This page is part of the Phase 2 OMAC strand synthesis

This section draws together what projects have said and is in mainly in their own words. These findings have been synthesised across into the main report findings pages. Coloured excerpts are from project final reports - bold emphasis is mine (LM) to highlight key points. Coloured excerpts are from project final reports or evaluation reports EDOR (EDOR final report), ASSAP, IPR4EE, CPD4HE CPD4HE final report , DELILA, Open for Business, ACTOR, Learning to Teach Inclusively, RLT for PA

What are the main motivations for, and barriers to, the release and use of OERs?

Projects identified similar issues to pilot phase projects with some benefits acting as strong motivators. IPR issues, cultural practice and traditions, trust, quality and, to a lesser extent technological, challenges still present significant barriers but, understandably within this strand, there has been a clear acknowledgement that staff development and recognition can have long term impact on practice. As with the release strand OERs as part of legacy have emerged as significant for spme projects.

Motivations

• “I have realised that while I am happy to share and for others to adapt, I don‟t want this to be for commercial gain (generally) and that I would like to know who is using any stuff that I have generated.” EDOR Project partner
• “Institutional Support for the creation and use of OER from the VC to Departmental Heads and colleagues. If this was encouraged, with time allocated for and praise attached to the creation and use of OER, this would help. Also, access to technical support in creating and using OER.” EDOR Project Partners
• Benefits of creating and using staff/CPD oer in HE in FE (EDOR)
• IT helps HE in FE staff get their work into the public domain – much of which is of high quality
• It empowers staff 
• It might help HE in FE staff think about publishing in the widest sense
• It encourages HE in FE staff to engage with a wider academic community
• It encourages innovation and adoption of new ideas and approaches
• It reduces travelling 
• It provides supports for and links between taught/face to face sessions
• It frees up time and potentially saves money in the longer term
• It enables engagement with a community of practice
• It enables the sharing of ideas and knowledge relating to standards and expectations
• One of the main lessons learnt was the potential of OERs to breathe fresh life into learning materials which already exist in other, less easily discoverable forms.  The Project has given us the opportunity to take materials that we have already developed and re-present them in more coherent and easily retrievable ways. With the closure of the English Subject Centre in July 2011, we see the availability of materials in The Pool, HumBox and JorumOpen as being a key element of our legacy, ensuring that they are available in a way that means they can be used and re-purposed widely. ASSAP
• It was clear from responses to the initial survey and from engagement with the UCF PGCHE that respondents considered online learning as an extension to class-based learning, but that considerations of OER were limited to what could inform their own teaching, rather than appreciation of how they might contribute to open education.“Sometimes I've found something on the web that has said it can be used in teaching.” (questionnaire respondent)  IPR4EE
• The benchmark questionnaire analysis indicated a mixed understanding of and engagement with OER. In this light of this, the course team designed into the structure of the three units of IPR4EE a progression from understanding online delivery to the creation of open educational resources. In this way knowledge of IPR could be applied to a ‘real-time’ project, which in itself may contribute to the growing resource base on Jorum. Not only does the course foreground awareness of IPR in developing curriculum resources, but it actively engages participants in the OER community.   IPR4EE
• “low level of understanding of OER as a term in itself, though many participants engage in the search and reuse of web-based resources in the preparation of teaching materials. OER as a term was seen to be another ‘eduspeak’ acronym. There was discussion amongst PGCHE participants on alternative more meaningful language to describe the sharing and reuse of educational materials. Coming from the creative sector, OpenPractice was favoured as encapsulating the notion of applied reworking of found resources. Participants in the PGCHE generally felt that some discussion of OER was overtly technical in jargon and this in itself became exclusive.” IPR4EE
• “We have found out that there is demand for resources like ours and enthusiasm for OER in the academic development community. Resources on e-learning and digital literacies seemed particularly in demand, an endorsement for the OMAC Strand identification of this as a priority area. Feedback from users has shown that they also find our Values resources interesting. We have found that audio guidance material alongside text resources is welcomed because it enables users to read and listen simultaneously.” CPD4HE
• DELILA has gathered together worked examples of integrating IL and DL into their local PGCerts. The variation of the structure of PGCerts was noted, whilst appreciating the common themes necessary for PGCerts. It would be useful to have a larger collection bank of examples from all the OMAC projects in one place, to continue and further develop the integration of materials in PGCerts. DELILA

