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��Dr. Cable Green�Director of Global Learning�cable@creativecommons.org�twitter: @cgreen�

Taking

OER

Mainstream

#oer15 #oerplan

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Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

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(1) OER Infrastructure

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OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

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FREE

+

LEGAL RIGHTS:

REUSE

REVISE�REMIX�REDISTRIBUTE

RETAIN

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Step 1: Choose Conditions

Attribution

ShareAlike

NonCommercial

NoDerivatives

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Step 2: Receive a License

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MILLION

BUTTONS

A DAY

27

That’s only on individual websites.

Doesn’t count Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube…

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most freedom

least freedom

Not OER

OER

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(2) OER Value Proposition

http://abject.ca/open-ends/ - Brian Lamb – April 3 “Open Ends”

'Open' as a tactic rather than a goal.

I think that’s right.

Tony Hirst’s statement of Academic Philosophy.

Tony’s definition of open practice: “driven by the idea of learning in public,

with the aim of communicating academic knowledge into, and as part of,

wider communities of practice, modeling learning behavior through demonstrating

my own learning processes, and originating new ideas in a challengeable and open way

as part of my own learning journey.”

Agree 100% - and (as David Wiley says) content is infrastructure … a necessary component of most learning.

Given we need content for learning – let’s do all we can to make sure that content is open.

Moreover – openly licensed content gives learners and teachers the legal rights to:

Access knowledge, make copies, modify and distribute learning resources in public, and remix old ideas with new ideas.

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Reducing barriers to education, including access, cost, language and format.�
Transforming teaching and learning and enabling open practice / open pedagogy.�
Enabling the free access to and reuse of human knowledge, in all of its forms.�
Enhancing educational opportunities to foster development and more productive, free societies.

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Re-professionalizing teaching.

Connecting communities of educators around openly licensed content.

Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public funds spent on education.

Introducing internet and digital technologies into education.

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(3) OER Research

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OER Research Hub: opportunities

37.6% of educators and 55.7% of formal learners say that using OER improves student satisfaction.
27.5% of educators and 31.9% of formal learners agree that OER use results in better test scores
79.4% of OER users adapt resources to fit their needs
79.5% of educators use OER to get new ideas and inspiration
88.4% of learners say that the opportunity to study at no cost influenced their decision to use OER
74.9% of informal learners use OER to have a learning experience
The more educators use OER, the more they are willing to share

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OER Research Hub: opportunities

40.9% of all formal learners in our sample consider that OER have a positive impact in helping them complete their course of study
79.6% of formal students think they save money by using OER
31.5% of informal learners say that their interest in using OER is a chance to try university-level content before signing up for a paid-for course.
31.3% say their use of OER influenced their decision to register for their current course.
83.2% of informal learners say they are more likely to take another free course or study a free open educational resource, and 24.2% say that they would go on to take a paid for course as a result of using OER.

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OER Research Hub: challenges

Knowing where to find resources is one of the biggest challenges to using OER
General knowledge of well-established OER repositories is low
Only 12.4% of educators create resources and publish them on a Creative Commons license
Only 15.5% of informal learners select OER with an open license allowing adaptation despite the fact that 84.7% say they adapt the resources they find to fit their needs. = copyright violation or fair use/dealing?
Brand awareness of OER and easy location are major obstacles to overcome.

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U.S. PIRG

2014 study by U.S. PIRG found that 65% of students surveyed have skipped one or more required textbooks due to cost.
78% of whom did so believing it could harm their grade in a course.
Florida students survey: 35% reported taking fewer courses and 14% said they had dropped a course due to the cost of textbooks.
2015 study by U.S. PIRG found that replacing an expensive textbook with an open textbook saves students $128 per course.

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Open Education Group:�The Review Project�

openedgroup.org/review�
Studies that included data on both efficacy and perception
Studies that focused on efficacy
Studies that focused on perceptions

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OPENING the Curriculum:�Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education

Dr. Jeff Seaman

Researcher & Co-Director

Babson Survey Research Group

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Faculty OER Awareness

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Criteria for Selecting Resources

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(4) OER Momentum

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(5) What Cable Green wants to see in the world…�� … as OER goes mainstream�

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Default set to OPEN

All publicly funded education and research resources are CC BY licensed or dedicated to the public domain using CC0 (no embargo period).�
Textbooks, curriculum... all education resources are freely and openly available, in editable file formats, in all languages.

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Publicly funded resources should be

openly licensed resources.

