Co-funded by theEU Commission

Observing Open E-Learning Content: Roadmap for Educational Policy and

Institutions and Hands-On Tips for Practitioners.

Guntram Geser, Veronika Hornung-Prähauser, Sandra Schaffert Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group

Austria

ICL Conference, 26 th September 2007Special Session “Open Educational Resources and Practices”

Co-funded by theEU CommissionOLCOS - Open eLearning Content Observatory Servicespage: 2

Agenda

● Background - EU Project Open eLearning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS)

● Some findings of the OLCOS Roadmap 2012

● OLCOS online support for skill development-OLCOS Tutorials & Collections

Co-funded by theEU CommissionOLCOS - Open eLearning Content Observatory Servicespage: 3

OLCOS Motivation

How to find the right way to use Open Educational Resources in an era of Web 2.0?

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Background

● OLCOS is a Transversal Action under the Euroepan eLearning Programme (January 2006 – December 2007)

● Main goal: To promote the production, sharing and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Europe and beyond

● Six partners, co-ordinator: Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group

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Project Results: OLCOS KNOWWARE

http://www.olcos.org

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OER Community contribution

http://www.olcos.org

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The OLCOS Roadmap 2012

The OLCOS roadmap, published in January 2007,

• road mapping time-horizon set for 2012(+),• identifies drivers/enablers and inhibitors of open educational practices and resources,• provides a set of recommendations (25 recs.) for decision makers – from political and institutional level to individual teachers and students!

The roadmap (~150 pages) is available for download athttp://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/

Required future work: Monitoring progress in open educational practices and resources

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Some Roadmap Findings (1)

1) Massive investment in ICT over the last 10 years, but little change in educational practices• Teacher-centred “knowledge-transfer” model still dominates• Expectations to bring about student-centred and collaborativelearning approaches have not been fulfilled

(2) Concerns about non-alignment of educational institutions withdemand for knowledge society competences and skills• However, still “top-down” approach of national e-content repositoriesthat want to deliver a “critical mass” of learning objects to teachercentrededucation

(3) Easy access to (digital) OER is considered important to driveLifelong Learning agenda• Participation in Lifelong Learning is critical in Europe’s competitionwith other increasingly knowledge-based economies and societies

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Some Roadmap Findings (2)

(4) Business models in open educational resources are tricky • The right mix of income streams must be found – public or/andprivate funding, sponsorships, donations, fee based services…• There will be a growing competition on scarce funding resources

(5) Difficulty to find a balanced approach for open and commercial educational offerings• Entrenched commercial interests of educational publishers – willmake it difficult to establish innovative private-public partnerships related to OER• Little innovation by most academic and educational publishers• Much of existing digital content has simply been transposed from other forms, prepared for traditional models of learning based on knowledge transfer

(6) International interest in, and funding of, open educational resources

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Some Roadmap Findings (3)

(7) Healthy competition among leading institutions in providing free access to educational resources

(8) At present most available open educational content is static teaching and learning material (“course ware) in closed formats

(9) Institutional barriers to develop open content repositories• Lack of incentives & reward mechanisms for academic and other teachers to excel in producing and openly sharing of high-value teaching material• Often lack of clear-cut regulations regarding IPR/copyrights for material that could be made available• Often content incorporates some material from third parties under the assumption of copyright exceptions or “fair use” (copyright clearance iscostly!)

(10) Educational open content repositories will need to think more thoroughly about how to be useful for communities of practice

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OLCOS Brief Assessment

►Current focus of initiatives is on providing access to resources, but it is important to also promote educational innovation and change

►Delivering OER to the still dominant model of teacher-centred knowledge-transfer will have little innovative impact

►Priority should be on promoting open educational practices and focus on developing competences and skills for the knowledge society – students and teachers

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Online Tutorials & OER Collections

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Online Knowledge Service

How to● plan educational scenarios with the

use of OER? ● search and find OER? ● produce and remix OER (author and

modify)● Share, publish and re-use OER● Choose a license● Use open source tools

► Tutorial 1

►Tutorial 2

►Tutorial 3

►Tutorial 4

►Tutorial 5

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Online Knowledge Service

Where to find OER material?

