Organisational and Institutional issues

Part of the Phase2 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 EDOR (EDOR final report), ASSAP, IPR4EE, CPD4HE CPD4HE final report, DELILA, Open for Business, ACTOR, Learning to Teach Inclusively, RLT for PA, ORIC, OPENSTEM

What issues arise for different types of institution in relation to readiness, adoption, embracing, embedding and sustainability?

Cross institutional opportunities 

• One of the benefits of being part of the Phase 1 OER pilot, aside from having an understanding of OER and its issues, was that the team knew the importance of linking to appropriate internal and external support and knowledge networks from the very start of the bidding process, ensuring strong links with other UoP OER bids (Learning from WOeRk and the OF project) throughout the life-cycle of the project. EDOR

Marketing and Competition

• OER development and marketing is still a significant part of the University’s strategy, but in a competitive environment this is felt to require a targeted and considered approach as opposed to a wholehearted espousal of the OER movement. OPENSTEM
• All contributing HEIs now have a clear intention to develop a long term strategy to inform and encourage staff to use and develop shared educational resources, which may include creating an ‘Open (HEI Name)’ brand. Open for Business 
  

Embedding and sustainability - culture change/organisational change

Embedding and sustainability - culture change/organisational change

• embedding into PGCert/diplomas, and into teaching practice (OPENSTEM)
• through University guidelines and process review (Learning to Teach Inclusively)
• through policy and revised academic frameworks (IPR4EE)
• through practice review (O4B)
• In order to ensure the sustainability of the OER movement, it has become increasingly clear to the project teams through Phase 1 and 2 at the University of Exeter that OER awareness must be embedded in UG/PG teaching (e.g. through “Change Agents” projects or suitable academic assignments) and staff training.  Indeed, embedding OER as part of scholarly endeavour was a key recommendation of the Phase 1 project and a central plank of the SCORE fellowship of our Critical Friend. OPENSTEM 
• As this has been the University’s first foray into the production of high-quality OERs, the project’s processes and issues have provided evidence for internal changes need to both produce and exploit OERs for learning. The production process will serve as the basis for the creation of University guidelines to inform other such OER creation in the institution, serving to raise awareness of the use of e.g., use of video, interactivity, peer-review, subtitles etc. Alongside this the technical skills developed in use of Xerte, Jorum etc. have highlighted a gap in institutional expertise, which is being addressed. Learning to Teach Inclusively
• The OER project has also served to highlight an institutional gap in our exploitation of the now very rich and growing corpus of OERS in all disciplines. From this, over the coming year, the University will develop processes, involving staff from a variety of service departments, which will facilitate the discovery, evaluation, and use of OERS across our curricula. Learning to Teach Inclusively 
• The project provided timely stimulus to consideration of an institutional IPR policy for University College Falmouth. This has raised awareness of IPR within the particular contexts and of creative practices, research and teaching. A draft institutional IPR policy has been written and is awaiting ratification by the UCF management board. IPR4EE
• The introduction of revised academic frameworks for undergraduate and postgraduate courses, with a move from linear units to a modular scheme, has also raised the profile of open education to provide an opportunity to develop a ‘window’ into the courses offered at UCF. IPR4EE 
•  All HEIs should identify how OERs are currently being used within their institution as well as the extent to which OERs they have made available are re-used or re-purposed Open for Business 
• “The networking and sharing of effective practice has ensured that we have learned from existing OER projects and the expertise of those who have prior experience.  This project proved to be a relatively low risk way of networking a body of like-minded enthusiasts who were happy to share ideas, skills, and knowledge. The result is a combination of new skills, shared experiences, and up dated knowledge across all areas of Aston University practice, on which we intend to build upon and disseminate during 2012, and beyond.” (Aston) Open for Business

Staff

• recognition and reward (IPR4EE

• support and guidance (O4B)
• Impact on teaching practice  and teacher training - (ORIC 

•  

• An important element of the proposed policy is recognition and reward that acknowledges the  cultural shift required and with a focus on outcomes rather than income for the next few years IPR4EE

• Staff who have not previously made use of them will need considerable support, especially in repurposing. Open for Business 
• “There is an absolute need for support to be available to anyone starting or investigating the possibility of engaging in OER activities. This external support should direct participants to use internal colleagues as their primary source of support in relation to issues such as copyright, accessibility and e-learning issues. External support should then be used for general guidance and to impart best practice from previous projects. This approach would allow partners to establish working practices within their own institutions, adapting best practice to suit local needs, and would also increase the chances of OER activity continuing beyond the project funding, independent of external expertise.” (project depositer) Open for Business
• Impact - A new 20 credit PGCert module centred on inclusive curriculum design, running in conjunction with the ORIC project. ORIC
• Impact - Proposals to include and equality impact evaluation on all courses across the University of Bradford based on principles outlined by the ORIC project.
• Impact - A change in the University of Bradford’s course approval procedure to include questions around inclusive teaching practice as outlined in the ORIC project. 

