guidelines for open educational resources in higher education

7/29/2019 Guidelines for Open Educational Resources in Higher Education

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Guidelinesor

OpenEducational

Resources(OER)inHigherEducation


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The Commonwealth o Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation createdby Commonwealth Heads o Government to encourage the development and sharingo open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.

The United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) wasounded on 16 November 1945. UNESCO is a specialized United Nations agency

promoting international cooperation among its Member States and AssociateMembers in the felds o education, science, culture and communication.

The designations employed and the presentation o material throughout thispublication do not imply the expression o any opinion whatsoever on the part oUNESCO concerning the legal status o any country, territory, city or area or o itsauthorities, or concerning the delimitation o its rontiers or boundaries.

The authors are responsible or the choice and the presentation o the acts containedin this book and or the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those oUNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

Commonwealth o Learning, 2011Any part o this document may be reproduced without permission but with attributionto the Commonwealth o Learning.

CC-BY-SA (share alike with attribution)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

Guidelines or Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education

ISBN 978-1-894975-42-1

Published by:

Commonwealth o Learning

1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200Vancouver, British ColumbiaCanada V6E 2E9

Telephone: +1 604 775 8200Fax: +1 604 775 8210

Web: www.col.org

E-mail: [email protected]

UNESCO

Section or Higher Education7 place de FontenoyParis 75352France

Telephone: +33 1 45 68 10 00Fax: +33 1 45 68 56 32

Web: www.unesco.org/educationE-mail: [email protected]


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Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ iv

Glossary o terms ................................................................................................ v

1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Purpose o the Guidelines........................................................................ 1

1.2 Rationale or the Guidelines..................................................................... 11.2.1 The higher education context .................................................................. 1

1.2.2 Open licensing and the emergence o OER.............................................. 2

1.2.3 The transormative potential o OER ........................................................ 2

1.3 Scope o the Guidelines ........................................................................... 3

2 Guidelines or Higher Education Stakeholders ............................................. 5

2.1 Guidelines or governments .................................................................... 5

2.2 Guidelines or higher education institutions ............................................ 6

2.3 Guidelines or academic sta ................................................................... 92.4 Guidelines or student bodies .................................................................. 11

2.5 Guidelines or quality assurance/accreditation bodies and academic

recognition bodies ............................................................................... 13

Reerences ........................................................................................................... 15

Appendix 1 Useul knowledge, competences and skills or efective

use o OER in higher education ..................................................................... 17

Appendix 2 Promoting more efective and inclusive education by

designing OER or the diverse needs o students ......................................... 21


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Acknowledgements

We are grateul to all who contributed to this document and, in particular, to:

Sir John Daniel, President o the Commonwealth o Learning and

Ms Stamenka Uvalic -Trumbic, Former Chie, Section or Higher Education,

UNESCO, who championed this initiative;

Mr Neil Butcher, OER Strategist, OER Arica/South Arican Institute or

Distance Education, Ms Jenny Glennie, Director, South Arican Institute or

Distance Education, and Ms Catherine Ngugi, Project Director, OER Arica,

or preparing drats o these Guidelines;

Members o the Expert Group or guidance in their specialised subject areas;

Participants in the workshops, online orums and policy orum that were

part o the Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacity

initiative;

All who submitted comments on this document; and

Ms Trudi van Wyk, Education Specialist eLearning, Commonwealth

o Learning, and Ms Zeynep Varoglu, Programme Specialist, UNESCO,

who managed the Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy and

Capacity initiative rom its inception in 2010.


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v

Glossary o terms

Open Access Publishing: Open access publishing usually reers to the

worldwide electronic distribution o peer-reviewed journal literature in order

to give ree and unrestricted access to it.1

Open Educational Resources (OER): OER are teaching, learning and

research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain and have

been released under an open licence that permits access, use, repurposing, reuse

and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions (Atkins, Brown &

Hammond, 2007).2 The use o open technical standards improves access and

reuse potential.

OER can include ull courses/programmes, course materials, modules, student

guides, teaching notes, textbooks, research articles, videos, assessment tools and

instruments, interactive materials such as simulations and role plays, databases,

sotware, apps (including mobile apps) and any other educationally useul

materials.

The term OER is not synonymous with online learning, eLearning or mobile

learning. Many OER while shareable in a digital ormat are also printable.

