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![Many
Few
Self
Social
OER
OEP
• Appraises the effects of using OER
on students’ learning experience
and own practice
Step 3: Reflection
Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by
Underpinning
Step 1: Understanding
Piecemeal
Step 2: Need
Strategic
“I now always go for images
that have CC licence. I never
know when I might want to
upload [my resource]
somewhere and share it”
“We’ll wait and see how
the new module goes on
a course.”
Benefit: Terms of use
• Shares own resources openly](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/jiscoerprogrammefinalmeeting-160505105127/85/The-Impact-of-UKOER-programme-14-320.jpg)
![Many
Few
Self OER
OEP
• OER is embedded into teachers’ every-
day practice
• Advocates and encourages others to
use OER
• [Modifies and shares back]
Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by
Embedded
Step 3: Reflection
Underpinning
Step 1: Understanding
Piecemeal
Step 2: Need
Strategic
“The more confident you
feel with it, the more you
use it .”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/jiscoerprogrammefinalmeeting-160505105127/85/The-Impact-of-UKOER-programme-15-320.jpg)
Uploaded byJoanna Wild
The Impact of UKOER programme
The UKOER programme impacted educators' practices regarding the reuse of open educational resources (OER) by highlighting the journey from novice to expert users. The findings reveal an increase in OER engagement among educators, although barriers such as discoverability and misconceptions about copyright remain significant challenges. Recommendations for promoting OER included enhanced support from libraries and learning technologies to integrate OER effectively into teaching strategies.
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The Impact of UKOER programme
- 1. The Impact ofUKOER Programme UKOER Final Programme meeting London, 13 November 2012 Joanna Wild, University of Oxford Allison Littlejohn, Caledonian Academy OER Impact Model, McGill et al 2011
- 2. The Impact ofUKOER Programme: Investigating educators’ reuse practice Joanna Wild & Liz Masterman Academic IT Services University of Oxford OER Impact study team members: Marion Manton & David White TALL, University of Oxford
- 3. Mostly qualitative: evidenceof changes in practice • - funded OER Impact Study – Understanding how, when and why reuse happens (or not) – Perceived benefits – Enabling factors (inc. Early initiatives to ‘raise OER engagement’ ) • - funded OER Engagement Study – Ways to ‘raise lecturers’ engagement’ with OER reuse – Progression from ‘novice’ to ‘expert’ OER user • - funded World War I Centenary Project (in progress) – Usefulness and relevance of a collection of OER to academics in Oxford – Relationship between OER and other materials on the Web 3 Our research into reuse
- 4. • From ‘novice’to ‘expert’ OER user – Changes in behaviours and awareness – Enabling factors – Where are educators now? • ‘OER Impact Study’ – ‘Now’ – Reflection on change and continuation
- 5. From novice toexpert OER user
- 8. The OER EngagementLadder
- 9. Many Self OER •Shares and reuses ER locally or within existing communities of practice • Uses digital resources found on the web to enhance teaching and learning • Directs students to online resources as supplementary material Underpinning Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by • Little (or no) awareness of copyright and licensing operating under ‘fair use’ + misconceptions
- 10. Many Self Social OER OEP • Awarenessof the concept of OER & open licences Step 1: Understanding Underpinning “I knew about the CC licence but I kind of put it at the back of my mind… I thought it wasn’t that important” Enabling • Emerging distinction between OER and ‘stuff on the Web’ Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by • Reassurance that using OER is acceptable, and even, good practice “One of my concerns about OER in general is the thought that people might see it lazy or poor practice. So it was very useful to go to this session and to received information that it’s not poor practice”
- 11. Many Few Self Social OER OEP • Searches forOER to fill gaps/supplement learning • Reuses OER produced or recommended locally Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Piecemeal Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by “E-resources team is really good, very proactive with sending stuff and circulating resources”
- 12. Few Self OER • Isinvolved in designing a online course Step 2: Need Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Piecemeal “It all seemed a bit of a blind panic at the beginning: ‘how I am going to write all of this?’ So when they introduced us to OER, then I thought: ‘oh that's great!’” Perceived benefit: productivity
- 13. Piecemeal Many Few Self Social OER OEP • Reuses OERproduced externally • Integrates OER into core teaching • Tweaks OER • Attributes the creator Logistical barriers remain: • Discoverability • Quantity and quality of OER + Types of licences Strategic Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Step 2: Need Piecemeal Enabling factors: • Support in searching, selecting and correct attribution • Technical solutions for clustering and sharing OER found elsewhere (logistical) “If you involve the library, you’re likely to get a list of 6 or 8 resources which you might look at and decide that may be 3 or 4 are suitable”
- 14. Many Few Self Social OER OEP • Appraises theeffects of using OER on students’ learning experience and own practice Step 3: Reflection Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Piecemeal Step 2: Need Strategic “I now always go for images that have CC licence. I never know when I might want to upload [my resource] somewhere and share it” “We’ll wait and see how the new module goes on a course.” Benefit: Terms of use • Shares own resources openly
- 15. Many Few Self OER OEP • OERis embedded into teachers’ every- day practice • Advocates and encourages others to use OER • [Modifies and shares back] Original image geezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by Embedded Step 3: Reflection Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Piecemeal Step 2: Need Strategic “The more confident you feel with it, the more you use it .”
