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6. Lessons Learned - Impact & Benefits

Evidence to support this page at: Impact on various stakeholders | Impact on staff | Impact on students

 

Impact on various stakeholders How have OER or the OER release process benefited your stakeholders? How have your stakeholders' appreciation of the benefits of OER changed through involvement in the project?  In what ways has your approach to OER release and re-use enhanced the profile and reputation of your institution? In what ways other than reputation, have OER release and re-use benefited your institution?   Impact on staff and students What is the impact on teaching staff of OER release and use? What has been the impact of OER development and release on the student experience?

 

 

Impact on various stakeholders

How have OER or the OER release process benefited your stakeholders?

It is challenging enough to get different stakeholder groups within an institution or department to use and/or release OER, but including stakeholders from outside the HE sector requires different approaches and new levels of understanding. This was a significant aspect for phase three projects as most worked with a wide range of partners from several diverse sectors. Many of the stakeholders involved were engaging with the notion of OER and OEP for the first time. Some might have previously engaged with open content or open access, or started to share content through the open web, but not necessarily with the notion of open in an educational context.

 

At the very least the efforts of project teams to increase awareness amongst their partners could be seen as a benefit, if we accept the premise that increased awareness is likely to increase release and use. Different stakeholders have highlighted barriers and enablers to open practice that reflect their own contexts, particularly when that challenges existing traditional culture and practices. Many projects illustrated mutual benefits for both their institutions (and their staff and students) and the partners.

It is evident that those partners have also seen a real benefit of working with us in scoping, developing and disseminating these resources within the wider sectors, and the long term impact this has on improving resources to support the curriculum in a very fast moving industry. Not least this involvement with some very influential partners in the sector will have a very important impact on the use of the OER, their sustainability and on-going relevance, as their endorsement is highly valued. (ReACTOR Final Report)

“We have been very impressed by your earlier OER output [the CORE-Materials site], and all of its technical functionalities, which you developed and refined over recent years. It gives us reassurance that you have produced something of high quality that would sit very well alongside our business and its vision for the future. We appreciate that there will be a transfer of know-how from yourselves to this organisation, and that will then allow us to play catch-up with others who are much further ahead of us, who at the moment would have a competitive edge in promoting their offerings to global clients and customers. Though, I now appreciate from our discussions that this working arrangement will not be one-way between your Project Team and staff from a number of our business units represented here today; marketing, staff training, technical services. It is pleasing to hear that you feel we also have something to offer you, in academia, from the range of case-study materials and research-oriented outputs we have put together. I was not aware that such things were becoming more sought after by students and lecturers, and as a business we will be more than glad to contribute to that.”[Project Partner C] (CORE-SET Final Report)

 

In projects with short timescales it can be difficult to do more that raise awareness, but providing tangible outputs, such as the OER themselves, guidance and support materials and champions who can continue to embed new approaches means that real benefits around changed practice can be anticipated. Projects have produced some interesting insights into the benefits for different groups, which builds on those identified in previous work such as the Good Intentions JISC Study in 2008 and the previous phases of UKOER.

 

Learners can benefit from: enhanced quality and flexibility of resources seeing/applying knowledge in a wider context than their course would otherwise allow, e.g. international dimension freedom of access (e.g. at work/home/on placement) and enhanced opportunities for learning support for learner-centred, self-directed, peer-to-peer and social/informal learning approaches skills development (e.g. numeracy) through release of generic OER that can be re-used and re-contextualised in different subject areas the opportunity to test out course materials before enrolling – and compare with other similar courses opportunities to be involved in OER initiatives either through contributing towards OER development, testing or evaluation, marketing activities, acting as an ambassador for OER with other learners or staff authentic or 'real-life' learning experiences through OER that link to employer or professional sector activities

The OER originator can benefit from: student/user feedback and open peer review reputational benefits, recognition benefits (efficiency and cultural) of collaborative approaches to teaching/learning opportunities to work across sectors, institutions and subject disciplines increased digital literacies (particularly around IPR) reaching a wider range of learners   Other staff/users can benefit from: availability of quality peer reviewed material to enhance their curriculum collaborative approaches to teaching/learning (CoPs) professional/peer-to-peer learning about the processes of OER release increased dialogue within their organisation or with other peers in the sector and globally preservation and availability of materials for endangered subjects open access to legacy materials