• Developing OERs is significantly different to usual research outputs linked to journal articles which are heavily policed through peer review. OERs are at an early stage and the role they play in professional development is currently under- appreciated.  “As a community, we need to make more of being involved in the development and use of these resources as I have no doubt that they do, and will continue to play an important role in the future advancement of knowledge. I have gained significantly from working in this area and would strongly encourage others to participate too!” (Liverpool) O4B

• There is a real interest from staff in this approach to delivering and accessing CPD. In the field of educational development, where there is a considerable amount of ‘reinvention of the wheel’, the OER model is an excellent approach to combat this and provide easily adapted resources which can then be tailored for local delivery. Staff (in a similar way to students) need guidance on self-managed learning. The issues surrounding the development of OERs is a large and growing field, with significant potential, which requires greater understanding and engagement from academic colleagues. Discipline-specific tailoring of generic resources need only be relatively light touch with the emphasis on engaging colleagues. (Dundee) O4B

Barriers to release and use

These continue to focus around trust, provenance and ownership and perceptions around knowledge and understanding of IPR issues

• “Pilot investigations into the experience of different EDOR stakeholder communities, including academics new to teaching and those delivering CPD to HE in FE staff, show that there is interest in the OER agenda, but that there are issues surrounding support and trust that prevent deeper engagement.”
• We found that there was a lack of digital literacy around the areas of IPR and copyright, and also around the actual „how to‟ nature of using and developing resources for open access- for example, how to know if a resource you wish to use is truly open, and how to correctly attribute an image.

“I think the copyright issues still continued to scare them, but at least they could see easy starting points in terms of searching for photos by licence. One participant said she would go back to Flickr and reclassify her photos to allow reuse under a CC licence, as she hadn't known about it before.” HEA GEES SC Early Career Lecturers‟ Workshop Facilitator

• “I am prepared to put together materials and the discussion/analysis around presentation/copyright, etc. is very necessary I am sure but, seems very time consuming and distracting in terms of what I would consider most important which is the production of the materials themselves. It is helpful to work with someone who is adept at engaging with these kinds of tasks.” EDOR Project partner
• Barriers to creating and using staff/CPD OER in HE in FE?

o There is often a lack of confidence with the technology

o There may be a lack of confidence in the quality of staff‟s own work

o There may be worry over copyright and what it might mean for use and dissemination

o There is often an assumption that OER are effective teaching materials in a stand-alone sense. This may not be the case, and accompanying metadata needs to clarify original and potential purposes

o The use of OERs may add to a potential disconnect with face-to-face facilitation that is already occurring in the sector

o There is an administrative bureaucracy that seems to surround the dissemination of OER

o It can be seen as difficult to find what you need on Jorum and other platforms

o Publicity and understanding of OER: staff are often unaware of the potential advantages

o Lack of institutional support: including lack of resource (staff time, money, technical support), lack of recognition and lack of encouragement to engage

• For longer term, sustainable impact, support for OER needs to move away from small pockets of funding around specific areas of resource development to a broader platform of work. The number of engaged academics and senior managers has not yet reached a critical mass to allow a shift in institutional culture.
• Habits that have been entrenched in academia around the use of content owned by third parties on closed VLE’s (e.g. Blackboard and Moodle) present barriers when re-formulating learning objects for public access.  Primarily the habit that must be overcome is one of “borrowing” and using third-party content without permission from the copyright owner, and often without any accreditation, for learning purposes on a VLE requiring login access.  When creating learning objects and resources, best practice is to produce such content with a view to its being publicly available, including adhering to the moral, ethical and legal requirements of copyright law. IPR4EE
• OER is quite new to staff in our institution and licensing issues have been under discussion throughout, particularly the question of whether or not to allow commercial use without prior consultation. Our experience may illustrate the time needed to acclimatise to an OER environment. This has also been a topic for debate at our dissemination events and we have encountered some conflicting views about what constitutes a commercial organisation. We also had discussions with the programme managers at the Academy, attended the IPR workshop and other programme events on licensing. In the end, our resources have been released with a mix of CC BY NC SA and CC BY SA licenses. CPD4HE
• Some concerns were expressed about whether developing OERs in professional development might undermine potential resource-generation from CPD courses. Caution in relation to commercial exploitation was also encountered, together with conflicting opinions on what actually constituted commercial use. CPD4HE
  
