Which models are appropriate for different contexts?

How do different models benefit different stakeholders? How is this articulated?

In a sense it could be argued that this strand adopted an institutional model that focused on release as a result of funding and programme mandates. In preparing their proposals projects articulated the anticipated benefits of Open release and to some extent these were likely to mirror the principles of the call to ensure funding. It can take a while for institutions to tease out the models that are most appropriate and these should in the longer term reflect the drivers that are important to the institution. The approaches should aim to satisfy the needs of several stakeholder groups with a view to achieving the various benefits that open release offers. Several projects felt that the focus on the 'supply side' might be necessary to achieve a critical mass of resources, but that it could adversely impact on understanding the reasons for opening resources in this way. Several identified improving quality of teaching and learning materials and enhancing the experience of students. Although not tasked to focus on use of OERs most projects did engage at a deep level with use, reuse and repurposing. See the Institutional Strand Pedagogy page.

OpenStaffs was interested in investigating three business models for OER release:

• self learn model where students had access to content and pay for assessment and accreditation
• reputation builder model focusing on building the reputation of the institution and staff
• Showcasing for recruitment model

Most institutions were interested in the models around reputation building and showcasing for recruitment. Both of these models need to take into account learners (use) and other academic staff (re-use and repurposing) as stakeholders which can have an impact on the types of resources that are released. The OpenSpires model for example focussed on celebrating excellence and sharing discrete materials (podcasts and videos) with the wider world - a showcasing model that was highly effective in attracting interest in the institution and recognition for contributors.

The internal implementation models adopted by Institutional Strand projects were often affected by the organisational structures that already existed within institutions and by approaches to implementing new technology related initiatives. In some cases the project team acted as the central service supporting OER release. Several projects realised the sustainability advantage of giving ownership to faculties and two actually managed to achieve this during the life of the project. Most projects adopted a 'hub and spoke' model with a central team supporting faculty and building competence within faculties and other central teams. Three projects adopted a more cenrtalised model which made use of existing repository teams or centres of experience such as the library or educational technology teams. Most projects developed frameworks and models to illustrate their institutional approach, and these were used a awareness raising mechanisms within the institutions.

Project outputs

BERLiN (University of Nottingham)

• BERLiN Conference – Nov 2009
• Presentation ay Online Educa 2009
• Presentation at OER 10
• BERLIN Project final report
• BERLiN Project at the University of Nottingham
• Module framework - used as a template
• Example of student-generated content as OERs - BURN Biosciences Undergraduate Research at Nottingham

OCEP (University of Coventry)

• minimap, workflow guide, employability resource audit, Policy document Briefing and training materials, guides, consent forms, agreements
• OCEP Project final report

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

• Open Exeter Project final report
• The Challenge of OER to Academic Practice OER10, Cambridge, 22-24 March, 20

Openspires (University of Oxford)

• briefing document ‘OER basics’
• Presentations from the OpenSpires Project
• Open Spires Project final report content workflow in Final report
• Series of presentations to staff
• Teaching presentation 1 - OpenSpires Project
• Teaching presentation 2 - Copyright Introduction
• Teaching presentation 3 - Creative Commons Introduction (1/2)
• Teaching presentation 4 - Finding OER
• Case studies

OpenStaffs (Staffordshire University)

• OPENSTAFFS Project final report
• guide v1 for all University Staffordshire University October 2009
• guide v2 for Library staff supporting contributors February 2010 (under development)

OTTER (University of Leicester)

• OER symposium (end of project)
• Learning Futures Festival
• Poscasting in Assessment: New technology in Higher Education Research (PANTHER) Workshop
• Presentations from the OTTER Project
• OTTER Project final report
• CORRE framework for transforming teaching materials into OERs and CORRE workflow model

Unicycle Project (Leeds Metropolitan University)

• Guidelines for evaluating value of materials for use in the OER Project
• Discussions online and at programme events
• [http://www.box.net/shared/aqlnvo8r3c | Strategy document]]
• Unicycle Final Report

Excerts from project documentation

BERLiN Project (University of Nottingham)

• 'The great thing about U-Now is that it allows us to interact with different groups internationally in a number of different ways… prospective students can use U-Now to see what teaching and learning is like at the University of Nottingham; partner universities in other countries can use the materials on U-Now to get a sense of what we do and also if they find them useful, to use them in their own teaching. In that sense, U-Now is very consistent with what we say our internationalisation strategy is - knowledge without borders.' Professor Chris Ennew, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Internationalisation
• In an online OER staff survey (March 2010), respondents listed Powerpoint slides (66%), reading lists (53%) and lecture notes (49%) as the three main types of resources they would publish openly, with Powerpoint slides (59%), lecture notes (46%), images (46%) and reading lists (43%) as the main types of resources they wanted to use openly.
• Enhancing University reputation (73%), sharing best practice (72%), and supporting students without formal access to HE (66%) were the top three reasons cited for publishing OER; whilst respondents cited enhancing users‘ knowledge of a subject (51%), reducing development costs/time (47%) and sharing best practice (42%) as the three main benefits of using OER.
• it is a concern for OER development and release generally that there are relatively few ways of rewarding excellence in teaching when contrasted with the numerous rewards available to excellent researchers.
• Virtually all of the material we were offered came from teaching staff; of this, much was introductory. The Senior Tutor of the School of Biosciences brought to our attention that school‘s practice of publishing the best undergraduate projects from each year. He was familiar with matters such as copyright and consent and allowed us to use these projects as BERLiN material. The inclusion of final year student content is an encouraging and exciting development, providing powerful and rewarding promotional opportunities for students and the institution alike.

