guidelines for open educational resources (oer) in higher education,

7/31/2019 Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education,

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OpenEducationalResources(OER)in HigherEducation


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Contents

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

Glossary o terms ................................................................................................ iii

1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 11.1 Purpose o the Guidelines........................................................................ 1

1.2 Rationale or the Guidelines ..................................................................... 11.2.1 The higher education context .................................................................. 11.2.2 Open licensing and the emergence o OER.............................................. 21.2.3 The trans ormative potential o OER ........................................................ 21.3 Scope o the Guidelines ........................................................................... 3

2 Guidelines or Higher Education Stakeholders ............................................. 52.1 Guidelines or governments .................................................................... 52.2 Guidelines or higher education institutions ............................................ 6

2.3 Guidelines or academic staf ................................................................... 92.4 Guidelines or student bodies .................................................................. 112.5 Guidelines or quality assurance/accreditation bodies and academic

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

Re erences ........................................................................................................... 15

Appendix 1 Use ul knowledge, competences and skills or efectiveuse o OER in higher education ..................................................................... 17

Appendix 2 Promoting more efective and inclusive education bydesigning OER or the diverse needs o students ......................................... 21


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Acknowledgements

We are grate ul to all who contributed to this document and, in particular, to:t 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;

t

Mr Neil Butcher, OER Strategist, OER A rica/South A rican Institute orDistance Education, Ms Jenny Glennie, Director, South A rican Institute orDistance Education, and Ms Catherine Ngugi, Project Director, OER A rica,

or preparing dra ts o these Guidelines;t Members o the Expert Group or guidance in their specialised subject areas;t Participants in the workshops, online orums and policy orum that were

part o the Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacityinitiative;

t All who submitted comments on this document; andt

Ms Trudi van Wyk, Education Specialist eLearning, Commonwealtho Learning, and Ms Zeynep Varoglu, Programme Specialist, UNESCO,who managed the Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy andCapacity initiative rom its inception in 2010.


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Glossary o terms

Open Access Publishing: Open access publishing usually re ers to the world-wide 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 havebeen released under an open licence that permits access, use, repurposing, reuseand redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions (Atkins, Brown &Hammond, 2007). 2 The use o open technical standards improves access andreuse potential.

OER can include ull courses/programmes, course materials, modules, studentguides, teaching notes, textbooks, research articles, videos, assessment tools andinstruments, interactive materials such as simulations, role plays, databases,so tware, apps (including mobile apps) and any other educationally use ul

materials.The term OER is not synonymous with online learning, eLearning or mobilelearning. Many OER while shareable in a digital ormat are also printable.

Open Licence: An open licence is a standardised way to grant permission andto state restrictions to accessing, using, repurposing, reusing or redistributingcreative work (whether sound, text, image, multimedia, etc.). 3

For denitions o related terms please re er to A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) (Butcher, 2011), published by UNESCO and COL. 4

1Budapest Open Access Initiative ( http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read)2 A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities (http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/les/Reviewo theOERMovement.pd )

3 Creative Commons ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses /) and Open Denition(http://opendenition.org/guide/)

4 See A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) (http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide)
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/readhttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdfhttp://creativecommons.org/licenseshttp://opendefinition.org/guidehttp://www.col.org/oerBasicGuidehttp://www.col.org/oerBasicGuidehttp://opendefinition.org/guidehttp://creativecommons.org/licenseshttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdfhttp://www.soros.org/openaccess/read


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Introduction

1.1 Purpose o the GuidelinesOpen educational resources (OER) are materials used to support education thatmay be reely accessed, reused, modied, and shared. These Guidelines outlinekey issues and make suggestions or integrating OER into higher education.Their purpose is to encourage decision makers in governments and institutionsto invest in the systematic production, adaptation and use o OER and to bringthem 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 contextIn the current knowledge-driven global economy, higher education systemsplay major roles in social development and national economic competitiveness.However, they ace immense challenges in meeting rising enrolment demandsworldwide. Forecasts suggest that current global enrolments o 165 millionwill grow by a urther 98 million by 2025. However, this growth is unlikely tobe accompanied by equivalent increases in the human and nancial resourcesavailable to the higher education sector.