•  IPR issues remain a barrier to the further development and sharing of OERs. Whilst LSE and Birmingham gained permission to deposit materials identified for DELILA into local repositories, (and Jorum), IPR for teaching resources remains with the universities.  At LSE an institutional policy concerning open content is under discussion; in general, however, at ground level there is still a relative lack of understanding and appreciation of the benefits of using and developing OERs. DELILA
•  IPR issues around the inclusion of 3^rd party materials in teaching resources remains an issue, and it proved difficult to get clarity from JISC Legal on the risks attached to using these materials and advice on how to deal with them. There needs to be a more joined-up approach, as currently each institution needs to seek permission for including screen-shots of common e-resources and software (such as Endnote), and web 2.0 apps (Google) etc – for inclusion in instructional DL / IL material when these are made into OERs. This is a strong deterrent against making materials into OERs, and it may be worth looking at this as an exclusion in JISC licences or as a separate project. DELILA
• The concept of sharing resources openly is well understood by a few in Higher Education but there is considerable reticence by many colleagues including some in senior positions. Projects like this one can provide the opportunity to address some of those concerns and challenge perceptions. Open for Business
• Alongside this is issue are typical questions, issues and concerns around creating OERS: “What’s in it for me?”, “Why should I give my knowledge capital away for free?” and “If I have to replace the third party content in my lecture, won’t that take an absolute age to do?” IPR4EE 

Barriers relating to time

• At the start of the project we had been worried about the amount of time needed to gather and write content; we rather overlooked the time needed to design the framework to put it into. ASSAP
• “There seems to be a great deal of administrative tasks to deal with and there seems to be a high level of exclusive language/terms etc. associated with [OER] usage.” EDOR Project partner

Barriers relating to quality

• In some disciplines, and in the mind of some lecturers and their students, to use and/or re-purpose OERs can be regarded as a deficiency in their academic knowledge and skills, almost ‘cheating’. “While I often unofficially borrow slides and tests from colleagues with good effect, when I attribute those resources to a colleague some students think I do not understand the subject, rather than offering them the benefit of others ideas to support their learning” (Personal communication). Open for Business

Barriers relating to institutional practice

• A strong message of can do. Although there was an exposition of potential barriers and issues – mostly  institutional (e.g. in terms of approval / contracts) and technological (e.g. to do with access provisions) – there was also a clear message these could be overcome. (Evaluation report) Open for Business
  

• Following consultation we chose to review how each partner institution functioned; look at the pros and cons of different models; and through networking and communication enable existing collaborations (and new) to review their institutional policies and practice in light of the OER programme. ACTOR

 What mechanisms support effective stakeholder engagement for the subject discipline/theme?

Workshops, advice and guidance

• These workshops utilised the experience of the project coordinator, the OF project team and the Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at Plymouth (also a member of the Web2Rights team) to work directly with EDOR team members, providing advice on preparation of resources for open release, including copyright, licensing, metadata and tagging, development of backpages, due diligence etc. “Personally I think it is really important to include [OER training] in new lecturers‟ workshops, for many reasons- finding resources to help you when you start, it‟s easier to make resources open access if you have that in mind when you develop them (referencing, choice of images etc.), greater awareness of copyright laws [would be particularly useful].” HEA GEES SC Early Career Lecturers‟ Workshop Facilitator EDOR
• The level of interest in our workshop and webinars suggests a climate in which academic developers want to consider open resources [evidence – attendance and requests for access to recordings and further information]. CPD4HE
• There is some evidence from our workshop that those who attended are likely to exchange learning materials in the future. [evidence – questionnaire responses] CPD4HE
  

OER engagement as CPD

• The majority of the EDOR Project team thought that engagement with OER (and the EDOR Project in particular) provided good professional development for any academic. In particular, it was considered useful in terms of own research publishing, not just for learning and teaching. It was also felt that it developed self-awareness around learning and teaching good practice in general (not just open access), such as accessibility issues and future engagement with distance learning (what makes „good‟ distance learning resources?). EDOR
• “I am much more supportive of open licensed resources now, more likely to use and create them myself, as well as recommend them to colleagues…. and argue for their creation within my institution and discipline.”

