This document discusses open educational resources (OER) including definitions, arguments for OER, categories of OER providers, and challenges. It defines OER as educational materials that are freely available online for anyone to use and that can be adapted. Benefits include broader dissemination of knowledge and faster innovation. Institutions are motivated by leveraging taxpayer money and competition, while individuals are motivated by access to resources and altruism. Challenges include lack of awareness of copyright, ensuring quality, and developing sustainable business models for OER initiatives.

1. Open Educational Resources:
Opportunities and Challenges
Dr. Jan Hylén
OECD/CERI
Paris, France
www.oecd.org/edu/ceri

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OER Project
 Why this is happening?
 Who is involved?
 What are the policy implications?

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The OECD/CERI study on OER
 How to develop sustainable costs/benefits models for
OER initiatives?
 What are the intellectual property right issues linked to
OER initiatives?
 What are the incentives and barriers for universities and
faculty staff to deliver their material to OER initiatives?
 How to improve access and usefulness for the users of
OER initiatives?

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http://www.oecd.org/edu/oer

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 OER Definition
 OER Elements
 OER Arguments
What is OER?
A Conceptual Discussion

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What is OER?
OER Definition
UNESCO Conference (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.”
The Currently Most Used Definition
“OER are digitized materials offered freely and
openly for educators, students and self-learners to
use and re-use for teaching, learning and
research.”

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What is OER?
OER Elements
 Learning Content
 Software Tools
 Implementation Resources

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What is OER?
OER Arguments
 OPEN - Freedom to use, contribute and share. Freedom
from technical, price, or legal barriers for the end-user.
“while “open” may on the one hand may mean “without cost”,
it does not follow that it also means “without conditions”.
 EDUCATIONAL – Includes only materials actually used
for teaching and learning should be considered. (OLCOS,
2006)
 RESOURCES - OER are digital resources

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 OER Is A Worldwide Movement
 Categories of OER Providers
 Findings of OECD Survey
 Barriers To Produce OER
Mapping OER
Who Is The User & The Producer?

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Mapping OER
OER Is A Worldwide Movement (1)
 Over 150 Chinese universities with over 450 courses online
 11 French universities (ParisTech OCW project), offer 150
courses
 9 Japanese universities in the Japanese OCW Alliance offer
over 250 courses
 7 American universities with OER projects (MIT,Rice, John
Hopkins, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, Utah State University)
 More OER projects at universities in Australia, Brazil, Canada,
Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia,
South Africa, Spain, Thailand, the UK, the US, and Vietnam.

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 OER Translation Projects: Universia’s Spanish and Portuguese
translations and China Open Resource for Education’s simplified Chinese
translations.
 OER non-course Projects: Rice’s Connexions project offers over 2800
resources, MERLOT offers 15000 resources, European based ARIADNE.
 Textbook Revolution contains links to hundreds of freely available,
copyright-clean textbooks.
 Freely accessible encyclopedias like Wikipedia and Math World grow in
size and quality.
 More resources available by way of search engines like Google or
Yahoo.
Mapping OER
OER Is A Worldwide Movement (2)

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 Upper Left Corner - Large Scale Institution-Based Operation
e.g. MIT OCW project is large scale in the number of resources
provided
and the number of people involved.
 Upper Right Corner – Large Scale Community-Based
Operation
e.g. Connexions uses a mix of resources both from their own staff and
from external people contributing materials.
 Bottom Left Corner - Small Scale Institution-Based Initiative
e.g. University of Western Cape, South Africa announced in October
2005 that they would launch a “free content and free open
courseware strategy”.
 Bottom Right Corner - Large Scale Community-Based Initiative
e.g. Open Course is a “collaboration of teachers, researchers and
students with the common purpose of developing open, reusable
Mapping OER
Categories of OER Providers

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Mapping OER
Findings of OECD Survey
For Individuals (Teachers & Researchers)
 The majority of the respondents said they were deeply involved in OER
activities, mostly as users of open content and only slightly less as
producers.
 According to MIT, users of OCW are typically: (Nov. 2003 – Oct. 2004)
-Well educated self-learners with bachelor’s or master’s degree (MIT
48%)
-Students (31%), and Educators (15%)
-From North America (36%) and were non-US visitors (36%)
 According to Tufts, users of OCW are typically: (Tufts 2006)
-Self Learners with bachelor’s or master’s degree (over 50%)
-Students or Faculty Members (43%)

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 Lack of Time
 Lack of Skills – Technical know-how among faculty
 Lack of interest for pedagogical innovation
 The absence of a reward system
 Lack of a business model for open content
 Lack of access to computers
 Lack of Software
Mapping OER
Barriers To Produce OER

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 Fundamental Questions
 Arguments For Open Sharing of OER
 Motives For Institutions
 Motives For Individuals
Why Are Individuals & Institutions
Engaged In OER?