Educational Institutions can benefit from: recognition and enhanced reputation wider availability of their academic content and focus on the learning experience (linking to widening participation agenda) increased capacity to support remote students efficiencies in content production (particularly around generic content that can be used across subject areas) new partnerships/linkages with other institutions and organisations outside the education sector increased sharing of ideas and practice within the institution, including greater role for support services a buffer against the decline of specific subjects or topics (which may not be sustainable at institutional level but can be sustained across several institutions through shared resources) supporting sustainability of legacy materials increased understanding of IPR new relationships with students as they become collaborators in  OER production, release and use

Other sectors can benefit from: (eg, employers, public bodies, private bodies, 3rd sector) access to re-purposable content input to scoping, development and endorsement of OER in their focus area new potential partnerships with content providers and other sectors upskilling - increased understanding of IPR, curriculum development and learning technologies understanding of customer needs (for example, commercial publishers  finding out what kinds of OER and learning resources are wanted by teachers and/or learners)

 

In addition to the benefits of releasing and using OER educational institutions experienced quite a few benefits from involving external stakeholders in OER release and evaluation including:

• establishing partnerships that can be ongoing in relation to OER but also in other contexts
• exploring issues of trust, ownership, and rights with other agencies can improve institutional awareness of their own issues and challenges in this area
• new levels of understanding around how external bodies can augment and support curriculum development
• additional content to integrate into learning and teaching materials
• developing sustainable community approaches - either through the provision of supporting technology or networking opportunities
• new understanding around OER release and use through evaluation with external partners - passed on to the wider community through standard research mechanisms, events and publications
• providing opportunities for staff and students to engage with key agencies or groups that may enhance their own learning or future opportunities

 

How have your stakeholders' appreciation of the benefits of OER changed through involvement in the project? 

As already mentioned many stakeholders, both within educational institutions and from other sectors, started from a very elementary point in their OER and OEP journey. Some began with more concerns (see section on enablers and barriers) than anticipation of benefits, although all projects report enthusiasm for open release and OER once general awareness of benefits are discussed and people experience OER release themselves.

 

Working with external partners, and particularly the NHS have been very enthusiastic providers of OER, and completely understand the philosophy behind it. There have been no barriers in terms of gaining © approval to use the Creative Commons licence from any of our partners. (HALS OER Interim Report)

 

Raised awareness of the benefits of OER to partners who had previously not heard of the concept. The notion of open sharing has been discussed in detail and the efforts of the team to engage commercial partners has been significant and resulted in openness to colleges and educational institutions using some of their resources in learning and teaching materials. (ReACTOR Final report)

 

In what ways has your approach to OER release and re-use enhanced the profile and reputation of your institution?

There is little hard evidence of this but most institutions involved in the programme have an understanding of the reputational benefits of OER release, particularly in relation to showcasing and marketing. This has led to an increased focus on quality, branding and making sure that OER are easily discoverable. Many phase three projects were building on previous UKOER work which had already received recognition within the organisation and beyond.

With benefits such as efficiency savings, promotional opportunities and enhancement of the student experience, Open Nottingham is designed to foster increased use, reuse and publication of OER by staff and students across the university and beyond. It aims to improve the understanding of what impact OER has on teaching and learning and to measure the effectiveness of open resources as a promotional tool. (PARiS Final report)

A particularly strong example from this phase of the programme is the COMC project focusing on open courses at Coventry University who have received wide recognition and impact within the UK, and in the US (through links made during the project). It is emerging as an interesting alternative model of an open course to the massive open online courses (MOOC) and the institution is expanding this approach. The project has featured in a number of JISC dissemination activities including a radio show, a case study and the 2012 JISC Innovating eLearning Online Conference

There has been significant spin-out from this project – the Dept has established an Open/Innovative pedagogies working group with one COMC project member as one of its leaders, but it also  has three other staff new to the approach. Initiatives adopting the Open Approach are now being developed in the BA Media and Communications course  the MA CCM, BA Journalism and Media.(COMC Final Report)

 

In what ways other than reputation, have OER release and re-use benefited your institution?  

The table above includes a section on benefits for educational institutions which is informed by this phase of activity. Below are some comments from the projects themselves to illustrate these benefits.

