Background

At the e-Framework Partners Strategy Board meeting in August 2009, New Zealand offered to share some experiences on strategic issues related to open education resources (OER).

The three strategic issues identified were:

• The quality of open educational resources (what does quality mean, what processes might be useful to monitor and ensure quality and what quality related risks are there for education systems?).

• The metadata associated with open educational resources (how can it be used to make resources more discoverable, formally and/or informally).

• Who publishes what open resources and where (and in particular where should teacher created resources be published?)

Officially sanctioned on-line resources in NZ

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Education has developed a bilingual portal and web community which provides quality-assured educational material for New Zealand teachers, school managers, and the wider education community.

It is called Te Kete Ipurangi or in English, The On-line Learning Centre (www.tki.org.nz/)

Learning Management Systems and Digital Content

The growing use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) is taking place in parallel with the development of the TKI on-line learning centre and the reuse and portability of teacher created content is an emerging issue.

With more (composite) digital resources being created in New Zealand schools via LMS we want to avoid this tool set becoming a silo for content. We want content to be more reusable and portable, not locked inside the creation/run-time tool. The alternative is more ‘lock-in’ or expensive exit costs for schools changing systems and increased barriers to sharing digital content.

The Strategic Issues

Here in New Zealand, the need to make teacher created digital resources discoverable and re-useable has led to some dilemmas. If we want to use our official on-line channel for teacher created content, and we claim that this channel publishes quality assured material, then we need to put quality assurance processes around the content and that could be a barrier to growing a culture of sharing.

Alternatively, we could use a separate channel for authoring, publishing, licensing, storage, discovery and editing/republishing teacher created content. Wikieducator is one option that we are exploring. However, without suitable quality assurance this could lead to the reuse of material that is not endorsed by the Ministry of Education.

We are in the early stages of this journey – we will share our experiences via the e-Framework newsletter and we are interested in similar experiences taking place in partner countries.

Some relevant literature

Findings reported in the following three publications provide some useful insights into the development of open educational resources, and may help further inform on some of the associated issues.

1. Susan D’Antoni, “Open Educational Resources: The Way Forward. Deliberations of an International Community of Interest” UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, February 2008
   www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/911/880
   
   This report sets out the priority issues identified by a community of interest of more than 600 members from over half of the 193 member states of of UNESCO for advancing and supporting the growing OER movement internationally. The discussions and deliberations took place over a two year period, 2005-2007.
   
   While there were differences in priorities between developing and developed countries, and among regions,

   • awareness raising and promotion,

   • building communities (eg. regional, linguistic, and topic specific),

   • building capacity,

   • sustainability, and

   • quality assurance

   stood out as the most important issues, with copyright and licensing also of significant concern, in particular where resources intended for release in OER contained copyrighted material within. In the use of Creative Commons licenses a need for guidance towards better understanding of the implications of the licenses chosen was identified

2. Norm Friesen, “Open Source Resources in Education: Opportunities and Challenges” BC Centre for Open Learning, July 2009
   www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/911/880
   
   This report discusses two OER models – the creation of open educational content in online Wiki environments specifically designed for its collaborative development and organisation, such as occurs in Wikiversity and WikiEducator, and the open courseware model where existing course content is made available on the Web, as has occurred at MIT where ‘virtually all’ of its courses were posted online by 2007.
   
   Friesen raises the issue of sustainability as one that is of major concern for OER projects. He defines this as “the capacity of an initiative to outlive its initial start up phase and the associated short term project funding”. He asserted that it was ‘disquieting’ to read from Susan D’Antoni’s report (above) that the ‘majority of OER developments’ are generally still being ‘undertaken on a project basis’.
   
   He suggests that the open courseware model followed by MIT is a relatively clear alternative to project funding, (ie financial support of the educational institutions with which the courses are associated), and that MIT has benefited in a number of ways from its investment in OER:

   • 32% of faculty say that putting say that putting material online has improved their teaching

   • MIT’s site has shown to be a significant factor in student choice of institution and recruitment

   • Majorities of students and faculty use the site to support study and teaching

   • Marketing of the quality of teaching and learning in areas of strategic institutional interest

   Friesen concludes that “enlightened self-interest is one of the most powerful drivers for the sustainability of OCW (open courseware) and for OER more generally.

3. OECD, “Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources” OECD Publishing, May 2007
   www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?CID=&LANG=EN&SF1=DI&ST1=5L4S6TNG3F9X
   
   This report explores a range of issues and implications of the OER movement that it says exist at many policy levels and also identifies sustainability as a significant issue.
   
   It suggests a number of models that can address this, from user-producer and co-production models to replacement, endowment, segmentation, voluntary support model, and membership model.

   • The report says there are three arguments for governments to support OER projects:

   • They expand access to learning particularly for non-traditional groups of students and thus widen participation in higher education.

   • They can be an efficient way to promote lifelong learning.

   • They can bridge the gap between non-formal, informal and formal learning.

   It also says institutions mention six types of reasons for being involved in OER projects:

   • Altruism – sharing knowledge is a good thing to do.

   • Educational institutions should leverage taxpayers’ money by allowing free sharing and re-use.

   • Quality can be improved and the cost of content development reduced by sharing and re-using.

   • Public relations – an OER project can attract new students.

   • There is a need to look for new cost recovery models as institutions experience growing competition.

   • Open sharing will speed up the development of new learning resources and stimulate innovation.

   Whilst much of the literature and experience with OER relates to the higher education/tertiary sector, many of the implications, issues, and concerns identified could apply across all sectors, and consequently help inform decision and policy-making for stakeholders nationally and internationally.