Fostering OER in Indonesian through an online bootcamp for educators
Creative Commons Indonesia (CCID) conducted a virtual bootcamp for educators focusing on Open Educational Resources (OER).
Setting the Scene
Learning in the 21st century shows different trends and characteristics from the past few decades due to the rapid developments of information and communication technology (ICT). We can access learning content from everywhere. The utilization of ICT in the learning process promotes new learning cultures: collaborative and sharing. Education and learning now feel more open as it should be. The landscape of open education, therefore, is getting stronger.
Indonesia is aware of this changing learning paradigm and has shown many efforts to put open education into practice through the use of open educational resources (OER), particularly within the last decade. We even have a written law that specifically stipulates this effort.
“Government shall develop open educational resources that can be used by all academics” (Indonesian Higher Education Act, UU №12, 2012, article 79, point 4)
Many OER initiatives have been emerging in the country pioneered by respective governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC), the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), the SEAMEO Regional Open Learning Center (SEAMOLEC), and the Open University. Working along the line in the non-governmental sector, organizations such as Wikimedia Indonesia and Creative Commons Indonesia has also begun to introduce OER to educators and the general public.
Despite these emerging efforts, studies on OER in Indonesia showed further challenges of putting OER into practice in the country. Incomplete conceptions of copyright and open licensing issues among Indonesian educators still become potential problems in grasping a full understanding of OER and its good practices in academics. Moreover, it creates a narrow interpretation of OER as free online educational materials. The studies also noted the importance of raising awareness of OER and its benefits to the general public and education communities. Specifically to educators, there is a demand to focus the efforts on using OER in learning practices, beyond mere socialization.
What We Did
Addressing these challenges, Creative Commons Indonesia initiated an online bootcamp for educators on OER with a tagline “my learning materials for all”. The bootcamp, which lasted from November 4–28, 2020, was designed to equip educators with the root knowledge of copyright, open licensing, and OER as well as the necessary skills needed to find, use, create, publish, and share OER in Indonesian for their learning practices. To support this goal, seven facilitators with diverse expertise in copyright law, Creative Commons licensing, and open education led the event as the instructors and small group facilitators. These facilitators have also completed the CC Certification course.
The bootcamp was intended as an interactive place for educators to learn from the materials, the instructors, and their peers. To optimize the learning experience, the bootcamp unfortunately could only afford a small number of learners, considering the ratio of facilitators to learners. From nearly a hundred applicants, 21 educators were selected to participate in this online bootcamp. They were strategically chosen to represent diverse educational sectors and geographical areas across the country. These participants include elementary to high school teachers, vocational school teachers, higher-ed lecturers, librarians, educational government officials, non-profit educational organizations, and informal educators for preschoolers, homeschoolers, indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and youth organization.
In this online bootcamp, there were five synchronous sessions held every weekend and a virtual WhatsApp group for continuous asynchronous interactions needed throughout the bootcamp period. The synchronous sessions were used for few different purposes: presenting the content (recordings are available here) and allowing for live Q&A about the content, demonstrating and trying out some necessary skills (e.g., applying CC licenses to works, finding OER on the internet and repositories, etc.), engaging educators in interactive quizzes and case studies about common copyright misconceptions and CC licenses, and working and learning collaboratively with peers to solve problems in understanding CC license compatibility when creating OER.
In between these synchronous sessions, we have set up some renewable assignments (borrowing the term and the notion of disposable vs. renewable assignments from David Wiley) for the participants to put their understanding and skills into practice as well as to share what they have learned to their own networks and the general public so that more people can benefit from them. All these mini assignments led into their final assignment: creating and sharing an OER in Indonesian to contribute to the commons -for other educators to use-. Upon completing their OER creations, participants were also asked to review other peers’ OERs.
Note: the bootcamp syllabus (in Indonesian) can be viewed HERE.
We designed the bootcamp as much as we can to simulate an open education practice, which includes the use of OER in the learning process and the implementation of open teaching (i.e., learners contribute to producing knowledge for others), open collaboration (i.e., learners collaborate each other within and beyond the classroom cohort), and open assessment (e.g., peer-review and peer-feedback to reflect and improve each other’s works, understanding, and practices). We adopted some open educational practices from the Guidance on Open Educational Practices during COVID-19 pandemic.
Facilitators have significant roles in this bootcamp. A facilitator was assigned to a small group of 6–7 participants. They served as resources for the participants to seek assistance in understanding the learning materials and working on assignments. Moreover, facilitators were also there to clear up any misunderstandings and to give constructive feedback to participants’ works. All of these works were done by the facilitators via WhatsApp for asynchronous interactions and via a breakout rooms in Zoom for synchronous interactions.