Open Licence: An open licence is a standardised way to grant permission and

to state restrictions to accessing, using, repurposing, reusing or redistributing

creative work (whether sound, text, image, multimedia, etc.).3

For denitions o related terms please reer toA Basic Guide to Open Educational

Resources (OER) (Butcher, 2011), published by UNESCO and COL.4

1 Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read)2A Review o the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New

Opportunities (http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/les/ReviewotheOERMovement.pd)3 Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/) and Open Denition

(http://opendenition.org/guide/)4 SeeA Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) (http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide).


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Introduction

1.1 Purpose o the GuidelinesOpen educational resources (OER) are materials used to support education that

may be reely accessed, reused, modied and shared. These Guidelines outline

key issues and make suggestions or integrating OER into higher education.

Their purpose is to encourage decision makers in governments and institutions

to invest in the systematic production, adaptation and use o OER and to bring

them into the mainstream o higher education in order to improve the quality o

curricula and teaching and to reduce costs.

1.2 Rationale or the Guidelines

1.2.1 The higher education context

In the current knowledge-driven global economy, higher education systems

play major roles in social development and national economic competitiveness.

However, they ace immense challenges in meeting rising enrolment demands

worldwide. Forecasts suggest that current global enrolments o 165 million

will grow by a urther 98 million by 2025. However, this growth is unlikely to

be accompanied by equivalent increases in the human and nancial resources

available to the higher education sector.

Many institutions are incorporating inormation and communication

technologies (ICT) into their management, administration and educational

programmes in order to serve their students more cost-eectively and to prepare

them or the world into which they will graduate. In many developing countries,

however, access to hardware, sotware and connectivity remain challenges. It

is thereore critical to adapt pedagogical approaches and learning materials

to this environment while ensuring high quality and relevant educationalopportunities.

In parallel, ICT are dramatically increasing the transer o inormation through

global communication systems, leading to an explosion in the generation

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and collective sharing o knowledge. The participation o non-specialists

in previously specialised disciplinary areas is extending the boundaries o

scholarship, while dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools

and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted. This opens up

opportunities to create and share a wider array o educational resources,

thereby accommodating a greater diversity o student needs. The digitisation o

inormation, combined with its increasingly widespread dissemination, poses

signicant challenges to concepts o intellectual property. Copyright regimes

and business models or publication are under scrutiny.

Increased online access to OER has urther promoted individualised study,

which, coupled with social networking and collaborative learning, has created

opportunities or pedagogical innovation.

1.2.2 Open licensing and the emergence o OEROpen licences have emerged in an eort to protect authors rights in

environments where content (particularly when digitised) can easily be copied

and shared without permission. Open licences seek to ensure that copying and

sharing happen within a structured legal ramework that is more exible than

the automatic all-rights-reserved status o copyright. They allow permissions to

be given accurately, while releasing the restrictions o traditional copyright.

OER are part o this process. They allow or more exibility in the use, reuse and

adaptation o materials or local contexts and learning environments, whileallowing authors to have their work acknowledged.

Some advocates o OER say that a key benet o open content is that it is ree,

but this is simplistic. Open content can be shared with others without asking

permission and without paying licence or other access ees. However, some

important cost considerations must be taken into account. Taking eective

advantage o OER requires institutions to invest systematically in programme/

course design and materials development and acquisition. Time must be

invested in developing courses and materials, nding appropriate OER,

adapting existing OER and negotiating copyright licensing (i material is not

openly licensed). There are also associated costs such as the procurement and

maintenance o ICT inrastructure (or authoring and content-sharing purposes)

and bandwidth.

Educational institutions are making these investments in order to improve

the quality o teaching and learning. They enable peers to share materials and

enrich the curriculum or students. Institutions using and adapting OER can

nd this a cost-eective way o investing in materials design and development.


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1.2.3 The transormative potential o OER

The growing demand or higher education and the ongoing rollout o ICT

inrastructure have created unique challenges or higher education institutions

in an era o tight resources. It has become increasingly important or educational

institutions to support, in a planned and systematic manner:

Development and improvement o curricula and learning materials;

Ongoing programme and course design;

Organisation o interactive contact sessions with and among students;

Development o quality teaching and learning materials;

Design o eective assessment tools or diverse environments; and

Links with the world o work.

OER can make a signicant contribution to these processes. However, OER

do not automatically lead to quality, efciency and cost-eectiveness; muchdepends on the procedures put in place. The transormative educational

potential o OER depends on:

1. Improving the quality o learning materials through peer review processes;

2. Reaping the benets o contextualisation, personalisation and localisation;

3. Emphasising openness and quality improvement;

4. Building capacity or the creation and use o OER as part o the proessional

development o academic sta;

5. Serving the needs o particular student populations such as those with

special needs;6. Optimising the deployment o institutional sta and budgets;

7. Serving students in local languages;

8. Involving students in the selection and adaptation o OER in order to engage

them more actively in the learning process; and

9. Using locally developed materials with due acknowledgement.

The transormative potential o OER also includes the benets o sharing and

collaborating among institutions and countries, and the creatively disruptive

role o OER in opening up new educational models.

