Open Educational Resources

And the challenges of quality controls

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Dr. Victoria NewsomOlympic College

Why should we be concerned about Quality Control?

Quality control for Open Educational Resources (OER) is centered at the intersection of two ideals that are taken seriously within educational fields:

Intellectual Freedom & Freedom of Expression

However, in today’s world of Open Information this needs to be balanced by avoiding materials that don’t meet quality standards and/or perpetuate

“alternative facts”

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"2016 Word of the Year: Post-Truth" by Mike Licht is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Open Resources and Quality

Controls

A brief history

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"Wikipedia | Collaboration" by Giulia Forsythe is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / A derivative from the

original work

Precursors of OER: Lending LibrariesThe history of lending libraries is a long one, but here are a few key

historic moments:

1731 Library Company of Philadelphia founded by Benjamin Franklin.1

To establish access to and a collection of reading material and get more people invested in literacy

“Reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ’d by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.” (Franklin, 1779)

1850 British Public Libraries Act2

To establish free access to information and literature

1964 US Library Services and Construction Act3

To increase the access to free information and books for underserved and disadvantages communities

A response to issues highlighted during the Civil Rights era4

More Modern Precursors to OER

Project Gutenberg, founded 19714

an archive of open source materials, mostly those in the public domain

The GNU Project, 19835

a public license to guarantee end user software freedoms

arXiv.org started in 19916

open access e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics

Open Access Journal Publishing efforts circa 19937

Public Knowledge Project, founded 19908

led to the development of the Open Journal System (OJS) in 20019

Wikipedia launched January 15, 200110

widely accessible open access encyclopedia, editable by anyone

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Overall Goals of these Precursors

What do these OER precursors have in common? • Affordable or free access to materials• Freedom of information • Freedom of speech and expression• Intellectual freedom

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Overall Challenges we can Learn from these Precursors

What challenges do these precursors present?• Issues of quality control versus freedom of

speech and expression• Data management• Making sure access is available to all• Costs of managing the data and resources• Who is considered the final authority on

accuracy and accessibility?

Controlling Information Versus Free Expression

The ALA records attempts to ban books as well as successful bans of books each year11

Among the books that have been historically banned are a number of those taught in literary, historical, and cultural studies

While it seems extreme to look at banned books in light of quality controls and OER, the challenge of free opinion versus what can and should be valued needs to be addressed

It brings us to a central question: Who should be deciding what is quality for our students?

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The book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is considered by historians to be the first book banned on a national scale in the US.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by moosevlt is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Controlling Information Versus Free Expression

How can we manage quality control versus free speech and expression? Some possibilities include:• Alternative facts versus reliable sources• Digital literacy training• Gatekeeping policies and techniques• Quality measures• Critical thinking skills training

Contemporary Issues of Quality Control in Open Access Media

Predatory journals12

claim to be academic sources but fail many or most checks for reliability and validitycharge authors to publish, which is never done in traditional academic publishinghave no or little peer reviewtake away control of copyright from authorstend to have a small or niche audience

Fringe-movement journals and alternative news sourcespublished by non-accredited institutionsgenerally have political or economic motivation to reach audienceshave no or little peer reviewlack citations of sources

Researchgate, academia.edu, wiki’s, blogs, and other online repositories

lack of accredited editorial controlAuthors with copyright upload their own work However, anyone can join or gain membership

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Quality Management Efforts in Open Access Resources

Efforts to manage the quality of Open Access materials have been implemented primarily by two groups of stakeholders:

Traditional publishers looking into affordable investment in open access publishing

End-users such as academics, librarians, and sites such as creative commons looking to find means of evaluating and critiquing open access materials

There are very few models available

Even with these efforts, there is no consistent standard used to evaluate and validate Open Access Materials

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Quality Management Efforts in Open Access Resources

End-User Rubrics and Measures:

ROARMAP15

Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and PoliciesIndividual libraries and library systems devise their own policies for including open access materials in their catalogsLibraries therefore act as validating entities for resources

2014 Approved Instructional Resources (AIR) scoring system16

Used by medical educators to evaluate online resources

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Traditional Publishers as Gatekeepers:

Hybrid Journal Resources13

Often traditional publishers allowing open access but charging an author fee

Allows for same level of peer review and reliability and validity testing as traditional journals

2011-2016 OAPEN-UK project14

Compared open access books with traditional publications in the social sciences and humanitiesRecommendations for traditional publishers looking to shift to open access

Quality OERAddressing the issues

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"On open educational resources--Beyond definitions" by opensource.com is licensed

under CC BY-SA 2.0

Quality OER: Addressing the Issues

As with Open Access journals and other materials the primary stakeholders for quality control are its producers and consumers. These entities should establish standards by which OER materials can be evaluated and critiqued.

Producers creating OER content include:Authors and InstructorsColleges and universitiesCollege systems Traditional publishersOnline systems

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Quality OER: Addressing the Issues

As with Open Access journals and other materials the primary stakeholders for quality control are its producers and consumers. These entities should establish standards by which OER materials can be evaluated and critiqued.

Consumers of OER content includeAuthors and InstructorsColleges and universitiesCollege systems Students Libraries

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Quality OER: Addressing the Issues

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How should stakeholders attempt to manage quality?

Traditional means:

Peer review

Editorial standards

Measures for reliability and validity

Quality OER: Addressing the Issues

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Quality OER: Addressing the Issues

How should stakeholders attempt to manage quality?

Innovative means:

Digital literacy trainings for all stakeholders

Generate new standards as new issues arise

Constant review to keep up to keep up with technology and access tools

Finding new ways to share information

Seek out adequate standards and measures of quality and share them globally

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Endnotes1 Franklin, B. (1931). Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin

Franklin. London: J.M. Dent and Sons. Original work published 1793.

2 Stave, T. (1981). Public lending right: A history of the idea. Library Trends, 29(4), 569-582.

3 Library Services Act Amendment of 1964, 20 U.S.C. §§ 293-358 (1964)

4 Project Gutenberg. (August 11, 2014). About Project Gutenberg. Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:About

5 GNU Operating System, (April 12, 2014). Overview of the GNU system. Retrieved from https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html

6 Cornell University Library. (n.d.). arXiv.org. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/

7 Laaskso, M., Welling, P., Bukvova, H., Nyman, L., Björk, B., & Hedlund, T. (2011). The development of open acces journal publishing from 1993 to 2009. PLoS ONE 6(6): e20961. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020961

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Endnotes8 Public Knowledge Project. (n.d.). History. Retrieved from

https://pkp.sfu.ca/about/history/ 9 Public Knowledge Project. (n.d.). Open journal systems. Retrieved

from https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/10 Wikipedia. (January 31, 2017). History of Wikipedia. Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia 11 American Library Association. (2017). 100 most frequently

challenged books by decade. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top100

12 Shen, C. & Björk, B. (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: A longitudinal

study of article volumes and market characterists. BMC Medicine, 13(230). doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2.

13 Björk, B. (2012). The hybrid model for open access publication of scholarly articles: A failed experiment? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. doi: 10.1002/asi.22709.

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Endnotes14 Collins, E., & Milloy, C. (2016.). OAPEN-UK final report. Retrieved

from http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/finalreport/15 ROARMAP. (n.d.). Welcome to ROARMAP. Retrieved from

https://roarmap.eprints.org/16 ALiEM Academic Life in Emergency Medicine. (n.d.). Why create the

AIR Series? Retrieved from https://www.aliem.com/aliem-approved-instructional-resources-air-series/