Outcomes
In the end, the bootcamp produced 21 OERs in Indonesian with varying formats, content, and target audiences. We are aware that one of the most discussed issues around OER is its quality. Although many have suggested reviewing an OER from a ‘best-fit’ perspective rather than the vague criteria of ‘high-quality’, at least we made an effort to make sure participants created their OER in appropriate ways. A rubric was given to the participants as a guide when developing OERs for their final assignment and for them to peer-review each other’s OER. Facilitators reviewed participants’ OERs and provided individual feedback for them to improve the ‘quality’ of their OER before they can publish and share it to an OER repository (e.g., OER Commons). These last works of revising, publishing, and sharing OER were not required as a part of the bootcamp -due to the limited time- though we strongly suggested them to do so. We provided below some parts of the catalogue of OERs created by the bootcamp participants. A full, complete catalogue of OERs produced by all the bootcamp participants can be viewed at THIS LINK.
As a part of the final task, we asked participants to make feasible action plans -not so ambitious- to further disseminate the knowledge and skills they gain from this event and promote OER to their own networks. We provided mini grants to support the top three bootcamp participants to carry out their plans. The facilitators selected these three educators based on their works on each assignment and the final OER project. The screenshot above this paragraph shows a brief description of their final OER projects. Our mini grants will be used by these three educators as follow:
- Achmad Ghozali, an elementary school teacher at SD Juara Bandung, will share what he learned particularly about OER and open educational practices and Creative Commons licenses to other teachers in his school at a regular professional development workshop in the school.
- Laily Amin Fajariyah, a middle school teacher at SMPN 5 Panggang, Yogyakarta, and also an educational content creator at Laily English channel on YouTube, will invite her colleagues who also educational content creators on YouTube to a 2-hours sharing session where she will share some resources to browse openly licensed digital content (e.g., pictures, audios, music, video clips) for them to use in their educational videos. In this sharing session, she will also promote the use of Creative Commons licenses and how to apply the licenses on their educational videos.
- Donan Satria Yudha, a faculty member at the Faculty of Biology UGM, Yogyakarta, and also the director of biology museum UGM, will work on sharing his collection of fish biodiversity pictures in Yogyakarta’s waters to Wikimedia Commons and curate them into a booklet/catalogue and a video for the general public.
The last outcome, but not least, we keep the WhatsApp group alive as a networking and community platform of these educators (including us, the facilitators from Creative Commons Indonesia, who are also educators) for ongoing discussions about OER and for potential future individual or institutional collaborations on fostering OER in Indonesia.
What they said
Below are some testimonies we collected from participants about the bootcamp.
“This bootcamp was interesting and richen my knowledge on OER and CC licenses that is really helpful for my daily works as a librarian.” Chaidir Amir, a librarian at the Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia.
“Thanks for giving us enlightenment, insights, and knowledge that are needed in the current digital era [through this bootcamp]. Also, now I have a new community of good educators.” Tri Astari, a lecturer at Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Sumatera Utara, Medan.
“This bootcamp brought up new perspectives that I never know and I haven’t thought about before.” Deden Dikmat Chaidir, a high school teacher at SMAN 6 Pontianak, Kalimantan Barat.
“I felt so much fun, the bootcamp was really useful for me as a teacher. Apparently, there are many things that I don’t know and I haven’t explored yet, particularly in the area of utilizing ICT for learning. I am inspired by the professionality of the instructors, the facilitators, and the other peer educators in their respective field of expertise.” Suprihatin Ngurawan, a vocational school teacher at SMKN 3 Palu, Sulawesi Tengah.
“From this bootcamp, I am now capable of creating OER and more aware of copyright law and attribution practices. It was exciting to attend the Zoom sessions and work on each challenging assignment given by the facilitators. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this cool bootcamp.” Feri Dwi Hermawan, a founder of Indonesia Digital Teacher (IDT) and a teacher at SMKN Pasirian, Jawa Timur.
Acknowledgement
The success and final outcome of this bootcamp required a lot of hard work, assistance, and support from the committee, instructors, and facilitators from the Creative Commons Indonesia team: Fitriayu, Bhredipta Socrana, Siti Nurleily Marliana, Hilman Fathoni, Harsa Wahyu Ramadhan, and Florens Debora Patricia.
We also thank Julia and Creative Commons for managing and providing the Community Activity Funds (CAF) that made this bootcamp happened.
