Journeys to Open Educational Practice: UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report A cumulative evaluation and synthesis of the entire HEFCE funded intervention in OER

[Activity 7]

(McGill, L., Falconer, I., Dempster, J.A., Littlejohn, A. and Beetham, H. Journeys to Open Educational Practice: UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report. JISC, 2013 https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/60338879/HEFCE-OER-Review-Final-Report)

Accessibility issues

For resources to be accessible, the technology required must be readily available - and potential students must be competent to use it.

On a course I teach, we are encouraged to develop teaching materials that every tutor can use. The idea is a good one: collectively we can do more than we can as individuals. In practice, though, I find the process very challenging. Course materials designed to be used without any discussion on how they will be used and online tutorials designed to make sense when recorded and viewed later do not lend themselves well to interactive community engagement.

The open learning landscape has in this period moved definitively beyond content-based resources. Open online courses provide a context in which learning content is relatively less important than the interactions, reactions and emergent properties of the community itself.

Recognition

There is potentially a conflict between what educators may believe to be the most effective and appropriate pedagogy and what student's [sic] actually demand. This is illustrated by some of the UKOER projects reporting that students felt concerned about paying a fee and then seeing lectures being made freely available to non-payers. [Section 2.iii - Motivations of Individuals]

People pay for a course because it is far more than just the content. Students can ask questions, obtain feedback and be graded on their performance. Freely available materials are great when learning about something for interest or for something immediately relevant in my work. I either do not need to prove my competence or will demonstrate it practically. The situation is different when I need formal proof of attainment.

This has been addressed to some extent by the introduction of badges (see http://www.openbadges.org/), but it is not clear how widely these are recognised.

Continuity (and sustainability)

Money - or lack of it - is not the only factor influencing people's perceptions of OER. Time is also a consideration. There is the time it takes to create resources compared to the time it takes to re-purpose existing ones. These constraints influence what an institution is able to provide, both today and into the future. The providers of OER need to be able to sustain their provision - even if that is maintenance of existing resources rather than producing new ones. There may be other institutions and individuals (teachers or learners) relying on those resources.

In addition, embarking on a programme that relies heavily on OER may mean a reliance on increasing provision - so that the level 1 course can lead to a level 2 course and so on. Learners may begin by wanting to study a single course, but end up by wanting to obtain a qualification. Some mechanism needs to be in place to enable the learning based on OER - especially self-directed learning - to be validated as a stepping stone to further education.