OER & Open Education: framing definitions Dr Daniel Villar-Onrubia // Dr Katherine wimpenny (Coventry university – Openmed project)
Openness is a rather polysemic term…
and so it is with the notion of opennes in education.
Multiple interpretations and meanings
For instance: "the 'open classroom' movement which originated in Leicestershire and was based on freedom of movement, the importance of 'play' and a novel analysis of the space and architecture of schools. In Britain the movement became known as 'informal education' based on 'learning by doing' in home-like settings or 'learning centers' where pupils were encouraged to be self-directed and creative in 'schools without walls"
Widening access to educational opportunities
- First European universities (Middle Ages)
- Printing press (15th-16th centuries)
- Coffee houses with libraries (17th)
- Self-education societies (18th)
- Miners’ libraries (19th century).
- University of London (est. 1836): any male student capable of taking its degrees – regardless of race or religion // 1878: first university in the UK where women could study // External System: degrees available to those who could not come to study in London
- 1918 Cordoba Reform & University of Buenos Aires (Argentina): an era of free (i.e. at no cost) access to education at university level.
- Rise of distance education universities: UK’s Open University (est. 1969), the University of South Africa, the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India.
“everyone has the right to education”
The Open Definition (Open Knowledge Foundation)
“Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose”
"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder."
Coined at an UNESCO forum in 2002:
“The open provision of educational resources, enabled by ICTs for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes” (UNESCO 2002, p.24)
10 years after...
“Teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”
Open Licences
"A Creative Commons licensor answers a few simple questions on the path to choosing a license — first, do I want to allow commercial use or not, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works or not? If a licensor decides to allow derivative works, she may also choose to require that anyone who uses the work — we call them licensees — to make that new work available under the same license terms."
- Attribution CC BY
- Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
- Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA
- Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
Open Educational Practices
"teaching techniques that draw upon open technologies and high-quality open educational resources (OER) in order to facilitate collaborative and flexible learning. They may involve students participating in online, peer production communities within activities intended to support learning or more broadly, any context where access to educational opportunity through freely available online content and services is the norm. Such activities may include (but are not limited to), the creation, use and repurposing of open educational resources and their adaptation to the contextual setting.”