Open Educational Practice and Open Educational Resources Getting Started

Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

The issue Teachers in a variety of educational sectors are looking at ways to embed more digital resources into the curriculum in order to meet the changing learner needs. Staff need to be able to find affordable, quality resources (e.g. images or video clips) which can be tailored to suit local requirements alongside their own materials. Learners and teachers may wish to share resources they have created. All can benefit from access to community resources as a way of gaining inspiration for their own creations, while respecting and acknowledging the work of others. Open educational practice and open educational resources (OERs) offer some possible solutions but it can be difficult to know how to get started.

Purpose and scope This briefing offers some basic tips on getting started with open educational resources, including:

- A brief introduction to open educational practice and OERs

- Tips on getting started

- Places to find and share OERs

- Links to help you explore open educational practice further, including developing your own OERs.

It has been written with further education and skills providers in mind but may also be of interest to others.

Please be aware that links provided in this guide were correct at the time the briefing was compiled but may be subject to change.

The issue 1 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Introduction to open educational practice and Open Educational Resources (OER) There’s no single definition of OERs and open educational practice. Here is a small selection which emphasise key features:

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost, and without needing to ask permission.” (from OER Commons)

“Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” (from the Hewlett Foundation)

But open educational practice is about more than OER as this quote explains:

'…open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning'. (from the Cape Town Open Education Declaration)

This short briefing concentrates mainly on OER but you will find links to some sites covering other aspects of open practice towards the end.

Introduction to open educational practice and Open Educational Resources (OER) 2 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Top tips 1. Start small. It’s possible to engage in open educational practice gradually, taking steps that fit your workflow and circumstances. You could begin by looking at what others have done, maybe borrow an idea here or an image there, and remember to acknowledge the work of others as required. When you’re ready you can share your own material in return. Open practice can be thought about as a journey or a ladder where you can move at a pace appropriate to your needs and capabilities.

2. Be realistic. The US-based Open Professionals Education Network points out in its guide Find OER, “It is unlikely that you will find OER that perfectly fit your needs”. In many ways, the whole point of OER is to be built on and adapted for new situations. As with any other teaching resource you will want to tweak OERs to suit your context, so allow some time for this.

3. Get some licensing know-how. Understanding the freedoms offered by open licenses - typically Creative Commons - can make life easier. For example the symbol CC-BY means you may use or modify a resource with attribution. The license symbol tells you what you can do with material you find on the web, it helps you guide your learners and it helps you to share your own work with confidence.

4. Some things are more open than others. Some sites describe their resources as ‘open’ but don’t necessarily give them open licenses so it’s not easy to tell how they can be used. If you don’t see a clear open license (e.g. Creative Commons) you may need to contact the copyright holder with details of how you want to use the resource.

5. Be social. Open educational practitioners tend to be enthusiastic networkers and the community is generally very keen to encourage others who are starting out. You can use some of the ideas in this guide to start networking and join the conversation.

6. Allow time to change. Open practice and working with OERs does not mean there are zero costs involved. Time is an important factor and it can take a while to change your practice, particularly if you’ve relied on other methods for some time.

7. Think digital literacy. Even taking small steps towards being an open educational practitioner is an excellent way to develop valuable digital literacy skills.

Top tips 3 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Finding OERs

Open educational resources (OERs) Here is a small selection of places where you can find OERs on a range of topics.

Jisc’s Hairdressing Training designed to meet the requirements of the UK awarding bodies

Humbox – covers the humanities

Languagebox – covers languages

Xpert – searchable collection of resources created using Xerte

Khan Academy

Creative Commons

Wikimedia Commons

OER Commons

MERLOT – a US based repository which operates a peer review process

Interactive Learning Resources for Skills – OERs created by skills providers on a Jisc project. They cover a range of curriculum areas and include some materials suitable for general skills development such as functional skills or communication. All the resources can be downloaded from the Interactive learning resources for skills blog along with support resources.

The Jisc OER repository Jorum is being retired in Sept 2016. Till then you can explore and download resources. The Jorum team have listed a number of alternative OER platforms including some not covered above.

Guides to finding OER

The Open Professionals Education Network in the US has a page on how to find OER

Finding free content available for reuse from Leeds University Library

Open educational resources guide by the Institute of Education library, covering education topics

You can also use advanced search options in Google and YouTube to identify openly-licensed material (though it’s important to note these may not be designed as educational resources). Guidance is available on YouTube and copyright/Creative Commons and how to find free-to-use images (and other material) via Google.

Finding OERs 4 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Useful links Here is a very selective list of pointers to further information on various aspects of OERs and open practice.

Guides Open educational resources (OERs) – Jisc guide based on learning from the UKOER programme (2009-2012)

Open practices briefing - from the UKOER programme

Guide to definitions and terminology – from the UKOER programme

Open educational resources roundup on Edutopia, a US-based site aimed at K-12 school teachers

Get up to speed with OER – a self-paced tutorial from SUNY Empire State College in New York.

Open courses The Open University has two free courses on its OpenLearn platform:

An introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)

Creating open educational resources

Getting to grips with licences Creative Commons infographic: licenses explained – blogger David Hopkins takes you through some essentials of Creative Commons, including some useful tips on images

Creative Commons Kiwi – a short video from Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand explaining what the different Creative Commons symbols mean

Turning a resource into an Open Educational Resource

Copyright and Creative Commons – a Commoncraft video which explains in simple language the benefits of Creative Commons for creators who want to share their resources in different ways.

Institutional policies and initiatives Open Nottingham

Leeds University

University of Edinburgh

Useful links 5 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Projects and communities of practice The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) has an Open Education Special Interest Group (Open Ed SIG) and organises the annual open education conference.

The CILIP Information Literacy Group website for librarians has a useful section on finding, using and sharing OERs. It also encourages the sharing of OERs for teaching people important digital skills. For example, the group have teamed up with TeenTech to share 10 Research Smarter tip sheets suitable for school and college learners.

OER-DISCUSS - a Jiscmail list providing a forum for discussion and sharing of OER.

Open Scotland

Open Educational Practices Scotland

OER Wales

OpenLearn Cymru (English language version here)

DigiLit Leicester’s Open Schools. Resources created on this project for teachers about the basics of OER and open licensing are available to download here

Social media Social media is widely used in open educational practice. On Twitter common hashtags include:

#oer

#oep

#ukoer

#openedsig

Some useful Twitter accounts to follow include:

@OER_Hub

@ukoer

@oerconf

Examples of open education blogs include:

Lorna Campbell’s Open World

Martin Weller’s Ed Techie.

Useful links 6 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Other aspects of open educational practice OERs are not the only form of open educational practice. Here’s a selective list of links to other ways openness is being explored in education and beyond.

Open badges Mozilla OpenBadges digitalme

Staffordshire University Library has a guide to open badges describing how open badges are used within the university’s Academic Skills Know How initiative.

Open textbooks Jisc’s project on the Institution as e-textbook publisher is working with some UK universities to explore a range of models for e-textbook publishing, including open solutions.

Open access Jisc’s open access page is a good starting point if you want to find out about open access to scholarly publications.

Open data The UK Data Service has information about open datasets in the social sciences.

Open Data Institute

Open source Opensource.com gives a useful explanation of open source software development.

Find out about free and open source software in our guide to Using assistive and accessible technology for learning and teaching.

On Scoop.it! there is a useful round up of news on open educational practices curated by Leo Havemann. Open Knowledge International is a global network covering many aspects of openness.

Other aspects of open educational practice 7 Open educational practice and Open Educational Resources Getting started

Lis Parcell

Subject specialist (libraries and digital resources) [email protected]

@lisparcell