Open Educational Resources - ODL

"he emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is focusing all its attention on open education. There is growing interest in creating MOOCs, which can be done by transferring OCW courses to MOOC format. However, a series of doubts arise regarding the pros and cons implied in this transformation. In this paper we discuss the conclusions derived from our experience at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid with a widely disseminated OCW course that was satisfactorily converted into a MOOC. This experience has allowed us to compare two different models of open education initially based on the same content. We also analyze the difficulties incurred in the transformation process and present strategies to successfully carry out this change."

"Scholars are increasingly being asked to share teaching materials, publish in open access journals, network in social media, and reuse open educational resources (OER). The theoretical benefits of Open Educational Practices (OEP) have become understood in the academic community but thus far, the use of OER has not been rapidly adopted. We aim to understand the challenges academics face with in attempting to adopt OEP, and identify whether these are related to or stem from the functionalities afforded by current repositories of OER (ROER). By understanding what academics and experts consider good practices, we can develop guidelines for quality in the development of ROER. In this article we present the findings from a study surveying academics using OER and experts who develop and/or work with ROER. We conclude by suggesting a framework to enhance the development and quality of ROER."

"The usage metrics for open educational resources (OER) are often either hidden behind an authentication system or shared intermittently in static, aggregated format at the repository level. This paper discusses the first year of University of Michigan's project to share its OER usage data dynamically, publicly, to synthesize it across different levels within the repository hierarchies, and to aggregate in a method inclusive of content hosted on third-party platforms. The authors analyze their user research with a target audience of faculty authors, multimedia specialists, librarians, and communications specialists. Next, they explore a stratified technical design that allows the dynamic sharing of metrics down to the level of individual resources. The authors conclude that this framework enables sustainable feedback to OER creators, helps to build positive relationships with creators of OER, and allows the institution to move toward sharing OER on a larger scale."

"In the context of a European OpenCourseWare project, funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Program, a handbook has been created with the purpose of showing how students and universities throughout Europe can get the most out of OpenCourseWare in order to become part of new learning communities and facilitate virtual exchange across borders. The main part of the handbook is the presentation of the Student Mobility Cycle that has been developed within the project and that defines five phases in the process of a student participating in Student Mobility. This article describes the five phases, each consisting of one or more scenarios that show the added value of OpenCourseWare in that particular phase."

"The past two years have seen rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) with the rise of a number of MOOC platforms. The scale of enrolment and participation in the earliest mainstream MOOC courses has garnered a good deal of media attention. However, data about how the enrolment and completion figures have changed since the early courses is not consistently released. This paper seeks to draw together the data that has found its way into the public domain in order to explore factors affecting enrolment and completion. The average MOOC course is found to enroll around 43,000 students, 6.5% of whom complete the course. Enrolment numbers are decreasing over time and are positively correlated with course length. Completion rates are consistent across time, university rank, and total enrolment, but negatively correlated with course length. This study provides a more detailed view of trends in enrolment and completion than was available previously, and a more accurate view of how the MOOC field is developing."

"Higher education in Tanzania like in many other Sub-Saharan countries suffers from unavailability of quality teaching and learning resources due to lack of tradition, competence, and experience to develop such resources. Nevertheless, there are thousands of open educational resources (OER) freely available in the public domain that can potentially improve the quality of existing resources or help to develop new courses. The uptake and reuse of these resources in higher learning institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania has been very low. The study applied the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model to elicit instructors' intention to adopt and use OER in teaching. The paper also investigated challenges that hinder instructors to adopt and use OER. A sample of 104 instructors selected randomly from five HLIs was collected and tested against the research model using regression analysis. The study found effort expectancy had significant positive effect on instructors' intention to use OER while performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence did not have significant effect. Challenges that were found to hinder instructors to adopt and use OER are discussed. The findings of this study will help those who are involved in OER implementation to find strategies that will maximize OER adoption and usage in higher education in Tanzania. "

"extbooks represent a significant portion of the overall cost of higher education in the United States. The burden of these costs is typically shouldered by students, those who support them, and the taxpayers who fund the grants and student loans which pay for textbooks. Open educational resources (OER) provide students a way to receive high-quality learning materials at little or no cost to students. We report on the cost savings achieved by students at eight colleges when these colleges began utilizing OER in place of traditional commercial textbooks."

"Open educational resources (OER) are making their way into a variety of educational contexts from formal lesson planning to just in time learning. Educators and training professionals have been recognized as an important audience for these materials. The concepts of self-efficacy and outcome judgment from social cognitive learning theory serve as theoretical constructs to measure educator perceptions of OER. This study uses a path analysis, based on the technology acceptance model, to understand adoption of these resources by this audience with a particular emphasis on self-efficacy. Among the participants, three main groups were identified: K-12 educators, higher education professionals, and those involved in workplace training. A discriminant function analysis found that K-12 educators stood out as finding OER relevant to improving their practice. Recommendations are made in regards to an emphasis on easy to use designs to improve application self-efficacy of OER and instructional messaging for future K-12 educators."

