DE Oracle @ UMUC

Open Educational Resources

Joseph Rawson

24/7 Services Coordinator Librarian

Information and Library Services

Published: September-October 2008

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Emerging-technologies

Background Information

The past several years have seen an exponential increase in the creation and use of open educational resources (OERs), which, according to an often-cited definition, 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" (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond, 2007, p. 4).

In other words, OERs are any type of educational material that are freely available for teachers and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse. OERs include learning content such as videos, audio clips, images, lecture notes, reading lists, course assignments, syllabi and lesson plans, textbooks, data, instructional games, tests and quizzes, etc.

OERs started as a grassroots movement by educators worldwide. Funded by grants and private donations (particularly from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which has given more than million in support of OERs), the OER movement has attempted to bring into the educational process groups who have traditionally been shut out, including K-12 teachers, scientists and engineers working in industry rather than in academia, and those who are not fluent in English. The OER movement's goal is to make education available to everyone around the world (particularly those in the developing world—who could not otherwise afford an education—as well as self-learners).

Since its inception as a grassroots movement, it has become an institutional movement as well, with early pioneers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology putting an increasing amount of course material—including complete course lectures—online, to the point where, as of November 28, 2007, MIT's Open Course Ware site contained material for more than 1800 classes in 33 academic disciplines. Other prestigious educational institutions—such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and U.C. Berkeley—have begun to put at least some of their educational content online as well. In most cases, OERs available online from institutions such as MIT do not confer degrees, certificates, or course credit, but they do provide accessibility to educational material for those who have interests in particular subjects and want to learn on their own.

The worldwide educational community met in September 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa, and produced the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, a document advocating the continued development and sharing of OERs in support of worldwide education, particularly in developing countries.

There are currently more than 300 institutions in over 30 countries that are creating or using OERs, and OER material is available in more than 10 languages.

Finding OERs

Because of the rapid growth in the development of OERs, there are many online repositories that contain OER material. The question for educators who want to use OERs is how to find them. There are a variety of methods to do this, including:

• searching through OER compilations such as:
  • OCW Consortium
  • Creative Commons search
• subscribing to an education-related listserv such as:
  • OER@LISTSERV.AED.ORG
• browsing through OER journals like:
  • The International Journal of Open Educational Resources
• conducting searches in UMUC library databases such as:
  • ERIC, Education Research Complete, Professional Development Collection, and/or Teacher Reference Center (using search terms like "open education* resources")
• conducting general Web searches using search engines such as Google Scholar

OER Collections 

Some OER collections focus on particular subjects, while others are multidisciplinary.   

Subject-specific OERs include:

• Berkelee Shares (music)
• Chemistry Collective
• HEAL (Health Education Assets Library)
• SERC (sciences)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Multidisciplinary OERs include:

• Connexions
• MERLOT
• Open Learn
• Open-of-Course 

Most OER repositories allow users to create a free account and to search for and save OERs as well as create new OERs and share them with others. This is a great way to organize OERs for future use.

Advantages and Disadvantages of OERs 

As with any educational resource, there are both advantages and disadvantages associated with using OERs in the classroom.

Advantages of using OERs include:

• Expanded access to learning: Students anywhere in the world can access OERs at any time, and students can access material repeatedly.
• Scalability: OERs are easy to distribute widely with little or no cost.
• Augmentation of class materials: OERs can supplement textbooks and lectures where deficiencies in information are evident.
• Enhancement to regular course content—for example, by adding multimedia to text: Presenting information in multiple formats may help students to more easily learn the material being taught.
• Quick circulation: Information may be disseminated rapidly (especially as compared to information published in textbooks or journals), which can increase the relevance of the material presented.
• Lower student costs: The use of OERs instead of traditional textbooks or course packs, etc. can substantially reduce the cost of course materials for students.
• Showcasing of innovation and talent: A wide audience may learn of faculty research interests and expertise. Potential students and donors may be impressed, and student and faculty recruitment efforts may be enhanced.
• Ties for alumni: OERs provide an excellent way for alumni to stay connected to the institution and continue with a program of lifelong learning.
• Continually improved resources: Unlike textbooks and other static sources of information, OERs can be improved quickly through direct editing by users or through solicitation and incorporation of user feedback.  Instructors can take an existing OER, adapt it for a class, and make the modified OER available for others to use. 

