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Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

This article discusses the concept of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and explores different funding models, technical considerations, content models, and barriers to their sustainability. It emphasizes the importance of community involvement in the production, use, and distribution of OERs.

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Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

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  1. Models forSustainable Open Educational Resources Stephen Downes National Research Council Canada February 7, 2005

  2. OERs… • Intended to be open, shared • Leverage value of research • Expose it to widest audience • Maximize impact of investment

  3. Resources… • Includes courses, content, courseware, learning objects • Not just learning materials, but aids, supports, etc. • Not just digital, include people, various media, programs, collaborations, partnerships…

  4. Sustainable… • Costs exist and may be significant • Is measured from provider perspective… but providers vary • More than just cost – we need to consider usability, durability, accessibility, effectiveness • Alternate objectives: free as in freedom

  5. Open… • vs. commercial resources? No… • Implies no cost to consumers • Includes not only access, but reuse, even modification • Still: does not necessarily mean without constraints

  6. Funding Models (1) Note how ‘sustainable’ varies • Endowment (eg., Stanford E of P) • Membershio (eg. Sakai) • Donations (eg. Wikipedia, Apache) • Conversion (eg. MySQL, SuSe)

  7. Funding Models (2) • Contributor Pay (eg. PLoS) • Sponsorship (eg., Stanford iTunes) • Institutional (eg., OCW) • Government (eg., SchoolNet) • Partnerships (eg., MUN and Brazilian university)

  8. Technical • Driven by financial, other considerations, eg. Learning objects • ‘Free Use’ vs ‘Adapt and Localize’ • Access and usability – eg., browse, search, data-mining • Impact on ‘open’ – eg., federations

  9. Content Models • ‘Sustainable’ often means ‘localizable’ and tantemount to ‘reusable’ • Hence, requires integration – which in turn requires semantic similarity • Questions of licensing, etc.

  10. Provider / Consumer • Content may reflect values of the provider – cultural imperialism • Shift in emphasis toward collaborative development • Sharing in all directions, north and south • Hence, need to think of OERs with respect to the community that uses them

  11. Staffing • Traditional: hiring of professional staff to design and produce OERs • Question of cost, use of volunteers • This raises the question of motives (and again changes ‘sustainable’) • Non-financial incentives

  12. Volunteer Organization • Community model – emphasis on individual members (eg. OSS) • Emergent model – emphasis on process (eg., Slashdot, eBay) • Producer-consumer model vs co-producer moder – Web 2.0

  13. Workflow • Traditional – design, use, evaluation • Quality: peer review? MERLOT • Rethink the idea of ‘producing’ • Decentralize, disaggregate • The ‘use’ of a resource constitutes the ‘production’ of a new resource

  14. Sustainable OERs… • Content only the beginning • Consideration of the community essential • Entails not just a mechanism but a model of production, use, distribution • Existing structures (centralized, financially oriented, hierarchical) are often barriers to OERs • We feel this in our communities

  15. Barriers… • Who gets funded (indiv. vs inst.) • Scale of funding (large vs. small) • Type of project (producer, centralized) • Overhead (eg., licensing) • Justification, quality (= overhead) • Narrow view of ‘sustainable’ (= money, = commercial?) • Access / control

  16. http://www.downes.ca

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