- 16. Few Self OER OEP Original imagegeezaweezer cc by; adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by Step 3: Reflection Underpinning Step 1: Understanding Piecemeal Step 2: Need Embedded Strategic
- 17. ‘OER Impact Study’– ‘Now’
- 18. Glass half-full JISC projects->OER users Promoting OER: OER-focused Logistical barriers: educator’s problem “Emergent strategic thinking” JISC projects -> OER promoters -> OER users ‘Natural’ embedding support from librarians, learning tech, etc. First examples of making OER reuse integral to existing T&L strategies Impact study
- 19. OER use ison the increase… … but much of this reuse still happens as a result of promotional activities which may be a by-product of initiatives to create OER →Threat: loosing the momentum Glass half-empty • Motivations of producers and educators are often at odds • Producers focus on OER + Quantitative metrics
- 20.
- 21. • A----------- -----------B •Little evidence of change in teaching practice as result of engaging with OER Glass half-empty
- 22. Need for disambiguation •Reuse: from the perspective of a resource or an educator? • O in OER (O = open) (OER = CC) • E in OER (CC licensed images = OER) • What types of OER are we talking about? • Adaption (Produces vs. Educators) Glass half-empty
- 23. (UNESCO 2012) Perhaps themajor impact to date is raising awareness of what is available on the Web and how to use it legitimately
- 24. • Original drawings:Fridolin Wild, cc by: slidesha.re/UecTWE • OER Impact model: McGill, L., Falconer, I., Beetham, H. and Littlejohn, A. JISC/HE Academy OER Programme: Phase 2 Synthesis and Evaluation Report. JISC, 2011 https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/46324015/UKOER%20Phase%202 %20final%20report • Liz Masterman & Joanna Wild: OER Impact Study: Research Report: http://bit.ly/Lajesu • David White & Marion Manton: Open Educational Resources: The Value of Reuse in Higher Education: http://bit.ly/TJThaX • Joanna Wild: The OER Engagement Study: http://bit.ly/UEcbPi • Joanna Wild & Liz Masterman: WW1 Centenary Continuation & Beginnings. Evaluation report, to be published References & Acknowledgements
Editor's Notes
- #3 I’ll focus on the left side of the diagramme – educator and to a lesser extent on OER Although it’s me talking today, the considerations and reflections on the OER impact
- #4 Mostly qualitative becasue we were looking for evidence of differences in what they do and in how they think about what they do. OER Impact Study - > OER engagement study In OER impact we identified grass roots initiatives aiming at raising lecturers’ engagement of OER, including OER specific workshops, attempts to bring OER into PG cert. What are they? Whom do they address? What motivates them? what are they trying to achieve? -> need to understand how OER promoters/teachers understand engagement with OER – what are the signs of engagement WW1: Relationship between OER and other OER impact – it also became evident the benefits and attitudinal and pedagogic factors uncovered in the study were rarely OER specific but could be applied to any online resources i.e. in was evident from examples given by teachers that often they were mixing both and talking positivey in general about online and digital resources
- #7 To bring to attention the legacy of OER impact study – method
- #10 The main outcome of the study – the OER Engagement Ladder (DESCRIPTIVE NOT PRESCRIPTIVE) It models progression stages in lecturers’ engagement with OER reuse). The four stages: ‘none’, ‘piecemeal’, ‘strategic’ and ‘embedded’ describe lecturers’ behaviours in using OER. The three steps: ‘understanding’, ‘need’ and ‘reflection’ each represent a change in lecturers’ awareness with regards to OER, which, in turns, triggers a change in behaviour and takes a person from one stage to another. FOUR STAGEs describe lecturers’ bahaviours in using OER THREE steps – each represents a change in lecturers’ awaness with regads to OER
- #11 This level briefly describes sharing and reuse-related practices that academics had adopted before OER were introduced and that can be seen to constitute the foundations on which open educational practice is built. in contrast to the rigorous attribution of peer-reviewed texts and books.