1.3 Scope o the GuidelinesGiven the potential o OER to improve higher education systems, UNESCO and

the Commonwealth o Learning (COL) have developed these Guidelines, ater

broad consultations with stakeholders in all regions o the world, to support

governments, higher education institutions/providers, academic sta, student

bodies and quality assurance/accreditation and recognition bodies. A UNESCO-

COL companion document,A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)(Butcher, 2011),5 provides more detailed inormation about all aspects o OER.

5 See http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide.


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Guidelines or Higher Education

Stakeholders

2.1 Guidelines or governmentsThe roles o governments in higher education and the relationships o

governments with institutions in this sector vary widely rom country to

country. However, governments can usually play an important role in setting

policies or higher education systems. They have an interest in ensuring that

public investments in higher education make a useul and cost-eective

contribution to socio-economic development. Most governments also support

some universities nancially.

In this context, governments are oten in a position to require that educationally

useul material developed with public unds be made available under open

licences. While there may sometimes be reasons or not requiring open

licensing, the sharing o educational materials has signicant potential to

improve the quality, transparency and accessibility o higher education systems.

Likewise, governments can use open licensing regimes to increase the leverage

o public investments, by acilitating widespread reuse o those resources with

minimal additional investment.

In this context, it is suggested that governments:(a) Support the use o OER through their policy-making role in higher

education. This could include encouraging and supporting the use o

OER in adapting learning experiences to a greater diversity o learners

and supporting national social-inclusion agendas. In this way, it would be

possible to encourage equitable access to higher education and improve

learning outcomes or all learners. Sustainability o this endeavour might

be encouraged by setting up a government programme o support or OER

creation and reuse.

(b) Consider adopting open licensing rameworks. One eective way to

accelerate open licensing and the sharing o higher education resources

would be to adopt, within policy rameworks, an appropriate national

open licensing ramework. This might orm part o an overarching policy

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ramework on intellectual property rights (IPR) and copyright in higher

education that spans both research and teaching activities. Such a licensing

ramework could also cover the copyright and IPR status o educational

materials produced by government departments and agencies.

(c) Consider adopting open standards. Linked to the above could be theadoption o appropriate open standards. The purpose would be to ensure

ull access to and use/sharing o resources in higher education. This could

span both research and educational publications, serving to ensure the

perpetuity o editable electronic documents, regardless o changes to

sotware. Such standards could cover educational materials produced

by government departments and agencies and by institutions receiving

government support or developing educational resources.

(d) Contribute to raising awareness o key OER issues. This could include

the development and sharing o case studies o good practice and relevantexamples o use to support implementation eorts. Governments can assist

higher education stakeholders to understand issues surrounding IPR, as well

as how IPR are being challenged and reshaped by the rapid digitisation and

online sharing o inormation and resources.

(e) Promote national ICT/connectivity strategies. Given the centrality o

ICT to accessing and sharing content online, such support could ocus on

ensuring sustained provision o connectivity and sta/student access to ICT

within higher education systems.

() Support the sustainable development and sharing o quality

learning materials. Key to the sustainable development and use o

OER will be supporting higher education institutions, individually and

collectively, in their eorts to produce and share high quality educational

resources. This could include support or national initiatives to develop

local content and regional/global eorts to develop OER repositories and

directories, as well as ostering mechanisms to promote quality in OER.

There is no single strategy that will work or every context, but a coordinated

approach would likely yield the best results.

2.2 Guidelines or higher educationinstitutions

Higher education institutions can play a critical role in supporting their

teaching sta in the creation o eective teaching and learning environments

or students and providing ongoing opportunities or proessional development.

Identiying and developing learning resources are both integral parts o thisprocess. Institutions should aspire both to create OER and to use OER rom

elsewhere.


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Well-designed learning resources encourage greater individual engagement

by students with inormation, ideas and content than is possible with lectures

alone. By making such resources an integral part o the teaching and learning

process, limited ace-to-ace teaching time with students can be more eectively

used to oster engagement and to nurture discussion, creativity, practical

applications and research activities.

In developing courses and learning resources, teaching sta naturally use what

is available. The increasing pool o OER not only widens their choice, but also

creates opportunities or new resources to be adapted to t the local context in

terms o culture and learning needs without necessitating lengthy copyright

negotiations or duplicating content development.