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openpolicynetwork.org

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Institute for Open Leadership

2^nd Institute: January, 2016

Location TBD

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Learning shifts to solving�global grand challenges

OER are continuously and collectively updated by teachers and students … constructivist / connectivist, open practice pedagogies dominate.�
“Succeeding” in school means contributing to and improving the world’s educational resources, and solving / making progress on global challenges.

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Education produces �and uses open data

Data is:

Collected
Privacy is protected (opt-out options, etc.)
Dedicated to the public domain using CC0
Used to improve OER, enable personalized learning pathways (when solo), and inform collective action on global challenges.

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So… what do we do next .. to move OER into the mainstream?

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Cape Town

Open Education Declaration

Paris OER Declaration

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(6) Time for an OER �implementation�strategy?��Let’s talk about it…�

While the goals for OER are clear and broadly agreed upon by the movement,

the means and strategies for achieving them are not.

To actualize the full vision of OER,

we need a doc that looks inward and addresses strategic questions

about how we, as the global OER movement, can reach our goals.

A group of OER practitioners met to discuss where the global OER movement currently stands:

common threads

greatest opportunities

Challenges

how we can more effectively work together as a community.

developing a shared sense of priority about what kind of actions

will help advance the proliferation of OER development and use.

The first draft was shared at the Hewlett OER grantees meeting.

The draft is being shared at OER15 (Wales) and Open Ed 15 (Canada) in April, 2015 for more feedback.

A round of online comment opportunities will ensue and then the drafting committee will submit an updated draft for community review.

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tinyurl.com/oerstrategy��Please review / comment later �(not right now ;)��

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Would the OER movement benefit from a coordinated OER implementation strategy to accelerate OER going mainstream?�
If so, is this the right list of opportunities?�
What other opportunities are there for those of us working in OER to better collaborate?�

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Drafting Committee

Nicole Allen: SPARC
Delia Browne: National Copyright Office, Australia
Mary Lou Forward: Open Education Consortium
Cable Green: Creative Commons
Alek Tarkowski: Centrum Cyfrowe

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#oer15�#oerplan��(tweet contributions) – on screen�

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Extent of Market Penetration Necessary to Consider OER a “Success”? �#oer15 #oerplan�

Disrupting the educational materials and services market so that it flips to OER as the primary model for resource production.
Shifting public funding models to pay for publishing services, rather than paying for individual copies of textbooks.
Mainstreaming OER among educators so it competes with the traditional publishing model in terms of reach and use.
Sufficient quantity of high quality OER necessary to provide choice.

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Top Strategic Priorities for OER?� #oer15 #oerplan�

Build OER content to fill gaps or enable productive reuse.
Develop open policies that require public and foundation funded educational resources are openly licensed (CC BY preferred) by default.
Create and enable effective research studies in conjunction with OER development and use.
Create communities that support, in a grassroots manner, the development and mainstreaming of OER.
Develop national OER models or strategies that can be replicated in other countries.

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Top Strategic Priorities for OER?� #oer15 #oerplan�

Build key tools that enable more effective discovery and reuse.
Moving beyond content-related issues and focusing on the practices of educators that can be achieved with a shift to open resources, i.e. “open practice” / “open pedagogy”.
Better communications about the value of OER.
Scale OER in a specific sector, i.e. K-12, higher education, workforce development, lifelong learning, etc.

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Are these OER Movement Challenges?�#oer15 #oerplan�

Linear Rate of Growth
Absence of Standards
Insufficient Awareness
Difficulty of Discovery and Use
Inconsistent Breadth and Depth

Lack of Evidence
Questions About Sustainability
Unfulfilled Promise of Reuse
Poor Branding
Perfect as an Enemy of the Good
Lack of OER heroes

Challenges include:

external (conditions in greater educational environment)

internal (issues within the OER movement).

Not all challenges are present in every national or local context

but many themes arise frequently in strategy conversations

Linear Rate of Growth: Momentum is building, but adoptions are still primarily happening on a one-by-one basis

we’re still piloting and proving one example at a time

While pilots often prove successful, the models rarely end up being replicated or brought to scale.

For full impact to be realized, growth needs to be exponential rather than linear, both within national contexts and internationally.

Absence of Standards: Other segments of the open movement have standardized models

“green” and “gold” routes for Open Access

5 Star Open Data standard.

The OER movement employs standardized open licenses, yet we lack still lack a single standard or unified message that is applicable around the globe.

This is in part due to the diversity of the educational sector, which spans education from infants to the elderly, and employs a variety of resources and tools. This is also due to a large variance between local and national autonomy of education, especially at primary and secondary level, and variations in systems from country to country.