It is hoped that our positive experiences of working with partners like sector skills councils and private companies may encourage other educational institutions to realise the potential benefits of taking this approach. This does require significant effort and it can be challenging to manage expectations to balance the needs of curriculum with the needs of industry partners. We feel that the benefits are worth the effort involved as it may help to align curriculum needs with those of employers. (ReACTOR Final report)

 

In this respect it has achieved success in acting as a lightening rod around which a number of diverse discussions have begun in areas including IPR policy and awareness, digital literacy, developing staff skills in instructional design, bridging the gap between managing learning resources (as OERs) and research data and outputs in HE, and exploring personal and disciplinary differences in educational philosophy. ALTO final report

 

All of the project coordinators reported an improved understanding of the of the issues facing part-time hourly paid tutors challenges and issues which part-time language tutors in HE face. They were all impressed with the enthusiasm and professionalism of the tutors and have reported their intention to find ways to continue working together and to find opportunities to engage tutors in the academic life of their institutions - beyond simply teaching. (external evaluator’s report) (FAVOR Final Report)

 

Work on Great Writers Inspire has had unforeseen benefits across the University:

• Ebooks within the OTA are disseminated to a wider audience. The project has also facilitated improved display and download options (e.g. a Kindle version was not previously available).
• Texts within the Bodleian Libraries Google Books collection are made available to a wider public audience (only otherwise available through an internal-facing library catalogue system).
• Several Bodleian Library talks were recorded and made available by the project, reinvigorating their podcasting activities and making these talks available for reuse globally. (Great Writers Final Report)

 

We anticipated that, once completed, the project would enable us to be more effective by offering considerably more to our students and the wider world with minimal extra resource required from the Weekly Classes Office. This certainly has been a major achievement of the project. Previous attempts to design sustainable online provision for the Weekly Classes programme had failed from being too costly to implement, whereas with the pump priming from the Sesame project we have developed tools and processes that will allow the Department to support this provision at a cost we are confident the programme can sustain. (SESAME Final Report)

 

The HALS project has continued to raise awareness of open education across De Montfort University and continued to spark discussion around open practices and the use of electronic learning resources. HALS has involved academic staff and students, as well as university services and senior management. (HALS OER Final Project Report)

 

The growing amount of openly licensed content helps provide an efficiency and value for money argument, which is important in the current economic climate.  ALTO final report

 

Impact on staff and students

What is the impact on teaching staff of OER release and use?

UKOER initiatives overall have probably had the most impact on teaching staff, particularly those that have been included in project teams. Academics have had to reconsider their own practice around the use, creation and re-purposing of learning resources. They have also been involved in conversations with other stakeholders that have had an impact on curriculum development and on the kinds of resources they release. They have worked with technical teams to consider new ways to make their resources open, discoverable and accessible.

It was anticipated that HALS would continue to build capacity and expertise, and continue our institutional transformation by embedding open practices into the heart of learning and teaching activities at De Montfort University. (HALS OER Final Project Report)

 

Improved digital literacies, particularly around IPR and licencing has been noted as significant by many projects. New technical skills and awareness around licencing, linked to new approaches to learning and teaching have resulted in changed practice as educators have started to define themselves as open educational practitioners. Even small changes for some individuals have ongoing implications for long term embedding within departments, faculty and at an institutional level.

In the process of becoming ‘open practitioners’, tutors have learnt new technical skills, shared pedagogical ideas and learnt from others, and adopted new approaches to creating materials. Their project work has raised their profiles within their universities and the community and made a lasting impact on their teaching.

 

“I’ve learnt a lot…thank you very much for the project because for me it was great…now I’m so motivated to learn more.”- tutor comment (FAVOR Final Report)

 

The potential for OER release to enhance professional profiles of academics within and outside the institutions was mentioned by several projects as an important benefit that encouraged ongoing commitment.

Great Writers inspire has had a significant impact within the Faculty of English as demonstrated by the commitment of the academic leads, the support of a large group of academic contributors and the extensive involvement of the graduate student community. The site provides a single access point to a range of reusable literature resources which are otherwise not easily available in one location. Through their involvement, academic contributors have disseminated their work to thousands of people; something they would find impossible through traditional publishing channels. (Great Writers Final Report)

 

This was particularly evident for part-time lecturers, who often work in isolation

The tutors reported feeling more integrated into their institutions and valued for the work that they do. They were gratified by opportunities to meet with other colleagues and share their work. (FAVOR Final Report)

 

It can take a lot of effort from project teams and OER champions to get practitioners to change, and, as evidenced elsewhere in this report, this also requires significant institutional and/or community support. Projects in phase three are still reporting challenges around general awareness of OER and OEP, and also lack of knowledge around appropriate use of third party materials. Although we have evidence of significant practice change, projects are also aware that there is still a fair way to go to make this practice mainstream.

