This section seeks to develop awareness of OERs by suggesting a range of databases, introducing the licensing system and referring to the language that is generally used in their production/consumption. The two reflexive questions seek to record your discoveries.

What are OERs?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.

An account of the development of OERs in the UK from 2002-2012 can be accessed from the UK OER Programme

According to Educators Can Save Time When They Stop Reinventing the Wheel with OER there are three types of OERs:

1) Courses, Courseware, Content Resources

2) Open Textbook Projects

3) Repositories, Referatories, and Specialized Collections

Stephen Downes presents an overview of Open Educational Resources in Open Education: Projects and Potential and a range of helpful databases are provided on ps. 15-22. The following places could also prove fruitful for an OER user/producer:

Jorum 

OER Recommender

Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) alliance

In addition the following places may also be of value: 

OER (Open Educational Resources) Websites

OER sources and courses

More than 800 universities have active iTunes U sites. About half of these institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley — distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store.

YouTube EDU

Q1. When searching on Jorum etc, did you find searching for specific topics or general browsing to be most effective?

Depositing your OER

At the end of your time on C4E when you are looking to produce and deposit your own OERs then it is possible to increase the discoverability of your online educational resources by preparing them for inclusion into search engines that utilize structured data. DiscoverEd is an experimental project from Creative Commons intended to explore how structured data may be used to enhance the search experience. Metadata about the resources, including the license and subject information available, are exposed in the search result set that also can include:

• Title
• Summary
• License (CREATIVE COMMONS?)
• Education level
• Language
• Subject

The degree to which metadata is structured is referred to as its granularity.

The power of openness?

"As we open up education and technology, the tyranny of the education brand will change and evolve because of the choice that students have"

The impact of web 2.0 and its improved communication and social networking capabilities opened a new stage in the profile of Higher Education and its subsequent on-line openness. The available OERs can differ significantly in their form and a vast range of resources is available that could assist with diverse and creative thinking. The ‘movement’ provides different granularity of information such as outline notes for a lecture or seminar to complete text books, research studies and full modules.

Q2. Is 'Harvard in your bedroom' likely to be 'a boon or a threat' to HE providers?

Licensing your OERs

Creative Commons Licenses Available: CreativeCommons Licences.docx

Creative Commons is a non-profit making resource that offers OER creators a free licence that serves as an alternative to full copyright.

The idea of universal access to research, education, and culture is made possible by the Internet, but our legal and social systems don’t always allow that idea to be realized… To achieve the vision of universal access, someone needed to provide a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. That someone is Creative Commons.

There are six main licences that are available and allow creators to specify their terms under which their resource has to be used.

The licences range from Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) to the most restrictive Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). The choice as to the licence’s openness generally depends on the creator’s beliefs towards acceptable future use of the work and whether derivatives from it  are permitted.

How to Use and Cite Creative Commons Resources

Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity

Terminology

In order to develop your understanding of how the OER system works and the language commonly used, you should make yourself familiar with the:  

OER Glossary

A helpful source for developing awareness of relevant issues can be found at Creating open educational resources