Many institutions are incorporating in ormation and communicationtechnologies (ICT) into their management, administration and educationalprogrammes in order to serve their students more cost-efectively and to preparethem or the world into which they will graduate. In many developing countries,however, access to hardware, so tware and connectivity remain challenges. Itis there ore 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 trans er o in ormation throughglobal communication systems, leading to an explosion in the generation

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and collective sharing o knowledge. The participation o non-specialistsin previously specialised disciplinary areas is extending the boundaries o scholarship, while dynamic knowledge creation and social computing toolsand processes are becoming more widespread and accepted. This opens upopportunities to create and share a wider array o educational resources,thereby accommodating a greater diversity o student needs. The digitisation o in ormation, combined with its increasingly widespread dissemination, posessignicant challenges to concepts o intellectual property. Copyright regimesand 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 createdopportunities or pedagogical innovation.

1.2.2 Open licensing and the emergence o OEROpen licences have emerged in an efort to protect authors rights inenvironments where content (particularly when digitised) can easily be copiedand shared without permission. Open licences seek to ensure that copying andsharing happen within a structured legal ramework that is more exible thanthe automatic all-rights-reserved status o copyright. It allows permissions to begiven 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 askingpermission and without paying licence or other access ees. However, someimportant cost considerations must be taken into account. Taking efectiveadvantage o OER requires institutions to invest systematically in programme/course design and materials development and acquisition. Time must beinvested in developing courses and materials, nding appropriate OER,adapting existing OER and negotiating copyright licensing (i material is notopenly licensed). There are also associated costs such as the procurement andmaintenance o ICT in rastructure ( or authoring and content-sharing purposes)and bandwidth.

Educational institutions are making these investments in order to improvethe quality o teaching and learning. They enable peers to share materials andenrich the curriculum or students. Institutions using and adapting OER cannd this a cost-efective way o investing in materials design and development.

1.2.3 The trans ormative potential o OERThe growing demand or higher education and the ongoing rollout o ICTin rastructure have created unique challenges or higher education institutions


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in an era o tight resources. It has become increasingly important or educationalinstitutions to support, in a planned and systematic manner:t Development and improvement o curricula and learning materials;t Ongoing programme and course design;t

Organisation o interactive contact sessions with and among students;t Development o quality teaching and learning materials;t Design o efective assessment tools or diverse environments; andt Links with the world o work.

OER can make a signicant contribution to these processes. However, OERdo not automatically lead to quality, e ciency and cost-efectiveness; muchdepends on the procedures put in place. The trans ormative educationalpotential 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 pro essional

development o academic staf;5. Serving the needs o particular student populations such as those with

special needs;6. Optimising the deployment o institutional staf and budgets;7. Serving students in local languages;

8. Involving students in the selection and adaptation o OER in order to engagethem more actively in the learning process; and9. Using locally developed materials with due acknowledgement.

The trans ormative potential o OER also includes the benets o sharing andcollaborating among institutions and countries, and the creatively disruptiverole o OER in opening up new educational models.

1.3 Scope o the GuidelinesGiven the potential o OER to improve higher education systems, UNESCO andthe Commonwealth o Learning (COL) have developed these Guidelines, a terbroad consultations with stakeholders in all regions o the world, to supportgovernments, higher education institutions/providers, academic staf, studentbodies 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 in ormation about all aspects o OER.

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


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ramework on intellectual property rights (IPR) and copyright in highereducation that spans both research and teaching activities. Such a licensing

ramework could also cover the copyright and IPR status o educationalmaterials 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 couldspan both research and educational publications, serving to ensure theperpetuity o editable electronic documents, regardless o changes toso tware. Such standards could cover educational materials producedby government departments and agencies and by institutions receivinggovernment support or developing educational resources.

(d) Contribute to raising awareness o key OER issues . This could includethe development and sharing o case studies o good practice and relevantexamples o use to support implementation eforts. Governments can assisthigher education stakeholders to understand issues surrounding IPR, as wellas how IPR are being challenged and reshaped by the rapid digitisation andonline sharing o in ormation and resources.

(e) Promote national ICT/connectivity strategies . Given the centrality o ICT to accessing and sharing content online, such support could ocus onensuring sustained provision o connectivity and staf/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 andcollectively, in their eforts to produce and share high quality educationalresources. This could include support or national initiatives to developlocal content and regional/global eforts to develop OER repositories anddirectories, 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 theirteaching staf in the creation o efective teaching and learning environments

or students and providing ongoing opportunities or pro essional development.Identi ying and developing learning resources are both integral parts o thisprocess. Institutions should aspire both to create OER and to use OER romelsewhere.


