OER and Widening Participation: an emerging research agenda?

1. OER and Widening Participation: an emerging research agenda? Professor Andy Lane

2. The opportunity: being open to change Open Educational Resources are “… digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research. “ Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, OECD 2007 “The most promising initiative in e-learning is the concept – and the developing reality, of open educational resources.” Sir John Daniel (OU, UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning) “There is no point duplicating effort to create content that is already available and has been proven to work. Institutions can build on the existing open educational resources initiative to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies. In addition they can pull in the best content and openly available learning resources from around the world and adapt them for particular courses.” On-line Learning Task Force, 2011 Image by: mag3737, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/1914076277/

3. The meaning of open in OER? (Geser, 2007)

4. Open educational practices Educational materials can act as a mediating object between teachers and learners (just as teachers can mediate the interactions between learners and educational materials) [Lane, 2008] Educational material Learners Teachers

5. The implications of OER for mediating teaching and learning opportunities • Granularity– the size and inter-dependence of modules • Judging the appropriate mix between: - Pedagogic support (built into content) - Personal support (self reflection and guidance) - Peer support (mutual reflection and guidance) - Professional support (expert reflection and guidance) • The use of new social computing technologies in facilitating support and interaction • Greater sharing of practice amongst teachers and learners – moving from individual to collective practices

6. OER are what you make of them Spreading ‘wild’ seeds • OER can be: • Designed explicitly for educational use • Other content used for educational purposes • Used as an information source

7. Open communities as much as open content http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/munroes-map-for-social-networksrsquo-lost-souls-2111356.html

8. How ‘students’ might use OER (Lane, 2012) • How prospective students use OER • OER as showcase • OER as guide • OER as community • How registered students use OER • OER as reinforcement • OER as fallback • OER as primary source • OER as enrichment • OER as community • OER as public product • OER as training ground • How alumni use OER • OER as refresher • OER as enrichment

9. How OER support lifelong learning (Lane, 2013) • OER for personal interest learning • OER for personal or professional development • OER for enriching more formal adult learning • OER for workforce training • OER as public engagement • OER as open courses

10. EADTU have used a conceptual framework (Lane, 2012) that views participation in higher education to be limited by the: • availability of opportunities to participate (usually taken to be number of study places available within higher education institutions); • affordability of those opportunities (this could be due to issues such as the cost of the opportunity in terms of fees and living costs); • accessibility of those opportunities (the ability to participate through a disability or ability to perform effectively due to the medium of instruction being a second or third language); and lastly by the • acceptability of the opportunity (a more subtle issue exemplified by the mode of instruction not suiting a students learning style or cultural norms making either the mode of study or the study of certain topics difficult).

11. This same framework can also be applied to educational resources in the form of learning and teaching content: • The extent or availability of educational resources (how many of them in what forms, both formal and informal)? • The affordability of those resources (how much do they cost)? • The degree of accessibility to those resources (where can they be found and by whom), that help contribute to the level of use of those by learners (the degree of engagement if not participation)? and • The acceptability of the resources that can also influence not only the way in which engagement and participation happens but also the way the experience is valued?

12. Within higher education some or all of the following may be barriers to particular groups and communities engaging with available HE provision (Lane, 2008): • Geographical remoteness, even in rural areas of small countries; • Cultural norms, with some ethnic cultures not supporting the education of women in particular circumstances, for instance; • Social norms, whereby some family groups or communities do not value education as highly as others, so discouraging engagement; • Prior achievements, such as prior qualifications being used as a filter to accessing a scarce resource or as a filter to maintain an individual institution’s social and cultural status; • Individual or household income, where the relative cost of accessing higher education by certain groups is very high; • Digital divide. Computers and the web offer many freedoms but they still cost money to access. People with less money may not easily afford such technology and even find that the absolute cost to them is higher than other groups because they are seen as a greater financial risk to a technology provider; • Physical circumstances. There may not be any easy places to undertake the learning due to lack of a home, space in a home or having particular type of home such as a prison. Similarly, people with certain disabilities may need specialist equipment or support;; • Individual norms, where a person is constrained by social and cultural norms - attitudes and beliefs - that they are not capable or not good enough to study at this level, as may be the case with older people.

