Educause have a useful page on open education and open educational resources at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/Open%20Educational%20Resources%20OER/27863
In particular, their one page document Seven Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutOpenE/205913 contains a helpful rational for the use of oer as well as countering some common reasons given for resistance to oer practice.
Blackboard is now marketing itself as a multiple learning platform, one which supports both commercial software and open source content. Blackboard CourseSites, launched in 2011, is a free, cloud-based opportunity for releasing teaching and learning courses as OER. Register for free at https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/index.html and start building your course. Alternatively try a free course. Blackboard is promoting CourseSites with Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success led by Dr. Curtis Bonk http://travelinedman.blogspot.co.uk/ which focuses on successful strategies and approaches to online learning, course design and facilitation.
Making education ‘open’ is a current trend and the release of OER under a Creative Commons licence takes full advantage of the affordances of the Internet to offer any-time any-place access to information and knowledge. Blackboard is a corporate giant in the world of commercial education and its not immediately clear if this move into the ‘free’ world is an example of genuine altruism or if there is a hidden agenda. On the surface it looks good. Instructors can post course materials, communicate with students and manage grades, but what are the disadvantages?
You are restricted to five ‘live’ courses although if you need more, then old ones can be hidden creating space for additional new ones. CourseSites cannot be integrated with existing systems and it isn’t clear how you would package up your course and export it somewhere else. Looking at the available literature online it seems the best way to find out the pros and cons is to use CourseSites to create a course so I’m experimenting with making some of the Getting Started transition materials available as OER in this way.
There is mention of a planned Blackboard Building Block to enable institutions to showcase courses that are open for learning. Instructors will apparently be able to share OER courses via Facebook and Twitter, but whether or not this Building Block has been released is unclear. For now you can use the Publish Open Resource link in Packages and Utilities which offers space for keywords and gives you the course URL with a BY Creative Commons licence attached.
‘Attribution CC BY: this license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Blackboard meets open education – this could be an interesting space to watch…
The two day Embedding OER Practice Interim Event was an good opportunity for project teams and students to work with the HEA Change Academy team and individual project critical friends. The Agenda for the day is shared here. Day One included a Rich Picture Group Activity where teams were encouraged to make visual representations of their project timescales and a Liquid Cafe event which gave teams opportunities to comment on each other’s work in progress.
Day Two included a number of presentations; key points from each are listed below.
OER Specialist presentation (Steve Stapleton)
Steve Stapleton gave a useful account of an institutional approach to adopting OER at the University of Nottingham. The PowerPoint presentation slides are available here Open Nottingham Presentation. The U-Now collection of OER at the University of Nottingham can be accessed here http://unow.nottingham.ac.uk/
Evaluation and Dissemination (Ranald MacDonald)
Ranald reminded us how getting feedback is a continual process. Project logs are one way of recording feedback as and when it happens. Key questions to bear in mind when designing evaluation and dissemination outputs include:
Useful links
Making Your Initiative Sustainable (Steve Outram)
The HEA Change Academy programme is about changing people and culture. Although we are working on separate projects connected with embedding OER practice, they share similar goals. These include student engagement by empowering student involvement with achieving project team objectives , ensuring project outputs are sustainable and promoting institutional change through adoption of the philosophy and practice of open education.
Opportunities to publicise our projects will ensure people know what we are doing. In particular we need to continually work to ensure senior managers are aware of our projects and engaged with their principles. Examples where OER are already being embedded into practice at Lincoln is their mention within the Draft Teaching and Learning Plan KPIs and the development of BuddyPress as a staff profile tool offering opportunities to promote OER. We are all acting as ambassadors and consultants for OER through promoting the existence of OER collections and the licensing of our own work as OER. It will be useful to look for alignment between the projects and institutional policies and practices. One good fit is Student as Producer which is central to teaching and learning at the Universityof Lincolnand grounded in principles of openness and sharing. The HEA sees Student as Producer as a distinctive good practice in student engagement and it is also currently being promoted by JISC as an example of open education http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/opentechnologies/openeducation.aspx
When we are all short on time and feeling stretched, it can be useful to think how small steps or nudges (see Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point) can make a big difference and to consider how to make projects ‘sticky’ or create added value. All projects have identified generic aspects of the student experience which will benefit from project outputs and this makes each project distinctive. Content branded by the University of Lincoln as OER will be quality assured and accessible. This will be achieved through piloting and evaluating with staff and students and ensuring resources comply with TechDis Accessibility Essentials (all project teams have been given a set of these and they are also available at http://oer.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk under Links). The issue of time shortage and feeling stretched was repeated throughout the two days and this needs to be taken seriously. The HEA have asked for all our project plans to be submitted for public dissemination on the HEA website so now is a good time to revisit and revise these plans, taking in to consideration the need for sustainability within the constraints of existing commitments. Each project has a budget of £5000 allocated which may be helpful in this respect.
Next Steps: returning to your institution (Sharon Waller)
Guidelines for the after the Interim event:
JISC’s Sustaining and Embedding Innovations; a good practice guide contains useful information for planning sustainability with embedding OER practice outcomes. It focuses on:
The Guide is structured around the following main sections which can be accessed directly from the links below:
Please scroll down the page for the booking form to register your place on the one day teaching and learning event, 21st June, Sharing Practice: open approaches to teaching and learning.
OER Workshop Two, WordPress and Other Things, took place today 21 March, facilitated by Joss Winn. This was planned as a catch-up session on Creative commons licences and searching for OER for those who missed the first workshop and then to introduce using WordPress for those new to blogging. These workshops are also opportunities for participants to ask questions about the technical ‘behind the scenes’ aspect of the Embedding OER project.
WordPress blogs are hosted on University of Lincoln servers and accessed using network userids and passwords. Go to http://blogs.lincoln.ac.uk and you will see a page looking something like this. Sign in.
The page will change and at the top left corner is the link to Create a New Site.
Sites support both blogs posts and pages. Once you are on the Dashboard of your new blog, you will see a Help link at the top right of the screen.
This Help link directs you to the WordPress.org Support Forums where there is advice on getting started as well as links to dozens of useful WordPress lessons. If you need any additional help with your new blog on campus, contact Sue Watling swatling@lincoln.ac.uk, Joss Winn jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk or Julian Beckton jbeckton@lincoln.ac.uk for some one-to-one support.
Please scroll down the page for the booking form to register your place on the one day teaching and learning event, 21st June, Sharing Practice: open approaches to teaching and learning.
Scroll down to book a place using the online Booking Form
As well as copyright and creative commons licences, OER Workshop One included guidance for using content which hasn’t been opened up for wider use. It can be acceptable to provide a link to materials so long the origin is cited, but doing this is not without potential problems. It is recommended you add a disclaimer such as
‘The content of this external website in the intellectual property of someone other than the University of Lincoln. You should not copy material without the permission of the copyright owner.’
It is also useful to acknowledge that you cannot take responsibility for the validity of the content, or if the content is moved elsewhere in the site or taken away resulting in a broken link.
If you are linking to a collaborative site take a moment to check out the copyright and licence guidance for the site e.g. You Tube or SlideShare. It will be complex but this in itself is an indicator of the complexity of copyright legislation. It also further emphasises the value of a creative commons licence which seeks to simplify and encourage the sharing process.
As the number of available OER increases so searching needs to be more strategic. A useful tool is the Google Advance Search function. The link to Advance Search may appear on your Google search page. If you can’t see the link, as on the page below, key in the phrase Google Advanced Search to find the advanced search options.
Advanced Search offers the facility to refine your search. Adding .ac.uk restricts content to HEIs.
At the bottom of the page is Usage Rights criteria. Clicking on the downward arrow reveals a lists of options which will identify different creative commons licences for example free to use or share and free to use, share or modify. This can make a significant difference to the relevance of content returned.
