Open Education for All

Open Education Resources: World Changer or Unrealistic Idealism?

By Erin L Baker

Presentation Overview

• Definition of Open Educational Resources (OER)

• Benefits

• Challenges

• Where do we go from here?

Definition of OER

• Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.

From United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization website (www.unesco.org), Communication and Information page

Benefits of Open

• Students save money, which increases retention

• Faculty can be more creative and therefore more engaged with their materials, which increases student engagement and retention.

• Because faculty could now feel more comfortable about the legality of their use of materials, they push themselves and their students further in learning.

• Peer Review – the more people who read your stuff and offer suggestions, the better your stuff gets – the better everybody’s stuff gets.

• We start to take the dollar signs off education, making it available to more people. An educated world makes a better world.

• New faculty can have a comfortable place to go to get their materials, rather than scramble a class together last minute.

Challenges of Open• Quality Assurance

Anyone can put anything on the internet and it’s pretty easy to get a creative commons license. It would be fair to say that it is possible that not all open materials are quality.

• SustainabilityFor the last several years, there has been grant money to support the work it takes to produce quality material. Will there continue to be money in the future? Will we be able to keep updating and creating if there isn’t?

• Lack of public understandingMany people don’t understand the concept of open resources and because they don’t understand either by-pass it, thinking it isn’t worth their time or don’t use it for fear of misusing copyrights.

• Stakeholder Buy-InThis is due to lack of understanding as stated above as well as fear of judgment. A lot of faculty don’t want others to look at their materials and judge them as unfit or out of context.

Where Do We Go From Here?

• The biggest thing that needs to drive this train is education. We need to educate ourselves and others. No, not just educate, but also excite people. There are so many benefits to OER we need to light a bonfire letting the world know. BUT, we also need to be very wary of the challenges and continue to work with our eyes open, develop and maintain quality assurance, create plans for sustainability, educate and assuage people’s fears. Let’s “go hand-in-hand”, and not “walk alone in fear.”