[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

Tue Oct 5 14:27:34 MDT 2010

Hi All,

Thanks for all these thoughts.  Many similar issues were raised at our
conference.  There is a strong feeling among those working with OCW and OER
that the potential impacts on educational systems and providing access to
high-quality education are just beginning to be realized. The sustainability
question will shift as the value of OER becomes more readily apparent to
everyone.  Right now, however, the value needs to be highlighted and
showcased more effectively.  We still need to promote its use, creation and
potential to a wider audience, and to continue to discover and publicize its
impact.  One of the pressing issues is sustainability in the near term as we
work on documenting impact and making OER more widely known.  The economic
value of OCW/OER to institutions is still an important argument.  From an
institutional perspective, value in terms of public relations, marketing and
visibility, alumni relations, student advising, etc. have been shown.  MIT
presented data from surveys they've been doing for several years (summary on
their site: http://ocw.mit.edu/about/site-statistics/); the University of
California made some promotional video that includes faculty testimonials
about the value of OpenCourseWare (http://learn.uci.edu/ucionline  the
"OpenCourseWare" video) , staff from TU Delft in the Netherlands have
written articles about the value of OCW (see their blog for examples:
http://ocw.tudelft.nl), just to name a few.  There are also resources
available to help make the case to institutions: OCW Consortium toolkit (
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/community/toolkit/makingthecase) and the UNESCO
OER toolkit (
http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=UNESCO_OER_Toolkit), for
example.

The OCW Consortium is trying to bring together examples of impact from
around the world that can be easily accessed by anyone.  We are developing a
case study library that will show the impact of OCW/OER for self learners,
students, faculty and institutions, along with a project showcase to
highlight the work and innovation already being done.  If you have an
example that would be appropriate for either of these projects, please let
us know.  We would love to see a rich library of examples available by next
year.  We'd also welcome other ideas that could be helpful in promoting
sustainability.

Thanks,
Mary Lou

-- 
Mary Lou Forward
OpenCourseWare Consortium
www.ocwconsortium.org

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Theo Lynn <theo.lynn at dcu.ie> wrote:

>  Hi all
>
> I have been considering this point, or at least a related point, a lot
> lately.
>
> I think it is very important that we discuss OERs in the context of
> subsidies. Why? One, it is important to recognise that OERs do have economic
> value. Two, it is important to recognise that someone bears the cost of
> OERs. We need to focus on justifying why OERs are a good investment from a
> societal, pedagogical and financial perspective and THEN put in place the
> metrics to demonstrate this value. Recently, I have been looking at OERs as
> a form of brand placement and justifying institutional investment in OER
> initiatives on that basis - for some institutional decision makers this can
> be an easier decision than purely societal, or even, pedagogical reasons.
> This requires some work to justify but is doable.
>
> Regards
>
> Theo
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca [mailto:
> oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] *On Behalf Of *rory
> *Sent:* 05 October 2010 16:55
>
> *To:* oer-community at athabascau.ca
> *Subject:* Re: [Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion
>
> Paul, et al.
>
> I did not see this in the same way as you. I saw "in the place of current
> expenditures" more about external spending than internal. We can replace the
> payments to publishers and licensing fees of our libraries by using OERs.
> Then it is no longer zero sum. Internally, I would support (in our context)
> diverting internal money also from printing and mailing to online access to
> resources. Of course robbing Peter to pay Paul does not always work as you
> note below and we should be careful not to penalize  other productive areas
> of the institution, so I do not disagree there.
>
> I also would like to respectfully suggest a change in your statement:
> "Think of sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of
> impact that is wholly positive"
> To
> "Think of sustainability not JUST in terms of money, but rather in terms of
> impact that is wholly positive"
> I would suggest that anyone who is not looking at the financial
> implications of sustainability(as well as other factors) is not being
> systematic. Financial considerations need not rule everything, but that does
> not mean that they are unimportant and should not be considered.
>
> All the best.
> Rory
>
> Rory McGreal
> Associate VP Research
> Athabasca University
>
>
>
>  Dear Susan, all
>
> It's great to see this discussion starting. Thank you for circulating the
> briefing document (10 10 OER Community-OCWC.doc), which mention three
> sub-themes:
>
> 1. Building OpenCourseWare
> 2. Using OpenCourseWare
> 3. Sustaining OpenCourseWare
>
> Sub-theme 3 states the importance of strategies for long-term
> sustainability of OCW/OER projects. It says "...think of sustainability not
> in terms of money, but rather in terms of impact." Fine. Then I begin to
> worry, because it says "...investments will come IN THE PLACE OF other
> current expenditures." (my emphasis). "In the place of" sounds like
> diverting funding from one area to another area. To me, that seems like a
> zero-sum game. In my view we don't need to make the assumption that our
> options are limited to what we can do within overall institutional budgets,
> and we don't have to decide on what to allocate to OCW/OER at the expense of
> other activities. Diverting funding is potentially very divisive: imagine
> for example that the "current expenditures" at risk of being diverted to
> OCW/OER are for social justice programs that have lower impact than OCW/OER
> on impact measure A, but higher impact than OCW/OER on impact measure B, and
> that we pay attention only to measure A and use that to justify shifting
> funds. Sounds fine? Not for me. I'd want to know how to protect people
> affected by the cuts. They might include people who are surely important to
> any caring institution, such as the disabled, minority groups, and
> historically-disadvantaged groups such as women.
>
> There is a better way, in my view: create wealth in socially-desirable ways
> (= benefits to society as a whole, rather than the few), using OCW/OER where
> appropriate, and direct a proportion of the new wealth to augment the total
> budget available for social justice interventions including OCW/OER.
>
> This is not fanciful. It requires liaison with people in other communities,
> likely to be well-disposed to OCW/OER. An example is the Open Science
> community, see eg an open-access book from the National Academies Press,
> "Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest" [acronym:
> MUIPPI], *http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13001*<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1300>
>
> The MUIPPI book is representative of a body of well-informed work on how
> society as a whole, as well as individual public institutions, can benefit
> from a systemic (and systematic) approach to sharing and using innovations.
> I shall be contributing to that process in various multi-partner
> international projects, one of which has just begun. Our commitment to our
> funders (public bodies) includes interoperability with other programs, eg
> OCW/OER, and sharing our findings, insights, contacts etc in open ways that
> have the potential to create societal wealth at a significant level without
> harming weak groups in society, and, as part of that, can help individual
> learners and their communities to get lasting benefits, valued by them, from
> the knowledge created and shared in joint work such as OCW/OER.
>
> My conclusion: I would be delighted to collaborate with anyone who wants to
> explore projects that implicitly assume a subtext to sub-theme 3 in the
> following direction:
>
> Think of sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of
> impact that is wholly positive (eg, new forms of wealth creation, compatible
> with the public-interest). Take action in an integrated way: link OER and
> OCW to forms of Open Innovation and Open Knowledge Sharing that benefit
> society as a whole (eg, socially-focused exploitation of publicly-funded
> intellectual property, to create new sources of wealth for the world) and
> that can lead to socially-desirable outcomes (eg, creating new types of job,
> and making students more employable by helping them to apply what they learn
> via OER and OCW, to bridge the "knowledge-action gap").
>
> Best wishes
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> --
> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt
> charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Rory McGreal
> Associate VP Research
> Athabasca University
>
>
>
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