Étiquette : OER

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The Open Flip – a digital economic model for education

Author : Martin Weller

The advent of the internet and digital technologies has given rise to a number of new economic models. These have often been applied to education, but either through faults in the initial models or differences in the characteristics of the education sector, they have not proven to be widely applicable.

The use of digital, network technologies combined with open licences is one area that has seen particular success in educational application. This field offers an economic model that has particular application to education, through the reallocation of finances to the production of openly licensed resources instead of the purchase of copyrighted ones.

This has potential significant impact across a range of educational practices and beyond.

URL : The Open Flip – a digital economic model for education

Alternative location : http://www.jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/152

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The role of “open” in strategic library planning

Academic libraries are undergoing evolutionary change as emerging technologies and new philosophies about how information is created, distributed, and shared have disrupted traditional operations and services.

Additionally, the population that the academic library serves is increasingly distributed due to distance learning opportunities and new models of teaching and learning.  

This article, the first in this special issue, suggests that in today’s increasingly networked and distributed information environment, the strategic integration of open curation and collection development practices can serve as a useful means for organizing and providing structure to the diverse mass of available digital information, so that individual users of the library have access to coherent contexts for meaningful engagement with that information.

Building on insights from extant research and practice, this article proposes that colleges and universities recognize a more inclusive open access environment, including the integration of resources outside of those owned or created by the institution, and a shift toward policies that consider open access research and open educational resources as part of the library’s formal curatorial workflow and collection building.

At the conclusion on this article, authors Lisa Petrides and Cynthia Jimes offer a commentary on the six remaining articles that comprise this special issue on Models of Open Education in Higher Education, discussing the significant role that “open” policy and practice play in shaping teaching, learning, and scholarship in the global context of higher education.

URL : The role of “open” in strategic library planning

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.2478

Publié le

Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions

Textbooks are a vital component in many higher education contexts. Increasing textbook prices, coupled with general rising costs of higher education have led some instructors to experiment with substituting open educational resources (OER) for commercial textbooks as their primary class curriculum. This article synthesizes the results of 16 studies that examine either (1) the influence of OER on student learning outcomes in higher education settings or (2) the perceptions of college students and instructors of OER.

Results across multiple studies indicate that students generally achieve the same learning outcomes when OER are utilized and simultaneously save significant amounts of money. Studies across a variety of settings indicate that both students and faculty are generally positive regarding OER.

URL : Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions

Alternative location : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11423-016-9434-9

Publié le

Who are the Open Learners? A Comparative Study Profiling non-Formal Users of Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) have been identified as having the potential to extend opportunities for learning to non-formal learners. However, little research has been conducted into the impact of OER on non-formal learners. This paper presents the results of a systematic survey of more than 3,000 users of open educational resources (OER). Data was collected between 2013 and 2014 on the demographics, attitudes and behaviours of users of three repositories.

Questions included a particular focus on the behaviours of non-formal learners and the relationship between formal and non-formal study. Frequency analysis shows that there are marked differences in patterns of use, user profiles, attitudes towards OER, types of materials used and popularity of different subjects. The experience of using OER is fairly consistent across platforms in terms of satisfaction and impact on future behaviour. On the whole, non-formal learners surveyed were highly positive about their use of OER and believe they will continue to use them.

With regards to this making formal study more likely some degree of polarization was observed: some believed formal study was now more likely, while others felt it made this less likely. On the whole, while non-formal learners are enthusiastic about using free and online resources, the language and concept of OER does not seem to be well understood in the groups surveyed. A range of findings relating to OER selection and use as well as differences between repositories are explored in the discussion.

URL : http://www.eurodl.org/?p=current&abstract=707

Publié le

Donor Funded Open Educational Resources: Making the Case

PURPOSE

This paper aims to explain the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) and how libraries can make a good case to donors to fund these types of projects.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

The literature reveals that donors have been willing to support projects that save students money on textbooks. Course reserves have traditionally been a popular model. More recently, libraries have found funding for OER initiatives. These types of initiatives are discussed and several case studies of donors currently funding OER projects are examined.

FINDINGS

Donors, internal and external to the library and to the university, have shown an interest in funding projects that reduce textbook costs for students. They have funded course reserves in the past and have begun to fund OER projects. There are both qualitative and quantitative methods to induce donors to fund these types of projects.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Libraries have traditionally supported the mission of access to information and for academic libraries that has sometimes included access to textbooks. Course reserves are a limited solution, whereas when an OER replaces an expensive textbook, it is a viable solution for all students.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

OERs have strong social implications. Any person, whether associated with an institution of higher learning, or not, can access the information in an OER and learn the associated content.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

There is some literature on specific OER projects. This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature, specifically on how to approach donors regarding OER initiatives.

URL : http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/57920

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Open Scholarship Practices Reshaping South Africa’s Scholarly Publishing Roadmap

South African higher education institutions are the largest producers of research output on the African continent. Given this status, South African researchers have a moral obligation to share their research output with the rest of the continent via a medium that minimizes challenges of access; open scholarship is that medium. The majority of South African higher education libraries provide an open access publishing service. However, in most of these cases this service is via engagement with the green open access route, that is, institutional repositories (IR).

Some of the libraries have piloted and adopted gold open access services such as publishing of “diamond” gold open access journals and supporting article processing charges. The experiment with publishing open monographs is a new venture. This venture must be viewed against the backdrop of the need for open educational resources (OERs). OER is an area that is very much in a fledgling stage and is gaining traction, albeit, at a slow pace.

The growth of IRs, the growth in support for gold open access including the library acting as a publisher, the experimentation with open monographs, and OERs are all shaping South Africa’s scholarly publishing roadmap.

URL : Open Scholarship Practices Reshaping South Africa’s Scholarly Publishing Roadmap

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications3040263

Publié le

Developing a Sustainable Financial Model in Higher Education for Open Educational Resources

Financial issues regarding the sustainable production, dissemination, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education are reviewed and proposed solutions critiqued. Use of OER produce demonstrable cost savings for students. Yet OER development continues to rely almost completely on government and philanthropic funding.

This indicates that a mismatch exists between the financial interests of students and those of higher education institutions. Before OER will be broadly adopted, changes to government policy are required to align institutional objectives with faculty motivations and student needs.

URL : Developing a Sustainable Financial Model in Higher Education for Open Educational Resources

Alternative location : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2133