The document discusses the history and concepts of open educational resources (OER) and open education. It notes that MIT was the first university to make many course materials openly available online in 2001. Open education aims to improve access to knowledge worldwide using open frameworks and 21st century technology. OER are defined as teaching and learning resources that can be freely used and modified under open licenses. The challenges and benefits of open and closed educational models are debated.

2. Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas
Concepts continued. OER and openness
“Open Educational Resources” EDU4020 (Virtual mobility option)
Autumn, 2014
Assoc. Prof. Airina Volungevičienė
Vytautas Magnus University, a.volungeviciene@isi.vdu.lt

3. The history of “open”
•In 2001, MIT was the first university to work on putting many of the teacher-defined support materials from its undergraduate and graduate courses online, in
•The Open Education
Consortium today is a
worldwide community of
hundreds of higher education
institutions and associated
organizations committed to
advancing open education
and its impact on global
education

4. http://www.oeconsortium.org/about-oec/
•Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide
•Open Education combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learner’s needs.

5. Open or closed?
Open Educational Resources (OER) is a term used to describe:
“teaching and learning 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”
(William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2009).

6. Challenges: open or closed?
•Other concepts used are:
–open courseware
–open educational content
–open learning content
Open Up Education!
http://www.youtube.com/user/OUE2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BCCY5liKfk
1.Effective software tools to create meaningful learning experiences
2.Appropriate collaboration and communication tools to engage with other learners and create possibly even more meaningful learning experiences that involve others (Andy Lane, 2008).
Lane, A.B. (2008a) Who puts the Education into Open Educational Content? In Richard N. Katz, ed., The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education and Information Technology Revisited, EDUCAUSE, Boulder, Colorado. pp 158-168. 2008. ISSN 978-0-9672853-9-9.
See also http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud/133998

7. Prof. Brenda Gourley, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University
Universities have a unique responsibility to exploit the potential of the new technologies and embrace the education opportunities now rendered possible by them and also the networks they have spawned.
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

8. Open universities

9. Open Universities

11. Problematika

12. OUUK
•1,5 % OUUK turnover dedicated for ads
•BBC
•Printouts
•OER
•Google ads
•Other…

13. OER at OUUK
•More than 700 of OER, more than 300 OER books (iTunes, Google books; ibook, e-book, etc.)
•Creative Commons
•6 mln unique IP visitors at OpenLearn
•13 % (780 000) register for studies
•iTunes provide more or less 1 % of registered students

15. From “Frozen planet” to “The History of Art” at OpenLearn

16. Planet science

17. UK Fund raising directory

18. iSpot – the place to share nature

19. Mapping, social media and data mining and other!

20. Open Education Europa

21. OER definitions
•The term ‘open educational resources’ was coined by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2002 (Caswell et al., 2008)
•it embraces OpenCourseWare but would also include any educational materials, technologies and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to remix, improve and redistribute
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/education/creating-open-educational-resources/content-section-2

22. wiki.creativecommons.org

23. William and Flora Foundation
"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 and 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

24. •Classification of definitions by:
–Open license required
–Rights of access
–Non – discriminatory
–Non-commercial delimitation

25. Challenges: for user and for developer
•How quality, fitness for purpose and availability is communicated?
•Is it re-usable?
•Is it adaptable?
•Can we re-mix it?

26. How OER are perceived among HE students in UK?
•Survey addressed 40,000 students in UK NUS (National Union of Students)
•2,807 responses represented 43% traditional learners and 57 % non-traditional learners
http://openeducationeuropa.eu/sites/default/files/news/Learner_attitudesOER.pdf

27. http://openeducationeuropa.eu/sites/default/files/news/Learner_attitudesOER.pdf
•OER characteristics identified:
–Accessibility
–Equality
–Sharing
–Choice
–Inspiration
–Freedom and change
•60 % of traditional students and 52 % of non-traditional students rated OER as “very helpful” or “somewhat helpful”
•The major theme in the focus group was that OERs were a valuable additional to more traditional resources, but should not be seen as a replacement
•The interaction between students and university staff was seen as vitally important
•Students appeared to value academics who engaged with OERs more than they valued those who did not

28. Purpose of use
•Students might consider using OER for a variety of reasons, to access content remotely, to grasp complex subjects and to revise for exams
•OER might help develop transferable skills and promote independent learning emerged I focus groups discussion

29. Perspectives of use
•The „Student Perspectives on Technology Research‟ (NUS 2010) highlighted a number of key findings:
–students prefer a choice in how they learn – information and communications
–technology (ICT) is seen as one of many possibilities, alongside traditional modes (e.g.
–full-time study, face-to-face learning contexts) and non-traditional modes (e.g. part-time
–learning);
–opinions about e-learning are fundamentally divided;
–ninety per cent of students agreed that the Internet has benefited their studies. As to
–whether ICT had improved their learning experiences, 78% agreed with this statement,
–with only 5% in disagreement.