Experience shows that, when institutions make good quality courses and

materials publicly available online, they can attract new students, expand their

institutional reputation and advance their public service role. Such institutionsmay also urther the dissemination o research results and thereby attract

research unding. However, institutions have to position OER within their

institutional branding and take into account any income that the sales o their

educational materials may generate.

In this context, it is suggested that higher education institutions:

(a) Develop institutional strategies or the integration o OER. These

Guidelines suggest elements that institutions may wish to consider in

developing corporate strategies or the integration o OER into a range oactivities.

(b) Provide incentives to support investment in the development,

acquisition and adaptation o high quality learning materials.

Institutional policies should be reviewed to:

Encourage judicious selection and adaptation o existing OER, as well as

development o new materials where necessary;

Promote the publication o educational materials as OER within

institutional protocols;

Promote research on using, reusing and repurposing OER;

Promote students publishing their work (with the guidance o academic

sta and within institutional protocols) under an open licence as OER;

Build OER into mechanisms or institutional and individual

monitoring;

Promote collaboration both within and beyond the institution in

developing materials;

Provide sta with appropriate incentives and rewards or the

development, acquisition and adaptation o learning materials; and Ensure that sta workload models allow or curriculum, course and

materials design and development.


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(c) Recognise the important role o educational resources within

internal quality assurance processes. This should include establishing

and maintaining a rigorous internal process or validating the quality o

educational materials prior to their publication as OER.

(d) Consider creating exible copyright policies. Such policies couldmake it simple or sta to invoke some-rights-reserved copyright or other

licensing permutations when this is deemed necessary. These policies could

be part o a wider institutional process to ensure that robust, enorceable

IPR, copyright and privacy policies are in place and accurately reected in all

legal contracts and conditions o employment.

(e) Undertake institutional advocacy and capacity building. Ongoing

awareness-raising, capacity-building (sta development) and networking/

sharing or both women and men can be carried out to develop the ull

range o competences required to acilitate more eective use o OER.6 Theseactivities could aim to encourage a shared vision or open educational

practices within the organisation, which would ideally be aligned to the

institutions vision and mission and linked to incentives.

() Ensure ICT access or staf and students. This means striving to ensure

that academic sta and students have ubiquitous access to the necessary

ICT inrastructure, sotware and connectivity to access the Internet and

develop or adapt educational materials o dierent kinds. This should

include sotware applications, such as Web content editing tools, content

management systems, templates and toolkits that acilitate the creation and

use o adaptable, inclusively designed educational resources.7 It might also

entaildeveloping a repository o the work o academic sta and students

that could serve as a powerul teaching and learning resource, while raising

awareness o the distinction between appropriate sharing/collaboration

and plagiarism. Sta and students should also have access to training/

proessional development and support to use these systems.

(g) Develop institutional policies and practices to store and access

OER. This includes the capacity to store, manage and share resources andcontent, both internally and externally, so that academic endeavours build

on a growing base o institutional knowledge. This might be done most cost-

eectively as part o a coordinated national strategy or in partnership with

emerging global OER networks and repositories based on open standards.

(h) Review institutional OER practices periodically. Such reviews will

help the institution determine the value o its policies and practices. They

could include reviewing the extent o the use o openly licensed educational

materials in higher education programmes. They could also include

assessing the eects o this use on the quality o educational delivery and

6 A complete list o relevant skills and competences or consideration is included in Appendix 1.7 See Appendix 2.


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its impact on the cost o developing/procuring high quality teaching and

learning materials or undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Where

relevant, this might be extended to showcasing examples o good practice,

in both marketing publications and academic research publications.

2.3 Guidelines or academic stafAcademic staare vital agents in ensuring the quality o teaching and learning

delivered to students. They are central to the teaching and learning experience

o students. Teachers ace a series o challenges, including:

Time constraints in preparing curriculum and selecting, adapting and/or

developing teaching and learning materials and assessment tools;

Access to high quality, relevant teaching and learning materials;

The need to address the oten diverse needs o their learners and

demonstrate gender sensitivity;

Changing teaching and learning environments (rom teacher-centred to

learner-centred approaches);

Increased student access to online materials, collaborative networks and

online publishing opportunities;

Legal requirements to broaden access;

The need to cover a broad and growing knowledge base;

The need to update their ICT skills regularly;

High student expectations; and

Ever-increasing enrolments in many jurisdictions.