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 Why should anyone give away anything for free?
 What are the possible gains in doing that?
 Are there negative effects that might appear if
software developers, scientists and educationalists
do not share their work openly?
Why Engaged In OER?
Fundamental Questions

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IF NO:
 Traditional academic values will be increasingly
marginalized by market forces
 The risk of a software monopoly
 The risk of ownership monopoly
 Increased costs
 Increased social inequality
 Slower technical and scientific development
Why Engaged In OER?
Arguments For Open Sharing of OER (1)

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IF YES:
 Broader and faster dissemination of research results and
educational materials
 More people are involved in problem solving
 Rapid quality improvement and faster technical and
scientific development
 Societal development and diminished social inequality
Why Engaged In OER?
Arguments For Open Sharing of OER (2)

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 Altruistic reason
 Leverage on taxpayers’ money by allowing free
sharing and reuse of resources between institutions
 “What you give, you receive back improved” – cuts
costs and improves quality
 Good public relations and show-window attracting
new students
 Growing competition – new business models & new
ways of making revenue are needed
Why Engaged In OER?
Motives For Institutions

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 Gaining access to the best possible resources
 Having more flexible materials
 Promote scientific research and education as publicly open
activities
 Altruistic reasons – assisting developing countries and bringing
down costs for students – less important
 To personally be financially awarded – the least important
Why Engaged In OER?
Motives For Individuals

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Challenges To The
Growing OER Movement
 Lack of Awareness of Copyright Issues
 Quality Assurance
 Sustainability of OER Initiatives

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Challenges To OER Movement
Intellectual Property Rights (1(
Challenge
Lack of knowledge and awareness among researchers and
faculty of copyright issues. They hesitate to share their
work for fear of losing their right to their work.
Solution
A need to use open licenses such as Creative Commons

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Open Content Licenses:
Advantages
 Provides a way of controlled sharing with some rights reserved to the
author.
 Reduce the administrative burden of having to clear rights before use.
 Establish a body of works licensed as “open content” that may be
freely shared.
Disadvantages
 Rights holders must be prepared to exercise control over their work
 Moral rights are waived under open licenses
 Overlapping boundaries between not-for-profit, educational and
commercial distribution.
Challenges To OER Movement
Intellectual Property Rights (2(

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Challenge
How teachers, students and self-learners can find the
resources that are most relevant and of best quality?
Solution
Quality Management Approaches
 Internal Quality Procedures – before releasing the
courses.
 Peer Review Process – review resources by peers
 User Comments and Ratings
 Number of downloads for each resource
Challenges To OER Movement
Quality Assurance

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Challenge
Once the start up funding ceases, it becomes urgent to
find alternative ways for covering the costs of the
operations.
Solution
No Single Sustainability Model Will Fit All
- Institutional-Based OER Initiatives
- Community-Based OER Initiatives
- New Cost Recovery Models
Challenges To OER Movement
Sustainability (1(

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Institutional-Based OER Initiatives (e.g. MIT OCW Project)
The growing competition among them creates a need to develop a strong
band, user communities, increased site usability and improved quality
of the resources offered -“Community Marketing”. Institutional
Model production, use and distribution is centralized.
Community-Based Initiatives (e.g. Connexions & MERLOT
Projects)
This is more of a grass roots activity where individuals contribute with
their time, knowledge and resources on a voluntary basis. Community
Model production, use and distribution is decentralized. Since it is
build on voluntary work, sustainability is not so much a matter of
financial resources as of dismantling barriers that hinders the
community to flourish and grow.
Challenges To OER Movement
Sustainability (2(

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Sustainable Costs/Benefits Models
 Replacement Model (e.g., Blackboard)
 Foundation, Donation or Endowment Model/Government
 Support Model
 Segmentation Model
 Conversion Model
 Voluntary Support Model/Membership Model
 Contributor-Pay Model
Challenges To OER Movement
Sustainability (3(

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Thank You
Mai M. Aly
OER