OpenEd:Week2-3-4

What do these overviews of the field have in common?
Though different in structure, perspectives and aims (see table 1), the three reports focus on the value of OER (Open Educational Resources) as a tool to guarantee “the right to education” for everybody.
One point that these overviews have in common is word “resources”, that refers not only to contents, as Emanuela Zibordi points out, but to many other items ranging from text books, streaming videos and audios, modules etc. up to full courses. One more similarity is the attempt to find an exhaustive definition of OER.

[1] Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (OECD)
p. 30 The definition of OER now most often used is: “open educational resources are digitalized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research”. To clarify further, OER is said to include:
- Learning content: Full courses, courseware, content modules, learning objects, collections and journals.
- Tools: Software to support the development, use, reuse and delivery of learning content, including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and online learning communities.
Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design principles of best practice and localize content.

[2] Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (OLCOS)
OLCOS has gathered expert opinions and suggestions on open digital educational content but does not attempt to provide its own fully-fledged definition of Open Educational Resources. Interesting that all the three reports are somehow connected with William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: the first just mentions it among the acknowledgement (“The work was supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation”) , while the other one explicitly refers to the Foundation.
Report [2] mentions the Foundation reporting its definition of OER: “At the heart of the movement toward Open Educational Resources is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and re-use knowledge. OER are the parts of that knowledge that comprise the fundamental components of education – content and tools for teaching, learning and research.”

[3] A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond)
OER are 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 or re-purposing by others.
This report gives an overview of OER movement, focusing on the achievements, remaining challenges, and enablers. It does not only describe the abstract concepts, but also gives an overview Hewlett funded projects.

What do they emphasize differently?
As Andreas observes, there is a sort of “progression”: “on open education resources the first, extended to open education practices the second, looking forward to a new learning culture the last one”.
Document [1] focus is on the necessity of open sharing of intellectual property, but more at an institutional level. It highlights "the risk of doing nothing in a rapidly changing environment" (p. 63) as a central motivator for many institutions to participate in open education initiatives. The title “Giving knowledge for free” emphasize – almost ironically – the paradox of giving something important like knowledge “for free”. In a world based on economical mechanism, the word free looks quite strange.
Document [2] is concerned with the outcomes of the Open Education movement - in other words - what are the major shifts that need to take place in the educational infrastructure to make it possible for people to use open educational resources, get credentials and end up with an education that has value for them in the end
Document [3] especially talks about the challenge in developing countries which have not been mentioned in the other two reports.

What are the aims of the authors of each report?
The aim of the authors of Report [1] is to describe “why this is happening, who is involved and what the most important implications are” (p. 9)
According to OLCOS Roadmap "open" culture is opposed to the "canned" content of the "industrial" school. The aim of the report is to demonstrate that OER can make a difference in teaching and learning.
The Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources Initiative (third report) seeks to use information technology to help equalize access to knowledge and educational opportunities across the world. The initiative targets educators, students, and self-learners worldwide.

Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports?
The second report is strongly constructivist, but I don’t think that this could be a ‘bias’. The approach of the first one is more ‘institutional’ (government forum), while the overview of third report is substantially – and voluntarily – limited to Hewlett Foundation’s perspective.

Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did?
The first one, because I thing that a systematic review of institutional efforts and a comparison among different countries could open the way to a general adoption of the model, rather than just celebrating good practices.

Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why?
One problem that particularly has struck me is that of sustainability, which could be assumed as a fil rouge among the different perspectives of the reports. As Karen points out “each report discussed these issues and concluded that they are ‘tricky’.”

Sustainability has different implications:
- for educators, appropriate mechanisms for reward and recognition must be determined;
- for learners, attention must be paid to the outcomes: ensuring that open education resources are useful, contributed to by learners and that the result of an "open education" is of value (so that open learners are not marginalized);
for institutions, sustained infrastructural support for grassroots projects - recognition as innovators.
Karen observes that “capitalism and open resources are not mutually exclusive” but I agree with Elisa that “…if a course is free of charge from the students, their final achievements are worse than when they have to pay for some fees. Only if a learner is highly motivated by a possible reward in terms of professional career or future financial gains will he be motivated even if he has nothing to pay for the course he wants to attend”