"The past few years have seen increasingly rapid development and use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing countries. These resources are believed to be able to widen access, reduce the costs, and improve the quality of education. However, there exist several challenges that hinder the adoption and use of these resources. The majority of challenges mentioned in the literature do not have empirically grounded evidence and they assume Sub-Saharan countries face similar challenges. Nonetheless, despite commonalities that exist amongst these countries, there also exists considerable diversity, and they face different challenges. Accordingly, this study investigated the perceived barriers to the use of OER in 11 HEIs in Tanzania. The empirical data was generated through semi-structured interviews with a random sample of 92 instructors as well as a review of important documents. Findings revealed that lack of access to computers and the Internet, low Internet bandwidth, absence of policies, and lack of skills to create and/or use OER are the main barriers to the use of OER in HEIs in Tanzania. Contrary to findings elsewhere in Africa, the study revealed that lack of trust in others' resources, lack of interest in creating and/or using OER, and lack of time to find suitable materials were not considered to be barriers. These findings provide a new understanding of the barriers to the use of OER in HEIs and should therefore assist those who are involved in OER implementation to find mitigating strategies that will maximize their usage."

"Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have recently become a much discussed development within higher education. Much of this debate focuses on the philosophical and operational similarities and differences between the types of MOOCs that have emerged to date, the learner completion rates and how they can be sustained. In contrast there has been much less discussion about how such courses do, or do not, fit in with existing higher education policy and practice in terms of the social, economic and environmental benefits. This paper begins to address this issue by comparing and contrasting current MOOCs with one large population ICT-enhanced, mostly online Open University UK course presented a decade earlier and how they have both served, or might serve, broader social, economic or environmental objectives. The paper concludes that while MOOCs are forcing a re-conceptualisation of higher education study, much can also be learned from previous and existing large population mainly online courses from open universities."

"This article provides a critical assessment of the potential of open educational resources (OERs) for open distance learning (ODL). After providing a definition of OERs it discusses the nature of OERs and explores the growth of the OER community. It also examines the different meanings that 'open' has when dealing with OERs and ODL before exploring the opportunities and possibilities that OERs afford. The article examines whether OERs can assist in the higher education (HE) crisis in terms of available places and whether they can also contribute to sustainable global economic growth. It also draws attention to the dark side of OER adoption, such as information imperialism and the danger that developing nations may only be consumers rather than producers of OERs. It concludes by highlighting the potential of OERs in ODL and draws attention to the need for specific educational practices and actions to facilitate the use of OERs in ODL."

"The last couple of years have witnessed a growing debate about online learning in higher education, notably in response to the global massive open online course (MOOC) phenomenon. This paper explores these developments from an institutional policy perspective, drawing on an analysis of the initial stages of different approaches to MOOCs and e-learning being taken up at three Australian universities. It points to four commonalities emerging from the institutional constructions of these initiatives including (1) the use of e-learning policy as a vehicle for curriculum redesign; (2) an emphasis on internal curriculum redesign as a core rationale for MOOCs; (3) a desire to capitalise on promotional opportunities but a reticence around wholly embracing the concept and structure of MOOCs and (4) the absence of access-driven concerns in university policy despite the prominence of such concerns in broader public debate. The approach is framed by a consideration of change dynamics in higher education and highlights the emphasis on internal university work within the policy narrative, suggesting this could represent an attempt to reframe the debate about MOOCs away from popular arguments about systemic disruption and instead use them to progress forms of change that align to broader strategic objectives."

"This exploratory study examines emotional affordance of a massive open online course (MOOC). Postings in a discussion forum of a MOOC in computer science are analysed following a research design informed by virtual ethnography. Emotional affordance is investigated, focusing on non-achievement emotions which are not directly linked to achievement activities or outcomes. The study identifies two non-achievement emotions in the MOOC. First, altruistic emotion evolves with the collaborative learning community and possibly compensates for teachers' minimal emotional intervention in a large, diverse class. Second, intergenerational emotional resonance is observed and this bears a key implication on managing age diversity for the future MOOCs."

According to Christensen and Horn, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are serving non-consumers. Although they are limited in the services they provide compared with traditional colleges, they offer free and accessible education to a broader audience, who cannot afford the traditional provision. However, this is a characteristic of online distance learning in its broadest sense, as can be read in the reports of UNESCO. For MOOCs to be disruptive, they have to: open up markets by competing with the existing firms using low-cost business models; improve beyond the level of the original competitors, taking price differences into account; and improve quality and replace the established firms. In this article, we are going to look at whether MOOCs are really disruptive innovations, or educational innovations that disturb the present state without driving out old educational business models. Based on the three characteristics of Christensen and Horn, our conclusion will be that the latter is the case. This does not mean that traditional education can ignore MOOCs, open educational resources and other forms of online distance learning, but that it will not be a direct competitor for degree-searching students.

