Repositories of Open Educational Resources: An Assessment of Reuse and Educational Aspects

Authors : Gema Santos-Hermosa, Núria Ferran-Ferrer, Ernest Abadal

This article provides an overview of the current state of repositories of open educational resources (ROER) in higher education at international level. It analyses a series of educational indicators to determine whether ROER can meet the specific needs of the education context, and to clarify understanding of the reuse of open educational resources (OER) provided by ROER.

The aim of the study is to assess ROER by combining these two perspectives, and to form a basis for discussion among the universities that are responsible for these repositories.

The method was based on content analysis and consisted of two phases: an exploration of international sources, and an analysis of 110 ROER using the proposed set of indicators. The results focus on data from the analysis of ROER websites and some models of good practices.

They are presented according to three core dimensions for evaluating ROER: general factors to establish types of ROER, a focus on drivers for OER reuse, and a focus on educational aspects.

It was found that most of the ROER that included one or more of the proposed reuse indicators were created exclusively for educational resources. Educational aspects are not yet firmly embedded into ROER.

The few repositories that seem to have successfully included them are those that provide other educational metadata and use educational standards.

URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3063/4300

Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education

Author : Catherine Cronin

Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices.

As compared with OER, there has been little empirical research on individual educators’ use of OEP for teaching in higher education. This research study addresses that gap, exploring the digital and pedagogical strategies of a diverse group of university educators, focusing on whether, why, and how they use OEP for teaching.

The study was conducted at one Irish university; semi-structured interviews were carried out with educators across multiple disciplines. Only a minority of educators used OEP. Using constructivist grounded theory, a model of the concept “Using OEP for teaching” was constructed showing four dimensions shared by open educators: balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching role expectations.

The use of OEP by educators is complex, personal, and contextual; it is also continually negotiated. These findings suggest that research-informed policies and collaborative and critical approaches to openness are required to support staff, students, and learning in an increasingly complex higher education environment.

URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3096/4301

Open Innovation in Development: Integrating Theory and Practice Across Open Science, Open Education, and Open Data

Author :  Jeremy de Beer

This article integrates the concepts of open innovation and open development. It extends the theory of open development beyond the field of information communications technology to address aspects of innovation systems more generally.

It applies the concept of openness to innovation in practice across the domains of open science, open education, and open data. Creating a framework that is more integrated in theory and cross-cutting in practice creates new possibilities for interdisciplinary research and policy-relevant insights.

URL : https://ssrn.com/abstract=3008675

 

Open Access and OER in Latin America: A survey of the policy landscape in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay

Author : Amalia Toledo

This chapter presents an overview of the mechanisms (funding, policy, legislative and procedural) adopted by Latin American governments with respect to Open Access and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in the higher education sector.

It addresses three questions: How do the higher education systems of Chile, Colombia and Uruguay operate and fund their activities in general? How do existing policies and processes incorporating Open Access and/or OER influence student access to learning and research materials in these countries? What policy, advocacy and community-building interventions might be useful for promoting Open Education activities in these contexts?

This study employed a descriptive, case study approach to examine whether and how Open Access and OER policies have been applied at national and institutional levels. It first engaged in an Open Education policy country-mapping exercise, then conducted a comparative analysis, and concluded the research process with a workshop conducted with 10 regional education experts and activists to validate findings.

Findings indicate that while each country has its own approach to funding higher education, there are few or no specific national and/or institutional policies aimed at promoting Open Education in the higher education sectors.

Low OER awareness and a commercialised model of higher education appear to account for the lack of any OER policies in Chile, while in Colombia various national and institutional strategies reveal a country at a nascent stage of Open Education policy development.

By contrast, the nature of OER management and extent of policy implementation in Uruguay suggests that it is an enabling environment for current and future open policy development.

URL : Open Access and OER in Latin America: A survey of the policy landscape in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.602781

Learning Analytics and the Academic Library: Professional Ethics Commitments at a Crossroads

Authors : Kyle M.L. Jones, Dorothea Salo

In this paper, the authors address learning analytics and the ways academic libraries are beginning to participate in wider institutional learning analytics initiatives. Since there are moral issues associated with learning analytics, the authors consider how data mining practices run counter to ethical principles in the American Library Association’s “Code of Ethics.”

Specifically, the authors address how learning analytics implicates professional commitments to promote intellectual freedom; protect patron privacy and confidentiality; and balance intellectual property interests between library users, their institution, and content creators and vendors.

The authors recommend that librarians should embed their ethical positions in technological designs, practices, and governance mechanisms.

URL : Learning Analytics and the Academic Library: Professional Ethics Commitments at a Crossroads

Alternative location : http://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16603

Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?

Authors : Martin Paul Eve, Ernesto Priego

“Predatory publishing” refers to conditions under which gold open-access academic publishers claim to conduct peer review and charge for their publishing services but do not, in fact, actually perform such reviews.

Most prominently exposed in recent years by Jeffrey Beall, the phenomenon garners much media attention. In this article, we acknowledge that such practices are deceptive but then examine, across a variety of stakeholder groups, what the harm is from such actions to each group of actors.

We find that established publishers have a strong motivation to hype claims of predation as damaging to the scholarly and scientific endeavour while noting that, in fact, systems of peer review are themselves already acknowledged as deeply flawed.

URL : Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?

Alternative location : http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/867

 

How to share data for collaboration

Authors : Shannon E Ellis, Jeffrey T Leek

Within the statistics community, a number of guiding principles for sharing data have emerged; however, these principles are not always made clear to collaborators generating the data. To bridge this divide, we have established a set of guidelines for sharing data.

In these, we highlight the need to provide raw data to the statistician, the importance of consistent formatting, and the necessity of including all essential experimental information and pre-processing steps carried out to the statistician. With these guidelines we hope to avoid errors and delays in data analysis.

URL : How to share data for collaboration

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3139v1