Finally, use and reuse practices are crucial in education, as well as personalised approaches to learning - these don’t standardize easily. However, in order for OER to scale, some standards or standard pathways are needed.

Insufficient Awareness: Awareness of OER is an essential precondition to expanding adoption, but generally is still very low.

This is true both in terms of understanding that OER exists as an alternative to currently used materials, and a deeper understanding of the benefits, quality, and potential innovations that can happen when it is adopted.

Difficulty of Discovery and Use: OER discovery, curation and re-use are often laborious and complicated.

This is a consistent challenge across the commons. Repositories are varied and do not have shared search terms and metadata.

Materials are presented in a wide variety of formats.

Tools to assist with remix, curation and reuse are insufficient, not well known, and/or are not themselves open.

Inconsistent Breadth and Depth: OER supply is uneven across subject areas and disciplines.

Some OER is very complete, while others are little more than links or shells.

This can undermine the impacts of awareness raising and slow down momentum if people who want to adopt OER don’t have OER to adopt.

Lack of Evidence: A persistent area of frustration for OER supporters is the lack of compelling, locally-relevant evidence for the impact of OER.

This includes research demonstrating efficacy and illustrative case studies.

Just as important is a better understanding of contextual variables that affect OER adoption and impact, such as educator practices, and the ways resources and IT are employed in education.

Questions About Sustainability: Business models and public funding models for supporting OER continue to develop, with numerous case studies of each.

However, there are still questions surrounding long-term sustainability and the ability for OER to “stick” in the marketplace without philanthropic support.

Unfulfilled Promise of Reuse: Potential for reuse is one of the key arguments OER advocates use to promote their model;

OER policies can make teachers into active creators and collaborators, while resources become dynamic and improve over time.

Yet we don’t have enough compelling testimonials, case studies or evidence that this is taking place, nor have we connected this advantage to a broader problem that stakeholders care about.

Poor Branding: In recent years, the term “open” is used in education ever more widely, with a variety of meanings. It gives opportunity to bring OER into a broader educational debate - but with several definitions of “open”, educators and learners are understandably confused. We are at risk of others “openwashing” OER. At the same time, paradoxically, the term OER is little known, difficult and technical - not a perfect educational “buzzword”.

Perfect as an Enemy of the Good: It is critical to maintain a strong definition of OER to avoid “openwashing,” but this can also create a dynamic where efforts that take a step in the right direction, but do not meet our definition, are excluded and not given recognition.

Lack of OER heroes: Mainstreaming OER requires stories that make people pay attention - exciting and engaging enough to make them interested in a relatively challenging subject that combines pedagogy, technology and law. We have good stories, but not great ones. Some of the really big stories in modern, digital education, such as Khan Academy and MOOCs, are at best ambivalent about open.

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Opportunities: Demand�#oer15 #oerplan�

Build Evidence Base
Improve Communications
Embed OER In the Teaching Profession
Engage Key Constituencies
Empower the grassroots
Coordinate Demand With Supply

Many opportunities exist for advancing OER, both in new ways and by expanding on opportunities that have already proven successful.

We have organized the opportunities below based on the three components necessary for OER adoption:

demand (awareness and motivation to use OER)

supply (content and tools to use it)

capacity (community and systemic support for sustainability).

These opportunities identify key places where the OER movement can intervene to help advance OER, and are intended to provide a useful starting point for developing strategies.

Demand / (awareness and motivation to use OER)

Build Evidence Base: Improve the body of evidence showing the positive impacts of OER, focusing on contexts where OER presents an especially critical solution to a problem.

This includes efficacy research that looks at key areas such as improved learning outcomes, business models, innovative reuse, improving equity, and cost savings. It also includes compelling case studies and stories that illustrate the impacts.

Improve Communications: Build a stronger case for OER to strengthen its branding and value proposition. Be more active in communicating by developing resources, coordinating messages, and working with other segments of the open movement. Consider the key target audiences of OER, and tailor resources to reach those audiences. Assets such as compelling human stories, infographics, and plain language resources will be key.

Embed OER In the Teaching Profession: Take advantage of ready-made pathways for instructors to become aware of and learn to effectively use OER.

In the short term, this could be linking OER with professional development activities that educational systems already conduct.

In the long term, this would be integrating OER into teacher training and teacher prep programs.

Engage Key Constituencies: OER adoption is not just about engaging the teachers, schools and policymakers who make resource decisions.

