Reuse Of Open Educational Resources Research Articles

Open Educational Practices

Open educational practices (OEP) is an umbrella term that includes the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER); pedagogical practices encouraging peer learning, collaborative knowledge creation, sharing, and empowerment of learners; and systemic and structural initiatives to support and embed openness. The underlying values of OEP match those of open education more broadly, i.e. enabling educational access, ensuring inclusivity, and furthering equity. Examples of OEP include using OER, renewable/non-disposable assignments (where students publish work openly), collaborative annotation, Wikipedia editing, open courses, and engaging in open learning/teaching communities, among many others. Some people use the terms 'OEP' and 'open pedagogy' interchangeably, while others consider OEP to be a broader concept, inclusive of open pedagogy, as the latter focuses primarily on teaching practices (see Open Pedagogy). OEP can be enacted at the level of individual artifacts, modules or programs (via OER, open pedagogy, open textbooks, open learning design) as well as systemically across institutional structures (via open education policies, open publishing practices, reward/recognition structures). Recent OEP research focuses on the importance of critical and social justice approaches, reflecting wider trends in digital and higher education. Such approaches acknowledge the importance of context and power relations and encourage diverse, inclusive, and equitable approaches to openness.

Openness reexamined: teachers’ practices with open educational resources in online language teaching

ABSTRACT Open educational practices (OEP) as a research field is relatively new. One aspect that has received limited attention is the impact of using open educational resources (OER) on the development of OEP. This article, based on a doctoral study (Pulker, 2019), considers teachers’ activities when reusing and adapting OER, with a view to providing evidence of reuse and understanding whether these activities influence teaching practices. A qualitative study following a constructivist grounded theory methodology was undertaken with 17 part-time online language teachers via semi-structured interviews. The article presents the five-step model of reuse that emerged from the data analysis. We suggest that OER reuse has a positive impact, even though teachers’ practices might not be open as defined up until now. A graphic representation depicts the process that teachers engage with when using and adapting OER. The research brings new understanding of teachers’ experiences of reuse, showing that the principal motivation is enhancing students’ learning.

Open Education for a Better World: A Mentoring Programme Fostering Design and Reuse of Open Educational Resources for Sustainable Development Goals

An international online mentoring programme Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) has been developed to unlock the potential of open education in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The programme provides an innovative approach to building Open Educational Resources, connecting developers of educational materials with experts volunteering as mentors. The model of the programme has been carefully designed and tested in two subsequent implementations in years 2018 and 2019. Results have proved the model to be useful for building capacities in open education, while producing concrete educational materials with great potential for social impact. Analysis of results has been used to suggest further improvements needed for enabling the program to be used on an even larger scale. The paper presents the development of the OE4BW model, its main characteristics, implementation results and guidelines for the future.

University Teachers and Open Educational Resources: Case Studies from Latin America

The Open Education movement has made efforts to systematise experiences and to evaluate the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). However, OER adoption is not part of the prevailing paradigm in higher education, both at the global level and in Latin America. This paper describes results of a study that analysed the social representations regarding the development, use, and reuse of OER by university teachers in their pedagogical practices. We conducted a study of 12 cases from Latin American universities using data analysis based on Grounded Theory. The results show that the use and reuse of OER lacks of public and institutional policies. The main agents are teachers organised in teams that support OER adoption. The reasons that encourage the creation of OER are mainly intrinsic, such as the pleasure derived from contributing and sharing, as well as external and related to professional development needs from the reflection on one’s own educational practice. Educators consider it essential to evaluate the resources created so that they can be reused in continuous improvement processes. Commercial use and misappropriation of the works are two of the main tensions identified. The community factor of teaching guides most behaviours in OER adoption in educational institutions and is presented as an inherent part of the development and transformation of the curriculum.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) for Teaching Portuguese for Foreigners: A Case Study

Education is experiencing a period of change and the traditional models of education adopted by universities need to go through innovative processes to democratize knowledge, attract new learners and optimize resources. The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) can contribute to such changes. However, studies on the reuse of OERs and language courses in the MOOC format are still scarce. To this end, the aims of this study are (a) to verify whether the OER production cycle proposed by Zancanaro (2015) in his framework could be used in part for the production and supply of MOOCs and (b) to present the production and to offer a process of the Portuguese Teaching MOOC for Foreigners (MOOC-PFL), developed at the Regional University of Blumenau. This is a case study that shows a production and offers cycle comprising the phases of analysis and design, coding, evaluation, dissemination and offering. Considering it was the first experience of the University with a MOOC course, it exceeded expectations, provided an increase in the institution’s and city’s visibility, contributed to the demystification of the OER use by the production and offer team and generated incentives for the production of new levels.

