Role of Open Educational Resources (OER) White Paper

1. Data Analytics Services & Solutions WHITEPAPER Access to Education for Everyone The Role of (Open Educational Resources) OER

2. Access to Education for Everyone modification, and sharing with others. Complete online courses, modular digital textbooks, and more detailed information may all be found in digital publicly licensed resources. According to the Department’s National Education Technology Plan, openly licensed educational materials are public domain or have been made available under a license allowing unrestricted use, reuse, either in the Why utilize educational materials with open licenses? • Increased Equity - Because publicly licensed educational resources are freely shared with anybody, all students have access to excellent learning materials with the most current and pertinent information. Research case: Tidewater Community College (TCC) - Virginia, USA There is a community college called Tidewater Community College (TCC) in Virginia, USA. TCC, like many other educational institutions, struggled to deal with equity challenges relating to availability and affordability. In order to address these equality issues, TCC made the decision to launch an OER effort. They sought to lessen students’ financial burden, improve accessibility resources, and foster academic achievement. TCC strongly encouraged academic staff to develop and use OER content. Faculty members were urged to generate new OER or modify current ones. They were given assistance, instruction, and rewards for taking part in the program. All students have immediate access to OER resources on the first session of class. This guaranteed that no student fell behind because they couldn’t access the materials they needed or couldn’t buy their textbooks on time. The OER program at TCC produced a number of fruitful results: • Student success rates were shown to be favorably impacted by OER resources, including greater retention and course completion rates. • Student success rates were shown to be favorably impacted by OER resources, including greater retention and course completion rates. • Empower Teachers - Openly licensed educational resources provide instructors the freedom to adapt and alter lessons to better suit the requirements of their students without violating copyright rules, empowering them as creative professionals. Research case: Curriki - using OER to empower teachers A sizable collection of OER, including lesson plans, worksheets, videos, and other educational materials, has been assembled by Curriki. These materials are useful for instructors in all subject areas and at all grade levels since they cover a wide range of topics. Teachers can use these open educational resources (OER) as well as modify and adapt them to meet the unique needs of their classrooms. Teachers now have the ability to adapt materials to the learning preferences and skills of their pupils. Outcome: • Improved Teaching Resources: Teachers who use Curriki’s OER have access to a huge and varied collection of teaching resources, which enhances their lesson plans and teaching strategies. • Increased Student design more interesting and pertinent courses that are tailored to their students’ needs and interests by adapting and customizing open educational resources (OER). to educational Engagement: Teachers 2

3. Access to Education for Everyone • Maintain Relevant and High-Quality Content: Because traditional textbooks are always out of date, districts are forced to spend a large amount of money on renewing them. The conditions of use for publicly licensed educational resources enable instructors to continuously update their products to maintain their quality and relevance. Research case: A well-known nonprofit group called OpenStax, with its headquarters at Rice University, produces open textbooks for college and high school courses. Their goal is to increase access to education by offering high-quality, peer-reviewed OER for free. Their strategy of quality and relevance are: Peer Review Process: OpenStax uses a strict peer review procedure to make sure that their textbooks are accurate and of high quality. Before publishing, the information is reviewed and given input by knowledgeable educators and subject-matter experts. Continuous Updates: OpenStax understands the value of maintaining updated material. To reflect advancements in the subject, fresh research, and changing educational standards, they routinely update their textbooks. By doing this, OER content is guaranteed to be current. . Outcome: • High-quality resources: OpenStax’s dedication to peer review and continuous updating produces educational resources of a caliber comparable to that of traditional textbooks. • Relevance: OpenStax makes sure that its OER resources are current and in line with the most recent advancements in each field by regularly updating the content. Major challenges of OER • Sustainability - The upkeep and sustainability of OER is proving to be a considerable difficulty, as it is with any fixed-term, externally sponsored effort. Research asserts that two factors must be taken into account when evaluating the viability of OER initiatives: the viability of OER production and the viability of resource sharing. Any OER initiative’s sustainability is impacted by the operation’s size (small or large), the kind of provider (university or community), and the degree of user involvement (co-production or producer-consumer model). Although there are several financing models used in various institutional contexts, no one model will be appropriate for all projects because every initiative will have distinct aims. • Intellectual Property and Copyright Issues - The fundamental problem with OER is intellectual property. According to one theory, the problem of copyright and material ownership is “the fundamental reason for sluggish progress in this field,” preventing certain academic institutions and faculty members from providing more educational information accessible to the worldwide web community. The author or publisher of educational materials that incorporate content from other parties must confirm they have permission to use such materials before releasing those items online. Quality Assessment and Enhancement - Finding the most pertinent and high-quality resources is a significant challenge given the quickly expanding amount of learning resources and repositories. • 3