Embedding practice

• There is still scope for more extensive sharing of OERs for Digital and Information Literacy. This will save time and effort on the development of material. In order for this to become more widespread the mechanisms for sharing material need to be embedded further into local practice – in particular the continued use of institutional repositories and Jorum. DELILA
• There also needs to be a continued cultural shift in recognising the value of developing and using OERs: so that the processes required can be put into place. This will include things such as checking for existing OERs before developing IL / DL materials, and creating new materials as OERs – e.g. adding CC licences, metadata, being mindful of IPR issues when including screen-shots etc, and considering the amount and the way in which institutional material is included. DELILA

How has OER release affected academic practice of staff running HEA accredited courses or schemes of professional development that meet the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education (UK PSF)?

Impacts on the practice of the OMAC strand practitioners has been much the same as for other strands. Engagement with OER release generally has fostered reflection on existing teaching practice, increased technical skills, improved understanding of IPR and legal aspects, improved use and application of licenses and changes in content production processes. The specific focus areas of projects, such as inclusive practice, CPD and digital literacies has further enhanced both engagement and practice change. Student feedback and interaction has been of particular benefit in this strand.

Academic practice

• I found it really useful to have the opportunity to speak frankly with some of my students and to learn directly from them which of the techniques I use they find the most useful.  I enjoyed reflecting upon what I do and I like the fact that following reflection I am always finding ways to tweak and improve my practice and keep it fresh for student...It was good to learn from the note taker and interpreter…I’m looking forward to seeing the extracts of other teachers in action. (Tracy McCoy, Lecturer). Learning to Teach Inclusively
• I learned from watching the video of myself that I tend not to finish off all my sentences, as if I assume they know what I was going to say, so I move on to the next point.  After nearly 30 years of teaching I never realised that I did this!... (Dave Wilkinson, Lecturer). Learning to Teach Inclusively
• They are not only authentic, they trigger discussion.  By scrutinising others’ practice, warts and all, we can reflect on our own approaches and identify areas for improvement.  Until now, there has not been a body of authentic video resources such as these that are widely available for use as triggers to do this. Learning to Teach Inclusively
• Teachers who developed their own materials for release as OERs are more aware than previously of IPR and licensing issues and more likely in future to consider open release at the design stage. [evidence – self report]. CPD4HE
• Teachers who developed their own materials for release as OERs worked with the team member responsible for technical issues throughout the process, to a far greater extent than happens in day-to-day working. [evidence – observation and self-report] CPD4HE 
• Teachers who developed their own materials for release as OERs have strengthened ties with both technical and rights/licensing specialists which are likely to inform future working practices. [evidence – self-report] CPD4HE

• it has been an enormously useful exercise to bring together selected material that specifically links to the areas considered in the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education. This will enable and encourage staff members in our small & specialist college to apply for HE Accreditation via the individual path or by taking our accredited programme.  RLT for PA

Technical teams

• the technical team have acquired and developed a whole range of knowledge, skills and capabilities.  These include: 
• Sharing and distributing educational resources, ways and places to share - OpenJorum, LabSpace, iTunes U-Learn, YouTube Edu.,etc. 
• Developing ways of making things more accessible and easy to use and re-use for everyone. 
• Mixing different types of materials (text, sounds, video, etc.) into one 'package' 
• IPR - how to observe and respect them 
• Exploring the capabilities of Xerte for creating interactive content with Flash and simple ActionScript programming. 
• Development of web content to enable user to communicate using forums, blogs and journals. Learning to Teach Inclusively

Researchers and academic developers

• A key outcome from this project has been the opportunity to work closely with and learn from university teachers in a range of subjects about the ways in which they academically engage their diverse students. Pre and post observation meetings with teachers, students and in some cases student support staff, provided the opportunity to think about inclusive practice within different contexts and from different perspectives.  Discussions with staff not only led to changes in their practice, they also challenged our thinking, as researchers and academic developers, around inclusive practice.  Learning to Teach Inclusively

Community of Practice

• The potential value to the promotion and implementation of the UKPSF is considerable and there is therefore a need to continue the community of practice long term to promote this process. MEDEV will explore with the HEA how this might be achieved.    ACTOR