- #12 distinguish between OER and ‘stuff on the web’ - showing examples of when the former should be favoured over the latter and what benefits can follow for the teacher and/or for the learners, this includes being HONEST about compromises involved! – I’ll talk about it later. There is a difference between taking sth of the web to help you make your point, like using a simulation to support understanding of difficult concepts (by linking to it) or even integrating pictures in your own presentation without attribution – AND, bringing in resources developed by other institution into your course design and attributing correctly (does not my university pay me to develop resources? What will students think?)
- #13 exploration into what kind of OERs are out there in a teacher’s own discipline, but the ways in which teachers go about searching and reusing educational materials remain largely unchanged i.e. OER is used alongside other ‘free stuff on the web’ usually to ‘fill in gaps’ in their own teaching materials or as supplementary resources to which they can direct their students: What gets reused in first place is OER produced locally or recommended locally Realistic expectations = offering a discipline-specific picture of mass of resources available and places to look Local repositories: because easy to find and validated by institution Building community knowledge: having OER repositories is great but what is equally important is having technical solutions in-house to facilitate clustering, sharing and reuse of OER because this will allow existing communities to surface.
- #14 An important breakthrough in a teacher’s engagement with OER is likely to come when he or she is involved in a process of creating a new course, or, even better, redesigning an old one from an on-campus to a blended or online delivery. What teachers often realise at that point is that creating everything from scratch is either far beyond their capacity or they have to reconsider the types of materials they have used so far. So it’s a good opportunity for module support services to bring OER to teachers’ attention as one of the relevant elements in designing/redesigning a course. (Of course, this will be different in institutions that specialise in online teaching. Here, clearing copyright on external resources and/or the development of high quality multimedia resources are usually included in the business model and well budgeted. If this is the case, there is little motivation for module teams to switch to using OER.)
- #15 At this level there is a shift in a teacher’s approach to searching for and reusing OER from piecemeal to a more strategic one. Searching becomes more targeted and it often moves outside a comfort zone of the institutional repository. OER are still used as supplementary materials but some get also integrated into core teaching and learning. Reusing OER produced externally was usually seen higher up on a ladder than reusing materials produced locally. But in some disciplines it might be easier to get hold of materials externally, because there are more of them than locally. Therefore, reusing OER produced outside one’s own institution may also come at the ‘low’ rung of the ladder. Teachers would usually start taking advantage of the CC licence by making small adaptations (tweaks) to the resources that they find and plan to use in their teaching. OERs that get tweaked are usually created in simple tools such as Word or PowerPoint and the adaptations are focused around things like: changing format of a document or context of a resource, updating references or statistics, replacing images. Integrating OER into core teaching is sign of growing confidence in using OERs. Attributing – suggestion that correct attribution of the creator is a sign of greater familiarity with the CC-licence concept. Enabling factors Support in knowing where and how to find relevant OER in your discipline - i.e. where is the stuff that is relevant for me? Quantity and quality - Difficulty in finding relevant OER, varied quality of the resources and lack of time are the top three barriers to reuse of OER produced outside one’s own institution. So, need for a critical mass of good-quality resources Minimal adaptation: most teachers are not technical people and therefore they shouldn’t be expected to make any larger adaptations, especially not to complex things like multimedia resources Implications of CC licences: there is usually a long way to go between a point when a teacher becomes aware of OER and open licensing and a point when they fully understand the meaning of different types of cc-licence and implications it has on how a resource can be used.