OCEP Project (University of Coventry)

• make one store one distribute many – policy difficult to maintain using progressive release VLE – closed repository – open repository
• Remember that content can go out of date. The back catalogue needs active management (and will form the majority of resources in time) at the same time as we are trying to encourage new deposit.
• Clear guidance and information on what a resource is, how it has been successfully used and links to supplementary information (if available) may be more effective than attempts to comply with standards which are best limited.
• OCEP has enabled us to undertake a great deal of work developing documents and guidelines for consent, copyright, accessibility, open formats etc. These are a valuable resource and will help develop a sustainable flow of deposits.
• Where copyright material is incorporated in resources it is important to understand the pedagogic purpose of the material. In some cases non-copyright content can be used to the same pedagogic effect. In other cases this may not be possible, however linking to it (sometimes avoiding deep-linking) may be possible. Most staff are unaware of these distinctions.
• Open models are becoming prevalent in other arenas, for example open source software, open research and open data. The OER movement needs to be seen in this broader context to help develop a culture of “openness”.
• Institutions need to be persuaded of the long-term benefits of OERs in terms of sustainable, agile and cost-effective course development models rather than focusing on short-term costs. This is equally the case for individuals who may see OERs as yet another way of doing more work.
• (prior to project) some individuals were already making resources open, often in a very haphazard way, but not within a university culture where “openness” was seen as valuable. This situation has the potential to damage all parties. Individuals may be taking risks which they are not aware of, the university does not recognise the contribution being made by resource originators and the resources may not be discoverable or re-usable in any systematic way

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

• move from centralised to decentralised model through curriculum design QA processes
• Many staff involved in the initial funding application freely admitted that they knew little about OER at that time. Those involved in the set up of the OER project tended to be educators who believe in “better to share” policies:
• 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.
• It was felt that OER has a significant part to play in co-created activity, getting away from the model of the University as producers and students as consumers towards students being co-producers.
• It was suggested by several staff that the University would need to offer career rewards for staff to participate with a path forward which “supports scholarly activity as well as research”.
• However, the immediate over-riding answer to the question of the future of OER at Exeter always came down to time and whether or not the University really valued teaching: “Totally unrealistic at a research led University”.
• 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”.
• Many staff highlighted the marketing aspect of OER during interviews. It was generally felt that OER would be good for kudos and as PR but that there was potential for the marketing aspect to take over and distract from providing valuable educational resources. Often these staff supported the idea of “quality not quantity” for resources to showcase the University as “flagship work”, for example, “podcast great lectures”. It was felt that “lesser quality” work would reflect very badly on the University.
• Most staff interviewed believed that OER could assist with the future development of the University of Exeter, as long as it fits into the strategic aims, with reasons such as: “more international students”, “more joined up with the wider academic community”, “enhancing an international reputation” and “a missed opportunity if we do not use it to fly the Exeter flag”. However, it was felt that it would only be of use if: “the academics are willing to use it and share ideas” and “the copyright laws allow greater freedom of use within an education context”. The majority of staff stated that it is “not fundamental to the future of the University”.

OpenSpires (University of Oxford)

• visiting speakers also providing content. Content across wide range of subject areas.
• Mixed model as appropriate – devolved model of content production wherever possible, which inhabits an existing content production workflow (established for iTunesU) and adapt it to make OER release a low-effort option.
• Adapting an existing podcasting model helped to embed the OER process within regular activities. Used existing podcast support service
• “The project aimed to embed the release of OER as part of regular podcasting activities, by raising awareness of the open content movement (increasing ‘open content literacy’), standardising institutional processes (e.g. minimising and simplifying legal paperwork), providing technical and legal support when required and also training staff within departments to become self-sufficient in podcasting activities”

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

• model developed for granular OER release.
• visiting speakers also providing content. Content across wide range of subject areas.
• Mixed model as appropriate – devolved model of content production wherever possible, which inhabits an existing content production workflow (established for iTunesU) and adapt it to make OER release a low-effort option.
• Adapting an existing podcasting model helped to embed the OER process within regular activities. Used existing podcast support service
• “The project aimed to embed the release of OER as part of regular podcasting activities, by raising awareness of the open content movement (increasing ‘open content literacy’), standardising institutional processes (e.g. minimising and simplifying legal paperwork), providing technical and legal support when required and also training staff within departments to become self-sufficient in podcasting activities”

Which models are sustainable? What affects sustainability?