Repositories of Open Educational Resources: An Assessment of Reuse and Educational Aspects

<p class="3">This article provides an overview of the current state of repositories of open educational resources (ROER) in higher education at international level. It analyses a series of educational indicators to determine whether ROER can meet the specific needs of the education context, and to clarify understanding of the reuse of open educational resources (OER) provided by ROER. The aim of the study is to assess ROER by combining these two perspectives, and to form a basis for discussion among the universities that are responsible for these repositories.</p><p class="3">The method was based on content analysis and consisted of two phases: an exploration of international sources, and an analysis of 110 ROER using the proposed set of indicators. The results focus on data from the analysis of ROER websites and some models of good practices. They are presented according to three core dimensions for evaluating ROER: general factors to establish types of ROER, a focus on drivers for OER reuse, and a focus on educational aspects. It was found that most of the ROER that included one or more of the proposed reuse indicators were created exclusively for educational resources. Educational aspects are not yet firmly embedded into ROER. The few repositories that seem to have successfully included them are those that provide other educational metadata and use educational standards.</p>

Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education

<p class="3">Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices. As compared with OER, there has been little empirical research on individual educators’ use of OEP for teaching in higher education. This research study addresses that gap, exploring the digital and pedagogical strategies of a diverse group of university educators, focusing on whether, why, and how they use OEP for teaching. The study was conducted at one Irish university; semi-structured interviews were carried out with educators across multiple disciplines. Only a minority of educators used OEP. Using constructivist grounded theory, a model of the concept “Using OEP for teaching” was constructed showing four dimensions shared by open educators: balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching role expectations. The use of OEP by educators is complex, personal, and contextual; it is also continually negotiated. These findings suggest that research-informed policies and collaborative and critical approaches to openness are required to support staff, students, and learning in an increasingly complex higher education environment.</p>

Educators' open educational collaboration online: The dilemma of emotional ownership

The open education movement has witnessed ups and downs from initial interest in transparency and openness, followed by a lack of reuse of open educational resources (OER) and the massive boost of interest in massive open online courses (MOOCs). This article addresses educators' online behaviors and perceptions regarding participation in collaborative development of OER in online settings. Using a data-driven approach to study educators' perceptions, this article presents multiple considerations for collaborative OER development and validates a new model explaining educators' intention to participate in collaborative action. The findings reveal the contradictory nature of emotional ownership of knowledge: a critical enabling factor for commitment and a barrier to knowledge exchange in an open and transparent manner. The findings also show how outcome expectations regarding increase in reputation and status in the network do not influence the intention to share knowledge. Further interviews with idea-sharing platform users enable us to explain the favorable settings to resolve the dilemma of emotional ownership. The study contributes not only to further development of the open education movement but also to theory development of educators’ collaborative behaviors online.

Personal Spaces in Public Repositories as a Facilitator for Open Educational Resource Usage

Learning object repositories are a shared, open and public space; however, the possibility and ability of personal expression in an open, global, public space is crucial. The aim of this study is to explore personal spaces in a big learning object repository as a facilitator for adoption of Open Educational Resources (OERs) into teaching practices and to gain more insight into different types of OER user behaviors by analyzing the users' behaviors in the Bookmark Collection of MERLOT (a personal space, formerly known as Personal Collection), along with other community activities in that repository: writing comments and peer reviews, as well as sharing learning materials, learning exercises, and contents that were built with the content builder. In addition, using a data mining methodology, most active Bookmark Collection contributors (N=507) were classified into clusters of users with the same patterns of activity. Three clusters resulted, which gave insights into different types of contributor behavior. Furthermore, it was found that personal spaces are applicable for a variety of uses with diverse goals. Members create personal spaces for their own use, while allowing others to view and copy; or for other users. Personal space encourages the reuse of learning materials and enables the construction of unique learning processes that suit the learner's needs. They may offer the possibility of personalizing public repositories and promoting the reuse of OERs.