Responsibility or assuring the quality o any content used in teaching and

learning environments, including OER, will reside predominantly with the

programme/course coordinators and individual academic sta members.

Whether prescribing core readings/textbooks, suggesting urther readings,

choosing a video to screen or using someone elses course plan, they retain

nal responsibility or choosing which materials open and/or proprietary,

digital or hardcopy to use. For this reason, much o the quality o OER willdepend on which resources academic sta choose to use, how they adapt them

or contextual relevance and how they integrate them into various teaching

and learning activities. Eective use o OER can address many o the above

challenges.

In this context, it is suggested that academic sta in higher education

institutions:

(a) Develop skills to evaluate OER. A good starting point is to increase

knowledge o OER through exploring existing OER in suitable portals/

repositories and determining what might be useul in courses and modules.

Academic sta may nd existing OER to be useul benchmarks or reecting

on and improving their own curriculum and pedagogy as well as those o


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others. Such exploration and peer support/review may also develop their

condence to share new and/or adapted resources to address curriculum

gaps in the existing pool o OER, which would enable them to contribute to

global knowledge.

(b) Consider publishing OER. For some academic sta, this might beinitiated most comortably by starting small, working collaboratively with

peers (including peer reviews) and publishing materials openly that are

already routinely produced as part o teaching and learning, including

course outlines, course inormation booklets or hand-outs, teaching notes

and course assessment tools and instruments. Over time, such practices

could generate a rich, inter-institutional repository o materials on which

to draw. It would also provide students with a richer understanding o the

content area.

(c) Assemble, adapt and contextualise existing OER. Part o the eectiveuse o OER includes developing skills to adapt and contextualise existing

OER to respond to diverse learning needs o students and support a variety

o learning approaches or a given learning goal. This can be achieved by

making use o, and contributing to, the diverse pool o resources available in

OER repositories and sharing inormation on issues and processes related to

adaptation and localisation o resources.

(d) Develop the habit o working in teams.Just as modern research is

usually a team eort, so the development and repurposing o materials

is likely to be more successul and more satisying or the academic stas

involved, i they adopt a team approach.

(e) Seek institutional support or OER skills development. In order

to exploit OER eectively academic sta will need to acquire skills and

competences, such as materials design, curriculum development and the

location, selection and adaptation o OER through a blended strategy o

skills development and proessional skills support. They should receive

institutional support or proessional development in these areas, both as

individuals and as teams.8

() Leverage networks and communities o practice. Academic sta can

benet tremendously rom using existing online networks and communities

o practice collaboratively to develop, adapt and share OER, as well as

to engage in dialogue about their experiences in teaching and learning.

Such communities o practice can also provide an excellent platorm or

publishing resources in existing repositories.

(g) Encourage student participation. Academic sta can be encouraged to

use student eedback on OER to improve their own materials and encouragestudents to publish and contribute to OER. Students can be encouraged and

supported in seeking and using OER or the purposes o sel-directed study

8 A detailed list o relevant skills is contained in Appendix 1.


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and, at the more advanced levels, or developing their own curriculum/

courses o study.

(h) Promote OER through publishing about OER. This can help toincrease

the body o knowledge available on a subject, particularly i it is done via

open publications, journals and other relevant vehicles. This might includearticles sharing experiences on the use, reuse and repurposing o OER and

encouraging students to participate in OER.

(i) Provide eedback about, and data on the use o, existing OER.

Providing eedback and data on the OER that have been created, adapted,

used and/or reused, specically relating to success in meeting learning goals

and student needs, is an invaluable contribution to their eective use.

(j) Update knowledge o IPR, copyright and privacy policies. This would

entail having access to relevant advice and expertise on these matters, as

well as a general amiliarity with institutional policies and contractual

agreements relating to IPR and copyright. It is particularly important to be

clear about rights and conditions relating to works created during the course

o employment and how these might be shared with and used by others.

Academic sta should understand how these policies might aect their

rights.

2.4 Guidelines or student bodiesAs the role o universities has evolved, so too has the role o the student.

Emerging trends include a need or active global citizenship, employability,

transerable skills and knowledge, communication skills, creativity and

innovation. Key challenges include meeting the rising costs o education

(including textbooks) and identiying appropriate educational courses/

programmes that meet learning needs. Eective OER use can contribute

to resolving these challenges, both by making the content o educational

programmes more transparent and lowering the cost o accessing them.

When adequately supported, students have great potential to support higher

education providers in sourcing, adapting and producing OER in partnership

with academic sta.

