Module 2: Planning an OER Initiative

IDRC Research Grant 102791

Open Educational Resources Capacity Building Workshop

Version 1.3 • June 3, 2010

Acknowledgements

This document draws upon existing open educational resources (OERs), all of which are licensed under a Creative Commons license (http://www.creativecommons.org).

The body of Module 2 draws upon the resource, UNESCO OER Toolkit/Setting up Your OER Project, available via a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=UNESCO_OER_Toolkit

The margin icons use icons from a Commonwealth of Learning publication, Training Educators to Design and Develop ODL Materials: A Facilitator’s Guide, a training manual template for the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth, that uses a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/Training_Educators_March08_doc.doc

The use of these resources is gratefully acknowledged and attributed in this Acknowledgements page, in footnotes within the document, or in the list of references at the end of the module.

Wawasan Open University 2010

OER Capacity Building Workshop by Wawasan Open University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Contents

Planning an OER Initiative

Objectives and Timing

 

This workshop module enables trainees to examine existing open educational resource (OER) projects and begin to determine the time, human resources, and planning issues involved in the implementation of an open educational resource (OER) project.

Assessing and defining the needs of an OER project

What kinds of OER projects exist across the world?

An Open Educational Resource (OER) project can take many forms. In this section of the workshop we’ll look at some examples of OER initiatives that have different purposes. For example:

 

• An OER project can be designed by an educational institution to share its instructional materials. The MIT Open Courseware Initiative is a project of this type.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

 

• It can be a project designed to support a specific subject or discipline. The OER Africa AgShare project is designed to share agricultural education resources. http://www.oerafrica.org/Default.aspx?alias=www.oerafrica.org/agshare

 

• It can be a project designed by a non-profit organization to share free educational resources. The OER Commons is a project of this type.

http://www.oercommons.org/

• It can be a project designed to invite educators to work together to produce freely available educational resources. The WikiEducator project is a project of this type.

http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page

Exploring OER projects and their goals

We will explore a selection of OER projects from various parts of the world to determine:

• The purpose and objectives of the project

• The target groups or audiences for the project

• The kinds of OERs the project provides

• The technology requirements for using the OERs

• The value the OER project provides

Activity: Exploring OER projects and their goals

Use the table below to guide your exploration of three global OER projects. Complete the information in the table with short notes and be prepared to discuss your findings with the workshop participants.

OER Project	Connexions: http://www.cnx.org
Purpose of the project
Target audience for the project
Kinds of OERs the project provides
Technology requirements for using OERs
Value of the OER project
OER Project	WikiEducator: http://www.wikieducator.org
Purpose of the project
Target audience for the project
Kinds of OERs the project provides
Technology requirements for using OERS
Value of the OER project
OER Project	Choose a project of your own using a Google search for “OER project” http://
Purpose of the project
Target audience for the project
Kinds of OERs the project provides
Technology requirements for using OERS
Value of the OER project

Planning a project

Open educational resources (OER) are a relatively new area with specific implementation challenges. For this reason, there is a need to track and assess progress, to record successes and to identify challenges.

It is common practice to sum up the main ideas and objectives for a project in a planning document. This serves as a project management tool to make sure the project is successful.

OER projects should usually address the following points in a planning document:

• State the purpose and main objectives of the project, and describe the reasons why it should be undertaken.

• Who is the target audience, and how will the project have a positive impact on them?

• Why is this project is being taken on at this time? How does it fit with existing structures and processes?

• Who are the key participants and partners? How you will collaborate with them?

• What are the technology requirements, ongoing support services and training?

• What are the staffing needs?

• What is the time frame for achieving the project goals? What are the milestones that determine whether the project is achieving its goals?

• What is the project budget and what are the sources of funding?

Activity: Begin to plan your own OER project

Use the table below to describe the OER project you will design for your institution or organization. Start by clearly stating the purpose, target audience and OER products for your project.

