Open Educational Resources (OERs) and me
I always took OERs to be a collection of artefacts (text, imagery, audio, video) woven together to form a chunk (for want of a better word) of material to support learning.
In 2002 UNESCO defined OERs as:
‘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.’
I’ve been aware of OERs for many years but I’ve hardly ever used them to support activities that I’ve devised or incorporated them into materials that I’ve developed. I suppose the truth of that last statement depends on your accepted definition of an OER. If a video on YouTube constitutes an OER then I use them all the time. Same goes for Creative Commons licensed imagery.
Having worked in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning for over 10 years I remember when OERs were previously a hot topic. I dipped my toe in the water back then by attempting to find resources relating to the projects that I was working on at the time. The result? Little success. Why? Looking back, national or international repositories of OERs were few and far between. From a UK perspective, the JISC funded Jorum repository for OERs was in its infancy and as a result the amount of materials available was very small. Interestingly, whilst researching for this blog post I discovered that the Jorum repository will be ‘retired’ in September of this year and JISC plan to ‘refresh its open educational resources offer’ due to ‘the changing digital demands’ of their users.
Due to a large scale project that I’m currently involved in I’ve recently re-engaged with the concept of OERs. Curation rather than creation — no point in re-inventing the wheel if someone has done a good job already and are willing to share the fruits of their labour. Searching for OERs today I was amazed at how many results I could get for specific search terms using the super aggregator type OER search engines.
Something that I’m almost ashamed to admit is that I’d never considered making any of my resources available as OERs. Studying on the Open Knowledge in Higher Education module has stimulated me to reflect and consider why this is the case.
As a Learning Technologist I predominantly collaborate with subject matter experts to devise and develop learning materials. In short, the creation of such materials is a joint enterprise. The fact that these subject matter experts are often from another organisation (namely the NHS) makes the issue of ownership at best fuzzy.
A problem often cited with OERs is that they are initially conceived as part of a greater whole such as a module or programme of study. Taking them out of their original context can often diminish their usefulness or effectiveness as an aid to learning. Deciding that you’d like to make resources available as OERs after they’ve been developed isn’t helpful in this instance. Instead a clear strategy prior to development of the resources is required which allows for the fact that segments of the material may be viewed as stand alone chunks devoid of the context provided by the whole to which they form part. The truth is that there has been no real desire to pursue a strategy of OER provision on the projects that I’ve worked on or within the schools or departments in which I’ve been based.
I currently work for the Manchester Medical School primarily in relation to their 5 year undergraduate Medicine programme (MBChB). Another obstacle to making some of the materials I develop available as OERs is that the school has ‘sold their curriculum’ (which includes all of the learning materials) to a University in Saudi Arabia. Could we really just give some of the same content away for free? How would this affect the school’s agreement and relationship with their partner institution?
Another barrier to the distribution and adoption of OERs appears to be that of localisation. Niall Sclater summarised this well by stating that:
‘OERs are built around a host culture, using a specific language, pedagogy and institutional philosophy, with literature generally originating from that culture.’
In effect, OERs often need considerable modification, such as being translated between languages, before they can be utilised. Cultural sensitivities must also be considered and addressed by those wishing to make use of OERs that were created by people from outside their own culture. The example of the Saudi Arabian institution I mentioned earlier is a good case in point (even though they’ve paid for their content the same principle applies). All of the content from the Manchester Medical programme is vetted by the Saudi Arabian institution to ensure that it’s suitable for use within a cultural context where subjects such as homosexuality, drug use and the rights of women are viewed differently to that of the culture in which the resources were originally developed and made available.
I’d be interested to know of anybody at Manchester making their materials available as OERs. Are there people doing this outside of the institutions official MOOC offerings on FutureLearn and Coursera? If so, what has been your experience? Chris Millson wrote about his experience of releasing the Library’s My Learning Essentials as OERs and how doing this enabled him to get suggestions and feedback from a much larger pool of people.
So, to quickly recap, I’ll happily take from the shared OER pot but don’t actively contribute anything back at present. I aim to explore if this is something that I can change going forward. There are clearly hurdles for me to clear (such as school/organisation approval) but I do believe these can be overcome. Essentially, my pragmatism is telling me that as long as I can do it without much extra work then I’ll at least try.
Is there a specific team at Manchester (perhaps within the library structure) that can advise and guide people looking to make things available as OERs? If anybody else is interested in exploring OERs JISC have made available some comprehensive guidance information.