Disadvantages of OERs include:

• Quality issues: Since many OER repositories allow any user to create an account and post material, some resources may not be relevant and/or accurate.
• Lack of human interaction between teachers and students: OER material is created to stand alone, and since self-learning users may access the material outside of a classroom environment, they will miss out on the discussion and instructor feedback that characterize for-credit classes and make such classes useful and valuable.
• Language and/or cultural barriers: Although efforts are being made to make OERs available in multiple languages, many are available only in English, limiting their usefulness to non-English speakers. Additionally, not all resources are culturally appropriate for all audiences.
• Technological issues: Some students may have trouble using some OERs if they have a slow or erratic Internet connection. Other OERs may require software that students do not have and that they may not be able to afford.
• Intellectual property/copyright concerns: Since OERs are meant to be shared openly, the "fair use" exemption from the U.S. Copyright Act ceases to apply; all content put online must be checked to ensure that it does not violate copyright law.
• Sustainability issues: Since OER creators generally do not receive any type of payment for their OER, there may be little incentive for them to update their OER or ensure that it will continue to be available online. 

Using OERs in UMUC Classes

There are a variety of resources available to help instructors who want to use OERs in their classrooms.

Because OERs may vary in quality, it is important for instructors to evaluate them carefully before posting them in their classroom. Although there is not yet a standard checklist that has been developed for this purpose, many of the criteria listed on the UMUC library's Web site for evaluating online resources can be used to evaluate OERs. The criteria include:

• Authority: What are the author's credentials?
• Accuracy: Are errors or omissions visible?
• Objectivity: Is any type of bias present?
• Currency: Is the resource up-to-date or have a creation or update date visible?
• Coverage: Does the resource address the topic at hand sufficiently to add value to the class?

It is important to pay attention to the type of copyright assigned to an OER by its author and to use the OER in strict accordance to its stipulations. To facilitate their use, modification, and distribution, many OERs have flexible copyright licenses from organizations such as Creative Commons; these licenses provide varying amounts of protection, ranging from "all rights reserved" (full copyright) to "no rights reserved" (public domain). See the Creative Commons Web site for a list and description of the six main licenses.

Several online tools can help users determine an item's copyright status. These include PDTool, an interactive tool that can be used to determine whether permission is needed to use an item and when an item will no longer be protected by copyright, as well as Stanford's Copyright Renewal Database, which allows users to search the copyright renewals records received by the U.S. Copyright Office between 1950 and 1992 for books published in the United States between 1923 and 1963.  

UMUC's Center for Intellectual Property is able to provide additional copyright-related information and guidance.

Instructors planning to use OERs in their classrooms should also keep in mind that the OERs should comply with federal and state accessibility requirements. A checklist for compliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act can be found at WebAIM.

You may also want to review UMUC's information about accessibility in distance education. The site contains information about disability-related legal issues and best practices for developing accessible Web sites, along with other useful links.

There are other considerations to keep in mind when determining whether and how to incorporate OERs into an online classroom. Instructors must consider, for example, how an OER will need to be adapted to meet the particulars of the class learning objectives. They will also need to decide how the OER will be used and provide clear instructions to students for its use. They will need to determine whether the OER was successfully integrated into the class and whether it was valuable to students.  And before they use the OER in another class, they will need to determine whether the URL is still valid and whether the OER was updated since they last accessed it.

The Future

The students that will be attending college in the near future are used to robust multimedia experiences, such as can be provided by OERs. Today's students send and receive text messages, play video games, surf the Web, and post comments in online classrooms—often all at once. Students will not be satisfied by online content that is text-heavy and instruction that relies simply on students reading the class material. Students want to interact online, experiment with information provided in classrooms in a hands-on way, and add their own content to the learning environment. This is what Web 2.0 is all about. The use of OERs can help bring Web 2.0 to the classroom as well as meet the expectations of our future students.

OERs can make education more convenient since many contain content that is accessible nearly anywhere and that can be used "on the go" (podcasts, for example). This aspect of OERs will help to ensure their popularity and continued use and growth.    

The expanded use of OERs also has implications for faculty and their role in the online classroom. Will faculty still be needed in an environment where educational content is provided for free? Most experts and currently teaching faculty members indicate that the answer is yes. Students will still need instructions, guidance, and feedback, regardless of how learning material is made available. Interaction with faculty and other students is part of the learning process, and while the OERs may enhance the learning process, they are not substitutes for human interaction. Also, faculty are still the subject experts in the classroom, and their expertise is warranted in the selection and proper use of OERs. For these and other reasons, faculty presence will still be needed in online classrooms in the future.

Conclusion

Just as television did not replace the radio but rather complemented it, OERs will likely not completely replace textbooks, lectures, or other traditional classroom materials. However, their role in enhancing the online learning environment—allowing faculty to collaborate in new ways and expanding access to educational materials to people worldwide—will ensure their growth and use in education, to the benefit of students and faculty alike. This reality can only bode well for the future of online education.

Reference

Atkins, D. E., Brown, J. S., & Hammond, A. L. (2007, February).  A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement:  Achievements, challenges, and new opportunities. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://tinyurl.com/yw4j4u