3 Key issues in Open Educational Resources

The three key issues in Open Educational Resources are as follows:

1.     Lack of awareness regarding copyright issues; 

2.     Assuring quality in open content; and 

3.     Sustaining OER initiatives in the longer run. 

 

Lack of awareness regarding copyright issues:

Several literature point out the lack of awareness among the academics regarding the copyright issues as a key issue and barrier. Hassall C. et al (2017) identifies the lack of awareness as the top most issue for the use of OERs as a tool in education, particularly in medical and biomedical education. OER Research Hub’s ‘Evidence Report’ (2013-14) also shares similar findings.

Teachers as well as researchers have access to a wide ranging of publishing and production tools. In addition they have licensing access to a digital, transitory or fleeting product rather than a physical object such as a book or print. This interrelation of teachers as well as researchers with licensing is at a level as never before. For the most part they appear to be either unprepared or unwilling to engage with cumbersome licensing procedures. According to McCracken (2006) while publication, consumption and distribution of texts were mediated through physical media, academics remained for the most part unaware of the licensing that underpinned the exploitation of copyright. Internet and other digital media have changed this.

Several open content licenses have been developed, like the Creative Commons and the GNU Free Documentation Licence, to accommodate this problem. Open licensing provides a way of controlled sharing with some rights reserved to the author. 

In the words of Dr. Jan Hylén of OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation Paris published in Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License:

They have the benefit of introducing certainty and clarity into the process of obtaining permission to use the work of others. They also reduce the administrative burden of having to clear rights before use. This is particularly useful in the educational context where users have little or no inside knowledge of the mechanisms used by the media industries. Finally, open licenses establish a body of works licensed as “open content” that may be freely shared. However, it must also be recognised that they have some disadvantages. Rights holders must be prepared to grant and to live with exercising only a “broad-sweep” control over their works, replacing the case by case control with which they are familiar. Moral rights are waived under licences offering the right to make derivative works and different and often blurred and overlapping boundaries emerge between not-for-profit, educational and commercial exploitation or distribution. Despite some shortcomings, there seems to be a growing interest for open licenses, as shown by the increasing number of objects released under the Creative Commons license.

Assuring quality in open content:

Teachers, self-learners and students look for resources. They should not have difficulties finding resources. Yet they have the problem of judging their quality and relevance. This is a fundamental issue.

Institution-based providers can use the brand or reputation of the institution to persuade users that the materials on the website are of good quality. They are likely of have internal quality checks before the release of the courses.

Peer review is another approach to quality assurance. The peer review process is one of the most used quality assurance processes in academia for research publications. It is a well known and well understood routine and peer reviews can guarantee the quality of resources in a repository. Taylor (2002) argues the process can be used to come to terms with the lack of a reward system by giving recognition and reward to the creator of a learning resource, as well as a dissemination method. Furthermore, there is a need for making the review decisions credible, and for that purpose an open peer review according to agreed criteria is well suited, Taylor claims.

Individual users may also decide on whatever ground they like whether a learning resource is of high quality, useful, or good in any other respect. This is the opposite of the centrally designed approach process. This is a low level bottom-up approach and used on internet based market places for example. Quality may not be inherent part of learning resource but rather a contextual phenomena.

Sustaining OER in the long-run:

There is a strong competition for funding among OER initiatives. Start up funding that may be available for short term may cease after a few years. Therefore long term sustainability needs to be given serious consideration. No single sustainability model will fit all and different approaches need to be explored that might be useful in a local context. Community model and Institutional models are two different approaches with possibilities of inventing other models that are a mix of the two:

Community model of sustainability:

This community model of sustainability is more of a grass roots activity. The individuals contribute with their time, knowledge and resources on a voluntary basis. The production, use and distribution is decentralised in community model. However it is not enough to look at the advantages and disadvantages of different revenue or funding models alone. One need to look into who pays for the resources but also who creates them, how they are distributed and how to work with them. Discoverability of the resources, kind of openness and constraints on access and use, the possibility to localise content, incentives for people to contribute resources, models without a clear distinction between the user and the producer, co-production, maintenance and updating of resources and some of the technical aspects to be considered. 

In the community model sustainability is not so much a matter of financial resources as of dismantling barriers that hinders the community to flourish and grow. The enthusiasts and their voluntary work are the building blocks of community model of sustainability.

Institutional model of sustainability:

Institutions need to explore different revenue models for the long term stability and viability of their initiative. 

According to Dholakia (2006) the different revenue models that might be considered are: 

·       The Replacement model, where OER replaces other use and can benefit from the cost savings which is a result of the replacement. It was noted though that this model has a natural limit since it can only generate the same amount of resources as it replaces. 

·       The Foundation, Donation or Endowment model, where the funding for the operations are provided by an external actor such as foundations. This model was primarily seen as a start up model that will most probably not be viable in the long run. It might be transferred into a Government support model, which could be a long-term option in some (mostly European?) countries but not others. 

·       The Segmentation model, where the provider, simultaneously with resources for free, also provides “value-added” services to user segments and charges them for these services – such as sales of paper copies, training and user support, ask-an-expert services etc. This model, together with the conversion model, is among the most used in the education sector. 

·       The Conversion model, where “you give something away for free and then convert the consumer to a paying customer”. 

·       The Voluntary support model, which is based on fund-raising campaigns. Another version of this model is the Membership model where a coalition of interested parties – organisations or individuals – is invited to contribute a certain sum as seed money or on an annual basis. 

·       The Contributor-Pay model where the contributors pay the cost of maintaining the contribution, which the provider makes available for free. This model is used to give open access to scientific publications and might work also for OER.

3 Key issues in Open Educational Resources © 2022 by  Mohammad Shoaib Haider is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0