1. OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OERs) FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS By: Dr Samuel Nikoi – OER Evaluator

2. Q1. What do we mean by Open Educational Resources? (OERs) ‘Digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.’ (OECD) ‘OERs are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute.’ (Wikipedia)

3. Q2. Why do we need OERs in HE? Because there are specific gains in sharing OERs and penalties for not sharing. Pull arguments (Gains for sharing) Free sharing reinforces societal development and diminishes social inequalities Push arguments (threats for not sharing) Traditional academic values of openness to knowledge will be marginalised by market forces such as Microsoft or Apple

4. Q3. What are the benefits of OER for the University of Leicester? Institutional visibility (http://www.webometrics.info/) A showcase for attracting new students (MIT and Openlearn) Better use of available resources which can lead to cost cutting of content development Helps to reach out to new groups of people without access or prior knowledge of higher education Can improve the quality of learning materials and stimulate internal improvement and innovation Reputation as a socially responsible University

5. Q4. Which institutions are currently involved in OERs? UKUSAEUROPEASIAOthers OU “Open Learn” Uni. of Nottingham BERLiN Uni. of Oxford OpenSpires MIT Open Courseware project Rice Univ. Connexions project Utah State Uni. USU OCW ParisTech OCW project with 11 member Uni. MORIL project A Pan- European OERs initiative including Russia and Turkey China Open Res. for Educ. consortium. 222 Uni. Members Japanese OCW Consortium from its 19 member universities OER Africa UNESCO virtual Uni. AEShareNEt in Australia Over 3,000 courses currently available from over 300 universities. Examples are:

6. Q5. What’s in it for me? Sharing stimulates further innovation leading to recognition by peers Publicity and visibility within the academic community Potential for collaboration with academics in other institutions around the world Potential for commercialising a version of the OER

7. Q6. Are you saying I should release my materials – i.e. those my students pay £10K a year for? Yes. Your students do not pay £10K for your materials. They pay for a university experience, including: Accreditation Socialisation Teaching Networking Cultural experience …. Teaching materials are only a small part of the university experience

8. Q7. OERs for whom? Current University of Leicester students Potential University of Leicester students Independent learners Work-based learners Educators Researchers Developing countries Global public

9. Q8. Are OERs sustainable? What is the long-term viability of OERs? Limited research evidence on sustainability of OERs Various funding models exist: Institutional e.g. MIT OCW Endowment e.g. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy project Membership e.g. Sakai Educational Partners Program Donations e.g. Wikipedia Apache Foundation Conversion e.g. Elgg educational community Contributor pay e.g. Public Library of Science (PLoS) Sponsorship e.g. MIT iCampus with Microsoft Governments e.g. The United Nations

10. Q9. How can I be sure about the quality of OERs available? Assessment of the quality enhancement of the production process Institutional reputation and expertise in a given discipline or subject Individual profile and expertise in a given subject area Growing community around the OER

11. Q 10. What other issues are there regarding OERs? Keeping materials up-to-date and in multiple repositories Interoperability issues Metadata standards Tracking and assessing the value of OERs Copyright

12. ‘OERs will help nourish the kind of participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation that rapidly changing knowledge societies need.’ (The Cape Town Declaration, 2007)

13. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. More FAQs?