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Well-designed learning resources encourage greater individual engagementby students with in ormation, ideas and content than is possible with lecturesalone. By making such resources an integral part o the teaching and learningprocess, limited ace-to- ace teaching time with students can be more efectivelyused to oster engagement and to nurture discussion, creativity, practicalapplications and research activities.

In developing courses and learning resources, teaching staf naturally use whatis available. The increasing pool o OER not only widens their choice, but alsocreates opportunities or new resources to be adapted to t the local context interms o culture and learning needs without necessitating lengthy copyrightnegotiations or duplicating content development.

Experience shows that, when institutions make good quality courses/materials publicly available online, they can attract new students, expand theirinstitutional reputation and advance their public service role. Such institutionsmay also urther the dissemination o research results and thereby attractresearch unding. However, institutions have to position OER within theirinstitutional branding and take into account any income that the sales o theireducational materials may generate.

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

(a) Develop institutional strategies or the integration o OER. TheseGuidelines suggest elements that institutions may wish to consider in

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

(b) Provide incentives to support investment in the development,acquisition and adaptation o high quality learning material . Institutional policies should be reviewed to:

Encourage judicious selection and adaptation o existing OER, as well asdevelopment 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 academicstaf and within institutional protocols) under an open licence as OER;Build OER into mechanisms or institutional and individualmonitoring;Promote collaboration both within and beyond the institution indeveloping materials;Provide staf with appropriate incentives and rewards or the

development, acquisition and adaptation o learning material; andEnsure that staf workload models allow or curriculum, course andmaterials design and development.


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(c) Recognise the important role o educational resources withininternal quality assurance processes . This should include establishingand 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 staf to invoke some-rights-reserved copyright or otherlicensing permutations when this is deemed necessary. These policies couldbe part o a wider institutional process to ensure that robust, en orceableIPR, copyright and privacy policies are in place and accurately reected in alllegal contracts and conditions o employment.

(e) Undertake institutional advocacy and capacity building . Ongoingawareness-raising, capacity-building (staf development) and networking/sharing or both women and men can be carried out to develop the ullrange o competences required to acilitate more efective use o OER. 6 Theseactivities could aim to encourage a shared vision or open educationalpractices within the organisation, which would ideally be aligned to theinstitutions vision and mission and linked to incentives.

( ) Ensure ICT access or staf and students . This means striving to ensurethat academic staf and students have ubiquitous access to the necessaryICT in rastructure, so tware and connectivity to access the Internet anddevelop or adapt educational materials o diferent kinds. This should

include so tware applications, such as web content editing tools, contentmanagement systems, templates and toolkits that acilitate the creation anduse o adaptable, inclusively designed educational resources. 7 It might alsoentail developing a repository o the work o academic staf and studentsthat could serve as a power ul teaching and learning resource, while raisingawareness o the distinction between appropriate sharing/collaborationand plagiarism. Staf and students should also have access to training/pro essional 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 buildon a growing base o institutional knowledge. This might be done most cost-efectively as part o a coordinated national strategy or in partnership withemerging global OER networks and repositories based on open standards.

(h) Review institutional OER practices periodically . Such reviews willhelp the institution determine the value o its policies and practices. Theycould include reviewing the extent o the use o openly licensed educationalmaterials in higher education programmes. They could also includeassessing the efects 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 andlearning materials or undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Whererelevant, this might be extended to showcasing examples o good practice,in both marketing publications and academic research publications.

2.3 Guidelines or academic staf Academic staf are vital agents in ensuring the quality o teaching and learningdelivered to students. They are central to the teaching and learning experienceo students. Teachers ace a series o challenges, including:t Time constraints in preparing curriculum and selecting, adapting and/or

developing teaching and learning materials and assessment tools;t Access to high quality, relevant teaching and learning materials;t The need to address the o ten diverse needs o their learners and

demonstrate gender sensitivity;t Changing teaching and learning environments ( rom teacher-centred to

learning-centred approaches);t Increased student access to online materials, collaborative networks and

online publishing opportunities;t Legal requirements to broaden access;t The need to cover a broad and growing knowledge base;t The need to update their ICT skills regularly;t High student expectations; andt Ever-inng enrolments in many jurisdictions.

Responsibility or assuring the quality o any content used in teaching andlearning environments, including OER, will reside predominantly with theprogramme/course coordinators and individual academic staf members.Whether prescribing core readings/textbooks, suggesting urther readings,choosing a video to screen or using someone elses course plan, they retainnal 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 staf choose to use, how they adapt them

or contextual relevance and how they integrate them into various teachingand learning activities. Efective use o OER can address many o the abovechallenges.