The next Team Six workshop will be held on 21st March 10.00-12.00 in Room 101 in the Library. This is looking at WordPress and will include a revision of creative content licences for anyone who missed this first time around. The workshop will be repeated on 28th March for those unable to make it on 21st.
Part of the Team Six Workshop, OER, Copyright and Licencing, looked at Creative Commons licences. Creative Commons is the infrastructure built to allow content creators legal controls over the copyright of the their work. More information about Creative Commons can be found on the Creative Commons site and the Lincoln Academic Commons site at http://commons.lincoln.ac.uk/creative-commons There are six different Creative Commons licences, each one giving the conditions under which the content can be shared, re-designed and re-licenced either commerically or non-commercially. Each licence can be identified with a relevant logo.
Attribution. CC BY. This licence means other people can use and reuse the OER, including commercially, as long as the original author is credited. This licence is recommended for ensuring content is most widely shared.
Attribution ShareAlike. CC BY SA. This license includes the same criteria as Attribution but anyone re-purposing it must license the new materials under identical terms.
Attribution-NoDerivs. CC BY ND. This license allows for commercial and non-commercial redistribution but it cannot be changed and the original author is credited.
Attribution-NonCommercial. CC BY-NC. This license is for non-commercial use. It allows others to re-use and re-purpose content. The original author must be cited but the new work does not have to be licenced under identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. CC BY-NC-SA. This license is for non-commercial use. It allows others to re-use and re-purpose content. The original author must be cited and the new work must be licenced under identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. CC BY-NC-ND. This is the most restrictive license. Work can be downloaded and shared, the original author must be credited but not changes can be made and the work must not be used commercially.
The Creative Commons site contains more information about background and development of these licence and also has a licence choosing tool designed to help you select the right licence for your own work.
Because the creator has the control over the copyright, sharing and distribution of their work, this is sometimes referred to copyleft.
Saving the OER Copyright and Licensing presentation slides as PowerPoint 2003 is not currently happening so if anyone is running Office 2003 without the converter here is a pdf version of the slides (opening in a new window) TeamSixOERWorkshop1CopyrightlicensesandOERs. It is also publically available here http://lncn.eu/vw9
OERs Copyright and Licenses introduced the complexities of copyright legislation. The internet has become the first destination of choice when it comes to creating teaching and learning content. It offers an infinite source of materials and there are many common myths about their usage
All of these are incorrect. It’s worth bearing in mind that in the copyright world everything belongs to someone. So although taking and reusing online content is easy, there are a complex set of rules and regulations to be aware of. Unfortunately there is also no single answer as to what can or cannot be taken but some guidelines are more fixed than others. For example you can reuse content if:
The last two are where the complexity begins. Substantial is undefined. For example a square taken from the face of the Mona Lisa would be more substantial than the same sized square taken from the bottom right of the picture. The face would be more recognisable than her dark clothes so has a different significance in terms of copyright legislation. The defence of fair dealing is also an arbitrary ruling. While the work of others can be copied for criticism or review – e.g. teaching and learning – we can’t rely on this as a defence in law that the action was justified. There is no exception to copyright for education purposes in the UK as there is in other countries and the concept of fair dealing is less applicable in law than is often realised. When we take content there is always a risk and individuals have to consider the level of that risk.
Everything belongs to someone. A colleague gave the useful example of wanting to use the London Underground tube map in a book and having the publishers request permission. London Transport agreed but with restrictions on the artwork and a fee of £300. This applies to logos and trademarks and was relevant to me – when I talk about the digital divide I use the slide below.
How illegal is this? What is the risk level of stealing all these logos for educational purposes? Scary stuff if only because this illustrates how easy it is to do this without thinking through the potential consequences.
What all this does do is reinforce the value of Creative Commons licences which will be looked at next.
