• Introduction

 

Open Education Resources (OER) have been a popular educational topic since the late 1990s and  while their appearance has dramatically changed, their purpose of connecting learners to knowledge and helping people build and share knowledge collectively remains captivating. While used in a variety of contexts, higher education in particular has been striving to define their relationship with OER. Traditional educational resources are entrenched in higher education and the OER disruption is handicapped by the lack of faculty and other change agents that feel comfortable and confident in using and creating OER. A lack of understanding among administrators prevents meaningful modifications of the existing educational frameworks and results in small groups of passionate instructors using OER but little momentum outside of those groups until recently. 

As higher education costs continue to rise, students are increasingly questioning the value of higher education and institutions are struggling to reduce costs where possible while increasing the value of their offerings. OER support these apparently disparate  goals by being, by definition, free and useful in educational contexts. Now the question being asked by administrators and faculty is how to identify the best OER for integrating into courses and supporting student success. 

In this paper, we will review differing approaches to increasing and evaluating  OER usage in higher education with our ultimate focus on a Canadian open university that is working to transform their university into an OER-intensive learning environment to continue with their mission, reduce costs, and increase value. 

 

• Literature Review

 

When reviewing the literature surrounding OER, a trend quickly emerges. Quality evaluation of OER is the focus of researchers followed closely with explorations of how to integrate OER into a course effectively. The following research teams h demonstrate the differing approaches to answering those questions.

Karunanayaka et all (2015) studied the efforts and impact of a course designed to support faculty at the University of Sri Lanka in adopting consistent open educational practices (OEP) as opposed to irregular adoption of OER within individual courses. To promote OEP instead of OER, a five module course designed to build capacity in attendees with the end goal of promoting OER usage, re-usage, and creation in an e-learning environment. The authors designed the course according to rigorous design principles and integrated the usage of OER both horizontally within the modules and vertically throughout the course. By incorporating opportunities to use, revise, and create OER in increasingly complex authentic learning activities, participants were able to build capacity by developing new knowledge, attitudes, and skills. All participants increased their knowledge of OEP. In this way, the University of Sri Lanka was able to increase the amount and quality of OER used and created within their institution. 

Scanlon et al (2015)reviewed how OER were influencing learning in distance education. Taking a pragmatic view of Educational innovation, the authors acknowledge that designers use what resources they have rather than the perfect resources and that the combination of diverse theories, tools, and activities creates a compelling and effective learning environment. Distance education is one of the earlier forms of open education in which the openness was focussed on reducing barriers to education for students who were unable to pursue a traditional in-person education. The use of OER and other open education solutions is leading to new knowledge to inform further innovations. Scanlon et al. found that OER usage led to improved student performance and satisfactions and that OER are used in different patterns that other online resources. The authors make a valid point that designing OER to support disabilities and other educational barriers  results in better OER for all.

Richter and Veith (2014) also strove to foster OER usage thought their approach was analysis of quality and life cycle instead of building faculty capacity for OEP. Based on their literature review, the authors found that quality standards of OER is an ongoing concern and, while there are many systems of quality standards in technology-enhanced learning, the creators and users of OER are generally not experts in learning resource quality standards and can struggle to evaluate their created and found OER appropriately. In a commercial learning resource life cycle, developers are careful to design according to appropriate quality standards as they are hoping to sell their work and therefore must be able to demonstrate widespread value to potential customers. In contrast, OER developers are generally developing in a specific learning context and are more concerned with the appropriateness of the resources instead of reusability. This characteristic changes the life cycle of OER from the traditional model to an iterative process with no designated end point. OER users must be willing and able to modify the resource for their specific contexts. To promote the OER lifecycle and facilitate OER integration, the modified resources should then be made available so further adaptations and use can occur. In addition to the collaborative creation of OER, the authors list OER-specific quality demands that can be used to evaluate the quality and appropriateness of OER for a specific context, including evaluating the presumed learner knowledge and context-specific examples. 

