A presentation used to introduce the concept of OER to new materials developers at the University of Malawi, 2009

1. WHAT ARE OER?
Day 1 Session 2

2. OER?
A] What are Open Educational Resources? - Definitions
1] OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside
in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual
property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others.
Open educational resources include full courses, course materials,
modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other
tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
(ref: Atkins)
2] 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. (ref: UNESCO)
3] Open Educational Resources are digitized materials offered freely
and openly for educators, students and self learners to use and reuse
for teaching, learning and research. (ref: Wikipedia)

3. OER REPOSITORIES - OCW
The flagship of the Hewlett
Foundation OER investments
is the MIT
OpenCourseWare Project.
This project emerged from
MIT faculty and
administrators who asked
themselves the following
question:
“How is the Internet going to
be used in education and
what is our university going
to do about it?”
The answer from the MIT
faculty was this:
“Use it to provide free access
to the primary materials for
virtually all our courses. We
are going to make our
educational material available
to students, faculty, and
other learners, anywhere in
the world, at any time, for
free.”
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

4. OER REPOSITORIES - USU
Utah State University has
been a major grantee in
the OER program as a
provider of open content
and as a free source of
open learning support
through the Center for
Open and Sustainable
Learning (COSL).
The Center provides
support to others
interested in starting OCW
at their institutions. It has
developed eduCommons,
an OCW management
system with workflow
process that guides users
in publishing materials in
an openly accessible
format.
http://ocw.usu.edu/English

5. OER REPOSITORIES -
OPENLEARN
The OpenLearn website
gives free access to Open
University course materials.
FAQ: Can I use your
materials to teach my class?
Educators are encouraged to
use OpenLearn materials in
the classroom.
FAQ: Can I link to
OpenLearn from my
website?
Links to OpenLearn or pages
within the website are
permitted as long as the use
of the materials associated
with the link is permitted
under the terms of the
Creative Commons licence
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

6. OER REPOSITORIES -
CONNEXIONS
Connexions is a place to
view and share educational
material made of small
knowledge chunks called
modules that can be
organized as courses,
books, reports, etc.
Anyone may view or
contribute: authors create
and collaborate, instructors
rapidly build and share
custom collections while
learners find and explore
content
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

7. SEARCH & FIND
# OER Repository URL
1 MIT Open Courseware http://ocw.mit.edu
2 Utah State University http://ocw.usu.edu/
3 OpenLearn (Open University - UK) http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/home.php
4 Connexions (Rice University) http://cnx.org/
5 MERLOT (All Licences, not only CC) http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
6 OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/
7 Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) http://www.doaj.org/
8 United Nations University (UNU) http://ocw.unu.edu/
9 Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Melon) http://www.cmu.edu/oli/index.shtml
10 Yale University http://oyc.yale.edu/
11 webcast.berkeley (Podcasts and Webcasts) http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
12 University of Malawi (?) ?

8. POTENTIAL FOR OER IN HE
AFRICA
 Dearth of quality resources in African HE
 Existing resources often lack African context.
 Existing copyright / licensing models
exorbitant
 Makes sense to create, share and adapt our
own resources
 Makes sense to adapt Western materials

9. CHALLENGES FOR OER IN HE
AFRICA
 OER culture not established
 Academics cling to ‘intellectual capital’ in
hope it might become revenue stream
 Repositories not comprehensive across all
subjects
 Bit of skill required in remixing materials
 Not clear what resources are actually being
used for.

10. LICENSING OPTIONS / COPYRIGHT
Creative Commons, with a tagline of share,
reuse, and remix, legally, is a critical
infrastructure service for the OER movement
providing free tools that let authors, scientists,
artists, and educators easily mark their creative
work with the freedoms they want it to carry. They
can change the default copyright terms from “All
Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”
Creative Commons is a companion to the OER
initiative and was founded in 2001 to help revive
the shrinking public domain as copyright durations
were repeatedly extended in large part due to the
pressures from the media industry. Like the free
software and open-source movements, their ends
are cooperative and community-minded, but the
means are voluntary and libertarian.
Ref: Atkins et al. (2007)
A Spectrum of Rights…
How it Works…
Additional Information…
http://creativecommons.org/

11. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 1

12. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 2

13. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 3

14. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 4

15. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 5

16. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 6

17. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 7

18. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 8

19. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 9

20. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 10

21. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 11

22. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 12

23. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 13

24. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 14

25. CC – SPECTRUM OF RIGHTS 15

26. IMPLICATIONS FOR UM
 How do we determine success of UM OER
project?
 What will UM do with materials after
manipulation / use?
 What extent is the OER process repeatable /
sustainable?

27. IADP / OER AFRICA
http://www.oerafrica.org/sadciadp

28. IADP / OER AFRICA ON FACEBOOK