A framework for transforming
teaching materials into OERs
Alejandro Armellini, Richard Mobbs, Gabi
Witthaus, Samuel Nikoi, Tania Rowlett and
Emma Davies
www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance
www.le.ac.uk/mediazoo
ALT Learning Technologist of
the year : Team award 2009
European foundation for quality in
e-learning Unique Award winner
Open Educational Resources (OERs)
• Digitised materials offered freely and openly for
educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse
for teaching, learning and research.’ (OECD)
• Educational materials and resources offered freely and
openly for anyone to use and under some licences to
re-mix, improve and redistribute.’ (Wikipedia)
OTTER
Open, Transferable and Technology-enabled
Educational Resources
www.le.ac.uk/otter
Phase 1, institutional OER project
OER development around the world
Location OER programme or project
• University of Leicester – www.le.ac.uk/oer
UK
• Open University - “Open Learn” http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
• University of Nottingham - BERLiN http://unow.nottingham.ac.uk/berlin.html
• University of Oxford - OpenSpires http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
• MIT Open Courseware project - http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
USA
• Rice University - Connexions http://cnx.org/
• Utah State University - USU OCW http://ocw.usu.edu/
EUROPE
ASIA
• ParisTech OCW. - http://graduateschool.paristech.fr/?langue=EN
• MORIL. A Pan-European OERs initiative - http://moril.eadtu.nl/
• China Open Res. for Educ. Consortium - http://www.core.org.cn/en/
• Japanese OCW Consortium - http://www.jocw.jp/
• OER Africa - http://www.oerafrica.org/
OTHERS
• WikiEducator - http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page
• AEShareNEt in Australia - http://www.aesharenet.com.au/
OTTER academic partners
Leicester
Academic Departments Academic units
 Archaeology and
Ancient History
 Criminology
 Education
 Genetics
 Institute of Lifelong
Learning
 Law
 Media and
Communications
 Politics and
International
Relations
 Psychology
International partner
 Beyond Distance
 South African
Research Alliance
Institute of Distance
 Staff Development
Education (SAIDE)
Centre
 Student Support and
Development Service
OTTER achievements
• 438 credits’ worth of OERs on OTTER’s repository and
JorumOpen
• Leicester on the global OER map
• Research evidence on student use of OERs
• Raised institutional awareness of OERs
• Put-up and take-down policy
• OER toolkit
• The CORRE framework
CORRE:
‘Non-public’ teaching and
learning material
Open teaching and learning
material
CONTENT
Gathering
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
OPENNESS
REUSE & REPURPOSE
Open Educational Resources
(OERs)
EVIDENCE
Rights clearance
Internal Validation
Tracking
Collect existing
materials
Credit weighting
• Copyright
OER project team
Downloads
• IPR
Academic partners
Adaptations
Memorandum of
understanding
• Licensing
Students
User feedback
Screening
•
A framework for transforming teaching materials into OERs
Learning and
teaching context
Media and format
Structure & layout
Language
Learning design
Emerging user
community
Transformation
•
•
•
•
•
Decoupling
Scaffolding
Meshing
Sequencing
Editing
Formatting
•
•
•
•
Conversion
Standardisation
Metadata
Pedagogical wrap
around
External Validation
• Students
• Librarians
• Educators
Upload to repository
Institutional
(Plone)
JorumOpen
Others
Taking our materials through CORRE
Stage in
CORRE
Sample challenges
Content
Are the materials usable out of context (e.g. without
seminar input)?
Openness
Have I copyright cleared all 3rd party content (e.g. images)
embedded in my materials?
Reuse &
Are all authors happy with the CC licence assigned to the
Repurpose new version of the materials?
Evidence
Who is your OER primarily aimed at? Future Leicester
students? Academics in other universities? Others?
Research findings (1): staff
• Supportive but sceptical about value and impact
• Willing to make use of and contribute, but not full force
• Reward and recognition, especially non-financial
• Lack of awareness of CC
• Team effort
Research findings (2): students
• Supportive and enthusiastic
• Highly satisfied with OTTER OERs
• Concerned about trustworthiness of external OERs
• Preferred access via VLE as hub
• 1/3 unwilling to turn their own stuff (e.g. lecture
notes) into OERs
Research findings (3): librarians
• Concerns: 3rd party copyright, currency, quality,
funding, management support, institutional policies
and metadata requirements
• See themselves as managers of OER repositories,
developers of generic OERs, indexers, cataloguers and
promoters
Key messages
• Institutional policy on who owns what
• CORRE as a robust framework
• Clearance of 3rd party materials
• Designing for openness & culture shift
• Supply vs demand-driven approaches
• Sustainability
• Visibility
OTTER lives on
• OSTRICH (www.le.ac.uk/ostrich) – a cascade
project with Bath and Derby
• TIGER – a ‘new release’ project with De
Montfort and Northampton