Overcoming barriers and finding enablers

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Saved by Lou McGill
on June 17, 2010 at 11:33:50 am

What are the barriers to OER release, use, repurposing?

It is helpful to look at the literature on 'sharing of learning resources' as this has documented many of the barriers experienced by institutions, communities and individuals, and most have highlighted legal and cultural issues in particular (CD LOR, TRUST DR, Sharing e-learning content, Good Intentions report). Several point to the notion of 'perceived barriers' - anticpated barriers that are not as real as imagined or that are minimised by new developments, such as the introduction and widescale adoption of Creative Commons Licences, or the increasing publishing choices offered by social software/Web 2.0.

One of the most significant barriers to sharing has been that individuals are not necessarily interested or committed to sharing in the first place. Many of the government funded initiatives have at their heart a perception that sharing would prevent duplication and support efficiencies and cost effectiveness. Whilst this is clearly a laudable and sensible goal, busy teachers may need persuading and supporting to devote time to such activities. This is linked to understanding and appreciating the benefits to them as individuals, as well as those to the learners, institutions, and wider global community. It has also been noted that teachers often prefer an element of choice in who they share with so providing options for 'degrees of openess' may encourage more people to make their resources openly available. (Good Intentions report). This has been discussed in depth in the OCEP Project final report from the University of Coventry who adopted a phased release model. This model presented many technical challenges for the project team but responded to the need of staff to open some content only within the University.

Barriers/Enablers to OER Release

It is useful to look at barriers to releasing OERs from the point of view of different stakeholders and also to highlight some enablers to help people overcome the barriers or percieved barriers. Linking these to the benefits can also be useful to help people see the value in extending the effort to overcome some of the barriers. This table is not meant to be exhaustive but provides 5 of the most significant barriers for each stakeholder group.

Stakeholder	Barrier	Enabler	Possible Benefits
Teachers/academic staff	Not all teaching staff are aware of the benefits of releasing or using OERs	Information and support (e.g. from the Jorum Community Bay) Awareness activities - workshops, guidance	Enhanced reputation Improved quality Peer feedback and new contacts
	Time is a significant issue particularly when re-purposing existing materials	Institutional support and acknowledgement of time needed to re-purpose materials Technical support and guidance from central teams	Improved quality and checks re legality of content
	Skills/competencies - a whole range of new skills may be needed (technical and pedagogical).	Training and/or extra support form central teams Information and support from the Jorum Community Bay Incorporating OER release into accreddited teacher training	Additional skills and experience for staff Balanced skillsets across institution
	Quality - many staff are concerned about quality in relation to technical issues (eg. recording quality) as well as opening their learning materials to outside scrutiny - some are concerned that someone may repurpose their content to a low standard and will reflect badly on them	Reassurance, training and support for Instituional managers and support teams Staged release - degrees of openness Ensure clear attribution information is available in the licence	Increased quality of learning materials across instituion. Enhanced reputation.
	Legal issues - still a significant real and perceived barrier. Existing materials may contain materials that can't be released openly.	Information, training and support. Creative Commons Licences	Increased knowldege. Clarity re attribution and potential use options. Creator can control types of use.
Learning support	Technical challenges - particularly choices around content packaging, branding, version control	Dialogue across the instituion and decisions supported by strategic and policy documents Advice and support from JISC CETIS and institutions with existing experience	Clear guidelines across the institution Increased awareness and understanding
	Quality issues - central teams often have to package content on behalf of teaching teams with a range of quality issues (technical and pedagocigal)	Institutional committment to quality Guidleines for course teams to support production of high quality content	Increased quality of learning materials Enhanced reputation
	Metadata and retrieval - assigning appropriate metadata is still a challenging issue although utilising social software/web 2.0 services can help with retrieval.	Staged metadata creation through clear and efficient workflows Tagging	Enhanced retrieval of content for all stakeholders
	Hosting - where to deposit the content which in turn is affected by issues such as version control, branding, etc.	Decisions and guidance on where to deposit Mandating deposit within Institutional repository Mandating deposit within national repositories such as JorumOpen Ensuring that items are retrievable from range of sources Use of Web 2.0 facilities to support retrieval - RSS feeds	Clarity for depositors Enhanced retrieval
	Legal issues - trying to package or release content that contains material that can't be released for legal reasons - due to previous licencing restrictions or use of materials not owned by the teacher. Some institutions may have a very 'risk averse' approach.	Clear support and guidance across all faculties and teaching teams Releasing smaller chunks of content that doesnt depend on illegal content	Reduction in amount of illegal material being used in teaching Informed staff Time saving once staff are informed and trained
Management	Understanding the value and benefits of openly releasing their learning and teaching materials when concerned about competitors and ensuring student enrolment figures	Convincing senior managers of the benefits for institutions Getting key senior champions on board Including OER release in strategic and policy decisions and documents	Marketisation opportunities - showcase of courses and high quality content Enhanced reputation Increased enrollments
	Institution wide approach - HE instituions may not have culture or mechanisms to support institution wide dialogue which is needed for OER initiatives	Develop new partnerships within institutions Create mechanisms for cross faculty communication, practice sharing Case studies to share across the institution to illustrate approaches and benefits Mandates	Joined up approaches
	Competition - institutions may find it difficult to consider revealling their course content if it undermines a particular strength	Point to evidence that OER release encourages enrollment and offers marketing opportunities	Quality materials showcased Increased enrollment Higher profile globally
	Managing resources - existing mechanisms for managing learning and teaching materials (such as closed VLE systems) may mean that institutions do not know what they have, or what quality or legal issues may arise if they are made more open	Linking VLEs to institutional repositories Taking an institution-wide approach to support faculties/departments Providing guidelines on deposit, metadata, formats, etc.	Increased visability of all learning resources (and therefore likely positive impact on quality) Opportunities to share across departments Reduction in duplication for generic materials
	Uneven development due to subject discipline focus and cultures - some departments may be more inclined to openess and some may have been more experimental with new technologies	Developing case studies of good practice to share within institution Developing guidelines that are sensitive to subject discipline differences Utilise support of Academy Subject Centres and other communities of practice/professional bodies Utilise examples from outside the institution Accept that uneven development is likely.	Supporting disciplines as appropiate to need Enables a staged approach and encourages development of champions
Communities of Practice (CoP)	Institutional practices - many teachers are members of an institution which may already have guidelines, policies and restrictions on what and where a teacher can openly release	Sharing good institutional practices with other community members Sharing good community practices with institutions	Encourage good practice
	Legal issues - there may be a perception that legal issues are less of a barrier when sharing within communities	Ensure that community members still follow institutional guidelines, particularly when/if the institution owns the copyright	Less content released that contravenes copyright law
	Ownership - not all teachers own the teaching materials they produce as they may have a contract that gives the institution ownership - this may restrict what teachers can release within communities.	Follow institutional guidelines re quality, legality, branding Obtain institutional agreement re deposit outside the institutional repository	Clarity re ownesrhip
	Community agreements - the complexities of getting all parties to agree to particular aspects (legal, quality, metadata, branding) can be very time consuming	Lightweight agreements that are not restrictive Clear management, support and guidelines Obtain support from some central agency (such as Academy Subject Centres, Professional bodies	Increased particpation
	Hosting - communities that cross institutional boundaries need some mechanism for bringing the resources together	Community of Practice sharing places (wiki's, forums, social networking sites, Jorum Community Bay) Subject repositories/spaces National repositories such as JorumOpen Utilising existing CoP mechanisms	Community members know where to go for resources Resources supported by focus on practice - information, support and dialogue