Here is the link to the slides from the Team Six OER Workshop this morning in OERs copyright and licences. A write up of the session will be following shortly. The link will open in a new window. Team Six OER Workshop 1 OERs Copyright and Licenses
Thanks Paul, Joss and Julian for hosting the event.
The Open University offers over 600 free online courses from their LearningSpace site where all content is made available under a creative commons licence (see below).
Creating Open Educational Resources is a 15 hour introductory course looking at the pedagogical issues involved in the creation and selection of self-study educational materials. It is a unit about writing a unit and distinguishes between the different purposes of self-instruction and gives advice about techniques and strategies to help the learner when they are engaging with what is considered to be open-learning materials.
Digital teaching and learning resources are inherently more flexible and accessible than paper-based resources. They support customisation to individual requirements as well as a range of different learning preferences. When working with digital resources such as OER, attention to accessibility and inclusive practie is essential if the affordances of digital content are to be realised. JISC TechDis is the leading UK advisory service on technologies for inclusion. They promote inclusive practices for learning and teaching across the education sector and offer a range of support such as the Accessibility Essentials Series. Each of the six teams in Embedding OER Practice have been given a folder of JISC TechDis resources and there are direct links to Accessibility Essentials under the Links tab in the menu bar above. Where digital resources are used to support inclusive teaching, this inavariably benefits all learners and improves the e-learning infrastructure of the institution. Embedding OER Practice supports digital inclusion and welcomes this opportunity to promote accessible and inclusive design and delivery.
Open Education Week will take place from 5-10 March 2012 online (www.openeducationweek.org) and in locally hosted events around the world. The objective is to raise awareness of the open education movement and open educational resources.
Sustaining OER Activity: 8 March 2012
This interactive workshop forms part of the activities around OER week. Presenters will offer perspectives on how the Open Educational Resource (OER) projects they’ve been involved in have sustained their activities, and the internal and external influences have played a part in this. The presentations will be followed by an opportunity for delegates to participate in the ongoing discussions around how to sustain OER by working in groups to discuss key questions on OER and sustainability. Venue: The Open University, Milton Keynes. Fee: No charge. For more information or to register visit http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/events/sustaining-oer-activity
Today was the start of a HEA Change Academy programme with the University of Lincoln. It is the first time the Change Academy has worked alongside an OER programme to embed policy and practice at institutional level, in this case the Embedding OER practice initiative which has six teams from across the university looking at the philosophy and practice of open education and the use and reuse of OER. The Change Academy is about supporting institutional change by working with staff and students to create those conditions most conducive to change. Right from the beginning, engagement with OER is being seen as part a much wider picture i.e. of the use of technology for learning. This includes VLEs, Web 2.0 style tools and social media – as well as familiarity with the open education movement in general and open educational resources in particular. Even higher and wider to this is the individual need for confidence and competence working within digital environments and understanding what makes effective digital learning experiences. All of this involves change in practice and the adoption of digital literacies; those skills and understandings which are essential to teaching, learning and professional practice in a digital age. The Change Academy will help ensure individual project outcomes can be sustainable and identify ways for embedding them at departmental and Faculty level while overall project guidance to OER practice within teaching and learning aims to bring in all other academic and professional support staff from across the university. A write up from the day will be posted here soon. In the meantime, here are some photographs.
Set up an RSS Feed to the JORUM repository blog http://www.jorum.ac.uk/blog and keep up to date with latest developments in the original repository for UK HE and FE open educational resources. The New Featured Collections post at http://www.jorum.ac.uk/blog/post/22/new-featured-collections shows moves towards creating collections aligned to specific subjects; this might well make searching easier although it will be interesting to see how they manage content which fits in more than one category. Something to bear in mind when categorising our own content for sharing.
An RSS feed will alert you to any new content such as new blog postings. You can direct them all into a single place and this saves you having to revisit multiple sites to check to see if anything new has been added. Let me know if you need any assistance with RSS swatling@lincoln.ac.uk
Check out these OER tags on the project’s Delicious site