Realising the Potential of Open Educational Resources

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Realising the Potential of Open Educational
Resources

• Professor Denise Kirkpatrick
• The Open University

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Why make our content open?

• Growing momentum for open content
• Consistent with our mission
• Build markets reputation
• Test bed new e-learning developments
• Research evaluate them
• Learn more about business models
• Utilise materials from other organisations
• Facilitate local international collaborations

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Initial uncertainties

• Giving away the family silver what is the
  market value of content?
• Inappropriate use of the content what will
  others do with it?
• Threatening student recruitment why will they
  pay for what they can get free?
• Implementing licensing agreements for courses
  programmes will we lose revenue?
• Long-term sustainability who pays for making
  content open?

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Major aims

• Enhanced learning experiences for users of open
  content (self study content open learning
  environment)
• Greater involvement in higher education by
  under-represented groups support for networks
  that work with them
• Enhanced knowledge understanding of open
  content delivery
• Enhanced understanding of sustainable scaleable
  models of open content delivery.

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What have we done so far?
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FOR LEARNERS
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FOR EDUCATORS
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Major components of OpenLearn

• Study units consisting of multiple media assets
• Text assets as XML or PDF
• Audiovisual assets as MP3 files
• Images as jpg files
• Flash animations
• An Open Learning Environment using OSS (Moodle )
• Forums
• Learning Journals
• Learning Clubs
• Rating and Tagging
• Video conferencing (FM)
• Knowledge maps (Compendium)
• FlashVlogs
• Activity records

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Ensuring quality

• LearningSpace
• Original material externally peer reviewed
• Pre-publication internal peer review
• 5 star user ratings
• User reviews
• LabSpace
• Badging of Units as
• Current OU OER,
• Archived OU OER,
• User generated contribution,
• Project generated contribution
• 5 star user ratings
• User reviews
• Post publication external peer review?
• Institutional Lenses like Connexions?

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Users of OpenLearn

• Individual self learners (over 3.7 million
  browsing visitors and 80,000 registered users)
  around the world (220 countries)
• Individual groups of educators
• Lifelong learning groups in the UK wanting
  informal study
• Educational other organisations for
  collaboration and staff development

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What happens to the content?

• Accessed used online by browsers registered
  users
• Added to online by registered users
• Referred to from another VLE or website
• Taken away used elsewhere

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LearningSpace
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LabSpace
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Collaborations
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User augmented content
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Use of content

• Over 2000 FM video conferences booked
• Over 4,000 Compendium downloads, over 400
  knowledge map downloads and over 40 uploads
• Over 6000 forum postings
• Over 2000 learning journal entries
• 10,000 units printed per week
• 10,000 downloads per week

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Use of content

• Learning Clubs
• Translations
• In situ editing of units by educators
• Groups add their own content in collaboration
  zone
• Content now also found on or via YouTube,
  NetVibes, Flickr, MySpace as we and others spread
  it around

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Institutional impact

• 4m new users
• 240 countries
• 9000 sign ups
• gt10 funded projects
• gt30 collaborations
• Developed technology
• Established methods
• Changed image
• Won awards
• New plans

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Weve learned that

• OERs are attractive because people can do
  something with them
• Many want more than just the content
• Educators need strong commitment and continued
  support over long periods to rework or create new
  resources
• Being involved in networks makes a difference
• OER work needs to align with both daily business
  longer term activities
• New business models are required
• And we have more questions

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Collective Intelligence
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Finding out
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Content v social
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OLnet Open Learning network
Network

• From producing open resources to use of open
  resources
• Build capacity
• Find evidence
• Refine the issues

Research
Fellowships
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Network
Research
Fellowships
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olnet.org
olnet_at_open.ac.uk