30. Benefits of OER
•Several benefits of OERs have been identified by McGill et al. (2008):
–easy and open access to a range of learning materials
– increased access options for students, particularly those studying remotely
–supports collaborative learning
–supports development of students through accessing a wider range of resources
–easy access through student-owned technologies
–likely to encourage self-regulated and independent learning
–increased opportunities for flexible learning
– increased the demand for assessment and recognition of competences gained outside
–formal learning settings
–encouraged peer support, mentorship and ambassadorial programmes
–evidencing skills development/recording assessment and feedback

31. Sharing OER
•Both, traditional and non-traditional students said they were more likely to share resources that they had found rather than resources that they had created themselves
•Some students were happy for course materials to be openly available, while others expressed concern that sharing would devalue their courses
http://openeducationeuropa.eu/sites/default/files/news/Learner_attitudesOER.pdf

32. 2010 Massive Open Online Courses
•Online
•No entry requirements
•No participation limit
•Free of charge
•Do not earn credit
•50 000 student per course
Resource - EUA Council – 1 – 2013 Istanbul, 25 January 2013, Item 7d

33. Providers
•All the more recent MOOCs involve private companies, either for- or non-profit, partnering with universities or individual scholars, and provide services for them. The usual division of tasks is that the universities or the individual academics are responsible for the content (and the quality) of the courses, whereas the company is in charge of the production, and its technical facilitation.
Clusters of universities:
•Coursera (Standford + 33 univ., 2 mln stud. Record)
•edX (Harvard, MIT + Berkeley, Texas, Wellesley)
•Udemy (Ivy league professors, CEOs, 500 startups +)
•Udacity (Standford)
•Futurelearn (Oxford, Cambridge, UCLondon, etc.)
•Etc…

34. Startup
•The institution concludes a contract with a company (e.g. Coursera). It launches an open call among the faculty and invites applications. A limited number will be selected (note that so far these courses cost money, and do not generate income). The course is produced in collaboration with a professional team of Coursera.
•A consortium of universities may set up a company to serve their specific
•purposes (as in the case of edX).
•Companies would have no contractual relationship with a university, but with individual scholars (or other experts to provide course content – which is the case of UDACITY and probably also for UDEMY (which advertises itself as a portal for facilitating courses)

35. Business
•The contracts that Coursera offers also contain suggestions for the following monetization
strategies:
–Certification (students pay for a badge or certificate)
–Secure assessments (students pay to have their examinations invigilated
–(proctored)
–Employee recruitment (companies pay for access to student performance
–records)
–Applicant screening (employers/universities pay for access to records to
–screen applicants)
–Human tutoring or assignment marking (for which students pay)
–Selling the MOOC platform to enterprises to use in their own training courses
–Sponsorships (3rd party sponsors of courses)
–Tuition fees
(see e.g. http://www.gilfuseducationgroup.com/coursera-will-profit-from-free-courses)

36. Funding
•Another income source would be to sell courses to other higher education institutions, enabling them to lower costs or to make their study programmes more attractive
•There are also approaches under discussion where courses would remain free for individuals, but companies using them for staff development would have to pay.
•Up to now Moocs providers offered courses for free, and did not generate any revenue. Now some of them are under fee.
•However, it has now been announced that some providers will offer certification for a moderate fee and also start offering fee-based courses in the course of this year

37. Moocs
Student profile
•40% of participants signed up because they were curious about the topic
•30% wanted to sharpen skills
•only 18% were aiming at a better job
•14 – 74 years old
Dropout
•Of 104,000 students who enrolled in the 2011 online machine- learning class which was an earlier version of the later Coursera course,
•46,000 submitted at least one assignment (44 %)
•20,000 completed a substantial portion of the course (19 %)
•and 13,000 (12.5 %) passed

38. •We will continue next week…