The realities of 'reaching out': enacting the public-facing open scholar role with existing online communities

A core tenet of the open educational resources (OER) movement has long been that 'the world's knowledge is a public good' (Smith & Casserly, 2006, p.2) and should be available for everyone to use, reuse and share. However, this vision of openness and of the connection between OER and social justice, which McAndrew and Farrow (2013) observe is currently re-emerging, is limited by the fact that OER-provision is typically top-down, driven by higher education suppliers with the needs of higher education (HE) in mind. As a consequence, the OER that are released can be hard to find for potential users outside HE and often fail to meet those potential users' needs in respect of the content, size, format and level of the OER. Seeking to increase the impact of OER and open educational practices (OEP) beyond higher education we conceptualised a new role for academics - the public-facing open scholar. The role involves academics working with online communities outside HE to source OER to meet the specific needs of those communities. Having developed detailed guidelines for performing the role we piloted it within a voluntary sector child welfare community in order to explore its viability. To date, our pilot findings indicate that the role of public-facing open scholar is both viable and well-received by the case study community. However, the pilot process, conducted in a community which requires all participants to be anonymous, has also highlighted the need to be aware of the impact of privacy constraints when choosing a community with which to work. In addition, the pilot indicated that listening to a community's needs involves more than noting requests for advice and includes attentiveness to a community's culture and typical modes of participation. This, in turn, can help the public-facing open scholar to fit in with the community and gain members' trust. The implications of these findings are wide-ranging. Voluntary sector online communities offer one platform for the public-facing open scholar to realise the transformative potential of open education, raising awareness and increasing the use and reuse of OER by people outside HE. However, the scope for the role is not limited to the voluntary sector and academics could find opportunities to perform the role in many different types of community. Furthermore, whilst we have concentrated on the role of the individual academic, institutional dimensions are also relevant. For example, higher education institutions which formally recognise the public-facing open scholar role as an important component of academic output, rather than an activity which is in tension with the demands of paid employment, may themselves be seen as taking on the role of a benevolent academy that is contributing to a global movement for free and open access to knowledge.

The Open Translation MOOC: creating online communities to transcend linguistic barriers

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 open education can harness crowdsourcing and existing open translation models to further the openness agenda.

Open educational practices for curriculum enhancement

Open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) are relatively new areas in educational research. How OER and OEP can help practitioners enhance curricula is one of a number of under-researched topics. This article aims to enable practitioners to identify and implement appropriate open practices to enhance higher education curricula. To that aim, we put forward a framework of four open educational practices based on patterns of OER reuse (‘as is’ or adapted), mapped against the processes of curriculum design and delivery. The framework was developed from the in-depth analysis of 20 cases of higher education practitioners, which revealed patterns of OER reuse across disciplines, institutions and needs. For each open practice we offer evidence, examples and ideas for application by practitioners. We also put forward recommendations for institutional policies on OER and OEP.

What's Educational about Open Educational Resources? Different Theoretical Lenses for Conceptualizing Learning with OER

In the last decade, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) has gained an undeniable momentum. However, it is an easy trap to confuse download and registration rates with actual learning and interest in the adoption and reuse of OER. If we focus solely on access, we cannot differentiate between processes of mere information foraging and deep sense-making activities. The article provides an overview of the OER movement, stressing emerging concerns surrounding the educational efficacy of OER and highlighting learning theories which aid our understanding of this growing domain. The authors discuss building-blocks for a theoretical framework that allows us to conceptualize the learner's part in open educational practices, also characterizing challenges of open learning and traits of successful open learners.

Conceptual framework for parametrically measuring the desirability of open educational resources using D-index

<p>Open educational resources (OER) are a global phenomenon that is fast gaining credibility in many academic circles as a possible solution for bridging the knowledge divide. With increased funding and advocacy from governmental and nongovernmental organisations paired with generous philanthropy, many OER repositories, which host a vast array of resources, have mushroomed over the years. As the inkling towards an open approach to education grows, many academics are contributing to these OER repositories, making them expand exponentially in volume. However, despite the volume of available OER, the uptake of the use and reuse of OER still remains slow. One of the major limitations inhibiting the wider adoption of OER is the inability of current search mechanisms to effectively locate OER that are most suitable for use and reuse within a given scenario. This is mainly due to the lack of a parametric measure that could be used by search technologies to autonomously identify desirable resources. As a possible solution to this limitation, this concept paper introduces a parametric measure of desirability of OER named the D-index, which can aid search mechanisms in better identifying resources suitable for use and reuse.</p>

Obstacles to creating and finding Open Educational Resources: the case of research methods in the social sciences

