Better universities with free content: the future of open educational resources

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Better universities with free content the
future of open educational resources

• Jan Hylén

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Trends in the university sector

• Growing competition
• knowledge and learning resources are often
  considered as key intellectual property
• Still institutions and individuals are sharing
  their digital learning resources over the
  Internet openly and for free
• OECD study asked
• why this is happening?
• who is involved?
• what are the implications of this?

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A new culture of openness in universities?

• Open Source Software, Open Access, Open
  Educational Resources
• Free availability over the Internet
• As few restrictions as possible on the use of the
  resource
• No technical barriers (disclosed source code)
• No price barriers (no subscriptions, license
  fees)
• As few legal barriers as possible (open licenses)

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What is Open Educational Resources?

• Digitized materials offered freely and openly
  for educators, students and self-learners to use
  and re-use for teaching, learning and research
• Examples
• PDF files with lecture notes or tests
• Advanced simulations for physics or chemistry
• Videos of lectures
• Images, mp3 files

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Mapping the OER movement

• It is a global movement
• Growing number of initiatives, resources and
  users but not possible to give accurate numbers
• Started as a grass roots movement but now growing
  institutional involvement
• All kinds of institutions are involved
  big/small campus based/distance teaching
  private/public

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What about the quality of the resources?

• Traditional academic processes combined with web
  technology
• The concept of quality is different more
  context and related, less product related
• More emphasize on the process than the end
  product prosumers

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Why give away for free? Motives for individuals

• Altruistic reasons in line with academic values
• Non-monetary gain publicity, reputation, to
  show pedagogical skills
• Commercial reasons a way to enhance the
  commercialized version of the content, reaching
  the market more quickly

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Motives for institutions interplay between
altruistic and economic incentives

• Altruistic reasons
• Leverage on taxpayers money by allowing free
  sharing and reuse between institutions
• What you give, you receive back improved
• Good PR and show-window attracting new students
• Growing competition new business models are
  needed

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User Generated Content the same logic

• Citizen Journalism
• OhmyNews, Reporter.co.za, AgoraVox, Global Voices
  
• User Generated TV
• CurrentTV, Buntes Fernsehen, Bite TV, ZeD
• Publishing
• IgoUgo (Travel guide), Magazines, Wikipedia

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Better universities with OER why?

• Good supplement to textbooks
• Less costly for students
• Stimulates students and teachers to become
  prosumers, not only users more active
  learners
• Stimulates internal cooperation
• Makes it possible to reward pedagogical skills
• Opens up for quality control
• Makes the actual teaching visible

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The report is available for free on
www.oecd.org/edu/oer Thank you for your
attention! jan.hylen_at_metamatrix.se Licensed
under Creative Commons Attribution,
Non-commercial, Share Alike