Academic Teachers at the academic partners have been involved in the project and in creating OERs and discussing them through focus groups. At two of the academic partners no one had heard of Jorum, OERs, or Creative Commons licences so awareness has been greatly increased, although there is much more to do (ALTO Final Report)

 

Other educators are often the intended recipients of OER and it is important to note that an important impact of the programme has been to increase the number of OER in particular subject areas. An initial premise of the programme was that increasing the corpus of OER would promote use and engagement. It has been noteworthy that some projects report successful use of Jorum to find OER and also refer to OER released during earlier phases. It is interesting to see the wide range of subject areas covered by all phases of the programme.

Academic staff are routinely using OER as part of their curriculum delivery although in our 2012 university staff awareness survey more than 50% of staff had heard of the term OER compared to only 18% in 2009, and were more familiar with JORUM and other OER repositories. Staff were regularly using OER and many were sharing. Workshops on OER are now embedded within the PGCert at De Montfort, and staff training is continuing to develop the digital literacy skills and copyright awareness required for OER to be scaled-up within the organisation. As Ming suggests (2012 ), our next step is probably going to be an institutional-wide strategy for digital literacy and promoting open education and practice. (HALSOER Final report)

 

The potential for linking OER to academic research activities emerged during phase two of the programme and again features as a potential benefit for academic staff engagement.

the academic leads have submitted Great Writers Inspire as a pilot case study for the Faculty’s REF submission. Stressing the contribution that the project makes in making research-based teaching and expertise gathered within the Oxford Faculty of English available to all, the potential beneficiaries are cited as:

• Teachers wishing to create richer learning resources will find a resource bank of reusable materials which can be used to enhance and facilitate learning.
• Students. The collections will inspire students to go on and discover more. Students’ learning experience will be enhanced by having access to material in different formats (audio, video, text, ebooks) and via portable devices. Potential students wishing to gain a flavour of study at University will benefit from the ‘window’ that these resources provide.
• Life-long learners with an interest in classic texts. Themed collections offer new approaches to classic topics which will appeal to the interested self-learner.
• Resource creators. By providing access to thousands of reusable resources within the library section, resource creators will benefit from a rich source of materials when creating new learning and teaching materials (Great Writers Final Report)

 

OER production might be useful for the REF if it can be linked to increasing the impact of research – in which case metrics are important (ALTO UK Interim Report)

 

Academic staff involved in the provision and support of open courses have had to reconsider their own, and student's roles in the learning and teaching process. New roles have emerged around curation, and the move from a didactic broadcast model to one of participation and collaboration

There were differing levels of staff engagement with the Open Classes. All were engaged, but this ranged from a profound and sophisticated engagement, to a tentative and testing approach. This was mostly evident in terms of their attachment to different mixes of media /platforms and therefore, how, and how intensely, they were ‘Open, and ‘Actively Open’ (our distinction between simply making resources available online and making it possible to engage with the class through activities and/or dialogue or interaction). Further, staff engagement was predictably affected by the depth of experience they had with this approach. (COMC Final Report)

 

What has been the impact of OER development and release on the student experience?

Students are an important stakeholder group as both intended recipients of OER and increasingly as co-producers or collaborators in production and release. Many projects employed students or had volunteers in some capacity to support the projects, most often as evaluators and co-producers, but also as interns involved in marketing, dissemination, and design. The latter provided excellent work-related experiences for the students as well as mutual benefits for the projects.

The College benefited from the project experience in establishing a mechanism for employing student interns. This approach brought significant advantages for the team and for the students, not least because of the flexible responses needed to respond to our staffing challenges. We would recommend this approach to other institutions as the work experience has been valuable for the students CVs and paid work reflects the value that they can bring to projects.

 

This internship has given me a tremendous amount of knowledge about multiple different fields within the roles and responsibilities of running a design studio. During my time working with the team my role changed and grew bigger; along with my responsibilities; it was then that I gained insight into the true working nature of the studio and its many roles. Overall my time at REaCTOR has allowed me to gain experience that could help with job prospects in the future. (Business Management Student Intern)

 

Working with the REaCTOR Project gave me valuable insight into the design industry by allowing me to experience ‘real world’ practises in a professional environment. I was able to gain and partake in a variety of experience; such as disseminating project information and giving presentations, as my role expanded and changed during my time with the team. (Design Student Intern) (ReACTOR Final report)

 

Linking OER to digital literacy also emerged as an important focus with students. Projects made efforts to ensure that student awareness of OER increased, as well as their understanding around content creation, appropriate licencing and the value of open sharing. Some projects did report student concerns and misunderstandings around OER.

