1. Finding and Evaluating Open Educational
Resources
Dr Jane Secker, LSE,
Dr Stylianos Hatzipanagos, Kings College London
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
2. Overview of workshop
• Experiences of two OER projects:
– DELILA project at LSE
– CDE funded KCL project
• Repurposing existing materials to
OER
• Hands on activity
– Finding OERs relevant to your teaching
– Evaluating resources
3. What are OERs?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching
and learning materials that are freely available
online for everyone to use, whether you are an
instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of
OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi,
lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab
and classroom activities, pedagogical materials,
games, simulations, and many more resources
contained in digital media collections from
around the world.
JISC OER Toolkit
4. UNESCO definition
Open Educational
Resources are teaching,
learning or research
materials that are in the
public domain or
released with an
intellectual property
license that allows for
free use, adaptation,
and distribution.
5. Value of OERs
• Not reinventing the wheel
• Sharing good practice
• Capacity building
• Breaking down barriers to learning
• Networking between teaching
practitioners
• Cross fertilisation of ideas between
disciplines
6. Notable OER initiatives
• MIT’s Open Courseware initiative
• Open University’s OpenLearn
• JISC have funded 3 phases of
projects in this area in the UK
• Jorum is the national repository for
teaching and learning materials
(many are OERs)
7. DELILA project overview
• JISC/HEA funded - part of a strand to
release open materials for accredited
teaching courses
• Project partners: LSE, University of
Birmingham, CILIP CSG-Information
Literacy Group
• Paired with CPD4HE Project based at UCL
• Focus on digital and information literacy
resources
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
8. DELILA Aims and objectives
• To provide a model of embedded digital and
information literacy support into teacher training
at higher education level;
• To release a small sample of open educational
resources to support embedding digital and
information literacy education into institutional
teacher training courses accredited by the HEA
including PGCerts and other CPD courses;
• To customise local repositories to provide access
to these resources.
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
9. Relevant frameworks and
standards
• SCONUL 7 pillars of information literacy and
CILIP definition of IL – to identify materials
• FutureLab Digital Literacy framework (and
definition) – to identify materials
• UKPSF (UK Professional Standards
framework) – to accredit materials for
PGCert
• CORRE framework (Content. Re-Use and
Repurpose. Evidence) to convert content to
open content
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
10. What we did
• Audit of resources at LSE / Birmingham
• Selection of content following mapping
of digital and information literacy to
UKPSF
• Selection of content based on suitability
as OER
• Conversion of material
• Repository customisation
• Deposit of content - locally and in Jorum
• Quality control and evaluation
• Dissemination and publicity
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
11. Conversion to OER
• Using the CORRE framework
• IPR issues
• Review content
– 3rd party content most common issue
– Dealing with screenshots
• Add Creative Commons information
• Metadata
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
13. Sharing resources and
evaluation
• Materials added to local repositories at
LSE and Birmingham
• Materials also deposited into Jorum
• Evaluation of resources to take place
after deposit
• DELILA developed evaluation criteria
• Feedback suggested that quality control
not feasible before resources are shared
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
15. LSE Learning Resources
Online
• Customised Eprints software to share OERs
as part of DELILA
• Now sharing other LSE teaching and
learning materials
• Encouraging academics to deposit their
materials
• Library staff managing deposit process,
creating metadata, reviewing and
converting content where needed
16. OERs in DL:
adopting a model of open learning in
academic practice
• A CDE teaching and research
award
• Collaborative: King’s and University
of London International Programmes
(Law)
17. Aims and purpose
• Develop and evaluate a set of OERs in
academic practice to be used by ODL Tutors in
HE including global institutional providers.
• Investigate appropriate format and environment
for sharing the developed OERs.
• Evaluate the quality and uptake of these OERs.
• Engage users/tutors with the concept of OERs by
exposing them to the concept of open learning.
• Investigate drivers and barriers in the adoption of
OERs.
18. OERs vs. or in support of
academic practice
• Displaced from proprietary ‘silos’, i.e. the
institutional VLEs.
• Copyright ‘free’, as contributions to collective
knowledge.
• Most often come against recent improvements
in creation of e-learning content. They are
frequently didactic in nature.
• They are often elliptical shells to fill in with context
and meaning. Context and wrap around
activities are missing.
• Interactive aspects and their learning design are
separated from content and are often implicit
rather than explicit.
19. • Phase One: identify existing institutional
teaching resources that can be
repurposed into OERs
• Phase Two: repurpose the identified
teaching resources and develop them as
OERs
• Phase Three: link to policies, guidelines
and documentation that currently exist in
relation to the provision of OER as an
online resource for practitioners who want
to explore or use OERs.
20. Phase Four: evaluate the OERs with an identified
group of ODL tutors from the Laws programme.
Attributes of quality that will be evaluated include:
•Accuracy
•Reputation of author/institution
•Standard of technical production
•Accessibility
•Fitness for purpose
•Clear rights declarations
•Uptake and perceptions of teaching practitioners.
Phase Five: devise a set of guidelines for ODL
practitioners in using, repurposing and adopting
OERs in a disciplinary context. Practitioners’
involvement.
21. Finding and evaluating
OERs
Working in pairs or individually….
• Using the worksheet spend some
time finding an OER you might wish
to use in your own teaching
OR
• explore some of the KCL resources in
academic practice
Complete the evaluation form for the
resource/s you find
22. Group discussion
• What are the key barriers and challenges
of:
– Reusing OERs from others?
– Creating OERs yourself?
• When do OERs succeed?
