SCORE Introduction to Open Educational Resources - part 2

<<< Part 1

The second session of the day, run by Steve Stapleton of Nottingham University's Open Nottingham project, focused on discovering OERs. As well as its own repository, Nottingham has created Xpert - a search engine dedicated to locating Open Educational Resources, as well as finding images that are available for use under free licences. They also have material hosted on YouTube and iTunesU, though Steve did warn that additional restricive licence conditions are imposed on materials on the latter platform.

OERs may be discoverable through institutional repositories, subject-specific repositories such as HumBox, or gateways such as the Open Courseware Consortium's portal. There was some discussion about the reliability of materials located on the internet, and although in many cases you are relying on trust in the site, there are some gateways which use peer review, such as MERLOT. Steve's presentation slides are available on slideshare.net, and include many useful links.

The first session of the afternoon, run by the OU's Bernie Atwell, focused on copyright. Earlier sessions had brought up the need for "open content literacy", and particularly the myth that any resource found on the internet is free for use. As a signatory to the Berne Convention, the creator of an original work in the UK automatically owns the copyright to that work. For some works, such as music, the copyright is layered, with separate rights held by artist, lyricist, composer, etc. Copyright also exists in, for example, the typographical arrangement of a book, though not in ideas, and not in a person's image.

The session focused on the Creative Commons licences which allow for free distribution and use of the material (with attribution), and may also allow for derivative works to be created. There was also coverage of processes of clearing copyright in any materials (for example, images) used in educational resources, if their licence terms (or exemptions) do not already allow for free use. However, some of the scenarios we worked through were not clear-cut, and we discussed the need to take risks at times, as well as the need often to do what is right, not do what you have a right to do.

The final session of the day covered the global OER movement, ranging from community efforts (e.g. WikiEducator and P2PU) through to large-scale projects such as TESSA (which exists to improve teacher training across sub-saharan Africa), as well as the clause included in the regulations for US department of Labour training grants, requiring all materials created to be released under a Creative Commons licence.

We also discusses strategic issues. Preparing OERs is not cost-free, and there is often a need for seed funding from governments or national/international organisations. In the UK, JISC has recently opened the phase 3 OER funding round. However, there can be great savings throught lowered costs of developing materials in collaboration with others, as well as the potential to re-use. One of the participants gave an example of a lecturer needing to prepare materials on SPSS. With the support of library staff, existing courseware was located. This had to be adapted for the course needs, but the lecturer spent only around 20% of the time that would have been needed to prepare materials from scratch. There is also the need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the provision of OERs, relating to simple analytics of site access and downloads, through to tracking progression from use of OERs throught to registration.