Use, re-use and sharing of OERsand related evaluation issues

OER II Evaluation and Synthesis Team: Allison Littlejohn, Helen Beetham, Lou McGill, Isobel Falconer, Claire Carroll

Caledonian AcademyGlasgow Caledonian University, UK

www.academy.gcal.ac.uk

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Generic synthesis/evaluation framework

Practice change (includes expertise and building capacity; motivations, roles and divisions of labour)

Development/release issues (includes legal, technical and hosting issues)

Organisational/institutional issues (includes business cases, rewards, organisational support)

Cultural issues (includes quality, communities of practice beyond the organisation)

Impacts/benefits issues (includes benefits realisation, end-user issues, learning and teaching practice)

Evidencing issues – how do we give coherent and credible messages to the sector?

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Vision Extending reputation

Understanding users and their motives/needs is critical to effective design and management of ERs...

… but exceptionally difficult in Open contexts.

Hard to track quantitative use; harder to evaluate quality (who re-uses, why, with what educational impacts?)

Benefits, uses and impacts in project-funded contexts may not be highly transferable (??)

Release/re-use seems to be a different model from open sharing in networks (different impacts??)

Benefits, uses and impacts: challenges

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Vision Extending reputation

Attitudes to sharing/re-use are influenced byprior experiences – support available – perceived quality of OERs – perceived benefits/risks to reputation – cultures of innovation...

Release/re-use/sharing are related, but as yet we have few examples of the 'virtuous circle' in practice

Impacts of OER have an ethical dimension, in the context of a global market for education

Users typically have a low awareness of 'open' content as a category

OERs can be very intensively re-used with teacher and peer endorsement

Web 2.0 visibility critical to scale of re-use

Benefits, uses and impacts: we think we know...

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Vision Extending reputation

How do learners make good use of OERs, including sharing content? With what skills/strategies/attitudes?

How are OERs used by academics in their own teaching? What new skills and expertise are needed?

What if any educational information/metadata/rationale supports effective use of OERs? What hosting and communication strategies have most impact on use?

How do OERs influence pedagogies in use?

Who are OERs used by and with what impact on their practice? What are sustainable benefit models for these users, especially in the current financial climate?

What kind of communities benefit from OER sharing/reuse? How can OERs enhance existing open practices in learning/teaching/research communities?

Benefits, uses and impacts: things we need to know

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Discussion

1. What do you want to know about OER use and impacts?

2. What evidence are you gathering that could enrich our understanding of OER use and impacts?