Students are anxious about online learning and worried that it will replace face-face contact with academics. They are much more positive about blended learning.Students struggle to distinguish between online learning per se and open educational resourcesStudents have few problems with the technology behind OERsStudents would make more use of third party OER content if their tutors drew their attention to it.Students like the idea of Nottingham sharing via OERs.
Students identify strongly with Nottingham and like to feel part of Nottingham initiatives (PARiS Final Report)

 

However a few students were sceptical of the value and 26% responded that online resources to support their course will not add value to their learning experience. However, there are signs, even among those who don’t use technology, that attitudes are changing:
“I have not yet come fully to terms with the internet …So I am not representative… but I am aware how much I am missing. I plan to do better.” (Student commenting in pilot student survey) SESAME Final Report)

 

Involving students as co-producers of content has contributed to increased awareness and potential to impact on future use of OER.

 

As a result of this project, increasing numbers of undergraduate science students are aware of open education, know how to search for and evaluate the use of OER to support their studies, and have been involved in producing OER as part of their science programmes. (HALS OER Final Project Report)

 

Involving students as producers and users of OER has been a particular success of the project. It provided a simple framework to allow them to communicate and publish, increasing their digital literacy and introducing them to the benefits of open academic practice. By recruiting graduate students the project was assured of academic-level content from contributors who were closer to the target audience. (Great Writers Final Report)

In particular, the class has shown that, around the lectures and practical workshops – given by both Coventry Tutors and visiting practitioners and Scholars – the collaborative production of content can be both fast, and can drastically expand the experience and learning of students. This often began with the simple aggregating of hash-tagged, tweeted, notes, questions and observations. But when connected through the various social media platforms these notes became powerful means of articulating themes and learning the students want to pursue. The Lecture is a collaborative production rather than a ‘broadcast’ artefact which students respond to. (COMC Final Report)

 

The COMC project involved students as co-producers of content through three open media courses. Project activities actually focused less on content and more on refining a collaborative model for open participation - where existing courses were made open and engaged a variety of working professionals to enhance authentic learning experiences for registered students, encourage networking opportunities and stimulate creativity.

 

As the most developed of the Open Classes Picbod has reached the Stage at which it has also extended most beyond the collaborative production of content. CU Students and external participants have also begun to undertake new collective forms of activity, as a result of their experience.  (COMC Final Report)

 

This model provides an interesting alternative approach to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) and requires significant institutional support for both the concept and the implementation. Involving open students and working professionals added a dimension of collaboration that could not easily be replicated in a standard undergraduate course. This included students reviewing each others and practitioners work - becoming 'active participants in a peer-practioner community' and also establishing and organising their own exhibition.

The exhibition was a pivotal moment in the transformation of the students’ understanding of their own capabilities, when magnified by the open class approach. It captured and demonstrated their ability – working collaboratively through these platforms - to successfully undertake tasks, which would otherwise be beyond their normal expectations. It is important to note that this exhibition was not an assessed, or expected practical outcome of the face-to-face class. (COMC Final Report)

 

The different open courses adopted a range of approaches - all of which present a fascinating insight into radically new approaches to learning and teaching.

 

Each Open Class is working with a slightly different emphasis, different process of content generation and a distinctive balance of media/platforms; but all students have very actively contributed and participated. This is evidenced within each of  the Open Class sites. The staff have also been very highly engaged with these projects. All the sites have a richer range depth and mix of resources than has been the case with conventional modules. (COMC Final Report)

 

Some projects reported that OER can act as taster materials and help students make choices about courses.

become familiar with university courses and cultures to inform their career decisions. (HALS OER Final Project Report)

 

A few projects focused on school students which raised different kinds of issues in relation to contributing to production of OER.

The project has raised a number of both logistic and ethical issues involved when it comes to pupil involvement with OERs; for instance, issues of copyright become even more complex in the school context where issues related to e-safety and e-safeguarding are of key importance and parent permission has to be secured. (DeFT Final Report)

 

The GeoGebra software applications developed by students are for a range of users of varying technical confidence. The summer school activity consisted of three 4-hour workshops interspersed with home-working and online collaboration. In addition to excellent GeoGebra applications, the students also demonstrated target user awareness, communication and collaboration skills, and learning insights. The project is the first exemplar of a proposed, larger-scale, three-year development of 20 such authentic learning activities aligned with the STEM curriculum for Key Stages 2 and 3 (ages 7-14). The objective is to extend learning through technology and cross-curricular, ‘real life’ activities impacting on a wide audience with students, teachers and organisations working together. It has been agreed that all CCITE resources resulting from this collaboration will be held posted on the ORBIT wiki (http://orbit.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/CCITE).  (ORBIT Final report)

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