Sustainable OER Release has been a key focus of the programme and institutional strand projects have put considerable effort into ensuring that there will be long term impact as a result of project funding. Final reports addressed sustainability issues and provide a dialogue and describe choices made. All strand projects emphasised and evidenced the need to get 'buy-in' and support from key senior management figures and in making sure OER release (and use) was included in policy and strategy documents. Several focussed effort into writing OER into existing strategies and felt that this supported sustainability by integrating an OER mindset throughout the institution. Others developed new specific OER strategies.

Most projects sought active involvement from academics to establish long term change in practice and opportunities to cascade knowledge and skills though faculties. Several highlighted the need to make sure that OER thinking was incorporated into curriculum design practice. Most were focused on making learning materials open as a normal part of academic teaching and research practice. To support this all projects put significant effort into raising awareness, training and supporting staff and producing guidance for tricky aspects around IPR, workflow and metadata. Recognition and reward was identified as a key issue in encouraging staff to contribute in the shorter and longer term and efforts to incorporate recognition into performance review mechanisms and also into professional accredited training.

BERLiN (University of Nottingham)

• explore areas such as how teaching and learning communities can influence the sustainability of OER within their institutions through successful use of OER as a marketing tool, the routine use and re-use of OER in module and curriculum design tasks and how institutions benefit from the consideration of end user feedback.

OCEP (University of Coventry)

• economic, effective and sustainable model for developing and managing open content using established teams
• Introduced competition to encourage generation of new oers.
• Celebrate excellence through existing mechanisms and recognised in performance reviews
• need to decouple management, storage, archiving, discoverability, delivery & publishing

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

• incorporated into HE Academy accredited programme
• reward & recognition, defining & evaluating quality, managing risk (IPR) all impact on sustainability

Openspires (University of Oxford)

• sustainable model for open audio and video content through education and training of staff in departments re podcasting, legal issues. To encourage informed choices about decisions such as platform, licensing.
• Mixed model as appropriate – devolved model of content production wherever possible, which inhabits an existing content production workflow (established for iTunesU) and adapt it to make OER release a low-effort option.
• Adapting an existing podcasting model helped to embed the OER process within regular activities. Used existing podcast support service aligned with the Oxford University Computing Services learning technology strategy in ensuring that open content is available to learners to consume and adapt as they choose.
• Colleges and departments who have created content for OpenSpires also use this content on their own websites to disseminate their research and promote the learning and teaching they offer.

OpenSTAFFS

• Throughout the project Faculty support has been bolstered through the support of the Executive Pro Vice Chancellor via the Deans Committee and Faculty Management Teams.

OpenSTAFFS (Staffordshire University) outputs

• process models for complete OER release cycle
• incorporated into staff training
• staff availability and time (working on the project has made OpenStaffs aware of how time consuming it is to prepare material for open access release)
• has built on the knowledge and roles of existing staff (rather than employ a dedicated project team for the duration of the project)

OTTER (University of Leicester)

• OTTER is enjoying interest and support in UoL through its achievements and a high level of commitment from senior managers. Sustainability plans are in place through the institutional
• OER repository and policy discussions commencing, linked to the recent signing of a contract with iTunes U and the intention for Beyond Distance to commence its own Masters programme based around OER resources from October 2010.

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)

• Sustainability requires support of institutional senior managers and embedding into current practices and processes.
• This aspect of the Unicycle model was to provide guidance and support for OER co-ordinators within Faculties. It made available key documents and materials to assist Faculties with staff development, IPR awareness and OER use and submission through the institutional repository.
• It guided and informed institutional policy and from that Faculty policy on OER.
• As already identified throughout this report we have sought to embed all aspects of OER creation, submission, retrieval and use as part of the fabric of the institution. Alongside this we encouraged ownership of OER development and use from within the Faculties and areas at a “grass roots” level.
• We have found this model to be cost effective and clearly demonstrates increased levels of engagement across the institution.
• Below are a list of key recommendations for “embedding” OER within the institution and thus developing a sustainable approach to OER.
• Gain support from senior institutional mangers (ideally with an assessment, learning & teaching remit). This helps to communicate the value and importance of OER from an institutional perspective.
• Embed OER as institutional practice in the development of new courses and modules
• Seek to agree OER targets for staff/areas/subject groups.
• Realise OER outputs with support from institutional PDR process (encouraging staff to take ownership of OER release but giving them reward for doing so).
• Implement long term staff development programme to support OER (IPR/OER searches/OER submission etc)
• Implement OER as part of institutional ALT (assessment learning and teaching) strategy.
• Faculty/Subject areas to take ownership and quality control of OER development, thus negating the need for a potentially costly centralised unit.
• Utilise current institutional support mechanisms for OER (e.g. staff development programmes, events schedules, copyright services, repository and central services teams.)
• Identify specific areas of need for OER (e.g. colleges & delivery partners) – this can help provide focus for the content to be released and identify particular audiences.
• Strategy document
• Unicycle Final Report
• Academic Board discussion paper