Barriers/Enablers to OER Use, Re-use and re-purposing

Stakeholder	Barrier	Enabler	Possible Benefits
Learners	Equity re access - not all OERs are fully open, not all learners have access to computers, or to the internet	Movement toward fully open resources Ensure materials will be accessible on alternative technologies (mobile)	Genuine access for all
	Knowing what is available - learners who are not guided or supported by a teacher may not know what is available or how to access it.	Making resources discoverable by tools that learners use regularly - search engines Using social software to 'advertise' content (twitter, facebook)	Increased use of content
	Support and guidance - learners may need support and guidance to use resources effectively	Provide options to engage with content creator or other content users (peers) - such as discussion forums and opportunities for collaborative learning Include guidance on use within resources	Encourages peer support and interaction Encourages dialogue and enhances learning opportunities
	Quality - not all OERs are high quality - poor experiences with low quality materials may deter future use	User reviews can be helpful to encourage others Social software services such as Diigo allow users to highlight content and add notes	Quality resources likely to rise to the top of search engine results
Teachers	Knowing what is available and how to find it	Utilising peer networks and CoPs to find out what is available in their subject area Utilising services which pull resources together either physically or as a catalogue Mandating deposit within national repositories such as Jorum	CoPs and networks support practice and dialogue as well as resources Improved access
	Time - concerns about wasting time looking for content and then adapting for their own purpose	Central support teams to help with repurposing CoP support as above Providing educational context as 'wrappers' to support users of resources Using small chunks or individual items to supplement own materials rather than trying to adapt a large package of materials User reviews which describe how resource has been used by others	Easier retrieval CoP support as above Time invested is valid due to positive results
	Educational context - perception that each context is unique and that it is too difficult to adapt others content	Make generic content open to support several courses (eg. introduction to statistics) Allow for context specific aspects to be easily added/taken away	Flexible use of content as appropriate

Image CC BY-NC Steve Sawyer

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Last Cookiweek David Kernohan, a JISC Programme Manager, commented in a Guardian article last week that Open Educational Resources are a radical idea that has now become mainstream. JISC infoNet's OER infoKit supports JISC's OER programmes in providing a reference point:

To try and condense some of the vast amount that has been learnt about the benefits of OER releases in the past 10 years, the Higher Education Academy and JISC have developed an InfoKit. This now includes materials specifically aimed at advocacy to senior institutional staff, talking about business models for openness and making arguments around institutional ethos, alongside sound evidence-based advice about every aspect of getting to a stage where releasing materials openly online is as natural as creating them. We also have an interactive tool – how open are you – which uses your responses to make a recommendation concerning how much openness your institution is ready for.

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Overcoming barriers and finding enablers

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