- #17 A crucial moment that can impinge on teachers’ engagement with OER is when they’ve collected feedback on students’ learning experience in a particular session or module which made use of OER. The more convinced a teacher is of positive effects that reusing OER has had on their practice, the more likely they are to take this engagement forward or even start sharing OER themselves – i.e. I’s good for me, it’s good for everybody, take but also give. Sharing, in turn, can trigger more more legitimate use of 3rd party materials in own works - I am more careful in what images I put into my ppt if I know that I might want share my ppt openly
- #18 At this level OER is fully embedded into a person’s teaching and learning practice and, as a result, it gets incorporated into students learning more widely and with confidence (teachers talk about ‘reusing more’ or even ‘a lot’, 20-50% and more than 50% were often placed high on the ladder) There has also been a major shift in a teacher’s perception of who should benefit, from the initial focus on self-benefit and the benefit to one’s own students, to the benefit to the entire community, which manifests itself in a teacher’s: a) advocacy of OER and open practice. b) sharing their own resources under open licences, and Modifying and sharing back: little evidence at present – 3 reasons: a) teachers don’t adapt b) Not easy technically, especially if one wanted to put the modified resource back where the original came from c) nervousness about the reaction of the author of the original resource Enabling factors: Acceptance by students: how their students will react to the fact that a substantial part of learning resources come from outside the university esp in light of increased fees. HEA has recently commissioned a study of students’ reactions to OER. Sharing back and pedagogic dialogue around OERs are more likely to occur within smaller, discipline-specific networks and communities, especially if there are technical solutions in place to support these activities. Staff devt opportunities where OER comes out as a by-product (not a goal!! in itself)
- #25 OPEN Lecturers may have only a partial understanding of what is meant by ‘open educational resources’, this may not be helped by the multiplicity ‘open’ (e.g. open access, open data, open source). http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/lmc/2012/04/23/cam12-keynotes-backchannels-and-undercurrents/ : “like all buzzwords, the term “OER” has accumulated an awful lot of baggage over the years which may be less than helpful going forwards“ _ Lorna Campbell. OPEN LICENCE There are also signs of a tendency to equate a Creative Commons (CC) licence with OER status: i.e. to assume that because a resource bears a CC licence, it is therefore an OER – which, in the interpretation of the term used by this project, is not the case if the licence includes the ND (no derivatives) condition. ADAPTATION Producers push adaptation as benefit of OER - but lecturers do not appear to be concerned about adapting little OER in particular. However, this may also be in part because they don’t appreciate that seemingly innocuous actions as cropping and drawing call-out lines across an image are counted as adaptation. Talking about that in ther own framwork of reference – you can’t get rid of a misconception b Adaptation – we are using these terms as we understand what they Research is not through enough, not going deep enough into this concepts. Need for disambiguation: Use/reuse – from a perspective of a person (if a person reuses and OER again and again – this might also say sth) What kind of resources we are talking about? Understanding of open educational rsources and misconceptions about it. Understanding of adaptation/remixing/repurposing – teachers often don’t see
- #26 If participants’ reports of general practice among academics are to be believed, there would appear to be an almost cavalier attitude to resources that they find and retrieve directly from searching the Web. This stands in contrast to the rigorous attribution of peer-reviewed texts and books.
- #28 OPEN Lecturers who are acquainted with the term ‘OER’ may have only a partial understanding of what is meant by ‘open educational resources’, although this may not be helped by the multiplicity of terms incorporating the epithet ‘open’ (e.g. open access, open data, open source). http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/lmc/2012/04/23/cam12-keynotes-backchannels-and-undercurrents/ : “like all buzzwords, the term “OER” has accumulated an awful lot of baggage over the years which may be less than helpful going forwards“ _ Lorna Campbell. OPEN LICENCE There are also signs of a tendency to equate a Creative Commons (CC) licence with OER status: i.e. to assume that because a resource bears a CC licence, it is therefore an OER – which, in the interpretation of the term used by this project, is not the case if the licence includes the ND (no derivatives) condition. ADAPTATION Producers push adaptation as benefit of OER - but lecturers do not appear to be concerned about adapting little OER in particular. However, this may also be in part because they don’t appreciate that seemingly innocuous actions as cropping and drawing call-out lines across an image are counted as adaptation. Talking about that in ther own framwork of reference – you can’t get rid of a misconception b Adaptation – we are using these terms as we understand what they Research is not through enough, not going deep enough into this concepts. Need for disambiguation: Use/reuse – from a perspective of a person (if a person reuses and OER again and again – this might also say sth) What kind of resources we are talking about? Understanding of open educational rsources and misconceptions about it. Understanding of adaptation/remixing/repurposing – teachers often don’t see
- #29 The main outcome of the study – the OER Engagement Ladder (DESCRIPTIVE NOT PRESCRIPTIVE) – models progression stages in lecturers’ engagement with OER reuse (Figure 1). The four stages: ‘none’, ‘piecemeal’, ‘strategic’ and ‘embedded’ describe lecturers’ behaviours in using OER. The three steps: ‘understanding’, ‘need’ and ‘reflection’ each represent a change in lecturers’ awareness with regards to OER, which, in turns, triggers a change in behaviour and takes a person from one stage to another.