In this context, it is suggested that academic staf in higher educationinstitutions:

(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 use ul in courses and modules.Academic staf may nd existing OER to be use ul benchmarks or reectingon 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 theircondence to share new and/or adapted resources to address curriculumgaps in the existing pool o OER, which would enable them to contribute toglobal knowledge.

(b) Consider publishing OER . For some academic staf, this might beinitiated most com ortably by starting small, working collaboratively withpeers (including peer reviews) and publishing materials openly that arealready routinely produced as part o teaching and learning, includingcourse outlines, course in ormation booklets or hand-outs, teaching notesand course assessment tools and instruments. Over time, such practicescould generate a rich, inter-institutional repository o materials on whichto draw. It would also provide students with a richer understanding o thecontent area.

(c) Assemble, adapt and contextualise existing OER . Part o the efectiveuse o OER includes developing skills to adapt and contextualise existingOER to respond to diverse learning needs o students and support a varietyo learning approaches or a given learning goal. This can be achieved bymaking use o , and contributing to, the diverse pool o resources available inOER repositories and sharing in ormation on issues and processes related toadaptation and localisation o resources.

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

usually a team efort, so the development and repurposing o materialsis likely to be more success ul and more satis ying or the academic stafsinvolved, i they adopt a team approach.

(e) Seek institutional support or OER skills development . In orderto exploit OER efectively academic staf will need to acquire skills andcompetences, such as materials design, curriculum development and thelocation, selection and adaptation o OER through a blended strategy o skills development and pro essional skills support. They should receiveinstitutional support or pro essional development in these areas, both as

individuals and as teams. 8

( ) Leverage networks and communities o practice . Academic staf canbenet tremendously rom using existing online networks and communitieso practice collaboratively to develop, adapt and share OER, as well asto engage in dialogue about their experiences in teaching and learning.Such communities o practice can also provide an excellent plat orm orpublishing resources in existing repositories.

(g) Encourage student participation. Academic staf 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 andsupported 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 to increasethe 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 andencouraging 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 goalsand student needs, is an invaluable contribution to their efective use.

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

entail having access to relevant advice and expertise on these matters, aswell as a general amiliarity with institutional policies and contractualagreements relating to IPR and copyright. It is particularly important to beclear about rights and conditions relating to works created during the courseo employment and how these might be shared with and used by others.Academic staf should understand how these policies might afect theirrights.

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,trans erable skills and knowledge, communication skills, creativity andinnovation. Key challenges include meeting the rising costs o education(including textbooks) and identi ying appropriate educational courses/programmes that meet learning needs. Efective OER use can contributeto resolving these challenges, both by making the content o educationalprogrammes more transparent and lowering the cost o accessing them.

When adequately supported, students have great potential to support highereducation providers in sourcing, adapting and producing OER in partnershipwith academic staf.

To promote these changing student roles, student bodies have to play a rolein shaping the quality o their educational experience. Although creatingteaching and learning environments that harness OER in educationally efectiveways is primarily the responsibility o academic staf, student bodies as keystakeholders 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 bodies can actively promote awareness among students o thepotential 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 document A Basic Guide toOpen Educational Resources (OER) (Butcher 2011). 9 Student bodies could alsosupport and advocate the sharing o publicly unded educational materialsunder open licences and understand students own roles as knowledgeproducers and active participants in the learning process. Student bodiescan also collaborate with other countries student bodies with similar ocuson OER. 10

(b) Encourage their members to publish work as OER . Students canmake a signicant contribution to increasing the use o OER by publishingtheir work (pre erably under the guidance o academic staf and withininstitutional protocols) under an open licence. A repository o student workcould serve as a power ul learning resource, while also raising awarenessabout the distinction between appropriate sharing/collaboration andplagiarism.

(c) Take an active role in assuring the quality o OER through socialnetworks . Student bodies can encourage students to participate in the

social networking environments that have been created around OERrepositories, so that they play an active role in assuring the quality o content by adding comments on what content they are nding use ul andwhy.

(d) Recognise that ICT are an increasingly important part o thehigher education experience and are o ten crucial or students withspecial educational needs . Student bodies should engage in institutionaldecision-making processes to ensure that the ICT chosen are directly use ulto students, are inclusive and con orm to existing open standards.

