Content-Centric OERas Untenable: Means vs. Ends

Judy Baker, Ph.D.Dean of Technology and Innovation

Foothill College

Value of OER• Emphasis on content in

curating OER perpetuates the belief in OER as an end rather than as a means

• Value of OER– Not about free content,

it’s about the knowledge sharing,collaboration, and customizing that it affords

– Disruptive innovation that allows educators to gaingreater control and customization of learning materials for teaching

Knowledge Sharing

Educators

OER

OER

Educators

Knowledge Sharing

Process-centric Content-centric

Goals OER as a means to knowledge sharing and collaboration

OER as an end-in-itself

Content Dynamic and evolving content that can be easily updated, corrected, and edited

Focuses on bound, printed, shipped information that is quickly out of date and no longer available for corrections or editing

Reviews Reviewers voluntary Reviewers compensated

Uses Encourages educators to develop, review, customize, localize, differentiate, and contextualize learning materials that can be easily shared

Perpetuates use of learning materials as static Proliferation of OER repositories and referatories with redundant content ;

Budget Resources expended on professional development and tools that foster sharing and collaboration among educators

Expends resources on branding and marketing of repositories

OER as Means vs. Ends

Content-Centric OER Efforts

Process-Centric OER Efforts

Dynamic Textbook Project

• A multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access textbooks – to improve STEM post-secondary education – to develop and disseminate free, virtual, customizable textbooks that

will substitute for current, commercial paper texts in multiple courses at post-secondary institutions

• ChemWiki– Open Access textbook environment constantly being written

by faculty and students

ChemPaths

• Not an Online Textbook, A Student Portal

• Student Portal of the Chemical Education Digital Library

• Built to assist instructors put online tutorials and web-resources multimedia resources into one cohesive package ready for student-use

Content or Process Centric?

Content-CentricReviewers

Compensated

Process-centric Review of OER?Crowdsourced rating systems

Current Homepage

Original Homepage

Process-centricReviewers voluntary

Faculty Attitudes about OER

• Foothill-De Anza Community College faculty surveys indicate that major factors in faculty decisions about adoption of open textbooks and open contents are content-centric: – Concerns about quality and versioning– Availability of affordable options for

students to order shipped printed copies– Availability of a printed and bound

instructor’s copy of the open textbook

• Content-centric OER efforts perpetuate such faculty attitudes and fail to promote a culture of knowledge sharing with an awareness of other benefits of OER

“The value of OER will not be best achieved through static resources, but rather through their potential to

engage a wide range of educators and learners to share ideas and expertise, and collaborative

knowledge building.

… a culture of openness and sharing will only emerge when OER has embedded and become an integral part

of teaching practice and learning process in HE.”

~ JISC CETIS Li Yuan’s Blog

Sustainability of OER practice

• Need educators to participate in communities of practice where OER development and reuse becomes a normative

• Encourage institutions and educators to adopt a community of practice approach to create and maintain content and use existing networks to disseminate and share resources