There are two aspects to the cultural issues which affected Institutional Strand Projects. The first includes the efforts taken to describe and understand existing institutional cultural norms around developing learning and teaching materials and the sharing, or not, of these. The second follows on from this in that it relates to how projects have endeavoured to change these entrenched cultures to facilitate the release of OERs. The pilot programme was fundamentally about stimulating significant transformational change in the way that the UK Further and Higher education communities develop and share learning materials. Any individual working within an institutional context is also likely to be influenced by cultural aspects of their particular subject-discipline and proffesional communinty.
Barriers
Quite often when we talk about cultural aspects of sharing we inevitably start talking about barriers, either real or perceived. It is useful to note that although sharing can be one of the benefits of open release it is often not the main driver for releasing open content. (See Institutional Strand benefits. Whilst sharing is a significant factor in some of the more informal and community approaches to opening and using/re-using content, it is not always helpful to focus on the notion of sharing, which implies an intent on the parts of two, or more, individuals, communities or institutions. Perhaps one of the reasons for a continuing focus on barriers to sharing is that sharing may not be an overriding motivation for either individuals or institutions.
Institutional Strand Projects did find that their teaching staff had used content created by other people (often when they were trying to clear rights), but this did not tend to be legitimate use of content that had been made available in a 'sharing' sense. Early surveys of staff revealed a very low use of legitimate OERs, often as a result of lack of awareness about OERs, perceprions that they would not be relevant or that it would take too much time and also uncertainty about how to use them. Towards the end of the programme projects were reporting increased openness of staff to utilise legitimate content produced by others. Staff development activities were one signinficant method used to allay fears and change preceptions around barriers to both using and releasing content.
The barriers to releasing content were particularly challenging as they included fears around misuse or misrepresentation of content which was attributed to individuals or an instituion. It is not easy to allay those fears, and to some extent this lack of control over how content might be used needs to be accepted and weighed against all the potential benefits. Other barriers to release related to issues of quality (see Institutional Strand Quality Issues) - both in relation to staff being unsure about how the pedagogic quality of their own materials would be perceived, to actual physical quality of materials, such as recording, spelling errors, etc. Time to release existing OERs was identified as a major barrier for busy teaching staff and for also central service teams as materials needed reformatting or packaging, rights clearance, applying metadata/resource description, deposit and enabling discoverabilty. Some projects argued that using OERs offered potential for saving time - which illustrates how overcoming barriers often presented benefits. This is illustrated in more detail in the Barriers And Enablers table.
Other barriers to releasing content included:
- challenges to working practices
- IPR and ownership issues
- lack of technical skills
- costs
Changing practice
Institutional strand projects worked hard to initiate the long term process of institutional transformation through a range of mechanisms and there was clear evidence of change at institutional levels. Levels of cross-project (and cross-strand) communication and collaboration, and the resulting cross-institutional dialogue, was very usnusual. This could have been, in part, due to the types of programme support (well used strand and programme mailing lists and monthly support events in Elluminate) but may also have been because all projects in the strand had common goals. This level of sharing experience, solutions and even outputs (such as the joint staff OER guide offered opportunites for benchmarking against other institutions.
Most projects opted to integrate 'open thinking' into existing strategies and policies and adopted a policy of 'normalising' open practice. Projects are in the early stages of this process so it will be interesting to see how far they are able to achieve this.
In relation to changing the cutlures of inviduals projects adopted a range of apporaches including:
- utilising academic champions
- articulating the benefits of OER release and use
- capacity buidling through staff developmen
- [+reward and recognition through staff development and perfornamce review]
- peer encouragement through exemplars of good practice
- developing sustainable Communities of Practice
- utilising subject community spaces
- institutional mandates
Have staff increased sharing their own work as OERs?
Some projects have evidence of increased release and increased use of OERs and now have some excellent examples of content to encourage others in the institution.
Excerpts from project documentation
BERLIN (University of Nottingham)
OpenExeter (University of Exeter)
- Project staff thoughts
- 'Philosophically its time has come although strong opinions exist which make it difficult for people to give away material for free'.
- 'At first I thought ‘why publish material and information freely’, but people do not teach themselves just because information is available as they need the tools on how to use it. It could give us a competitive advantage as nothing will stop it happening eventually.'
- 'Generic awareness of a much more open move towards publishing or educational environment with sharing and collaboration ….it’s the direction we’ve been going in for a while…sharing specialist materials so that there is partnership and collaboration'.
- Staff from many sectors of the University questioned the value of the materials that are 'just being given away' and 'I just don’t see how OER contributes to goals of published research'.
- 'It might be an advantage to be a contributor to an OER project, as a showcase of my work for example, but all I'm really interested in as a contributor is making my resources more freely available to other educators to use as they see fit. I think there is some value in my resources that I'm happy to see others take advantage of if they wish.'