- #30 An important breakthrough in a teacher’s engagement with OER is likely to come when he or she is involved in a process of creating a new course, or, even better, redesigning an old one from an on-campus to a blended or online delivery. What teachers often realise at that point is that creating everything from scratch is either far beyond their capacity or they have to reconsider the types of materials they have used so far. So it’s a good opportunity for module support services to bring OER to teachers’ attention as one of the relevant elements in designing/redesigning a course. (Of course, this will be different in institutions that specialise in online teaching. Here, clearing copyright on external resources and/or the development of high quality multimedia resources are usually included in the business model and well budgeted. If this is the case, there is little motivation for module teams to switch to using OER.)
- #31 Once teachers have become aware of the importance of using resources legitimately, they like the fact that Creative Commons licences, and other ‘open’ licences such as GPL and GNU, make it more explicit what they are allowed to do with the resource even if often they do not exploit the real benefits of open licenses: although one of the benefits of a ‘fully open’ resource is that the re-using teacher is allowed to adapt it to suit their own needs, we found very little evidence that anyone is actually doing so.
- #32 If there’s a gap in your materials – for example, you want a graphic or an animation to explain a difficult concept to students – you can either make one yourself or use one that someone else has already made. But if you don’t have the time, the software, or the skills to make one yourself, then it’s easier to use someone else’s resource. Another example is when you have to teach sth which lies outside your area of expertise. Here an example of a person who is responsible for making sure that all courses at her university have employability skills embedded in them. However, beware of the time-saving argument! Lecturers tell us that looking for a resource can take as long as making one. But to help out, in some universities learning technologists or library staff will do the searching instead like in this example.
- #33 One of the benefits of the drive to release ‘big’ OER in particular is the increased availability of learning materials that lecturers can recommend to students who may want to explore a particular topic in more depth or gain an alternative perspective on it.
- #34 Likewise, the availability of longer stretches of learning makes it possible for lecturers to cover topics that lie outside their current expertise – in this case, genetics
- #35 So, what’s necessary for lecturers to be able to reap the benefits of OER? The OER Impact Study identified four categories of enabling factors: Attitudinal Pedagogic Logistical Strategic
- #36 >> Using other people’s materials is acceptable practice: We have already mentioned that borrowing from other people, and letting them have one’s one materials, are part and parcel of many lecturers’ practice. So, in principle, OER are landing on fertile ground. Even so, some of the participants in our studies expressed reservations about the acceptability of using other people’s materials: >> Copyright: Lecturers admit to having taken materials directly from the Web without thinking about the copyright implications – they seem to operate a ‘fair use’ policy. This contrasts with their attitude towards print-based materials, which they attribute as a matter of course. Only when they are introduced to OER through a workshop or presentation do they realise the error of their ways. This change of attitude is a key step towards embracing OER. >>Preserving one’s teaching voice: That said, participants emphasised the vital importance of preserving the authenticity of their teaching: i.e. their own ‘teaching voice’. They do not want to surrender this in adopting OER.
- #37 Pedagogic factors determine whether an individual resource is going to be relevant and useful to a lecturer. Obviously, this depends in part on the particular topic that the students are to learn, but the value of an OER to a lecturer’s need at any one time depends on a combination of factors. Granularity: In a 2010 paper, Martin Weller divides OER into ‘big’ and ‘little’ ‘Big OER’ are materials, often whole courses, that have ‘explicit teaching aims’ and are released by institutions as part of a major OER initiative, such as the Open University’s OpenLearn courses. ‘Little OER’: ‘individually produced, low cost resources’ that may not necessarily be associated with explicit teaching aims or an overt context. They might also include historical images or digitised artefacts that have been collected and released with a Creative Commons licence by the institution that owns them. Pedagogic intent: Lecturers appreciate resources that have a clear pedagogic intent embedded with them: that is, they have either been explicitly developed for educational purposes or can readily be co-opted for such a purpose. ‘pedagogic intent’ is suggestive of an affordance (i.e. that something may be used for a particular purpose) while ‘explicit teaching aims’ imply that the resource has been designed for learners with a specified level of competence, and to achieve a defined set of learning outcomes in relation to a particular topic. Balance between clear pedagogic intent (general affordance) and explicit teaching aims (designed for specific LOs/learners) The extent to which a resource was created with a specific pedagogic intent in mind is also important. Some are developed to meet a particular set of learning outcomes at a particular level and within a particular cultural context – or, even, medium. So, even though their content may be relevant, the way in which the learning is presented might not. Conversely, some resources that have been specifically developed for use with students may not contain sufficient (or even any) indication about how they might be used. One of the claimed benefits of OER is that teachers can adapt them to their needs if they don’t quite fit the required purpose. However, in our research we uncovered relatively little evidence that lecturers are actually interested in doing so – particularly where ‘little’ OER are concerned. This may be because they lack the time and, perhaps the software applications needed to ‘tweak’ these OER. (Not enough time to explain about ‘pedagogic wrappers’ – but quotes on pp39-40 of the OER Impact Study report are also relevant in this context.) Provenance – where the resource comes from: OER produced by higher education institutions and other academic bodies (e.g. research institutes and learned societies) are perceived to have a stamp of quality and as such seem to be preferred over resources from more ‘general’ sites (with a few exceptions among sites run by media organisations). This places an additional onus on producers to ensure that their OER indeed undergo a quality assurance process before release. Together, we could say that these factors make up the ‘fitness for purpose’ of a particular resource.
