Notes from: Open Educational Practices: A literature review, By Heather M. Ross

OERs DEFINITION: they offer the possibility not only of free access and sharing but also of combining content material from multiple sources whereas the acquisition of textbooks or other educational resources (online journals etc) has become a practice too expensive to sustain (…) they include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge”

On the word open: Open Education was introduced as a term by Nyberg in 1975 in his Introduction of the book “The Philosophy of Open Education”. Definitions on the word open vary. Iiyoshi and Kumar  (2008) use the term to define an “education can be improved by making educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the collective wisdom of a community of practice and reflection”. 

On the use of Creative Licences: At one of end of the Creative Commons spectrum of licenses are those that require only attribution and allow the work to be freely shared, modified, and even used for commercial purposes as long as the original creator is credited. At the other end of this spectrum, the creator of the work may restrict the work under a license that not only requires attribution, but also prohibits changes to the work and any use of it for commercial purposes.

On the use of Open Access Publishing: Open access publishing allows for articles to be freely available to anyone interested in reading the materials. There are different types of open access publishing, including “green” where authors self-publish on their own web site or in an institutional repository, “gold” where authors pay for their articles to be made open to the public (generally this happens in journals that still charge for subscriptions for non-open articles), and “platinum” where journals publish articles openly without charging authors (usually these are financially supported by an institution or professional organization) (Weller, 2014).

On Wiley’s five Rs: Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute and Retain

On OER Benefits: they show gaps in existing resources, they make instructors and learners collaborate, materials are adapted to meet the needs of a specific course, they can be customized, access to learning materials is increased, there are opportunities of empowerment.

On OER Barriers: lack of knowldge of OERs, lack of time needed, the existing academic culture, instructors’ attitude toward technology.

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