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eLearning Papers•ISSN: 1887-1542•www.elearningpapers.eu
n.º 23•March 2011
1
In-depth
informal learning, openeducational resources,expert survey, personallearning environments
TagsAuthor
Stefanie Panke
An Expert Survey on the Barriers and Enablers of Open Educational Practices
This paper is a report on the ndings of a literature review and an expert survey con-ducted in December 2010 with a self-selected panel. A total of 19 parcipants wererecruited through the UNESCO OER mailing list and the Educaonal Technology andChange Journal. The ndings depict current issues for debate, pinpoint potenal obsta-cles and benets of OER, and point towards future policy and research agendas. Therespondents dened several challenges for the widespread adopon and use of OERthat correspond to ndings from the literature review. These challenges include: inter-cultural exchange, sustainable instuonal policies, and formal accreditaon. Despitethe benets of OER, such as sharing with other learners, following personal learninggoals and encountering dierent points of view, learners connue to struggle to ndrelevant content and receive lile or no recognion of their informal studies in moreformal sengs. Both teachers and students lack competencies for self-directed learn-ing. Dialogue about OER needs to shi away from discussing access to materials andshould look at how to foster co-creaon, adaptaon, and distributed curaon.
1. Introduction
The term “open educaonal resources (OER)” was coined in 2002 during a forum held bythe UNESCO as “the open provision of educaonal resources, enabled by informaon andcommunicaon technologies, for consultaon, use and adaptaon by a community of usersfor non-commercial purposes.” Leveraging informaon technologies (ICT) to equalize accessto educaon has ever since been a core movaon for the OER movement – “
eliminate theaccess gap to high-quality educaon in the developing world
” (Pereira, 2007, 42). In the lastdecade, the concept has gained an undeniable momentum. In their report on OER achieve-ments and challenges, Atkins, Brown & Hammond (2007) esmate a total of 68 million OERgrants between 2002 and 2006. In 2010, the Horizon Report, which idenes emerging tech-nologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning, described “Open Content” asa key trend, expected to reach mainstream within the next twelve months. In the fall of 2010,UNESCO iniated an internaonal online discussion on OER-related topics. The “EuropeanConsultave group on Open Educaonal Pracces” currently develops a roadmap towardsquality management in OER (OPAL, 2010).As these examples show, the idea of educaonal material, freely and openly accessible on theWeb, aracts substanal aenon. One major reason why the concept of open educaonalresources has gained such prominence is the everyday-experience of informal and incidentalonline learning shared by praconers and researchers alike. Easy-to-use tools and wide ac-cess to networks make informal learning a more visible part of all learning (Kurhila, 2006).We use the World Wide Web as a convenient part of our everyday informaon infrastruc-
eLearning Papers•ISSN: 1887-1542•www.elearningpapers.eu
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ture - in private contexts, for scienc purposes, in schools anduniversies, and at the workplace. Search engines and directo-ries are oen the starng point for navigang the World WideWeb. But where do users end up in their quest for easily acces-sible, yet valuable content? At this point, the open access toeducaonal resources purposes becomes crucial to support theneed for lifelong learning opportunies. The idea is as simple asit is convincing: Free access to educaonal material facilitateslearning. As Elia Tomadaki from the Brish OpenLearn projectpointed out:
With open learning, people have greater access tohigher educaon material than ever before, at their pace and me and from anywhere in the world
(Sco & Tomadaki, 2007).Many scholars, journalists and educaonal praconers predictOER to be a disrupve technology:
Open courseware is a classicexample of disrupve technology […] an innovaon that comesalong one day to change a product or service
(New York Times,8. April 2010). As Beck (2007) puts it:
Opening educaonal re-sources is an acon that will take educaon to a new place
(3).A general consensus on the scope and classicaon of the termOER is yet to be found. Goertz and Johanning (2007) concludethat the design of OER-portals is extremely heterogeneous.Also, numerous projects are in accordance with the goals of theOER movement, without explicitly adopng the label. While itis dicult to give a clear-cut denion of OER, the following ex-amples provide an overview of the variety of projects and theirrespecve scope (Johnstone, 2005; OEDb, 2007; Stella, 2010;Butcher, 2010):
SourceOrganisationLaunchScopeURL
OpenLearnOU UK2005NNhttp://openlearn.open.ac.ukConnexionsRice University200016000 learning objectshttp://cnx.org/ OpenCourseWare Consortium of 250institutionsNN2500 courseshttp://www.ocwconsortium.org/ MERLOTProfessional community200322 500 learning objectshttp://www.merlot.orgChina Open Resourcesfor Education150 Chinese universitiesNN450 courseshttp://www.core.org.cn/en/ University of thePeopleNon prot venture20082 degree programshttp://www.UoPeople.orgParisTech OCW11 French universities2006130 courseshttp://graduateschool.paristech.fr/ iTunes UApple2007350.000 learning objectshttp://www.apple.com/education/ itunes-u/ WikiEducatorOER foundation, community 2006open Wiki environmenthttp://wikieducator.org/ MIT Open CoursewareMIT20012000 courseshttp://ocw.mit.eduJapanese OCWAlliance7 Japanese universities140 courseshttp://www.jocw.jp/ Open LearningInitiative (OLI)Carnegie Mellon University200211 courseshttp://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/ Teacher Education inSub-Saharan Africa(TESSA)Consortium of 18 Africaninstitutions2005Material on teachereducationhttp://www.tessafrica.netOER AfricaConsortium, Repository,Research1992research reports on OER,various learning objectshttp://www.oerafrica.orgJORUMRepository20079000 learning objectpackages for HEhttp://www.jorum.ac.ukTable 1: Open Educational Resources around the World: Initiatives and Repositories