(e) Encourage student participation in activities to support OERdevelopment. Student bodies can actively support and promote strategiesto allow students to assist in sourcing, adapting and producing OER inpartnership with academic staf. Furthermore, student bodies can helpto shape the nature and quality o students educational experiences byencouraging and supporting the use o OER or the purposes o sel -directedstudy and, at the more advanced levels, by having students create their owncurriculum/courses o study.

9 See http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide10 See http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks/
http://www.col.org/oerBasicGuidehttp://www.studentpirgs.org/textbookshttp://www.studentpirgs.org/textbookshttp://www.col.org/oerBasicGuide


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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 themobility o students, researchers and other pro essionals.

Quality assurance is primarily the responsibility o higher educationinstitutions, although external quality assurance bodies play an essential role in

ostering a quality culture through the assessment o programmes and reviewso institutional quality assurance mechanisms. When assessing the quality o teaching, quality assurance bodies normally consider the educational resourcesthat are produced, adapted and used by the institutions (including OER).Quality assurance bodies there ore have a role in ensuring that policies are inplace to support the use o OER.

Recognition bodies should also have an understanding o the role o OER inhigher education to ensure the air recognition o qualications. The missionso quality assurance bodies and recognition bodies are closely linked, andrecognition bodies o ten rely on in ormation provided by quality assurancebodies. There ore, recognition bodies are also likely to consider the educationalresources 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 thatpro essionals involved in quality assurance and recognition are aware o theincreasing importance o OER in the development and use o educationalresources by higher education institutions. Particular attention might bepaid to the shi ting terrain o IPR and copyright, and to developing an

understanding o the range o licensing options available or educationalresources .

(b) Engage in debates on OER, in particular on copyright . Like all otherstakeholders in higher education, quality assurance bodies and recognitionbodies will need to inuence policy developments around OER, ocusing onboth 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 thatquality assurance and recognition principles and processes support theefective 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 anddevelop criteria or assessing the efectiveness o the integration o OER intoinstitutional 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 andoutreach. This would ensure a shi t in ocus towards embedding thecreation and use o OER in the institutional culture while monitoring theirintegration into internal quality assurance practices.


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Re erences

Allen, N. (n.d.). Make textbooks afordable. The Student PIRGS . Retrieved romhttp://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks/

Atkins, D.E., Brown, J.S., & Hammond, A.L. (2007). A review of the openeducational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, and new

opportunities . Retrieved rom http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/les/Reviewo theOERMovement.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 romhttp://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. Retrievedrom http://oeproject.org/

Open Knowledge Foundation. (n.d.) Guide to open licensing. Open Denition .Retrieved rom http://opendenition.org/guide/
http://0.0.0.15/http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbookshttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/fileshttp://www.col.org/oerBasicGuidehttp://www.soros.org/openaccesshttp://0.0.0.15/http://floeproject.org/http://opendefinition.org/guidehttp://opendefinition.org/guidehttp://floeproject.org/http://0.0.0.15/http://0.0.0.15/http://www.soros.org/openaccesshttp://www.col.org/oerBasicGuidehttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/fileshttp://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks


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Use ul knowledge, competences

and skills or efective use o OER inhigher education

Below is a shopping list o the knowledge, competences and skills that highereducation institutions may wish to develop in order to use OER efectively.This list highlights areas where openness adds value and/or where particularattention is needed. These areas are:

1. Expertise in advocacy and promotion o OER as a vehicle or improving thequality o learning and teaching in education (having a good grasp o bothconceptual and practical issues, policy implications, etc). This requires:

(a) Commitment to the concept o openness, without which any attemptsat advocacy are unlikely to succeed;

(b) Understanding o the pros and cons o diferent open licensingarrangements, combined with insight into how most currentpolicy environments constrain the use o OER and open licensingo intellectual capital (with a particular ocus on the challenges o persuading educational decision makers in environments whereintellectual property policies make no provision or open licensing);

(c) Clarity about the di cult issues associated with using proprietarycontent in diverse online environments, new media and technologyand there ore 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 marketinginstitutions and programmes, the cost-efectiveness o materialsproduction, and policies, contracts and grants;

(e) Sound knowledge o practical examples o the use o OER to illustratekey 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 diferent approaches to the licensingo materials;

Appendix 1


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(b) Review copyright policies, contracts and grant conditions currentlyin place at the institution, including policies establishing who ownscopyrightable content developed by administrators, academic stafs andothers;

(c) Develop and adapt privacy, copyright and IPR policies that acilitate andachieve goals related to publishing OER;

(d) Determine requirements or copyright clearance and privacy to releasematerials under open licences; and

(e) Reect copyright and disclaimer statements accurately in materials o diferent kinds and multiple media.

