Here's a draft summary, prepared by Paul Albright, of the discussion themes and perspectives at week 1 of the conference. Of course the summary is very condensed and cannot provide all the discussion exchanges, detailed references, and cited OER examples. ("The forum started on 24 October and will run until 2 December 2005, but if you are interested in taking part, please send a message to virtual.university@iiep.unesco.org." ) _____JH
IIEP Forum:
Open Educational Resources and Open Content for Higher Education
Draft Summary of Session 1
24-28 October 2005
UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) launched a six-week forum on Open Educational Resources and Open Content for Higher Education by involving more than 400 individuals in more than 80 countries. The initial five-day session served as an overview on:
- the importance and benefits of using OER in higher education around the world;
- the identification of some issues, problems, and barriers that confront the further development and expanded use of OER.
Session 1 was grounded in a paper by the moderator, Dr. Sally Johnstone of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications in the USA. The ensuing e-mail discussion was energized by more than 225 participant introductions and commentary with the “whole world around the table” (as one participant put it). The session set the stage for more in-depth exploration of OER issues during succeeding sessions.
The Importance and Benefits of OER
There was no dispute among the wide range of participants as to the importance of OER in global education and no dissent as to its benefits, assuming that quality academic content was openly available. Indeed, forum participants characterized the importance and the benefits of OER in both global and individual terms.
As summarized by one participant, OER promote autonomy and self-reliance within the learning community by negating time constraints and overcoming geographic, economic, social, and cultural barriers. Through self-regulated learning and open academic content, the individual is able to develop intellectually beyond institutional and local boundaries.
Particularly benefiting from the accessible, worldwide sharing of content are previously deprived sectors of society, such as rural populations, women, and tribal groups. This could be an effective way to address poverty and unemployment and is of importance in both the developed and developing world. One analogy was to a pyramid with unfettered access to education at its base, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and other technical infrastructure in the middle to facilitate the process, and OER occupying the pyramid’s pinnacle.
Accreditation, Standards, and Certification
Should OER be subject to formal (or even informal) accreditation processes that prevail in traditional higher education settings? If so, how would that be achieved? Would accreditation constrain the development and the use of open content for the delivery of higher education? While such questions were posed during this introductory session, they were not probed in depth.
There was a contention that there would be more confidence and acceptance in the content of OER if assessments were made by quality assurance bodies, perhaps using internationally established standards applied by a global accrediting body. In response, it was suggested that university consortia (rather than international governance) could lead to the establishment and maintenance of quality standards. It was argued that it is in the self-interest of content developers to respond to accreditation and quality concerns so as to establish their offerings as standards in the field and as sources of customization for OER users.
Accreditation, of course, is linked not only to standards but also to certification. This raises the question of who provides certification of achievement through the use of open content — the institution where the OER was created (even if modified for the learner), or from the student’s institution (if he/she has one), or from Open Education Institutions (OEI) that may evolve from the proliferation of OER.
Benefits and Barriers within the Institution
While the benefits of OER for learners are readily apparent, those accruing to institutions are less evident. The conversations highlighted some of those institutional benefits. They included responding to new and expanding markets and inventing new business models, changing the context by which education is provided, spurring internal cooperation and quality controls within the institution, and bridging the gap between the public’s need and institution’s response systems. There remains, however, a preference to sell content in the form of distance education rather than opening content to all learners.
Despite the benefits, institutional reticence and deeply entrenched academic culture combine to hold back the development of OER around the world. Overcoming these barriers is a priority. Suggestions on how to entice faculty to board “this visionary OER bandwagon” ranged from developing OER development teams within institutions to stressing that individual faculty remain the primary source. A lingering perception by some faculty is that lecturers would lift everything from someone else/another source and that these materials would be used improperly or without appropriate credit or permissions.
Most important is the authenticity, originality, and adaptability of the OER content. Making institutions and faculty aware that these products are being scrutinized by a large audience around the world helps to create an internal quality control. More discussion on faculty development of OER was anticipated later in the forum.
OER in Less Developed Countries
Free and open educational content is seen as essential for less developed countries of the world if they are to break with past cycles and develop their capacity to combat poverty, illiteracy, and to achieve other goals. The extensive use of OER is regarded as critical for learner populations in these developing countries. This poses challenges that range from a lack of digital infrastructure to cultural and language differences.
In order to be most effective, OER should be both culturally and linguistically “translated” so as to enhance greater understanding, relevance, and adaptability within developing populations. These translations may be crucial to bridge the knowledge gap to reach millions of learners who need materials in their own language. In addition, more emphasis is needed on “localization” of content that is educationally relevant, technically feasible, and accessible to the learner in his setting.
The lack of infrastructure can be an obstacle but not an insoluble one, according to a number of OER providers. Availability of electricity and computers are necessary, of course, but it is also important for managers and educators to improve the quality of offerings and learner support. OER developers, in fact, have an incentive to target audiences in developing countries because that, in turn, creates a marketplace to push for the required infrastructure. One provider noted the greater use of OER by less developed parts of the world than in developed countries where educational technology is much more prevalent but economically-based forms of distance education dominate.
Data Collection, Analysis, and Evaluation
Some forum participants appealed for more and better research and analysis into the use, the impact, and the effectiveness of OER. Without reliable data, trends can be unrecognized and both effective and ineffective practices misidentified. For instance, does the integration of multimedia in online instruction enhance learning, especially in settings where the use of technology is difficult?
Other evaluation questions posed to the group included: why are educators and learners slow to use the open content resources now available; what is required to reconfigure educational material in localized contexts; how does informal learning using OER actually work; should OER be thought of exclusively in digital contexts, or are there alternatives delivery modes; and should OER be drawn from prior teaching, or should it be original content designed for worldwide application, adaptation, and reuse?
Maximizing Use of Educational Resources
Many educational resources available on the Internet are unused by teachers or students because they are difficult to locate and to integrate into materials. A growing concern expressed by participants is the identification and location of education materials stored electronically (for the most part) throughout the world. The process of “tagging” these data was advanced as a workable (if not optimum) approach.
Tagging refers to machine-language “tags” that help someone search a database to find things related to specific subjects or level of education. This tagging facilitates access to global repositories, augments selections, broadens awareness, avoids unnecessary duplication, and can add to quality.
An expressed concern was that tagging by educational level could be difficult because there are no standardized levels. Others responded that tagging could be realized through the use of classification rules established for content management in library science and information management. This classification and tagging of OER could play a large role in increasing their usefulness worldwide.
Continuing the Dialogue
As the IIEP Forum on Open Educational Resources and Open Content for Higher Education closed its introductory week and looked ahead to more in-depth discussions in succeeding sessions, a few summary comments by participants stood out:
- The issues swirling around the development and the use of OER are “vision and will on one hand, and fear and barriers on the other hand… [I]f we address these questions in our present discussion, we as a community will have taken a big step for mankind.”
- “It is important in our forum to recognize that online universal higher education is not a utopia, that it is not a threat to established education, that it is a great opportunity for producers and users alike, and that these messages should be conveyed to governments, universities, and other organizations.
- “With this much diversity (in the forum), it is difficult to arrive at a synthesis of viewpoints. But …agreement and integration are not really required. The conference will be a success if we can simply produce threads that stimulate productive directions of thought and development. That is happening.”
8:17:46 AM 
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