eTextBooks, the OER perspective.

Phil BarkerJISC CETIS Heriot-Watt University

phil.barker@hw.ac.uk@philbarker

Introduction

UKOER

http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/

http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer/

OER: Definition

Open educational resources can be defined as ‘teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.’

http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

OER: Definition

“open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone”

Capetown declaration on open education http://www.capetowndeclaration.org

OER Definition

Educational resource +

eTextBooks as Educational Resources

I hope this will be dealt with during the rest of the project

Issue include• multimedia animations and simulations• dynamic & adaptive content• direct linking and embedding • social connections• adopt-adapt-improve (remix and republish)

...nothing we haven’t spent 15+yrs talking about

eTextBooks as OERs

• Need to avoid assumptions that eTextBook will be paid-for.• Need to be able to express CC licences.• Need technology that permits what is allowed by the licence (e.g. format that is portable, editable, disaggregable)• Desirable that technology supports what is required by the licence (e.g. keeps attribution when copied / editted)

OER in eTextBooks

• Existing OERs tend to reflect what teachers use in class: MS Powepoint, Word / Adobe pdf; lecture capture and recordings; animations & interactive models

• Interest in HTML5 and EPUB

• Not so much emphasis on eLearning technical standards

Commercial eTextBook content and OER

PublishOER projecthttp://www.medev.ac.uk/ourwork/oer/publishoer/

What’s in it for publishers?• Market visibility (=> acknowledgement & tracking)• Not as OER (=> time limited licence, mixed licences)

Pearson Project Blue Skyhttp://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/pearson-bluesky

• OER and paid-for content in commercial “learning solution”

Licence and attribution

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.

To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

By Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>, JISC CETIS <http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk>