If I could use two sentences to describe what I have understood about the JISC/HEA Open Educational Resources Programme at the briefing meeting in Birmingham last week, these would be:
- the programme will make a wide range UK HE educational resources freely available with minimum technical requirements and by using various platforms and tools; and
- the programme will look for culture change, sustainable processes and institutional policies.
This one year pilot programme is to explore what works, what doesn’t work and to seek best practices in promoting free accessing, reusing and sharing educational resources. Further information about presentations and discussions on the breifing day are avalailbe at Lorna’s blog. It is clear that proposers are not only being asked to set a goal of publishing (x) number of open courses on (x) platform, they are also required to go deeper into thinking of and planning something more than content.
I don’t really know how potential bidders will actually plan something to address issues beyond content but I would like to share some initial thoughts and reflections from the meeting:
Firstly, OER and the culture of sharing. It is clear that simply publishing teaching materials online for others to have free access will not be enough to change cultures and teaching practices. The value of OER will not be best achieved through static resources, but rather through their potential to engage a wide range of educators and learners to share ideas and expertise, and collaborative knowledge building. Therefore, institutions should not only require staff to develop content for the use of others, but also encourage them to use content created and modified by others in order to improve our collective knowledge and improve the quality of teaching and learning at universities as a whole. I think a culture of openness and sharing will only emerge when OER has embedded and become an integral part of teaching practice and learning process in HE.
Secondly, sustainability and community building. One question was raised at the discussion concerning the situation in which a person involved in an OER project moves from one university to another – who would continue updating the content? One participant suggested that if the content was on open domain then he/she should be able to continue working on such content no matter which university he/she would work for. This suggests that when institutions think about how to sustain the OER they should not only focus on further funding for the project but also on the need to explore the opportunities for community building. It is important that institutions should invest in people who produce and use the content, as well as establish a new kind of shared ownership of learning material with a grassroots community to keep content alive and updated.
Finally, IPR and copyright policy. This is something that everyone is talking about. Many questions and issues were raised at the meeting. One of the participants asked a question: Could there be a standard institutional IPR and copyright policy which supports OERs so that institutions only need to sign an agreement? It seems a good idea but it is not practical or possible to do so at the moment, at least for this programme. Therefore, institutions will need to review their policies and make their own decision on how to support free and open access to teaching and learning materials. Clearly, an institution will need a deep commitment to openness and a strategic approach in order to make teaching and learning resources truly open and shareable and bring the desired changes to teaching and learning practices.
If you are interested in the JISC/HEA OER programme or would like to share your thoughts and discuss some issues related to OER projects, please join us at the CETIS OER/OU OpenLearn meeting at Open University on 27th February. Further information and online registration for the event is available at http://jisc.cetis.org.uk/events/register.php?id=164.