To promote these changing student roles, student bodies have to play a role

in shaping the quality o their educational experience. Although creating

teaching and learning environments that harness OER in educationally eective

ways is primarily the responsibility o academic sta, student bodies as key

stakeholders in higher education should be aware o the relevant issues

and integrate them as appropriate into their interactions with other highereducation stakeholders.


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In this context, it is suggested that student bodies:

(a) Understand the issues o OER and undertake advocacy o OER.

Student bodiescan actively promote awareness among students o the

potential o OER to improve the educational experience, based on the

understanding o educational and economic benets o OER mapped outin these Guidelines and the UNESCO-COL documentA Basic Guide to

Open Educational Resources (OER) (Butcher 2011).9 Student bodies could also

support and advocate the sharing o publicly unded educational materials

under open licences and understand students own roles as knowledge

producers and active participants in the learning process. Student bodies

can also collaborate with other countries student bodies with similar ocus

on OER.10

(b) Encourage their members to publish work as OER. Students can

make a signicant contribution to increasing the use o OER by publishingtheir work (preerably under the guidance o academic sta and within

institutional protocols) under an open licence. A repository o student work

could serve as a powerul learning resource, while also raising awareness

about the distinction between appropriate sharing/collaboration and

plagiarism.

(c) Take an active role in assuring the quality o OER through social

networks. Student bodies can encourage students to participate in the

social networking environments that have been created around OER

repositories, so that they play an active role in assuring the quality o

content by adding comments on what content they are nding useul and

why.

(d) Recognise that ICT are an increasingly important part o the

higher education experience and are oten crucial or students with

special educational needs. Student bodies should engage in institutional

decision-making processes to ensure that the ICT chosen are directly useul

to students, are inclusive and conorm to existing open standards.

(e) Encourage student participation in activities to support OERdevelopment.Student bodies can actively support and promote strategies

to allow students to assist in sourcing, adapting and producing OER in

partnership with academic sta. Furthermore, student bodies can help

to shape the nature and quality o students educational experiences by

encouraging and supporting the use o OER or the purposes o sel-directed

study and, at the more advanced levels, by having students create their own

curriculum/courses o study.

9 See http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide.10 See, or example, http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks/.


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2.5 Guidelines or quality assurance/accreditation bodies and academicrecognition bodies

Quality assurance and qualications recognition have become central elementso higher education at all levels because o its increasing diversity and the

mobility o students, researchers and other proessionals.

Quality assurance is primarily the responsibility o higher education

institutions, although external quality assurance bodies play an essential role in

ostering a quality culture through the assessment o programmes and reviews

o institutional quality assurance mechanisms. When assessing the quality o

teaching, quality assurance bodies normally consider the educational resources

that are produced, adapted and used by the institutions (including OER).

Quality assurance bodies thereore have a role in ensuring that policies are in

place to support the use o OER.

Recognition bodies should also have an understanding o the role o OER in

higher education to ensure the air recognition o qualications. The missions

o quality assurance bodies and recognition bodies are closely linked, and

recognition bodies oten rely on inormation provided by quality assurance

bodies. Thereore, recognition bodies are also likely to consider the educational

resources produced, adapted and used by the awarding institution.

In this context, it is suggested that quality assurance bodies and recognitionbodies:

(a) Develop their understanding o OER and how it impacts quality

assurance and recognition. This could include ensuring that

proessionals involved in quality assurance and recognition are aware o the

increasing importance o OER in the development and use o educational

resources by higher education institutions. Particular attention might be

paid to the shiting terrain o IPR and copyright, and to developing an

understanding o the range o licensing options available or educational

resources.

(b) Engage in debates on OER, in particular on copyright. Like all other

stakeholders in higher education, quality assurance bodies and recognition

bodies will need to inuence policy developments around OER, ocusing on

both the opportunities and challenges that OER create.

(c) Consider the efects o OER on quality assurance and recognition.

As OER become more common it is increasingly important to ensure that

quality assurance and recognition principles and processes support the

eective use o OER. In this regard, it will be important to review the roleand use o OER in improving the quality o teaching and learning and

develop criteria or assessing the eectiveness o the integration o OER into

institutional practice.


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(d) Accept OER as good practice in quality assurance and recognition.

I contributing to OER is accepted as good practice by higher education,

then external quality assurance processes may redene their scope and

outreach. This would ensure a shit in ocus towards embedding the

creation and use o OER in the institutional culture while monitoring their

integration into internal quality assurance practices.