My OER Project	Description of project goals
Purpose of the project
Target audience for the project
Kinds of OERs the project will provide

Establishing an OER strategy

University staff members are often concerned that publishing OERs will add to their already high workloads. Two strategies can help to address this:

• Start by creating, publishing or reusing OERs within existing processes. If instructors already share their resources in an internal learning management system, try to find solutions to make these existing resources available publicly.

• Second, provide strategic support services for the things that instructors are least likely to spend time on. This includes formatting the OER website (if necessary) or supporting copyright clearance.

Two strategies to consider

Instructor-focused strategy

An instructor-focused strategy uses lessons from courses as the main source of the OER. The aim is to make it as easy as possible for instructors to publish their course materials online. Instructors need support to address content licensing issues, and usually need help for the design of digital resources and their conversion into web-based resources (HTML pages, etc.).

The MIT OpenCourseWare strategy has been widely replicated at other institutions. It was designed to add support and services to move content online and make it public (i.e. to move it from a learning management system into a digital library).

For universities in resource-constrained countries, there may be some challenges for an instructor-focused approach. For example:

• Instructors are busy. It is often not possible for them to do more work. Even instructors who are enthusiastic and want to get involved may find it difficult to balance other responsibilities.

• Since no one can expect instructors to take on all of the work themselves, it is important to provide support services. Support services are required for developing digital course material and for moving it into digital libraries.

• The necessary support services usually require long-term support and funding from the institution. Sometimes this funding is difficult to get.

Student-focused strategies

Some universities are experimenting with involving students more directly in the production of OERs. For example the University of Michigan's dScribe project provides incentives for students to record lecture notes, collect presentation materials and upload them to the institutional OER library. The professor is just required to make available the resources he or she uses to teach the class, and review the final online version. Most of the work in the dScribe project is done by students. Students stated that the main benefit of working on the project was getting more opportunity to interact with their professors. In developing countries, other incentives might be needed - such as prizes or payment as part of student-work arrangements.

There have also been some cases of students collecting and publishing OERs without incentives or institutional involvement. In Hungary, for example, students of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, have created a library of educational resources that include lecture notes, exam texts with model answers, and summaries of articles and books. Without institutional support (and to some degree without institutional awareness of these efforts), the students compiled roughly 10,000 pages of content. The main benefits reported by the project coordinator were a more flexible learning process and access to a knowledge base that supported independent study and exam preparation.

Discussion: Which strategy appeals to you, or fits your organization?

Let’s discuss some of the ideas presented about the instructor-focused and student-focused OER strategies. Think about your own institution or organization.

• Which of these strategies might work best?

• What factors would support an instructor-focused strategy?

• What factors would support a student-focused strategy?

Activity: List important factors that will guide your OER strategy

Use the table below to begin to list important factors that you must consider if implementing one of these strategies.

Strategy	Important factors
Instructor-focused OER strategy
Student-focused OER strategy

Developing a plan in the context of the institution’s strategic plans

Smaller institutions that lack financial and human resources should think carefully about the costs and benefits of publishing OERs. An important basic question to ask is: "What resources (if any) should be published under open licenses?" Here are some factors that can help answer this question:

Expertise and reputation

If the institution has knowledge and expertise in a particular field, it is likely that OERs for that subject will attract more attention than a general course like "Introductory Economics.” Also, what are the areas in which the institution would like to be known as a thought-leader? OERs provide an opportunity to showcase knowledge and improve the reputation of an institution. If the OER project helps create a positive public image for the institution, it is more likely to find support from the administration and, possibly, open up access to internal or external funding.

Relevance

In which curriculum areas does the institution have special expertise or a special mandate to serve its community? For example, a university in southern Africa might be doing work on land management that is highly relevant to other universities in the same region. On the other hand, this university might also offer a course on a particular aspect of colonial history that is studied in other parts of the world. Defining where sharing knowledge would have the most positive influence for the institution and its immediate community, can help select which resources to publish. This does not need to be a question of either/or, but rather of which resources should come first.

