Étiquette : OER

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A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students

In some educational settings, the cost of textbooks approaches or even exceeds the cost of tuition. Given limited resources, it is important to better understand the impacts of free open educational resources (OER) on student outcomes. Utilizing digital resources such as OER can substantially reduce costs for students. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the adoption of no-cost open digital textbooks significantly predicted students’ completion of courses, class achievement, and enrollment intensity during and after semesters in which OER were used. T

his study utilized a quantitative quasi-experimental design with propensity-score matched groups to examine differences in outcomes between students that used OER and those who did not. The demographics of the initial sample of 16,727 included 4909 students in the treatment condition with a pool of 11,818 in the control condition. There were statistically significant differences between groups, with most favoring students utilizing OER.

URL : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12528-015-9101-x

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Open Textbooks at Oregon State University: A Case Study of New Opportunities for Academic Libraries and University Presses

“INTRODUCTION. This article describes a joint open textbook publishing initiative begun in 2013 between Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries and Press and the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit of Oregon State University’s Extended Campus.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM. This initiative combines the Open Access values and project management resources of OSU Libraries, the book production (peer review, editing, design, marketing) expertise of OSU
Press, and the technological development skills of the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit. Authored by OSU faculty and focused across some of the University’s signature areas, the initiative seeks to establish a sustainable model for research libraries and university presses to collaborate with each other and other partners to publish open textbooks that will benefit students on both economic and educational levels. The article analyzes how open textbooks fit within the emerging library publishing movement, examines the implementation of the OSU open textbook publishing initiative, and conveys some lessons learned for other libraries to consider as they entertain the possibility of similar collaborations.

Next Steps. A description of next steps includes tracking course adoptions of the textbooks as well as establishing sustainable digital publishing platforms and business models.”

URL : Open Textbooks at Oregon State University: A Case Study of New Opportunities for Academic Libraries and University Presses

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1174

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The Battle for Open : How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory

“With the success of open access publishing, Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and open education practices, the open approach to education has moved from the periphery to the mainstream. This marks a moment of victory for the open education movement, but at the same time the real battle for the direction of openness begins. As with the green movement, openness now has a market value and is subject to new tensions, such as venture capitalists funding MOOC companies. This is a crucial time for determining the future direction of open education.
In this volume, Martin Weller examines four key areas that have been central to the developments within open education: open access, MOOCs, open education resources and open scholarship. Exploring the tensions within these key arenas, he argues that ownership over the future direction of openness is significant to all of those with an interest in education.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/weller.pdf

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bam

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An investigation of faculty perspectives on barriers, incentives, and benefits of the OER movement in Turkey

“The purpose of this survey study is to investigate faculty’s perceptions of the main incentives, barriers, and benefits to publishing their course materials for free within the open educational resources (OER) movement. Data were collected from an online survey of 1,637 faculty from 56 universities in Turkey. Results showed that even though the majority of the participants’ perceptions of OER benefits and their attitudes toward publishing their course materials were positive, legal issues were perceived as an obstacle to effective application. Intellectual property protection mechanisms were perceived as the most important incentive to facilitate their contribution.”

URL : An investigation of faculty perspectives on barriers, incentives, and benefits of the OER movement in Turkey

Alternative URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1914

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Model for democratisation of the contents hosted in MOOCs

“Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as a new educational tool in higher education, based on gratuity, massiveness and ubiquity. Essentially they suggest an evolution of the Open Learning Movement based on principles of reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing open educational resources (OER). However, in contrast with the content of OERs, content hosed in MOOCs tends to be paywalled and copyrighted, which restricts its reuse. Philosophically, the main problem with MOOCs is the inaccessibility and inadaptability of their resources, challenging democratic open access to knowledge. A number of authors and organisations consider it an ultimate necessity to open up MOOC resources. Therefore in this paper three strategies to open up MOOC contents are proposed: to deposit the materials in repositories of OER (ROER) as individual objects, to archive them in ROER in data packages as learning units or to convert them into OpenCourseWare (OCW) as self-taught courses.”

URL : Model for democratisation of the contents hosted in MOOCs

doi http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v12i1.2031

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Open Access in Higher Education-Strategies for Engaging Diverse Student Cohorts

“With growth in online education, students gain tertiary qualifications through a mode more suited to their demographics such as work and life balance, learning styles and geographical accessibility. Inevitably this has led to a growth in diversity within student cohorts.The case study described in this paper illustrates strategies based on informed learning design for educating diverse student cohorts in an online program offered by Swinburne University of Technology. The case, an open-access, undergraduate information systems program, attracts mature age students studying while balancing employment and family commitments. The program’s open-access facet is the ‘no entry requirements’ such as prerequisite studies. Hence, many students enter the program via non-traditional pathways bringing significant differences in experience and consequent skill bases. The program’s innovative pedagogy encourages students to engage via active learning with tailored assessments, interactive communication via discussion boards and facilitated real-time sessions and formative feedback which include audio components.”

URL : Open Access in Higher Education-Strategies for Engaging Diverse Student Cohorts

Alternative URL : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/132

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OER adoption: a continuum for practice

“Whilst Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for broadening participation in Higher Education, reducing course development and study costs, and building open collaborative partnerships to improve teaching and learning practices, they have yet to gain significant mainstream traction. Research surrounding open education has focused on adoption at the institutional level, identifying key enablers and barriers to practice, but the practicalities of engagement with open resources are not often addressed.

By reviewing existing literature, and studying prior models used to explain OER (re)use, this paper proposes a continuum of use model. The proposed model seeks to acknowledge the complexity of applied knowledge required to fulsomely engage with open education by examining practitioner behaviours and the necessary supporting mechanisms. This conceptual model aims to be of use to both practitioners and also those responsible for designing professional development in an educational setting. Whilst the proposed model is designed for teaching staff use, some discussion is given as to how it could be applied to student learning using open resources as well.”

URL : OER adoption: a continuum for practice

Alternative URL : http://journals.uoc.edu/index.php/rusc/article/view/v11n3-stagg