4. Access to Education for Everyone Institutions Embrace Open Educational Resources (OER) for Enhanced Learning • MIT OpenCourseWare - The publishing of course materials utilized in MIT classroom instruction is known as MIT OpenCourseWare, and it is also the most widely imitated institutional OER model. The goal of MIT OCW is to offer a picture of how a particular subject is instructed at a specific period. Along with video and audio courses, it provides notes from the instructor, problem sets, syllabi, seven reading lists, tools, and simulations. Around 1,800 courses are made freely available to educators and students worldwide so that they can employ the resources for their personal instruction and education, use them as a tool for creating curricula and courses, or use them as an example for their own open content efforts. Additionally, this model aims to give institutions the tools they need to guarantee academic and pedagogical excellence through the creation of two distinct digital course resource systems within a university: one made entirely of open-source content, and the other within the IP environment of the institution’s digital library or repository, which restricts access to copyright material to community members who have been verified. The center also created open-source software to assist learner communities utilizing OCW and to offer academic support services. • Connexions - Connexions, which was first financed by Rice University, aims to integrate the three separate strands of content, communities, and software into a simple yet interactive learning and instruction environment. Along with a fast- expanding library of open academic resources, it offers an assortment of free software applications to aid in the publication and collaboration of writers, the quick creation and sharing of unique courses by instructors, and the exploration by students of the relationships between ideas, subjects, and courses. The Program aims to create and assist communities of makers and users of digital objects who accredit content. 3,461 open learning items are now hosted by Rice’s Connexions project and may be used to create smaller study groups or whole courses. • USU OCW - Faculty, students, and self-learners in Utah and all around the world have access to a variety of open educational materials utilized in official campus courses offered by Utah State University. Additionally, the USU OCW offers self- students a range of “credit by examination” choices so they may receive college credit for the knowledge they have acquired while using the USU OpenCourseWare. The OCW creation tool eduCommons was created by Utah State University’s Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. It enables organizations to quickly publish OCW content using a ready-made platform created for effective course materials development. Outcomes and lessons learned Although there is currently a dearth of qualitative or quantitative research data about OER programs, certain good results and benefits from specific projects have been documented. assessment report for MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OpenCourseWare), shows that MIT OCW received more than 8.5 million visits, a 56% yearly increase. The disciplines covered by MIT OCW are those in which the university is a recognized leader. According to research, 61% of OCW traffic comes from outside the United States, while 49% of visitors self-identify. 32% of learners are students, and 16% are teachers. Teachers visit the website mostly to create a course (26%), be ready to teach a particular class (22%), and increase their knowledge of themselves. Student uses the website as a course supplement (38%), to further their own knowledge (34%), and to plan their course of study (16%); self-learner uses it to further their own knowledge (56%), to stay up to date in their area (16%), and to plan further study (14%). Similar to this, Connexions is utilized by lifelong learners all around the world in distant learning settings, traditional institutions, community colleges, elementary, and secondary school settings. Courses and modules are being translated by volunteers into a variety of tongues, including Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai. For instance, the 4

5. Access to Education for Everyone About the Author SMRITI LOOMBA • Senior Analyst - Corporate Op-Ex Smriti Loomba, an MBA graduate, has a rich experience of more than 7.5 years in secondary research, primary research, and research report writing. She has worked on multiple technology projects, covering Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Machine Learning (ML), Quantum, and Big Data, among others. She helps clients grow their businesses by providing them with industry insights, growth opportunities, Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies, and marketing techniques. Disclaimer This document makes descriptive reference to trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks by SG Analytics (SGA) and is not intended to represent or get commercially benefited from it or imply the existence of an association between SGA and the lawful owners of such trademarks. Information regarding third-party products, services, and organizations was obtained from publicly available sources, and SGA cannot confirm the accuracy or reliability of such sources or information. Its inclusion does not imply an endorsement by or of any third party. Copyright © 2023 SG Analytics Pvt. Ltd. www.sganalytics.com GET IN TOUCH Pune | Hyderabad | Bengaluru | London | Zurich | New York | San Francisco | Amsterdam | Toronto | Wroclaw 5