File:POERUP D6.5.2 SECOND INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE WORKSHOP.pdf

Highlights

The SECOND INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE WORKSHOP was held on Wednesday 13th June 2013 at the University of Oslo, Norway, in connection with the EDEN 2013 conference. It was chaired by Professor Gráinne Conole.

Notable initiatives

The working definition of 'Notable' OER initiatives was shared:

• All notable OER initiatives should focus on producing content, material or resource for teaching and learning. Initiatives with the focus on providing information, guidance and service are not included.
• In a notable initiative, Creative Commons licences should be used for at least some of the content, materials or resources.
• Initiatives with the focus on producing e-textbooks and making these e-textbooks open and free (or at a low cost) for students are included as notable initiatives.
• All MOOCs are considered notable initiatives

Typology

Two complementary typologies for the classification of OER initiatives were discussed - see slides 4 and 5 of the attached PPTX and http://e4innovation.com/?p=765. It was agreed that the first of these (slide 4) largely described themes, whilst the second (slide 5) presented a framework.

Key points made in the discussion included:

• Ownership: Who owns the materials? Individual – Institution – Platform?
• Economic motivation to startup the OER - e.g. in the USA a Bachelor's degree can cost around $100,000, with students going heavily into debt (also true of some European countries, especially the UK), hence MOOCs might offer a potential solution in providing highly cost effective degrees.
• MOOCs are capable of infinite scaling.
• Talk about dimensions from informal to formal learning
• Are the typologies prioritized ? Will they be weighted to provide a potential benchmarking scheme?
• Intellectual property questions: is the presence of CC licensing a criterion for including initiatives?
• Will we use the categorization to predict the success of OER? What is a good design principle?
• Do we want to create a badging system?

Policy

A general and wide ranging discussion on possible policy recommendations included the following points:

• Do we need an accreditation body to give OER materials the label ‘education’?
• Are some 'OER' merely information?
• A Quality Assurance process should be included in policy recommendations.
• The uptake of OER - what has been done to facilitate reuse and collaboration?
• The issues of maintenance and sustainability need to be addressed in policy recommendations.
• Policy recommendations should address the marketing perspective - making the market more transparent.
• The role of the teacher: how can we change their attitudes towards OER?
• How can we help to change the current stagnant political context? How can we bring in change?
• Are we clear about how OER could contribute to solutions of current educational problems?
• Top down policy needs to take note of, and be linked to grassroots initiatives.
• When you define policies, take into account regional levels.
• OER is subject related. Communities of Practice tend to develop through subject interests.
• Investigate how institutions can value the work around OER and reflect this in policy recommendations.
• OER is very dynamic process and policy recommendations need to work with a multiplicity of scenarios. A multi-dimensional matrix approach may be useful, with careful selection of variables.

Next meeting

Gráinne thanked all members for their attendance and very helpful contributions and invited them to the next meeting of the IAC. It is likely that there will be small scale IAC meetings at SYNERGY (Budapest, 19-21 October) and Media & Learning (Brussels, 12-13 December), with a full IAC meeting on the day before OnLine EDUCA in Berlin on 4 December. Further details would be circulated as soon as these were available.