User:Sarmonpals/Global Implementation of Open Education Resources

Global Implementation of Open Education Resources This article describes implementation of open education resources in formal education environments across global contexts. For a description of Open Education Resources (OER) please see the Open Education Resources page.

Background

Definition

Open Education Resources (OERs) are materials created with varying degrees of creative commons licensing. They are a part of a bigger movement in open software and materials that aims to make information resources readily available for use to everyone although with varying degrees of freedom depending on constraints chosen by the creators. Materials deemed to be 'open' usually enlist creative commons licensing which allows for common use with the ability to choose the level of constraint.

The Movement

The OER movement is an arm of a larger open materials movement that aims to make information materials free for users. Movements that led the path for OERs include the hacker culture of the 1960s and 1970s, the free software movement that began in the 1980s, and the open-source software models of the 1990s. One argument for open, non-market information exchange is that attempts to make information proprietary leads to inefficiencies in the uses and benefits inherent within information characteristics . The IPA Position Paper on OERs makes the claim that proprietary materials are higher quality, implying that open materials work well as a supplement to proprietary education materials, a claim that an educator responded to in this rebuttal.

Key Players and Components

In 1995, the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) agreed that education could be included in the types of services that could be traded on an international level. This allowed for new markets to emerge in the Information Age. These markets, however, were driven by financial capital and could potentially increase issues already apparent in the Digital Divide.

In response to the possibility of added disparities in education on an international level, UNESCO amassed important leaders to treat this issue, coining the term Open Educational Resources for the first time . These OERs initially relied on free and open-source software for materials, such as OpenOffice, but soon added Creative Commons licenses that could give open access to materials .

The Network

Yochai Benkler is a thought leader on the impact of virtual networked environments on the production, exchange, and economics of information. His book, The Wealth of Networks , describes how virtual networks contribute to increasingly democratic exchange and civic engagement. This feature of virtual networks extends to education resources. A hope held by supporting organizations such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Mellon Foundation is that OERs will enable global access to high quality education through access and opportunities to adapt materials to local contexts , otherwise known as glocalization.

Challenges and Barriers

Although the initial hope for OER was that resources would open education and information sharing, there remain some barriers to the use of OER on the same large scale desired by the original movements. According to Willems & Bossu, not only are people limited by the easily surmised barriers of Internet access and geographical isolation in developing countries, but there are also linguistic barriers as well as cultural/contextual issues that are inherent in the difficulty of creating resources that are adaptable within different contexts. Even more, traditional ideas of the way knowledge should be shared (through marketed products), faculty hesitancy to join the open resource realm, and suspicions about quality of OER inhibit the mass expansion of OER. Faculty who create OER are not as prone to using it, so the ideal of shared resources is not yet being met . These are the challenges current OER motivators are trying to overcome.

Current State of Global Adoption

In spite of the challenges and barriers, OER is thriving in certain communities and countries, giving hope to OER proponents that the movement will gain the traction necessary to live up to their hopes.

Africa

Africa has several OER partnerships focusing on specific needs within the various sectors of education, health, agriculture, etc. Some of these sectors partner with international institutions in order to enhance the OER capabilities.

Topics related to teaching and learning envelop many of the OER projects in Africa. OER Africa, created by SAIDE which stands for South African Institute for Distance Education initiative, was implemented to help both the educator and their institution plan and use OER to help with the teaching and learning process. To aid with health education in Africa, a project called Health OER inter-institutional project, was created and made available for free access for everyone (students, professors, learners, etc.). The collaborative project uses the Creative Commons license. Many people in Ghana, Africa, developed these materials that have been used to teach students attending the University of Michigan. OER Africa and Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi teamed up to implement OER for the Certificate of Midwife training for staff. Materials were distributed on a CD-ROM, since the Internet and Infrastructure were an issue. There are plans to create DVD’s with lectures and videos on midwifery, so students won’t have to physically attend class. Another group focusing on the development of OER for teaching and learning has created the TESSA project (Open University in the UK initiative). Offering teacher education to nine African countries, TESSA is comprised of thirteen institutions from Africa and five international institutions. The teacher trainers attend the workshops to learn how to develop OER content using text and audio and local knowledge and materials. In addition, the content is translated into the most common languages of the countries: Arabic, English, French, and Kiswahili.

Though OER are becoming popular at African universities, the institutions do need to verify quality assurance, accreditation, licensing, and promotion. The University of Ghana and the Kwame Kkrumah University of Science and Technology have generated OER policies that aid in creating materials and IT support.

Asia

Asian countries have widely differing use of OER, mostly based on the level of need coupled with governmental support and OER-specific programs. OER has increased from hosts and contributors especially in one Asian country, India. Many programs in India are taught in English- so Indian written OER has wider accessibility to people within the country and around the world. Other reasons that OER are used more in India include the fact that faculty lack expertise and some schools are understaffed, so OER serves as guided texts to help with the instruction . Also, due to poverty, limited Internet access, and geographical barriers to educational access, OER has become very beneficial in the emerging knowledge country .

The National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER) was created together by the Government of India, the Central Institute of Educational Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, The Department of School Education, and National Council of Educational Research and Training. NROER includes educational materials, translated in all Indian languages, designed for the Indian school system. The educational materials are digital and include documents, interactive materials, videos, and audio. The National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) focus is to create video and web courses for engineer students. The Human Resource Ministry funds NPTEL and is used by seven campuses of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT’s), the Indian Institute of Science, and others. NPTEL allows rural colleges in India (students and professors) to learn and use the high quality resources. Quality is a common concern for India’s OER.

North America

Current United States implementers of OER programs include: MIT, Utah State University, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, Carnegie Mellon, Mercy College, and Tufts University. An example of use is Mercy College in New York where faculty piloted the use of open textbooks to teach algebra with the motto of "free and better" . By focusing on "better" education with open resources, improvements to pilot courses were substantial enough that other sections adopted the use of open education resources. Lumen Learning, founded by Kim Thanos and David Wiley, is a major American promoter of the OER movement and often partners with these institutions to help guide their adoption of OER.

Lumen Learning has created an OER calculator showing the phenomenal cost benefits of using OER. A survey conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group indicates that lack of adoption of OER is most often due to faculty lack of awareness of what constitutes OER. However, when faculty are made aware of or use OER, they find that OER are compatible with paid resources.

More Information

For those who are searching for OER, but do not know how to access it, a good place to start is at the Open Professionals Education Network.