eLearning Papers•ISSN: 1887-1542•www.elearningpapers.eu
n.º 23•March 2011
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Background
The public percepon that anything open or “free” is of inferiorquality proves to be a barrier to the widespread use of OER. De-spite pre-concepons that may or may not be jused, teach-ers and students understandably pose the queson: “Are thematerials worth searching for?” Providing educaonal materialopenly to large numbers and a diverse audience of teachers,students and informal learners requires a broad “minimumconsensus” on innovave pedagogy and respecve evaluaonframeworks. What theorecal consideraons account for theassumpon that learners prot from OER in the rst place? Thetheorecal framework can build on concepts such as learnerautonomy (Bouchard, 2009), self-ecacy (Bandura, 1997),open-ended learning environments (Land & Hannan, 1996)and cognive exibility theory (Spiro at al., 1992). OER providethe building-blocks to construct personal learning environ-ments (PLE) - “
a metaphor to describe the acvies and milieuof a modern online learner
” (Marndale & Dowdy, 2010). PLEscomprise tools, communies, and services learners use to di-rect their own learning and pursue educaonal goals (Educause,2009, Couros, 2010) and
migrate the management of learning from the instuon to the learner
(Downes, 2007).The conceptof OER is promising not only for the individual learner, but alsofor the learning organizaon : As universies make strategicdecisions to increase their levels of investment in design anddevelopment of beer educaonal programs, the cost eec-ve way to do this is to embrace open licensing environments(Butcher, 2010). Strategic alliances allow universies to develophigh-quality open content in key subject and disciplinary areas(see Table 1). At the same me, using OER poses several chal-lenges to self-organized learners and learning organizaons:•
Balance between
globalism and localism
(Osei, 2010): OERnurtures utopian visions of greater equality in the educa-onal system worldwide. However, there is potenally anelement of neo-colonialism the promoon of OER developedelsewhere. “Sharing across dierent cultures raises a chal-lenge on its own” (Madiba, 2008). Local content develop-ment is crucial in order to avoid the risk of training studentswho are useful for other markets rather than providing edu-caon and training that is relevant to the regional condionsand demands.•
Policy frameworks
: Many “one o” aempts to OER are des-ned to fail because there is no framework of sustainability.Issues to be addressed are intellectual property, recompens-ing sta contribuons and incenves for creang OER mate-rials. Petrides & Jimes (2006) see instuonal hierarchies andthe proprietary nature of educaonal content as barriers tocontent provision. This idea of ownership skews instuonalmovaon for implemenng OER and establishing measure-ments for success (Helsdingen, Jansen & Schuwer, 2010).•
Filtering
: The quanty of OER poses problems in itself - lter-ing what is useful and applicable to the individual learner’sneeds can be a large task. Various search facilies were de-veloped to allow users to search for relevant OER. For exam-ple, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) provides a Googlecustom search (hp://www.col.org/resources/crsMaterials/Pages/OCW-OER.aspx) and the widget Folksemanc (hp://www.folksemanc.com) allows for including related OER ma-terial into any given Web site.•
Reuse
: In higher educaon instuons are commonly waryof augmenng and reusing learning materials. Training teach-ers in creang, sharing and reusing OERs is a crical issue forthe OER movement. At the University of Nongham, the lo-cal e-learning center regularly oers workshops to promotethe use and re-use of OER materials (hp://www.nong-ham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_2588). Another example currentlyunder development is part of the OpenLearn project:hp://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=5732 •
Learner Competency
: Given that “
the level of adopon of OERs into common teaching pracces remains quite low
” (DeLiddo, 2010), many university students are unaware of openlearning opportunies or struggle to negoate and integrateopen educaonal resources with the formal, instuonalizedparts of their educaon. Making eecve use of OER in in-struconal contexts requires strategies to support coherenceformaon to integrate mulple representaons from mul-ple sources (Seufert, 2003).•
Assessment and accreditaon
: How can self-organized learn-ers bridge their open learning experiences and their formalaccreditaon needs? Findings from a survey on the Open-Learn environment indicate that users value the content thatOpenLearn provides but desire means of integrang stand-ardized (?) assessment components (Godwin and McAndrew,2008). How to assess student acvies in open learning envi-ronments remains an open queson (Reinmann, 2007).
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