13. Learner designed learning paths

14. HEI created learning paths?

16. Do definitions and language matter?

18. The Donald Clark view • Lots of people dropout from MOOCS, so what? Lots of people stop doing lots of things. • Lot’s of people don’t finish books but we don’t see this as a sign of intellectual failure. • MOOCs must not be seen as failure factories. They must rise above the education models that filter and weed out learners through failure. Good MOOCs will allow you to truly go at your own pace, to stop and start, go off on an exploratory path and return again. This is what true adult learning is and should be. I always drop out of learning experiences as I never go on formal courses. I decide when I’ve had enough. They should not copy but complement or construct new models of learning.

19. International participation rates

20. Widening participation and OER The level of participation and achievement within higher education is viewed as crucial for social and economic development. While widening participation in higher education is a goal of all 46 countries within the European Higher Education Area there is no common or simple definition of what widening participation means in practice. In principle it is a variable mix between how many people, what type of people and what type of achievement they make through engaging in higher education level study.

21. Widening participation and OER Whether from the perspective of the learner or a higher education institution it is possible to consider the availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability of educational provision and educational resources. A large number of social, economic, cultural and psychological factors or barriers influence how many and, what type of people participate and what achievements they gain.

22. Widening participation and OER Open educational resources come in many forms and their availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability vary depending on the licence used and the technology employed to create and deliver them. As with participation in higher education there are a number of multi-faceted and multi-layered reasons why people may be excluded from using open educational resources

23. Widening participation and OER The partners work with publishing open educational resources indicate that this can also greatly increase the opportunities for people to engage with informal (self-organised and non credit bearing) or non-formal (peer group or employer organised and non credit bearing) higher education study. Such opportunities are able to provide better bridges into formal study for those groups currently excluded from higher education study and better bridges with employers and voluntary organisations seeking more customised educational experiences for their employees or members.

24. Widening participation and OER New policies and practices are required at all levels in the higher education system to address issues of openness and open educational resources in higher education study and the role that can play in increasing and widening engagement and participation.

25. So what is the research agenda? • What does participation with and open and free resources or courses mean for learners, institutions and governments? • Do open and free resources or courses remove or reinforce educational inequalities and if so for whom, for what subjects and in which countries? • What might ‘supported open teaching’ look like for open and free resources and courses? • Will we have new ways of recognising educational achievement? • How should policy makers respond to open and free resources and courses?

26. Selected publications • Lane, A. (2013, in press) How OERs support lifelong learning, In Eds McGreal, R, Kinuthia, W. and Marshall, S., Knowledge Cloud Handbook, 11pp, Commonwealth of Learning • Lane, A.B. (2012) Chapter 8 Design and development of OER: A Student Perspective, In Eds. Glennie, J., Harley, K. and Van Wyk, T., Perspectives on Open Educational Resources (OER) as a Catalyst for Educational Change: Case Studies and Reflections of Practice, pp 141-154, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada, ISBN: 9781894975537, available at http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 • Lane, A. (2012) A review of the role of national policy and institutional mission in European Distance Teaching Universities with respect to widening participation in higher education study through open educational resources, Distance Education, 33 (2), pp 135-150, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2012.692067 • Lane, A.B. (2012) Chapter 8 Design and development of OER: A Student Perspective, In Eds. Glennie, J., Harley, K. and Van Wyk, T., Perspectives on Open Educational Resources (OER) as a Catalyst for Educational Change: Case Studies and Reflections of Practice, pp 141-154, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada, ISBN: 9781894975537, available at http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 • Lane. A. B.(2009)The impact of openness on bridging educational digital divides,The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(5): 12 pp, ISSN 1492-3831, available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/637. • Lane A.B.(2008)Chapter 10: Widening Participation in Education through Open Educational Resources, pp 149-163. In Eds. Ilyoshi, T. and Vijay Kumar, M.S., Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03371-2, available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11309&mode=toc. • Lane, A.B. (2008) Who puts the Education into Open Educational Content? In Richard N. Katz, ed., The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education and Information Technology Revisited, EDUCAUSE, Boulder, Colorado, pp 158-168, ISSN 978-0-9672853-9-9, available at http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud/133998 • Lane, A.B. (2008) Am I good enough? The mediated use of open educational resources to empower learners in excluded communities. 5 pp, In Proceedings of 5th Pan CommonWealth Forum on Open and Distance Learning, London, 13-17 July 2008, available at http://www.wikieducator.org/PCF5/Governance_and_social_justice.