Open Educational Practices and Resources OLCOS Roadmap 2012 Edited by Guntram Geser Salzburg Research EduMedia Group Project information and imprint Project information and imprint Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) OLCOS is a Transversal Action funded by the European Commission under the eLearning Programme. Duration: January 2006 – December 2007 Website: www.olcos.org Project partners European Centre for Media Competence, Germany European Distance and E-Learning Network, Hungary FernUniversitaet in Hagen, Germany Mediamaisteri Group, Finland Open University of Catalonia, Spain Salzburg Research, Austria Project coordinator Salzburg Research / EduMedia Group Veronika Hornung-Prähauser Jakob Haringer Straße 5/III, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria [email protected] Tel. 0043-662-2288-405 OLCOS roadmap editor Guntram Geser, Salzburg Research / EduMedia Group, Austria Contributors to the OLCOS roadmap FernUniversitaet in Hagen: Peter Baumgartner and Viola Naust Open University of Catalonia: Agustí Canals, Núria Ferran, Julià Minguillón and Mireia Pascual Mediamaisteri Group: Mats Rajalakso and Timo Väliharju Salzburg Research: Wernher Behrendt, Andreas Gruber, Veronika Hornung-Prähauser and Sebastian Schaffert Graphics & layout Jesper Visser, Salzburg Research 3 Project information and imprint Images Based on copyright-free photographs from www.imageafter.com Print version ISBN 3-902448-08-3 Printed in Austria January 2007 Online A digital version of this report can be freely downloaded from www.olcos.org Copyright This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 2.5 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Disclaimer This publication was produced by the OLCOS Project with the financial support of the European Commission. The content of this report is the sole responsibility of OLCOS and its project partners. Furthermore, the information contained in the report, including any expression of opinion and any projection or forecast, does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission and in no way anticipates any future policy plans in the areas addressed in this report. The information supplied herein is without any obligation and should be used with the understanding that any person or legal body who acts upon it or otherwise changes its position in reliance thereon does so entirely at their own risk. 4 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements The OLCOS Project Consortium would like to thank the following individuals for their highly valuable contributions: Workshop participants and roadmap reviewers: Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu (Bridge to Learning), SIGOSSEE project; Wales/UK Timo Borst, FernUniversitaet in Hagen, CampusContent project, Germany Peter Burnhill, University of Edinburgh, Edina national data centre, JORUM project, UK C. Sidney Burrus, Rice University, Connexions project, USA Raymond Elferink, RayCom B.V., BAZAAR project, The Netherlands Volker Grassmuck, Humboldt University Berlin, Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology; Wizards of OS and iRights.info, Germany Jan Hylén, OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, France Keith G. Jeffery, CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK Thomas Nárosy, eLISA Academy, Austria Petra Oberhuemer, University of Vienna, Center for Teaching and Learning, Austria Oystein Johannessen, Norwegian Ministry of Education, Deputy Director General (ICT Strategy), Norway Georg Pleger, Creative Commons Austria, Austria Niall Sclater, The Open University, Virtual Learning Environment Programme, UK Bernd Simon, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Institute of Information Systems & New Media, EducaNext project, Austria David Wiley, Utah State University, Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, USA Interviews: Asta Bäck, VTT Media and Internet, Finland Jakub Borkowski, Tampere University of Technology, Institute of Communications Engineering, Finland Paula le Dieu, Creative Commons International, UK Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ariadne Foundation, Belgium David Megías, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, International Master Program in Free Software, Spain Fred Mulder, Rector of the Open Universiteit Nederland, The Netherlands Robert Newcombe, VW Group, Virtual Campus Manager, UK Tere Vadén, Tampere University, Hyper Media Laboratory, Finland Sven Reiter, Raytheon, European Sales Curriculum Manager, Germany Christian Schrack, Pedagogical Institute Vienna, e-Learning Department, Austria Tere Vadén, Tampere University, Hyper Media Laboratory, Finland Llorenç Valverde, Vice-rector of Technology, Open University of Catalonia, Spain Jordi Vivancos, Generalitat de Catalunya, Education Department, Spain Stuart Yeates, University of Oxford, Research Technologies Services, UK Raquel Xalabarder, Open University of Catalonia, School of Law and Political Science, Spain 5 Acknowledgements By acknowledging the involvement of the above individuals and the review process in which they participated, we do not imply their endorsement of the published results of this report. The final responsibility for the content of this report lies solely with the OLCOS Project Consortium and the editor of the report. 