Social Research Methods are approaches to undertaking research shared not only by the social sciences, but by many other disciplines. There is therefore enormous scope for the creation and re-use of open educational resources (OERs) in this field. However, our work with social scientists on a number of recent projects in the context of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)/ HEA (Higher Education Academy) supported UK OER programme suggests that there are some barriers to both OER creation and use. Although there are now a number of national and institutional projects creating learning resources in research methods and making them openly available for teachers and students to use, many still use licences that restrict re-use and, in particular, modification; we refer to these materials as ‘grey OERs’. We also found that, in contrast to the well-developed practice of citation in research work, academics and teachers had a narrow notion of licensing and copyright of teaching materials, consistent with a limited experience of sharing teaching materials. The tacit understanding of academics about learning resources also meant that they saw potential users as mainly other academics who were subject experts like themselves. That meant that they gave little weight to the role of broad description and metadata in making resources findable. At the same time, when academics looked for resources, the quality and relevance of those resources and the ability to judge that quickly were paramount. We discuss two approaches that attempt to tackle these issues. First, the development of a mapping tool that supports those creating OERs to identify a range of classificatory and metadata in a way that gives those looking for resources a much wider range of ways of finding them. Second, the development of a website, based on Web 2.0 technology that exploits the contributions of academics using and reviewing research methods OERs. We suggest that the activities on a blog-based website creates a cultural context which constitutes an element of a community of practice of social science academics. Users can find resources by quality, pedagogy, and other metadata as well as content and through vicarious learning about the use and reviewing of resources by other academics, they may develop better practices in their own re-use and attribution of OERs.

UTILIZATION OF METADATA FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL SHARING AND REUSE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

In order to sustain the development and utilization of learning content under the limited financial and human resources, the sharing and reuse of open educational resources (OERs) have been promoted in various school levels and disciplines. In many countries, central organization(s) collect both learning content and its metadata, and provide them to learners and teachers with distinctive value‐added services from their portals. Collaborations among the national portals have also emerged beyond borders.Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) is an international consortium of the hub organizations, which manage a federated repository and/or a meta‐referatory in each country and region. GLOBE was established in September 2004 by five founding members, and now twelve organizations in the world participate in. By adopting IEEE LOM version 1.0 for the metadata standards, SQI for the query language, and OAI‐PMH for harvesting, GLOBE realized a global search and delivery infrastructure for lifelong learning (LLL). At present, while the repositories all over the world store huge number of learning content and metadata, the variance of the quality becomes much bigger. In addition, because the effectiveness of learning content is relative and dependent on contextual factors, both optimizations specialized in learner characteristics and localizations to each language/culture are indispensable. The users need some supports on the quality and pedagogical guidance when they find their right content. GLOBE, based on multilingualism, multiculturalism and pluralism, collaborates to build up standardized services on the quality assurance of the content utilizing the “Educational” items of LOM. In AAOU framework also, the organizations can promote “openness”, and share the quality learning content and educational information by using a standardized content search and delivery infrastructure.

Using learning design as a framework for supporting the design and reuse of OER

The paper will argue that adopting a learning design methodology may provide a vehicle for enabling better design and reuse of Open Educational Resources (OERs). It will describe a learning design methodology, which is being developed and implemented at the Open University in the UK. The aim is to develop a 'pick and mix' learning design toolbox of different resources and tools to help designers/teachers make informed decisions about creating new or adapting existing learning activities. The methodology is applicable for designers/teachers designing in a traditional context – such as creation of materials as part of a formal curriculum, but also has value for those wanting to create OERs or adapt and repurpose existing OERs. With the increasing range of OERs now available through initiatives as part of the Open Courseware movement, we believe that methodologies, such as the one we describe in this paper, which can help guide reuse and adaptation will become increasingly important and arguably are an important aspect of ensuring longer term sustainability and uptake of OERs. Our approach adopts an empirically based approach to understanding and representing the design process. This includes a range of evaluation studies (capturing of case studies, interviews with designers/teachers, in-depth course evaluation and focus groups/workshops), which are helping to develop our understanding of how designers/teachers go about creating new learning activities. Alongside this we are collating an extensive set of tools and resources to support the design process, as well as developing a new Learning Design tool that helps teachers articulate and represent their design ideas. The paper will describe how we have adapted a mind mapping and argumentation tool, Compendium, for this purpose and how it is being used to help designers and teachers create and share learning activities. It will consider how initial evaluation of the use of the tool for learning design has been positive; users report that the tool is easy to use and helps them organise and articulate their learning designs. Importantly the tool also enables them to share and discuss their thinking about the design process. However it is also clear that visualising the design process is only one aspect of design, which is complex and multi-faceted. Editors: Alexandra Okada (Open University, UK). Reviewers: Teresa Conolly (Open University, UK), Rose Luckin (Institute of Education, UK), and Alexandra Okada (Open University, UK)