 Aggregations and collections of material around particular themes
 OER as one component of what is available (alongside research outputs,
news stories, websites, people…)
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 17

18. A wider context
 OER should be seen as one part of a "layer" of open academic and
scholarly content, alongside:
– research outputs (journal articles, monographs etc)
– research data
– on-line text books
 and organised as an international resource to benefit society, education,
research and culture
 Resources will be world wide or regional/local depending on language
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 18

19. OER worldwide
 Thousands of institutions worldwide are involved in the creation or reuse
of OER
 Millions of people
 Millions of potential use cases
How can the world’s open educational resources best be exploited for the
good of mankind and society?
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 19

20. Conclusions
 OER should be seen as a part of a wider movement making information
and tools widely available for the greater good.
 There is unlikely to be one way of organising or discovering OER – we
need to consider multiple structures and working with users.
 The “user” experience of OER is under-researched – some work is
ongoing (eg. OlNet) but there is a need for much more.
 And we need to identify and replicate low-cost, sustainable models of
release.
Joint Information Systems Committee 19/05/2010 | Supporting education and research | Slide 20