3. Expertise in developing and explaining business models that justi y andillustrate the use and benets o open licensing to institutions, academicstaf, and other creators o educational content (including publishers).

4. Programme, course and materials design and development expertise, witha particular ocus on helping academic staf harness the ull potentialo resource-based learning and student-centred pedagogies in theirprogrammes and courses. An understanding o educational approaches isimportant (e.g., being able to diferentiate among open, distance, electronicand blended learning, and their respective merits), as well as understandingthe 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) Efectively identi ying target audiences;(d) Dening efective and relevant learning outcomes;(e) Identi ying 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 afordability and long-term

sustainability o teaching and learning strategies selected;(h) Developing efective and engaging teaching and learning materials;(i) Integrating meaning ul student support into materials during design;(j) Designing appropriate efective 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, including 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 orre-issue resources under open licences;

(p) Re-versioning existing resources using optical character recognitionwhere they do not exist in digital orm;

(q) Understanding:whether it is permissible to modi y the content when customisingmaterial and, i so, to what extent it can be done and how it shouldbe handled; andi work has been adapted or a specic purpose, how this should beindicated in the customised content;

(r) Rein orcing the need to credit the original author/source o the contentthat is being accessed or use through open license; and

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

5. Technical expertise. This set o skills is tightly connected to the skills o materials design and development. Increasingly, resource-based learningand student-centred strategies are harnessing a wide range o media and aredeployed 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 ownrepositories, 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 staf in developing courses within alreadyoperational or newly deployed VLE; and

(d) Developing computer-based multimedia materials (including video andaudio materials).

6. Expertise in managing networks/consortia o people and institutions towork cooperatively on various teaching and learning improvement projects

(including an ability to adapt to challenging environments or example,power outages, physical discom ort, di cult personalities, institutionalpolitics and remain ocused on the task at hand).

7. Monitoring and evaluation expertise to design and conduct ormativeevaluation processes, as well as longer-term summative evaluation and/or impact assessment activities that determine the extent to which the useo open licensing has led to improvements in the quality o teaching andlearning, greater productivity, enhanced cost-efectiveness, and so on.

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

(a) Technical skills to develop and maintain web plat orms to host OERonline, as well as to share the content and metadata with other webplat orms;


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(b) Ability to generate relevant and meaning ul metadata onto OER;(c) Knowledge o , and skills to deploy, standardised global taxonomies or

describing resources in diferent 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 in ormation aboutOER, 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 bestpractices 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 diferently. Learning experiences that match a studentsindividual learning needs result in the best learning outcomes. OER should beopen and accessible to students with a diversity o learning needs. Learningneeds are afected by:

Sensory, motor, cognitive, emotional and social constraints;Learning styles or approaches;Linguistic and cultural backgrounds; andTechnical, nancial, and environmental constraints.

Accessible learning is achieved by matching the individual learning needs o each student with a learning experience that addresses those needs. This canbe accomplished through the resource delivery system by reconguring theresource, where possible, augmenting the resource or replacing the resource orparts 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 ormobile devices);

4. Support keyboard control o unctions and navigation ( or students whocannot use or do not have access to a mouse or pointing device);

5. Provide audio or text descriptions o non-text in ormation presented invideos, graphics or images ( or students who have visual constraints or whohave limited displays);

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

who have hearing constraints or lack audio inter aces);7. Cleanly separate text that can be read in the inter ace 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 accesssystems and devices to display and control the resource; and

9. Adhere to international standards o interoperability so that OER can beused on a wide variety o devices and applications.

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

11 For more in ormation on these issues, visit the Floe project ( http://oeproject.org/).
http://floeproject.org/http://floeproject.org/


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Open educational resources (OER) arematerials used to support education that may be reely accessed, reused, modied,and shared. These Guidelines outlinekey issues and make suggestions or integrating OER into higher education.Their purpose is to encourage decisionmakers in governments and institutionsto invest in the systematic production,adaptation and use o OER and to bringthem into the mainstream o higher

education in order to improve the qualityo curricula and teaching and to reducecosts.

guidelines for open educational resources (oer) in higher education,

Documents