"This research describes the predicted outcomes of a Kenyan Cloud School (KCS), which is a MOOC that contains all courses taught at the secondary school level in Kenya. This MOOC will consist of online, ongoing subjects in both English and Kiswahili. The KCS subjects offer self-testing and peer assessment to maximize scalability, and digital badges to show progress and completion to recognize and validate non-formal learning. The KCS uses the Moodle LMS with responsive web design to increase ubiquitous access from any device. Access is free and open, and the KCS intends to be a contextualized open educational resource for formal secondary institutions to support blended learning and a free source of non-formal education for lifelong learning. The expected outcomes are that this effort will reduce secondary school dropout rates, improve test scores, become a quality resource for blended learning, as well as validate and recognize lifelong learning in Kenya."

One of the main barriers to the reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER) is language (OLnet, 2009). OER may be available but in a language that users cannot access, so a preliminary step to reuse is their translation or localization. One of the obvious solutions to the vast effort required to translate OER is to crowd-source the translation, as exemplified by Wikipedia (Wikipedia Translation) or TED (Ted Open Translation Project). From October to December 2012 the Department of Languages at the Open University UK ran a MOOC on Open Translation Tools and Practices (OT12). Participants explored a range of online open translation tools (Amara, Transifex, Google Translator Toolkit) that enable and facilitate the crowdsourcing of translation, dubbing and subtitling. For this MOOC, participants collaborated in the translation and subtitling of OER mainly to and from English and Spanish, but also Portuguese, French, Greek, German and Catalan. Forum discussions, synchronous online sessions, recorded podcasts and the tasks themselves were designed to provide input, facilitate discussion and share views not only on the linguistic specificities of translating different languages, but also on issues such as quality assurance in open translation and the ethics and practicalities of openness in education and translation. Data for this paper is drawn from online surveys covering participants' backgrounds and their prior experience as translators; their expectations and motivation for participating in the OT12 MOOC; and their evaluation of the outcomes of the MOOC. We understand MOOCs as events (Cormier, 2010) or, following the principles of connectivism, catalysts for starting conversations within a network (Downes, 2011), and therefore feel that they might be a suitable way of engaging online communities of translators, language teachers and learners, and those interested in the crowdsourcing of translations for OER. This paper attempts to open up a debate on how the world of

"This is a postscript to an article about the evolution of the massive open online course (MOOC). In the brief space of time between the previous article's completion and publication, attitudes to the MOOC appear to be changing rapidly. The current follow-up discusses the rejection of key MOOC principles by Harvard University and its replacement by small private online courses, not obviously different from the online education offered by distance education institutions since the mid-90s. The article also presents evidence suggesting that the previous widespread acceptance of MOOCs has been more myth than reality."

"The aim of this article was to examine the experiences of students who have participated in massive open online courses (MOOCs). The results of an initial Google blog search were narrowed down to a sample of twenty-one blog posts, each of which was written by a MOOC participant. Content analysis was applied to identify and classify blog comments into emergent themes (e.g., the relevance of type and length of course, student demographics, instruction/instructor interactive styles, and factors that impacted on the learning process) to develop a picture of their experiences. Overall, mixed feelings were expressed. Results provided a glimpse of the student experiences, including why students take such courses, what elements of their experience are positive, and what can be improved from the student point of view."

At the Open University in Scotland "openness" is part of our sense of self; our engagement with Open Educational Resources and Practices (OER/OEP) seems obvious. In this paper we explore some of those obvious aspects and using our partnership with a third sector organisation explore some of the less apparent aspects of openness. In addition to an account of the development and design of a suite of learning resources, the paper also reflects on how those resources have been used in practice, and the ways the design process has informed future developments. In doing so the paper attempts to be open and honest about the practice of openness in partnership. The paper is based on a partnership with a third sector organisation Community Energy Scotland (CES). It is funded by the Scottish Government to support and administer funding to community groups interested in energy and sustainability. Some of these communities take forward large scale commercial renewable energy projects, the majority are interested in improving the energy performance of local community facilities - "facilities projects". This paper concerns the development and piloting of a suite of learning resources to support those facilities projects. In particular it looks at the opportunities that openness in partnership presents for HE providers. As an open and distance learning institution it is "normal practice" for us to think about access in relation to a wide range of factors. Open educational partnerships create new questions and new challenges that disrupt our ideas of open practices and the idea of OEP more generally. Some are around the different needs of partners and learners, in particular how that informs pedagogical design, and some around what 'open' means in partnership. Finally, the paper looks at how the materials have been used, and what the development of them has "taught us" about future partnerships and open practices more generally.