"The British Columbia BCcampus OER initiative targets development at credit based, fully online learning courses in areas of high student demand and labour market need." OER stories: BCcampus (Stacey, 2007)

Duplication

There may already be high quality OER projects available in a particular subject area. Rather than duplicating efforts, new projects should find areas for which content is not yet widely available. A thorough search for existing resources should help the institution to decide which resources to publish.

Effort

There will be some academics that already publish materials openly, but who would benefit from extra support. They may need advice or help improving the design of their HTML web pages, but most of the work will have already been done. Working with academics who are truly interested in the idea of open education will make the job easier, increase the amount of OERs that can be published (within the budget), and attract others by setting a positive example.

Intellectual property

Some courses may be both unique and relevant, but they use materials for which the copyright is owned by others. Clearing these copyrights may not be worth the effort (especially with a limited budget), and publishing the course without providing access to these resources might not make sense - although this depends on the target audience.

For example, self-learners would probably not have access to academic journals to find missing content. On the other hand, if the main goal of the project is to provide course materials - and inspiration - for academics in other universities, it might still be worth publishing the course. Academics are likely to have access to journals via their own institution - or to be able to supplement incomplete materials with resources of their own.

Courses, courseware or learning objects?

There is a large body of literature on learning objects (small, re-useable pieces of content that can be re-combined in different ways). However, creating and organising learning objects in a way that makes them easy for others to re-use is a challenging task. Self-learners are likely to need context and structure in order to make use of resources. New projects interested in experimenting with open education may find it easier to publish whole courses, although there are also efforts to create OER modules that could serve as alternative examples.

"To be re-useable in as many other educational settings as possible, these resources needed to be developed into the smallest possible 'granules'. In this way, future users may choose to pick only the materials they need to develop their own courses. However, if we develop the context and the activities within the context in too much detail, we may end up with a very exciting and authentic story as the backbone for our course, but future users may get stuck with an 'all-or-nothing'. It's the old debate around learning objects: how much meaning (context) do you need to add to make it a learning object? When re-usability goes up, contextualisation goes down (Stephen Downes)." OER stories: New Zealand OER Project (Wyles, 2007)

Distance learning pedagogy

Many OER projects publish content that they use in their on-site or online teaching activities. MIT publishes the resources their instructors use to teach in the classroom. The UK Open University makes available "self-contained study units" designed for online and distance learning.

Smaller projects in institutions that do not have a history of distance education often lack the resources to re-work their materials for individual distance learners.

Activity: Consider the strategic factors for using OERs in your institution.

Which of the strategic factors described in this section of the workshop would apply best to your institution or organization?

Begin to make a list of the strategic factors you will need to consider as you build your own OER project plan.

Use the table below to list and assess the strategic factors in your institution or organization that will affect your OER strategy.

What are the strategic factors affecting your organization?	How will these factors affect your OER strategy?
Expertise and reputation
Relevance
Duplication
Effort
Intellectual property
Courses, courseware or learning objects?
Open and distance learning methods?
Other factors

Establishing responsibility

Training and support

An OER project manager will need to design a training plan that helps academics and students prepare for participation in the project.

Areas to cover might include some legal background for copyright and licensing issues, HTML editing skills and subject knowledge.

If the institution has an existing training programme that includes some of the relevant skills (for example, basic ICT training or e-learning focused training), it may be possible to add modules on OER to these sessions. In addition to initial training, ongoing support must be available for the academics and students involved.

Finally, consider how training could fit into human resource policies. For example, in South Africa, universities can apply to the state to obtain a subsidy for certain types of training to cover the costs. In the case of the University of the Western Cape, a member of the training team is paid by the institution’s human resources department, and is also supported by government funds.

The project team

The staffing needs of an OER project are varied. It depends on the amount of OERs to be published, whether the project has a research aspect, the budget available, and the amount of support available from other university employees.