Resources

• OERs may not save time and money, especially if these underpinning development costs are accounted for, but they may improve the quality of learning.  Open for Business 

Models 

• “This type of project also reinforces how a centralised university support department is pivotal in providing advice and guidance for technology enhanced learning solutions. We have demonstrated that, with close collaboration with academic staff, those technical aspects of enhancing learning are vital to both demonstrating innovative pilot projects, and providing scalable solutions for long term embedding.” (Aston) Open for Business

What new policies or strategies are required to support sustained release and use?

What existing policies and strategies require changing?

• “Although all of the ACTOR partners are based within academic institutions, one of the main lessons learned was to be sure to know exactly which institutional policies are in place in order to release openly licenced materials.  Staff needed to know whether their copyright belonged to them or their university.  NHS clinicians who teach our students present another dimension, we needed to know whether materials created by clinicians belonged to the clinician, the university or the NHS.” ACTOR
• “the project instantly impacted on the partners during site visits; many did not realise the implications of copying and pasting materials from the web into their resources.  Showing them ways to find openly licenced materials as well as tools to embed licences directly into their resources (e.g. Xpert ) impacted greatly on their practice.  Partners have since investigated their own institutional policies (where they existed) and developed guidelines for creation of learning materials.  ACTOR
• Our evidence for this change would be made available in university policy documentation, dissemination of information to relevant conferences and talking head videos available from www.medev.ac.uk/ourwork/oer/actor/.  Our stakeholders have realised that best practice in creation of learning materials is also about managing risk.  They realise the best way to safeguard themselves from copyright infringement is to develop appropriate policies, advertise the policy clearly, train everyone in how to implement it, and follow it.” ACTOR

How do institutions support staff to change practice/develop skills/knowledge?

Events and workshops around OERs as a concept

• Workshops, internally and externally, are a crucial way to share both the development approaches and the use in practice – it is important that other staff who may be one target for their use have the opportunity to engage with the resources in a safe environment.” Open for Business

Capacity building

• In our particular case the required areas of expertise included technical, OER expertise, subject nature and teaching/learning expertise.OPENSTEM 
• The institutional support that we have made use of has been: 
• Training in use of the institutional content management system
• Use of institutional networks, such as the UCL Teaching & Learning NetworkCPD4HE

Developing/supporting Communities of Practice

• Development of a significant community of practice focusing loosely around digital literacies and teacher education bringing together Educational Developers, Learning Technologists and Librarians. DELILA  
• “Working with a network of project partners who had various levels of experience with OER also helped to create a sense of community, and without judgement allowed sharing of both expertise and concerns during the meetings. Open for Business 
  

Creating a culture of openness

• Hosting your ‘own’ resources in a local open collection elevates the importance and potential impact of the repository to local academic staff. Depositing OERs should become a standard part of any CV along with conference presentations and published papers. Open for Business 
• Investigation into the creation of “Open Aston” - a future brand, in a similar vein to Oxford Brookes’ RADAR repository. This would form part of our strategic push for wider use of our learning object repository, creating OER, sharing learning resources, and the locating of OER, for our busy academic staff. (Aston) Open for Business

What are the best ways of working with teachers?

• Asking teachers for permission to use their materials (CPD4HE)
• Empowering, and supporting with guidance, teachers to negotiate rights clearance  - this was seen as a way of upskilling and likely to impact on future development of resources(CPD4HE)
• cross-team  collaboartion and support (O4B) 
• Although the institutional policy did not demand this, we asked colleagues’ permission to use materials they had created if they were not directly involved the project. The response was extremely positive. However, we realised that some teachers feel nervous about performance in the case of providing audio commentaries or about exposure arising from releasing teaching materials. The main audience is likely to be peers, so teachers see the release as submitting to peer review. We sought to empower individual teachers to negotiate rights clearance with third party contributors, rather than handing this over to the rights specialist in the team. The rights specialist met the teachers individually, provided a model request email and advised on problematic issues. The teacher-developers are also the ones who finally submit their own materials to Jorum. This means that they will have gone through the process and will therefore be able to release future resources in Jorum. It also avoids the release/uploading becoming a bottleneck at the end of the project. CPD4HE
• “I volunteered us for this adventure because it seemed to be something that we needed to start getting to grips with and also because we are doing some really innovative things here which other people would be interested in.  In retrospect I don’t know how I could have done this on my own but the team approach really made it work.  We had people involved from Aston Business School and from our central Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice (CLIPP).  Some of us had excellent technical skills, others (me for instance) are not so confident.  The team work has been tremendous and involving an enthusiastic MSc student was an inspirational idea.  The materials are accessible and well presented.  The IP issues have been complex but with lots of planning gaining permission and ensuring copy right permission made things run very smoothly at the end.  We now have a resource that we can build on in the future, and we will.  Thank you HEA BMAF.” Professor Helen E Higson OBE, Professor of Higher Education Learning and Management, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor Open for Business