ALT-C: OERs Matter Symposium

This is only my personal reflections of this session - I have almost certainly missed things, but if I have missed things this is only due to my failings and not due to any deliberate intention to do so. (Also blogged here).

The symposium was chaired by Oleg Liber (Director of CETIS) and the symposium began with the pro's and con's of OER being outlined by a prestigious (and ficticious) panel:

• Polly Pegler - Academic & an enthusiast for open educational resources
• Prof. Ogden Wisden - Sceptical Academic
• Will Pileham-Highe - Pro-Vice Chancellor
• Joe Zawinul - civil servant representing the minister of BISCUIT (Business Colleges Universities and International Trade)
• Quentinna Yan - Chinese secondary school teacher

Each member of the panel stated their take on OERs (well summarised here on the OERs Matter cloudworks page), then the debate was opened to the audience.

The panel's position statements proved to be a good starting point for the audience debate which followed. The audience debate further highlighted some of the difficult and thorny issues around OER, whilst (I felt) still retaining a sense of the future potential that OERs can offer.

The discussion began by considering the approaches to adoption of OER and it was suggested that it was a mistake to talk about the adoption of OER in 'top-down' approach terms (which many of the panel had done in their opening statements). It was argued that there was a real need to factor in a more 'bottom-up' approach and to understand the barriers associated with this, not limited to but including, unrealistic expectations on the amount of metadata that needs to be attached to an OER in order for it to be ready for release.

There was also a plea for more positive (carrot) arguments rather than negative (stick) arguments for the adoption for OER. Negative (e.g. saving money) 'top-down' approaches are unlikely to create motivated and enthusiastic adopters of OER - so more needs to be done on this.

Issues around the quality of content was also raised. It was agreed that this needs to be clearly articulated (without being imperialist), but also raises issues of trust - something that it was felt needed more exploration.

Picking up on this, another member of the audience added that the issue of reputation could do much to encourage the adoption of OER in a positive way. Currently there is no real percieved benefit to the individual to make content open - unlike the publishing model. If OERs had some kind of recogised peer-review type model then this is likely to increase the level of material that is made available in this way.

Another participant suggested at looking at what already works in terms of rating resources - e.g. amazon, the rating systems used by digg etc. This then raised the interesting question on who should rate the resources: academics or students? It was felt that they would be likely to rate quite differently, which would raise all kinds of issues (that time did not permit to be discussed further during the symposium).

The important role that repuposing plays in the advantages and benefits of OERs was also raised - it was pointed out that an open licence doesn't just mean 'free' content, it can also mean content that can be used/repurposed and generally 'messed about'.

However, deciding on the best granularity for a particular resource was considered to be one of the more difficult tasks as the context of a resource is likely to have big impact on its usability, depending on the end user of that resource. Resources for the independent/lifelong learner need to be strongly contextualised and accompanied with supporting material. If it is to be used as part of wider course, then items with much less context would be fine (and probably would be preferred).

Looking to the future, the debate also considered the changing nature of educational paradigms, in particular the impact of globalised education and how OERs can help support this. It was argued that there was a need to think more strategically, that even with the inherent difficulties of adopting OER that education as a whole could lose out if it did not grasp the opportunities provided.

So lots to take away from this session - not least the extent to which the current OER Programme pilots will go towards investigating more fully a large part of the issues raised during the debates.

"OER Matters - maybe been more negative talk than positive in this session - but more openness remains inevitable!" (tweet from Patrick McAndrew)