After staffing needs have been identified, the human resources department can usually help determine the best strategy for finding suitable staff. Hiring new staff or assigning the time of existing staff may be options. Working with existing staff familiar with the university can reduce the need for training.

Consider the staffing, support and resource needs available to you at your institution or organization for use in developing an OER project. As you read the description of staffing needs and resources that follows, consider whether you have access to these kinds of people or resources. If you have the staff and resources, make a note of these resources. If not, consider how you might obtain the necessary people or resources.

Staffing needs for a medium-sized OER project

Project Director

• Strategic recruitment of faculty to participate in the project

• Training and supervision of course production assistants

• Technical management of the project

• Management/resolution of intellectual property issues

• Outreach, assessment and development efforts

• Coordination with larger campus community

• Communication with international networks and OER community

Course Production Assistant

• This would be a good position for graduate students

• Basic intellectual property management

• HTML skills are desirable but not necessary if experts can be used

• Focus on familiarity with the discipline (so as to best adapt/develop the strengths of the course to suit the online environment)

Undergraduate student workers

• Different students can have different tasks, which include:

  • Routine clerical work (e.g. metadata entry)

  • Some coding and/or design work (e.g. flash modules)

  • Intellectual property management (in collaboration with Course Production Assistant or other IP expert)

  • Photography, if necessary

Other professionals

• Intellectual property and copyright clearance

• University librarians

Activity: Begin to list and organize your project resources.

Use the table that follows to list the people or resources that can assist with the functions required to operate an OER project.

Function	Resource: Who or what resources can you use within your organization to support your OER project?
Project director
Course production assistant
Student workers
Other professionals

Evaluating digitization options

Technology

Technology is not the most important aspect of an OER project, but choosing the right solution can make work easier and more efficient. The best solution is one that provides the features and levels of reliability you need. However, no technology is perfect; there will always be some problems and missing features.

The technology infrastructure needed to support an OER project includes hardware and software, as well as IT services such as backup, administration, troubleshooting, installation and support.

"The system we use is the eduCommons system of the Utah State University (USA). A lot of valuable support was given by people of the USU, including a full install from distance and several visits to the Netherlands to educate and support the system developers." OER stories: OpenER (Schuwer, 2007)

The first step in designing a technology solution is to conduct a technical analysis of the institution's current hardware, software and network environments. It is also important to consider the infrastructure needed to meet the project goals. For example, many universities have a learning management system (LMS) or content management system (CMS) where academics store and archive their electronic materials. An OER project should take into account these existing systems and look at how they could be expanded or complemented by specific OER technologies.

The technical analysis can be a complex process. It is beyond the scope of this document to cover every possible technical requirement and configuration. Ideally, there would be a software engineer on the team with experience in planning and implementing institution-wide software applications. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.

Fortunately, there are a number of software applications for OER projects that do not require a high level of technical expertise.

 

When designing the technology solution, keep in mind the following considerations:

• What is the publishing process and how does it connect to existing systems and applications?

• Will the features provided by the standard packages be sufficient or will a custom solution be necessary?

• What expertise and skills exist at the institution to help with technology design and implementation?

• What types of support are available?

• Who is the target audience and how will they access the resources?

 

Before deciding on the solution, it is worth getting competent technological assistance and investigating what others are using in terms of software platforms and content standards. The example architecture diagram below was created for project planning at the University of the Western Cape:

UWC Free Courseware Project technology infrastructure

Publishing platforms/digital libraries and repositories

Most learning management systems have a way to publish content openly - although they might not support all the desired features for instructional development.

That said, if your institution has experience with a particular learning management system, it would make sense to investigate whether it could be extended to the OER project. Open source LMSs include Moodle and Sakai.

• eduCommons is a Zope/Plone-based courseware publishing application which is used widely by open courseware projects. It was developed originally at Utah State University and is now supported by the for-profit organisation enPraxis. eduCommons is designed specifically for publishing materials on a locally installed server, not for collaboration or learning activities.