Exemplary collections of

● Open e-learning content repositories

● Institutions with OER policy

● Open Content licensing approaches

● Open formats, educational standard and tools for producing open educational content

► OLCOS OER Collections

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Advantages of the „open and living“ OLCOS Tutorials& Collections

http://www.wikieducator.org/Open_Educational_Content

adresses OER beginnersinteractive content

links OER content& tools

wiki based producedcontent adaptable to your needs wiki pages can be inserted into any web-portal

Use and share OER experience

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Contact

JOIN US!

info@olcos.org http://www.olcos.org

Sandra Schaffert M.A.Mag. Veronika Hornung-Prähauser

Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H.Jakob-Haringer-Str. 5/III

A-5020 SalzburgPhone: +43-662-2288-429

Fax: +43-662-2288-222http://www.salzburgresearch.at

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Introduction: PLAN the use of OER

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Introduction: PLAN the use of OER: Expected benefits of OER

● Viewpoint of educational networks and institutions, e.g.● Higher return on investment of taxpayers‘ money● Enrich the pool of resources● Lead to a leverage in the educational quality of content through quality

control, feedback and improvements

● Viewpoint of teachers and learners, e.g.● Offer a broader range of subjects and topics● Save time and effort through re-using● Provide learning communities● Promote use-centred approaches

Source: Geser (2007): OLCOS Roadmap 2012, http://www.olcos.org

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Introduction: PLAN the use of OER: How to start?

Didactical questions before you design your open practice and

educational resources regarding the following questions:

● What are the target groups, their needs and competence? ● What are the concrete topics and learning goals, as described e. g. in

a curriculum? ● How the instructional design and respectively the learning strategies,

e.g. are the students involved in the creation of the open content? ● What technical equipment do we have?

Co-funded by theEU Commission

CHOOSE a license

Co-funded by theEU Commission

Link to Tutorial 4: CHOOSE a license: Benefits

In the E.U. everybody has to ask the owner of the copyright of learning materials before using, copying, modifying the learning content and so on, and to enter into a contract.

With an open content license,you could profit about ● clear descriptions of the rights of the author(s) and the users ● licensing formulations which are proved by legal practitioner ● the awareness level of the license ● the possibility (for others) to search for your content with most of the search-

engines, when they support your license ● and (if you choose such a license) you could be sure, that your name is used

and that all materials, that are based on your work are published under the same conditions (share alike)

Co-funded by theEU Commission

CHOOSE a license: Suggestions and tips for decision

First of all, we recommend to choose a popular license to profit about

• it popularity and the possibility (for others) to search for your content with most of the search-engines, when they support your license

• to be ensure the reusablity of the content (especially when a share alike licence should be chosen: It is not very easy to mix up different licenses when mixing up open educational content).

Remember, that you can allways place an individual contract, e.g. for permitting commercial use, to vary from the license text!

Co-funded by theEU Commission

CHOOSE a license: Creative Commons

http://creativecommons.org/education/publish-website

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Tutorial 1: SEARCH & FIND OER

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SEARCH & FIND OER: overview

Different choices:

Effective search with search engines OER search Media specific search Searching in dedicated OER sites

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SEARCH & FIND OER: Effective search with search engines

In a project a group of students is working on a short presentation about pollination of apples.

If you like to search for the fruit "apple" you should exclude all findings about computers and operating systems.

Every search engine use a own request-language, but nearly all of the major search engines understand the following request.

apple +fruit -macintosh -mac -computer

http://www.wikieducator.org/Open_Educational_Content/olcos/SEARCH#Effective_search_with_search_engines

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SEARCH & FIND OER: OER Search

In a project a group of students is working on a short presentation about the settings and circumstances of Cosimo de' Medici.

In the following sequences we will lead you through the search process

* the Yahoo CC Search http://www.olcos.org/english/Yahoo-Search.html * and the Google Search http://www.olcos.org/english/Google-Search.html * using the Creative Commons Search http://www.olcos.org/english/Screencast-CCS-Search.html

Co-funded by theEU CommissionOLCOS - Open eLearning Content Observatory Servicespage: 28

Contact

info@olcos.org

http://www.olcos.org

Sandra Schaffert M.A.Mag. Veronika Hornung-Prähauser

Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H.Jakob-Haringer-Str. 5/III

A-5020 SalzburgPhone: +43-662-2288-429

Fax: +43-662-2288-222sandra.schaffert@salzburgresearch.at

http://www.salzburgresearch.at