- Many staff interviewed said that they focus on producing materials for their modules and seminars and would struggle to find the time to then adapt material for OER. Time was the main reason for staff saying they would have difficulties producing OER and it was mentioned by all staff who could possibly be involved in the process. It was felt that lecturing staff generally had little motivation to produce OER material and were currently struggling to fulfil teaching pressures. Some specifically said that they would not produce OER unless forced to in their contract, mainly due to time:
- 'No I do not produce OER and I am not going to. Apart from time issues I would be concerned about quality. I would not want my name linked to something that has not been quality approved…peer reviewed. There is a lot of tailoring of material needed for OER and I do not have time.'
- 'I do not have the time to produce OER and it would not be viewed as a valuable use of my time by the University'
- 'It would take you away from things you should be doing'.
- 'Staff do not need extra work.'
- Another member of staff said that the thought of producing OER changed from being 'something not to worry about to suddenly questioning how other people would interpret things. Students who see a whole course get to know you and see all your comments, such as comments on all government parties but with a selection of resources it can suddenly show a different view. I had not anticipated personal style problems.'
OCEP (University of Coventry)
- We need to get past the “not invented here” syndrome. Paradoxically, OCEP and the other institutional OER projects may have reinforced this tendency by concentrating in resource generation rather than resource use.
- The current cultural norm at Coventry is for some material to be shared among specialised teaching groups. There are exceptions to this, notably where external funding has been used to generate resources or where individuals have wished to publicise their work. In these cases CUTV and iTunesU have been the favoured channels for distribution. Other colleagues have been active participants in subject centres and have shared resources through them.
- We are building in OER awareness into our Pg Certificate in Professional Practice, our development course for staff new to university teaching. Hopefully this will help to establish a new norm where active use of OERs is seen to be a first port of call when designing and developing new courses. We are also building generation of OERs into our DPR (Development and Performance Review) process to give them status and their originators recognition
OpenExeter (University of Exeter)
- Time barriers for already busy staff
- Priorities for staff
- Confidentiality/Copyright
- reduce the value of resources
- create possible suing situations
- Staff concerns
- Fears of lack of support from the University
- Fears of criticism of work and no control over evaluation
- Loss of ownership of work
- Guilt at using off the peg resources
- Worries on quality of resources
- No obvious personal benefit
- Academic inertia
- Resources are already available to students within the University on WebCT
- review report (baseline)
- The Challenge of OER to Academic Practice Abstract and Presentation at OER10 Conference March 2010
- Open Exeter Project Final evaluation report
Openspires (University of Oxford)
OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)
- Themes appeared to emerge in six broad areas, promotion, quality control, copyright, purpose of learning objects (LOs), technical issues and implications for working practices.
- Discussions held at the early stage of the project revealed a very mixed picture. This ranged from reluctance to contribute resources to the project, those who were willing to contribute resources but would only involve themselves if no or minimal effort was required (workload was often cited as the reason for this attitude). To finally those who were both willing and keen to contribute and work with the OpenStaffs team.
- By end of project it was clear that the majority of staff viewed OER as an activity offering positive benefit. Concerns that staff raised were more about practical issues around the work load associated with OER and the need for processes which facilitated the creation and publication of resources rather than acting as bottlenecks.
OTTER (University of Leicester)
- Lack of an established culture of openness in terms of teaching materials within the university made it difficult to spread awareness of the OER initiative on a large scale.
- partnership with SAIDE enables participation in African community ‘space’ around OERs
- Stakeholder views on Open Educational Resources: research report
Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)
What motivates and supports/ enables individuals to make their content open? (ties in with benefits
How do we achieve academic staff buy-in)
BERLiN (University of Nottingham)
- Staff workhops incorporated into PGCHE (see quote in sustainability section)
- At this point, it appears that staff at Nottingham most readily recognize the ability of OER to provide a marketing vehicle for the University.
- the three main topics discussed were the potential development costs for OER, (possible negative or neutral) impact on academic promotion and the potential for providing a University showcase. IPR was discussed as an issue in all three themes, but not as frequently as expected.
- Impact
- Commercial
- IPR
- University showcase
- Academic concerns
- Academic promotion
- Changing current practice
- Development costs
- Target audience
- Learning strategies
- Book sales
- QA
- Barriers for reuse
- Loss of control
- Under the theme of promotion, the potential to provide a University showcase was more positively viewed and seen as the major benefit in this theme. However, concerns were raised regarding the potential to provide a route for academic promotion within a research-led institution, with the majority of the comments either negative or neutral. Interestingly, the comments received appear to suggest that there was a largely neutral perception of the potential impact on book sales because of the different natures of the content provided.
- At an institutional level, HEI OER sites enable prospective students to explore a taught curriculum when selecting a course.
- promotional events and materials to encourage buy-in.
- Focus groups on making materials available. Include biographical info in metadata.
- strategic approach – Dir of T&L as lead contact (successful early strategy)
- VC, ProVC podcast
- Final report includes results of staff surveys
OCEP (University of Coventry)
- successful embedding of CURVE repository starting to show impact in encouraging Open mandates (highlights time period needed for such cultural change)
- gained feedback that staff are willing to be open if this ties in with other needs (eg course review, adapting content for new business partner,). Trigger for opening – other needs not project per se. tactic of project to help them do it.
- internal workshops and materials
- progressive release – staged openness
- OCEP Project final report
OpenExter (University of Exeter)
- incorporate resource creation into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education practice (LTHE – HEA accredited postgraduate programme designed to meet the needs of those new to teaching). This would make OER sustainable in the long term. The costs of producing OER would then just be a part of training with getting staff to think about copyright and IPR from the very beginning: “a basic educational need which has now been highlighted as necessary anyway”.
- Many staff felt that it would be good to incorporate resource creation into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education practice (LTHE – HEA accredited postgraduate programme designed to meet the needs of those new to teaching). This would make OER sustainable in the long term. The costs of producing OER would then just be a part of training with getting staff to think about copyright and IPR from the very beginning: “a basic educational need which has now been highlighted as necessary anyway”.
- Cloudworks workshop revealed how little people know about OERs
- internal blog to encourage frank open discussion with academic teams – fed into reports
- utilising change of VLE to moodle
- new operational synergies must be created – promoting cross departmental working and new collaborations
- The Challenge of OER to Academic Practice OER10, Cambridge, 22-24 March, 20
Openspires (University of Oxford)
- internal focus group/workshops and materials
- survey of academic content providers – motivational factors for sharing
OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)
- planned to mandate OER at senior level – existing staff contracts were deemed to include this so released a statement of intent
- robust policies and business plans needed to sustain open access
- “The OER policies have made a journey through the governance of the University – discussed at both the Information Strategy Group and sub groups reporting to Academic Board, they have required very little refinement and have served as important dissemination opportunities. There is wide representation on the committees from faculties and services; there are important influencers and keen early adopters, the curious, and those for whom this is the first opportunity to engage with OER. The discussion has enabled OER awareness to gain momentum, energy and direction, it has also generated demand for the development of an Open Archive Repository for research output and a presentation to the Research, Enterprise and Advanced Scholarship Committee takes place in late April 2010 to explore this further”. Dave Parkes, Associate Director, Learning Technology and Information Services
- OPENSTAFFS Project final report
OTTER (University of Leicester)
- Internal dissemination event and materials to encourage participation
- support materials for informal use of OERs within institution
- academics have responded positively to the promise of receiving their materials back in enhanced format
Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)
What are the institutional, legal, cultural barriers to open content?
BERLIN (University of Nottingham)
- The major barriers to publication were identified as copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR) issues.
- the need for increased awareness of how to find, use and attribute web based resources correctly within teaching and learning materials.
What are effective mechanisms of reward and recognition?
OCEP (University of Coventry)
- Contributors of materials saw advantages in making their resources open. Partially this was because employability resources may have taken on a “Cinderella” status compared with “serious” academic content. Participation in OCEP conferred recognition on their work. In addition the project team agreed to enhance the resources in the process of making them open.
- progressive release – staged openness
OpenExeter (University of Exeter)
- buy-in - credit rewards system
OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University)
- reward & recognition – project money allocated to departments
- recruitment opportunities – presenting a ‘shop window’ to potential students
Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)
What do individuals perceive the costs to be, and how much cost are they prepared to bear?
BERLiN (University of Nottingham)
- Encouragingly, the potential to change current practice was seen as significant for both cost effectiveness and promotional opportunities. However, academic concerns around publishing OER within both promotion and cost efficiencies themes remain relevant for many.
- Under the theme of cost efficiencies there was a mixed response to the development costs required to publish OER, with many questioning the support and effort required. Some comments recognized new tools (such as Xerte Online Toolkits) which supports the easy creation of online materials, whilst others discussed the benefits to them in repurposing high quality materials created by others;but in terms of teaching I'm sure we all teach things that we know less about and that might be the areas that we could gain from;
OpenExeter (University of Exeter)
- Costs of training staff – if incorporated into LTHE PG curriculum then becomes more sustainable
Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)
How does the opening of learning resources affect the roles of individuals?
Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)
- Some discussion towards the end of the project relating to how staff can focus more on the design of a learning experience for students rather than feeling compelled to create all of the content.
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