Other constituencies, particularly librarians and students, can play a key role in helping to catalyze and support these decision makers.

Librarians are experts at finding, curating and sharing resources. This community wasn’t originally deeply engaged in OER, but has increasingly become involved.

Students are also key as the beneficiaries of education, and also the largest constituency in terms of numbers. Students can offer a compelling voice and people-power to catalyze action.

Empower the grassroots: Without grassroots support from educators, OER policies will never fulfill their potential.

In particular, the promise of re-use cannot be met without the engagement of users with open resources.

Coordinate Demand With Supply: Focus on building demand in areas where supply exists.

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Opportunities: Supply�#oer15 #oerplan�

Focus on Productization
Tools for Discoverability and Reuse
Build Supply to Meet Demand
Accessibility
Open Up Existing Platforms and Resources

supply (content and tools to use it)

Focus on Productization: OER is easier to adopt when it is presented as a “turnkey” solution that is ready to use immediately without extra work.

Meeting the expectation of convenience that teachers and faculty in many places have come to expect from traditional materials can help OER adoption spread on a faster and wider scale.

Once practitioners are using OER in a familiar form, more work can be done to support their exploration of innovative remixing and use.

Tools for Discoverability and Reuse: While building tools alone is not enough to solve problems, there are some central challenges that can be removed through strategic tools.

Most important is discoverability of OER, but also tools that enable users to fulfill the promise of OER in terms of creation, licensing, reuse and remix for teachers and students.

Build Supply to Meet Demand: The movement has learned that the “build it and they will come” philosophy is not successful for OER.

It is more effective to prioritize building OER in areas where there is high potential for large scale adoptions, both in terms of the number of students served and the potential for institutional commitment and resources to support OER development and use.

Accessibility: The flexibility offered by the 5Rs offers significant benefits over traditional materials in terms of Accessibility for students with disabilities.

This benefit can be leveraged when creating supply, to demonstrate the benefits in contexts where Accessibility is important.

Open Up Existing Platforms and Resources: Evangelizing open can help turn existing services and resources into OER.

This is a key, alternative tactic to creating new, open resources.

This allows our movement to benefit from already existing resources, networks and communities, once they are made open.

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Opportunities: Capacity�#oer15 #oerplan�

International Growth
National Mainstreaming
Open as an Aspect of Digital in Education
Government Funding
Improve Movement-Wide Coordination
Connect With Other Open Movements

capacity (community and systemic support for sustainability).

International Growth: Successful OER projects tend to have a relatively small scale and have not widely spread to other institutions, regions, countries.

Using key projects as models for scaling is a major opportunity for our movement.

At the international level, it is important to build foundations of the OER movement by examining local needs and priorities, and then using and adapting best practices, advice and tools from existing projects and experiences.

What cannot be copied is a strong community to support OER locally, though lessons learned from creating movements in countries around the world can serve as a starting point.

National Mainstreaming: Multiple projects prove sustainability and benefits of OER, but OER has still not entered the mainstream at a global scale.

In countries with relatively developed OER activities, we need to shift from a narrow OER community to the broad educational community, by addressing broader values and needs of educators.

It is crucial to develop, at national level, an integrated set of activities that combines policy work, content production, community building, etc. into a holistic model for OER growth.

Open as an Aspect of Digital in Education: The Paris Declaration sees OER as an aspect and key element of digital education. OER can be successfully introduced if merged with IT in education initiatives - and vice-versa, digital education strategies are more sound, effective and sustainable if they include the OER model.

Government Funding: Governments are the largest potential source for funding that can bring OER to scale.

In many cases they are already spending money directly on course materials, or on programs that create course materials. We need strategies such as open license funding requirements that will redirect some or all of that money to OER.

Improve Movement-Wide Coordination: Members of the movement are doing effective, impactful work, but there is a lack of coordination between segments of the movement that may have similar or complementary aims.

Increasing communication and coordination among groups within the movement can help accelerate progress through shared best practices, improve efficiency by avoiding duplication of efforts, and amplify impact by identifying areas of synergy and common messages.

This could take the shape of a lateral network that connects various nodes, not a top-down or time-intensive requirement.

The goal is not to stop people from doing good work, but rather to insure that the work being done is amplified and built upon for better service to the movement as a whole.

Connect With Other Open Movements: Movements for openness in research publishing, science, data, software, and other areas are pursuing similar goals and face similar challenges.

While some areas of OER are beginning to forge ties, a more deliberate effort to coordinate messages and actions will help build a stronger and broader open movement that benefits us all.

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