What else is around?

Some other important OER repositories in UK and abroad

EdShare

• An institutional repository “locked in” by password (U of Southampton)

• Terms & Conditions hand over all IP rights to University “unless otherwise clearly marked”

• Original aim(?) just to make resources “hidden” on local VLE visible to other possible users within University

• BUT EdShare includes different levels of access (“Viewing Permissions”)

EdShare

• “Just me” “Selected users” “School/Unit” “University” or “World”

• If “World”, anyone can download the resource• Descriptions (i.e. metadata) of all resources are

visible via Google• “This then generates requests from all over the

place to ask colleagues to share things – even when they have not made the resource visible”1

1Hugh Davis, Director of Education (with responsibility for elearning), University of Southampton and director of EdShare

Other JISC-funded OER repositories like HumBox

which have a presence at Southampton:-

1. C-Change in GEES (Open licensing of climate change and sustainability resources in the Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences)

2. MEDEV (Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry & Veterinary Medicine)

3. Skills for Scientists (Physical Sciences)

4. Core-Materials (Collaborative Open Resource Environment for Materials )

5. TRUE (Teaching Resources for Undergraduate Economics )

Jorum

• Up until this year (2009-10):-– Was restricted to UK HE & FE community– The contributors were institutions– Deposit Licence 20 pages long– “The licensor hereby grants to HEFCE a non-

exclusive royalty-free perpetual licence” so HEFCE could do anything it liked (charge access fees, grant sublicences...)

Jorum2 (2009-10) - three levels of openness

• JorumOpen (released 19 January)

• Jorum Education UK (released Spring 2010 but can already be contributed to)

• Jorum Plus (released after that)

Jorum Plus

• For resources and groups of users with special requirements not catered for in the JorumOpen or Jorum Education UK licensing regimes

• “typically involving restricted terms and conditions” (3rd party restrictions, institutional login, departmental login...)

• E.g. Medical resources

Jorum Education UK

• Will be equivalent to the “old” Jorum• Restricted to UK education sector under terms

of Jorum UK licence

JorumOpen

• Creators and owners are willing to share content worldwide

• Only UK education sector members can create resources

• But anybody in the world can download them

• Jorum Deposit Chooser helps you decide where to go

More info on CC licences

OpenLearn

• Made the decision to make all their course materials freely available, so, clear distinction between:-

• LabSpace– learners can, within stated limits, deposit

anything or rework and remix OU materials for others to use

• LearningSpace– “quality assured” – OU takes responsibility

OpenLearn

• OU retains the copyright for its course materials, though extracts may be made under licence

• CC BY-NC-SA, Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike – is the licence of choice for LabSpace

• Contributors wishing to translate OU materials and have them appear in the LearningSpace are invited to do so, subject to a “more formal agreement”

Non-UK and International:-Open Courseware Consortium

• Over 200 institutions from Afghanistan, Spain, Vietnam...not just USA

• They have to publish “under the institution’s name materials from at least 10 courses in a format that meets the agreed-upon definition of an opencourseware.”

• CC BY-NC-SA, Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

Open Courseware Consortium

• OCW “Toolkit: Making the Case” section contains useful info for contributors, faculty, admin

• Presentations designed to allay possible fears about sharing on the part of:-– Higher Administration– Mid-level Administration– Faculty– Information Technology team...

Dutch OpenER

• “Over the period 2006–2008, the Dutch Open Universiteit Nederland conducted an experiment in which Open Educational Resources (OER) were offered in an effort to bridge the gap between informal and formal learning and to establish a new style of entry portal to higher education with no barriers at all.”

• Changed attitudes – great success

Dutch OER workflow

As in USA, it’s not assumed rights checking will be done by contributor

Reproduced with permission of Robert Schuwer

Connexions

• Rice University• Similar to HumBox – ““small knowledge chunks ...that

can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.” • CC licence basic: CC-BY – Attribution• No mention at all of Rights information in the 202 page

PDF Connexions Tutorial and Reference • Site Licence: “Neither the Connexions Project nor Rice

University undertakes any obligation to review or monitor any content submitted to the Repository and shall not have any responsibility or liability in connection therewith.”

MERLOT

• Currently c. 20 institutions in the USA, collaborating with c. 20 African Universities in MAN (MERLOT Africa Network)

• Membership mix: Individual Members, Institutional Partners, Corporate Partners Editorial Boards

• Author-Owners are encouraged to use some kind of CC non-commercial licence on their products

Otago Polytechnic (NZ)

• Uses WikiEducator as platform to deliver courses

• Recently switched to supporting free and open access to material, based on a NZ Creative Commons licence – “but with options to restrict a resource if it is needed”

• Single institution, so no online guidance about submission – but interesting background:-

Otago Polytechnic (NZ)• Sought legal expertise to help draw up an initial

framework to put out for consultation – according to this, Otago Polytechnic owned copyright of material developed at the institution. Reactions:-

• Staff: “You’re not owning my thinking! If that’s the case, I’ll do what’s required for my job and do my really creative thinking at home!”

• Students: They’d do what was required to get a qualification, but would keep their best work to themselves because they wanted to be able to set up their own companies to develop their ideas after they finished study.

Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie-Mellon)

• Two paths - “Academic Courses” and:-• Open & Free courses

– no fees, set start/end dates, or enrolment...– no access to an instructor, graded exams,

feedback, or credit/verification...– Licenced using a Creative Commons licence

(CC BY-NC-SA – Attribution non-commercial share-alike)

Summary

• Many totally open repositories exist• Most institutions have “bought in” to the idea of

sharing• Many are developing “two tier” open/restricted

systems to safeguard core content in relation to institution’s enrolment and awarding functions

• UK central initiative (Jorum) has recognized the value and functionality of that multi-tier approach– (UK has highest proportion of centrally funded OER

sharing initiatives)