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Reerences

Allen, N. (n.d.). Make textbooks aordable. The Student PIRGS. Retrieved rom

http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks/

Atkins, D.E., Brown, J.S., & Hammond, A.L. (2007).A review o the open

educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, and new

opportunities. Retrieved rom http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/les/

ReviewotheOERMovement.pd

Butcher, N. (Author), Kanwar, A. (Ed.), & Uvalic -Trumbic, S. (Ed.). (2011).

A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Vancouver, Canada:

Commonwealth o Learning, and Paris, France: UNESCO. Retrieved rom

http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide

Chan, L., Cuplinskas, D., Eisen, M., Friend, F., Genova, Y., Guedon, J-C.,

Velterop, J. (2002). Read the Budapest Open Access Initiative.Budapest

Open Access Initiative. Retrieved rom http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

read

Creative Commons. (n.d.). About the licences. Retrieved rom http://

creativecommons.org/licenses/

Floe. (n.d.) Paving the way toward inclusive open education resources. Retrieved

rom http://oeproject.org/

Open Knowledge Foundation. (n.d.) Guide to open licensing. Open Defnition.

Retrieved rom http://opendenition.org/guide/


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Useul knowledge, competences

and skills or efective use o OER inhigher education

Below is a shopping list o the knowledge, competences and skills that higher

education institutions may wish to develop in order to use OER eectively.

This list highlights areas where openness adds value and/or where particular

attention is needed. These areas are:

1. Expertise in advocacy and promotion o OER as a vehicle or improving the

quality o learning and teaching in education (having a good grasp o both

conceptual and practical issues, policy implications, etc). This requires:

(a) Commitment to the concept o openness, without which any attempts

at advocacy are unlikely to succeed;(b) Understanding o the pros and cons o dierent open licensing

arrangements, combined with insight into how most current

policy environments constrain the use o OER and open licensing

o intellectual capital (with a particular ocus on the challenges o

persuading educational decision makers in environments where

intellectual property policies make no provision or open licensing);

(c) Clarity about the difcult issues associated with using proprietary

content in diverse online environments, new media and technology

and thereore awareness o the benets o OER as open resources that areusable, reusable and adaptable with no restrictions;

(d) Clarity about the economic benets o OER, in terms o marketing

institutions and programmes, the cost-eectiveness o materials

production, and policies, contracts and grants;

(e) Sound knowledge o practical examples o the use o OER to illustrate

key points; and

() Up-to-date knowledge o the arguments or and against use o OER.

2. Legal expertise to be able to:

(a) Understand and advise people on how copyright works generally, the

nature o copyright licensing and dierent approaches to the licensing

o materials;

Appendix 1


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(b) Review copyright policies, contracts and grant conditions currently

in place at the institution, including policies establishing who owns

copyrightable content developed by administrators, academic sta and

others;

(c) Develop and adapt privacy, copyright and IPR policies that acilitate and

achieve goals related to publishing OER;

(d) Determine requirements or copyright clearance and privacy to release

materials under open licences; and

(e) Reect copyright and disclaimer statements accurately in materials o

dierent kinds and multiple media.

3. Expertise in developing and explaining business models that justiy and

illustrate the use and benets o open licensing to institutions, academic

sta, and other creators o educational content (including publishers).

4. Programme, course and materials design and development expertise, witha particular ocus on helping academic sta harness the ull potential

o resource-based learning and student-centred pedagogies in their

programmes and courses. An understanding o educational approaches is

important (e.g., being able to dierentiate among open, distance, electronic

and blended learning, and their respective merits), as is an understanding o

the context o education in the specic sector in which work is taking place.

In addition, it requires skills in:

(a) Conducting educational needs assessments;

(b) Managing curriculum development processes;

(c) Eectively identiying target audiences;

(d) Dening eective and relevant learning outcomes;

(e) Identiying relevant content areas or programmes, courses and

modules;

() Selecting appropriate combinations o teaching and learning strategies

to achieve identied learning outcomes;

(g) Carrying out nancial planning to ensure aordability and long-term

sustainability o teaching and learning strategies selected;

(h) Developing eective and engaging teaching and learning materials;

(i) Integrating meaningul student support into materials during design;

(j) Designing appropriate eective assessment strategies;

(k) Applying the most appropriate media and technologies to support

learning outcomes;

(l) Using media and technologies to support educational delivery,

interaction and student support;

(m) Sourcing OER, based on a knowledge o the strengths and eatures o the

main repositories, specialised repositories and OER search engines;

(n) Adapting and integrating OER coherently into contextualised

programme and course curricula;


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(o) Negotiating with external individuals and/or organisations to issue or

re-issue resources under open licences;

(p) Re-versioning existing resources using optical character recognition

where they do not exist in digital orm;

(q) Understanding:

whether it is permissible to modiy the content when customising

material and, i so, to what extent it can be done and how it should

be handled; and

i work has been adapted or a specic purpose, how this should be

indicated in the customised content;

(r) Reinorcing the need to credit the original author/source o the content

that is being accessed or use through open licensing; and

(s) Implementing the necessary processes or producing print-on-demand

texts.