• Some projects have extended the Moodle course management system to include features for using or publishing OER. These projects have not made their code widely available or published documentation on how to install the modifications on a standard Moodle system, but they might be willing to advise others interested in using Moodle directly.

  • The UK Open University has created a Moodle-based hosted system based on Moodle for OpenLearn. Although some software was released under the GPL, it is not obvious where to download or how to install it.

  • Utah Valley State College's UV Open runs on a Moodle system but, again, it is not easy to find the extensions and modifications that were made, or how to download and install them.

• Rice University's Connexions project has developed a software platform that contains a number of special features for collaborative content development. The objective was to enable users to share their materials, and extend and modify them online within the system. Connexions can also be applied as a repository, but most users register and access the server hosted at Rice (Connexions, 2009).

The low bandwidth challenge

Low bandwidth is a particularly serious problem in developing countries, where an otherwise open educational resource may not be accessible because it consumes too much bandwidth.

Low bandwidth web design guidelines are available from Aptivate, at a UK-based NGO. The guidelines cover a number of points. One with particular relevance to OER is to provide, wherever possible, resources in multiple formats and versions, e.g. audio-only versions of videos, or transcripts of videos and audio materials.

Activity: What technologies are available to you?

Use the table below to list technical systems that may be available to you at your institution or organization for use in an OER project.

 

 

Technology function	Technology available to you
Publishing systems
Digital library systems
Course delivery or learning management systems
Other functions

Measuring success

OER projects should, at the bare minimum, measure web traffic using one of the web server’s log-file analysers. Google Analytics is a user-friendly web-based example that is used by a number of OER projects.

If there are resources available, however, to conduct user surveys or interviews, it will greatly enhance your understanding of the value of the project and how this value can be increased. Some content management systems make it easy to add surveys which users can choose to fill out.

"On several places [of the website], we have added short surveys. One general survey is about the background of the users. Each course also has added two different surveys, one type aiming at users who do not want to study the course (e.g. after reading the introduction) and one type aiming at users who do study the course. Goal is to find out more about the motives users have to come to the go-no go decision." OER stories: OpenER (Schuwer, 2007)

An OpenCourseWare Consortium working group is currently developing a comprehensive evaluation framework for the Consortium as a whole. It has recommended the following evaluation metrics:

• Webmetrics: Webmetrics are the measures used to reveal who is accessing OCW websites (and how). Example data collected from the logs include traffic volume, visitor geographic origin, visit characteristics, visitor profiles (if log-in is required), and referral sources.

• End-user surveys: These surveys allow end users (students, academics, instructors, self-learners, etc.) to report on, among other things, their use of materials, perceived impact of that use, the value and quality of the materials, and the level of adoption.

• End-User personal accounts (email, profiles, interviews): Feedback from users often comes in the form of email questions, concerns and success stories. These emails can be a good source of information on potential problems - as well as concrete examples of use.

A good example of an open courseware evaluation is MIT OCW's annual report.[3] It uses webmetrics, end-user surveys and personal accounts (including detailed interviews with different types of users). Indicators and parts of the methodology used by MIT can be adapted to other (smaller) projects.

The UK Open University's OpenLearn project is another source of resources to support the design of a monitoring and evaluation framework. The project sets out different reasons and methods for gathering data from its three key user groups: guest users, registered users and enthusiastic users (McAndrew, 2006a, 2006b).

References

Connexions. 2009. Connexions Software Architecture. http://cnx.org/aboutus/technology

McAndrew, P. 2006a. Gathering Data from Users of OpenLearn http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=8555

Open University. 2006. OpenLearn Research and Evaluation Plan. http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?documentid=8369

Schuwer, R. 2007. OER Stories: OpenER. http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories:_OpenER

Stacey, P. 2007. OER Stories: BCcampus. http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories:_BCcampus

Wyles, R. 2007. OER Stories: New Zealand OER Project. http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories:_New_Zealand_OER_Project

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