6 Table of content Content Project information and imprint 3 Acknowledgements 5 1 Executive summary 12 2 Introduction: Context, objectives and direction of the OLCOS road mapping work 15 2.1 Context and objectives 15 2.2 How can Open Educational Resources make a difference in teaching and learning? 16 2.3 Towards learning experiences which are real, rich and relevant 17 3 The quest for Open Educational Resources 20 3.1 Attributes and expected benefits of Open Educational Resources 20 3.2 Ongoing discussion for a comprehensive definition of Open Educational Resources 21 3.3 Who should create and provide educational content? 24 3.4 Open e-learning resources in a European perspective 31 4 Competences for the knowledge society 37 4.1 An urgent need for a transformation of educational practices 37 4.2 Defining and developing key competences 38 4.3 Priority of open educational approaches 41 4.4 Open educational content value chains 42 4.5 Canned products vs open practices 44 4.6 Activities in the open digital educational content life cycle 47 5 Presentation of OLCOS road mapping results 51 1.1 Introduction: Scope and approach, areas and topics covered 51 1.2 Policies, institutional frameworks and business models 54 5.2.1 Drivers and enablers 54 Policies emphasise educational innovation and organisational change in educational institutions 54 Understanding that ICT-based lifelong learning needs to be promoted through easy access to educational resources 57 International interest in, and funding of, Open Educational Resources 57 Creative Commons licensing is firmly established and increasingly used 58 Healthy competition among leading institutions in providing free access to educational resources 60 Open and Distance Teaching Universities make open self-learning resources accessible as a way to attract students 62 8 Table of content The Bologna Process could become a driver for cross-border collaborative development and sharing of study material in Europe 63 5.2.2 Inhibitors 64 Business models in Open Educational Resources are tricky 64 Lack of institutional policies and incentives for educators to excel in OER 65 Models that build on teachers in the creation and sharing of OER will need to invest considerable effort on training and support 67 Difficulty of finding a balanced approach for open and commercial educational offerings 68 Little innovation by most academic and educational publishers 68 Possible implementation of rigid Digital Rights Management Systems by many organisations 69 5.3 Open Access and open content repositories 72 5.3.1 Drivers and enablers 73 Strong breakthrough of the Open Access principle in academic publishing 73 Funding bodies require that project results be made available through Open Access repositories 75 Widespread tried and tested know-how in distributed open access repositories 76 Open content repositories increasingly surface from the Deep Web 78 5.3.2 Inhibitors 79 Further success of Open Access publishing of academic resources requires overcoming fears of low recognition among researchers 79 Need to reinforce institutional Open Access policies and measures 80 Barriers to making research data openly available for further research and teaching 81 Creation of rich educational metadata will remain costly 82 Ontology-based educational Semantic Webs will have a long way to go 83 5.4 Laboratories of open educational practices and resources 87 5.4.1 Drivers and enablers 87 Free and Open Source software is more widely used in Higher Education and Further Education institutions 87 The “industrialist” Learning Objects approach has run out of steam 89 New systems for creating and handling group-based Learning Designs are in the pipeline 91 Social Software tools and services empower learners to easily create and share content 94 RSS feeds enrich educational portals and learners can subscribe directly to thematic content feeds 96 Licensing open content will become easier through plug-ins for widely used software packages and standardisation of user information 98 Emergence of personal learning environments (“e-learning 2.0”) 98 Semantic applications offer new ways of accessing knowledge resources 100 5.4.2 Inhibitors 101 More cooperation between tools developers and educators is needed 101 Lack of know-how for enabling innovative educational settings to emerge 101 9 Table