5. Technical expertise. This set o skills is tightly connected to the skills o

materials design and development. Increasingly, resource-based learning

and student-centred strategies are harnessing a wide range o media and are

deployed in e-learning environments, acilitated by the ready availability o

digitised, openly licensed educational content. This requires skills in:

(a) Advising institutions on the pros and cons o establishing their own

repositories, as well as providing advice on other possible ways o

sharing their OER;

(b) Creating stable, operational virtual learning environments (VLE) andcontent repositories;

(c) Supporting academic sta in developing courses within already

operational or newly deployed VLE; and

(d) Developing computer-based multimedia materials (including video and

audio materials).

6. Expertise in managing networks/consortia o people and institutions to

work cooperatively on various teaching and learning improvement projects

including an ability to adapt to challenging environments (or example,

power outages, physical discomort, difcult personalities, institutional

politics) and remain ocused on the task at hand.

7. Monitoring and evaluation expertise to design and conduct ormative

evaluation processes, as well as longer-term summative evaluation and/

or impact assessment activities that determine the extent to which the use

o open licensing has led to improvements in the quality o teaching and

learning, greater productivity, enhanced cost-eectiveness, and so on.

8. Expertise in curating and sharing OER eectively. This includes:

(a) Technical skills to develop and maintain Web platorms to host OER

online, as well as to share the content and metadata with other Web

platorms;


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(b) Ability to generate relevant and meaningul metadata or OER;

(c) Knowledge o, and skills to deploy, standardised global taxonomies or

describing resources in dierent disciplines and domains; and

(d) Website design and management skills to create online environments in

which content can be easily discovered and downloaded.

9. Communication and research skills to be able to share inormation about

OER, in the orm o Web updates, newsletters, brochures, case studies,

research reports and so on. This includes the ull spectrum o skills required

or such communication activities, rom researching and documenting best

practices and core concepts to graphic design and layout.


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Promoting more efective and

inclusive education by designing OERor the diverse needs o students

Students learn dierently. Learning experiences that match a students

individual learning needs result in the best learning outcomes. OER should be

open and accessible to students with a diversity o learning needs. Learning

needs are aected by:

Sensory, motor, cognitive, emotional and social constraints;

Learning styles or approaches;

Linguistic and cultural backgrounds; and

Technical, nancial and environmental constraints.

Accessible learning is achieved by matching the individual learning needs oeach student with a learning experience that addresses those needs. This can

be accomplished through the resource delivery system by reconguring the

resource, where possible, augmenting the resource or replacing the resource or

parts o it with another resource that addresses the same learning goals.

To support this, learning materials or educational resources should:

1. Include labelling to indicate what learning needs the resource addresses;

2. Allow the creation o variations and enhancements through open licences;

3. Support exible styling (e.g., enlarging the ont, enhancing the colourcontrast and adjusting the layout or students with vision impairments or

mobile devices);

4. Support keyboard control o unctions and navigation (or students who

cannot use or do not have access to a mouse or pointing device);

5. Provide audio or text descriptions o non-text inormation presented in

videos, graphics or images (or students who have visual constraints or who

have limited displays);

6. Provide text captions o inormation presented in audio ormat (or students

who have hearing constraints or lack audio interaces);7. Cleanly separate text that can be read in the interace rom underlying code

or scripting (to enable translation);

Appendix 2


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8. Use open ormats wherever possible to make it easier or alternative access

systems and devices to display and control the resource; and

9. Adhere to international standards o interoperability so that OER can be

used on a wide variety o devices and applications.

The resource delivery system should also enable each student, or her/his supportteam, to identiy the students unctional learning needs.11

11 For more inormation on these issues, visit the Floe project (http://foeproject.org/).


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Open educational resources (OER) are

materials used to support education that may

be reely accessed, reused, modied, and

shared. These Guidelines outline key issues

and make suggestions or integrating OER

into higher education. Their purpose is toencourage decision makers in governments

and institutions to invest in the systematic

production, adaptation and use o OER and

to bring them into the mainstream o higher

education in order to improve the quality o

curricula and teaching and to reduce costs.

guidelines for open educational resources in higher education

Documents