– What would motivate you to reuse an OER?
– What would motivate you for release your
own teaching materials?
23. Creating OERs : challenges
• Are some teaching resources more institutionally
specific than others?
• IPR issues can be a barrier to releasing OERs
• Content can be copyright cleared or removed if
illustrative e.g. screenshots
• Choosing a CC licence: Non- commercial?
Attribution ShareAlike
• Keeping materials up to date in repository
• Reuse - what does it mean? how practical is
reuse?
http://delilaopen.wordpress.com
The workshop will be a chance to find out more about open educational resources (OERs). Colleagues from London School of Economics and King’s College London will discuss recent work they have undertaken to develop and release open educational resources, including a CDE funded project at KCL and a JISC / HEA project at LSE. The workshop will provide an overview of the challenges and issues of developing OERs, from scratch as well as converting/repurposing existing materials using the CORRE framework. It will also be a chance to explore a range of OERs that might be useful in your teaching and discuss the challenges and opportunities that they present. A large part of the seminar will be hands-on activities with laptops to explore Jorum and other places to find OERs in your own subject area and to evaluate these with a set of criteria. Followed by a more general discussion * What are the challenges and opportunities of OERs * When do OERs fail? * When do OERs work?
Say hello to Jane! Nancy on maternity leave and Ann-Marie taking over. Came out of chatting about Carillo with Jane.
What is UKPSF Am doing a PGCert – experience Who in audience knows about UKPSF? Explain what it is – standard used for HEA accredited courses have to meet OER best practice – CORRE framework. Created as part of the OTTER ( Open, Transferable and Technology-enabled Educational Resources ) project at Leicester University Futurelab DL framework – Jane discovered as LSE use DL more than UoB currently. Not as comprehensive at the 7 pillars but very useful nonethless. We concluded that the UKPSF is underpinned with IL and DL but its not explicit - they are reviewing it to hopefully make it more so!
Work packages 1-8, introduce briefly. Up to WP5, highlight that reports for each WPs are going on blog – outputs page.
Learning curve as we have never converted OERs – OTTER website very useful. Also quite time consuming, eg trying to find widely accessible technologies IPR issues – most content had some 3rd party content, usually screenshots of proprietary databases. JISC has provided some guidance of copyright clearance of OERs. Contact legal advisors to ensure openness in line with Institutional policy. UoB people involved at this stage – Legislation Manager in LS, Director of Library Services, Director of Academic Services and PVC for Education. Verbal agreement has been given to make the materials in DELILA openly available via our IR and OpenJorum. Project has opened up further debate with new PVCs for Research and Education around IPR Review content using relevant parts of CORRE framework - Use audit spreadsheet to identify content needing adaptation and to what extent. CORRE (Content, re-use and Re-Purposing, Evidence and Openness) framework was developed by an OER Phase 1 project OTTER – provides an overview of stages to go through when converting content into open content. Lso seeks to address pedagogical, legal, technical, institutional and socio-cultural aspects of converting material to OERs. 4 stages of process: Content – materials gathered, credit weight recorded and assessed (WP 1 and 2) Openness – legal, pedagogic and technical aspects of process, IPR clearance Re-use/Re-purpose – validation process where material achieves actual OER status Evidence – assess the value and usefulness of an OER by tracking its use. Building evidence gathering process – people who reuse DELILA material include further information about how they themselves are using them. Stage 2 of CORRE framework: Rights clearance – copyright, IPR and licensing Transformation for usability – decoupling, scaffolding, meshing, sequencing, editing Formatting for accessibility – conversion, standardisation, metadata, pedagogical wrap around Third party content – screenshots most common, usually third party content; logos from institutions were cleared for use; used a 1-4 scale for reusability with 1 being material with no external content and with institutional permission to 4 being material made entirely of external content and having no institutional permission. Dealing with screenshots – mostly illustrative rather than pedagogically necessary so can easily be removed and a placeholder inserted – easier than contacting the publisher for permission to use the screenshots of their databases. Placeholder would explain what was previously there allowing the person who reuses the resources to add their won, more meaningful, screenshot in place. Add CC information to document property where possible (do this using Microsoft Research which allows a Creative Commons link. Check accessibility (add heading levels etc – recommend this is added to the creation workflow), add metadata including rights info, author, date of creation, keywords etc. convert Word to any other formats for re-use eg Open office Word etc. Metadata - HEA to provide tags which can be used for each section of the UKPSF so if looking for material for a specific part of UKPSF can search by tag and find appropriate material. Embedding metadata using file properties and CC licence.
University of Leicester CORRE 2 now available DORRE – framework for creating oers from scratch
Deposit work flows from JorumOpen, Birmingham and LSE will be identified and used by team members to deposit material in repositories Applications such as SWORD – a small working group which is part of the JISC Digital Repositories Programme - will be investigated by repository staff at both institutions and a briefing written to indicate how these time saving processes are applicable to project content. If SWORD or harvesting is to be used, repository staff to implement use for direct upload from local repositories to JorumOpen If no direct depositing can be done, project team to deposit content in JorumOpen. If everyone can agree on tags and metadata then IL stuff would be easily findable in Jorum. Would encourage people to use our tags which are based on S7P (what are they?) Easier to find if we’re all using the same language.
Have permission to add OERs to ur repository for this project but Uni owns rights generally and we have no clear view of sharing these types of resources CC licences – we agreed to use 3.0 but plug-in for automatic integration into word/PPT automatically attributes 2.5 Moving forward – Shadow DELILA, UoB planning to re-use some of LSE’s DL material