- #38 Logistical factors primarily determine how easy it is to find a suitable resource and to find out how one can use it. Discoverability: The quantity of OER varies enormously across the different disciplines, with some disciplines being well catered, while a critical mass has yet to be reached in others. However, an excessive number of resources can be overwhelming. Within a discipline, there can be inconsistent coverage of topics. For example, in the WWI Centenary collection that we have just been evaluating, there are no resources for the famous football Christmas match that was played between British and German soldiers. In addition, lecturers need to be able to conduct searches with the minimum effort. Lecturers can be put off by inadequate search engines that can only handle one-word searches and/or cannot recognise accepted pedagogic terminology, and by the requirement to register with a site before one can even evaluate a resource. Support: Some universities that have specific initiatives to promote the use of OER address these logistical problems have identified individuals and groups who either help lecturers to locate suitable OER or actually do the searching for them. Librarians and learning technologists are particularly well placed to fufill these roles. And, of course, in subject areas where there is also a long tradition of sharing resources, the existing informal communities can simply add OER to the range of resources that lecturers recommend to one another.
- #40 Strategic. Both studies identified institutional strategies as essential to promotion and propagation of OER use, but these shld have a direct pedagogic motivation in terms of enhancing both students’ learning and teachers’ professional development, not simply be a by-product of a drive for production (drawbacks of these: i) are driven by concern with image/branding; ii) depend on external and/or temporary – i.e. insecure – funding). Also quantitative measures should be used as a yardstick with great caution: OER should be used only where teachers find them relevant and genuinely beneficial to the quality of their students’ learning, and that ‘relevant’ and ‘beneficial’ are contingent upon the task at hand. 1st bullet = The optimal situation is when OER use is made integral to existing strategies. This is not about specific OER policies telling people how much to share or reuse. But having OER written into t&l strategies makes it clear to the teachers where their institution stand in terms of sharing own resource or reusing external materials. It’s like a permission and it gives them confidence. 2nd bullet: Especially trusted people are important. People whose roles lend themselves to promoting OER, such as academic librarians, learning technologists, and staff developers. If senior management says you should do it, then people will kick against. Whereas staff support is trusted.
- #41 - Still some commitment by senior management in individual faculties is beneficial – often happens in response to an initiative made by an individual teacher or central teams such as t&l units, e-learning centres etc. - Grass-roots initiatives are by far most frequent so far. However, to flourish and be sustained, these initiatives need to have management backing. So the staff concerned will actively approach senior stakeholders, seeking their support in maximising the impact of this work.
- #42 So far the expectation has been that, if told where to look teachers would search for and locate OER independently. Jo’s study has revealed, however, that there is a growing recognition of the importance of support services involvement in helping academics to source OER. Support techniques vary from providing simple help sheets to offloading searching on to support services. >>CLICK it is not unusual for teachers to not check on the exact type of cc licence attached to a resource and therefore they would recommend directly supporting module teams by double-checking the licensing terms for them. >>CLICK Providers of OER training emphasized the importance of librarians. Learning Technologists The aim of templates for searching is for people not sidetrack from their original search aims when they go out on the web and find massive amounts of resources and also finding ways to publish and share search results so that others could easy access them. Tools for evaluating quality are often simple checklists that include: provenance, type of license, technical issues. There are attempts to develop different checklists for different types of OER >>CLICK Most teachers are not technical people and therefore they shouldn’t be expected to make any larger adaptations, especially not to complex things like multimedia resources. Urge OER producers to release the materials: in such a way that the adaptation is minimum, so it can very much fit in as it comes. If fuller adaptations to a resource are necessary, they should be made by module support services, media developers or, with limitations, by learning technologists from within the department.