After conducting a literature review that confirmed one did not already exist, Stracke (2019) developed a holistic quality framework for the design, realization and evaluation of open education based on the Reference Process Model of ISO/IEC 40180 from the International Organization for Standardization . Stracke added common quality dimensions, Learning objectives, learning realization, and learning achievements,  to the framework and works to identify how the framework fits into different levels of organization, such as the societal, administrational, and learner levels. With this framework in place, the ongoing discussion of quality concerns in OER will hopefully transition into a more transformational discussion

 

• Case Study

 

Athabasca University (AU) in Alberta, Canada is an open university that was founded in 1970. AU was the first Canadian university to specialize in distance education and their commitment to removing educational barriers remains stongs. As the definition of open changes, AU is a comprehensive research university with no entrance requirements outside of students being 16 years old. Students are allowed to enroll in courses at the beginning of every month instead of the traditional semester or quarter format. AU’s virtual classrooms, which encompass all of their classrooms, use open source software and their scholarly repository and press is dedicated to open dissemination of research via journals and monographs that conform to international open access standards. Even with all of these innovations and commitment to open education, AU is still pressured being the rising cost of resources, including a 1300% increase in copyright licensing costs. Because of this, AU is eschewing third-party resources and embracing OER in an institution-wide initiative. The article covers their history and background informing their move and lays out the theoretical frameworks that they are using to inform their transition as well as detailing three pilot projects: 1) a series of open calculus practice problems utilizing an open source tutoring tool, 2) a physics course that .adapted Open courseware, and 3) an aggregated database of OER  to include in an instructional design graduate program. These initial programs were successful and led to further enhancements and additions to existing courses. The work of transitioning to fully OER-based in ongoing and no followup article has been published at this time. Their planned next steps are designed to address the same questions that the earlier articles covered, namely how to evaluate OER for incorporation into courses.  

 

 

• Summary

 

In summary, OER in a higher education context is a rapidly developing field that is beginning to be a standard requirement in many ways. Educators and instructional designers must be aware of quality frameworks to support the selection of high-quality OER and the successful adaptations of OER so the iterative life cycle of OER can continue. There are now several valid quality frameworks and validated methodologies of OER course design to choose when developing instruction. Time will only improve our understanding and usage of these free and useful educational resources.

 

• References

 

Cindy Ives, & Mary Margaret Pringle. (2013). Moving to open educational resources at Athabasca University: A case study. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v14i2.1534

Karunanayaka, S. P., Naidu, S., Rajendra, J. C. N., & Ratnayake, H. U. W. (2015). From OER to OEP: Shifting Practitioner Perspectives and Practices with Innovative Learning Experience Design. Open Praxis, 7(4), 339–350. Retrieved from eric. (International Council for Open and Distance Education. Lilleakerveien 23, 0283 Oslo, Norway. Tel: +47-22-06-26-30; Fax: +47-22-06-26-31; e-mail: icde@icde.org; Web site: http://www.openpraxis.org)

Richter, T., & Veith, P. (2014). Fostering the Exploitation of Open Educational Resources. Open Praxis, 6(3), 205–220. Retrieved from eric. (International Council for Open and Distance Education. Lilleakerveien 23, 0283 Oslo, Norway. Tel: +47-22-06-26-30; Fax: +47-22-06-26-31; e-mail: icde@icde.org; Web site: http://www.openpraxis.org)

Scanlon, E., McAndrew, P., & O’Shea, T. (2015). Designing for Educational Technology to Enhance the Experience of Learners in Distance Education: How Open Educational Resources, Learning Design and MOOCs Are Influencing Learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2015(1). Retrieved from https://login.proxy.kennesaw.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1060086&site=eds-live&scope=site

Stracke, C. M. (2019). Quality Frameworks and Learning Design for Open Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(2), 180–203. Retrieved from eric. (Athabasca University. 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8, Canada. Tel: 780-421-2536; Fax: 780-497-3416; e-mail: irrodl@athabascau.ca; Web site: http://www.irrodl.org)