Introduction to Open Educational Resources Tutorial

Introduction to Open Educational Resources Tutorial Developed by Judy Baker, Ph.D Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0, 2008 Contents Module 1: Overview Module 2: Open Courseware Module 3: Copyright, Fair Use, and TEACH Act Module 4: Tools to Identify and Select OER Module 5: Accessibility and Universal Design Module 6: OER Discipline-Specific Sources Module 7: Use of Primary Sources Module 8: Sources of Open Textbooks Module 9: OER Development and Collaboration Module 10: OER Delivery, Storage, and Organization Module 11: Support for OER Use on Campus Module 12: Future of OER Movement Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com Module 1: Overview Definitions Open Educational Resources (OER) are “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research.” This term was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries funded by the Hewlett Foundation (source Wikipedia) A definition of OER from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is: "OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge." If you are unfamiliar with the terms used in this course, you may want to bookmark the following glossaries   International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) OER Glossary ISKME Glossary  iCommons Primer on OER-related Terms The term OER has been used to refer to learning materials such as:  Learning objects (quizzes, crossword puzzles, flashcards, animations, interactive maps, timelines, etc.) Audio lectures  Audiovideo lectures  Images  Sounds and music  Entire course content  Collections of journal articles and institutional repositories  Textbooks  Some more current definitions of Open Educational Resources place just as much emphasis on the PROCESS of creating open knowledge and promoting least restrictive knowledge-sharing as on the content itself For example, although content in this tutorial was originally only available from an online course that has an open license, it did NOT fit the definition of an OER because it required registration and was password-protected By contrast, the following courses are considered OER because they not limit access:   Development Gateway Foundation offers an Introduction to Open Educational Resources: The Wikiversity online course about Composing free and open online educational resources started March 3, 2008 Introduction to Open Educational Resources course available at Connexions Another example is the graphic at the top of this Module from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com This graphic is probably NOT considered to be an OER because it does not have an open license that promotes sharing and remixing And, as the graphic above implies, use and development of OER is somewhat of a balancing act between competing interests and needs, especially with regard to intellectual property The Open Knowledge Foundation has defined open knowledge as "A piece of knowledge is open if you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it.” A full definition is available Be sure that you understand the difference between learning content that is freely available and OER Although a resource may be accessible for FREE over the Internet, it may be protected by a copyright that does not permit reuse and reproduction for either commercial or non-commercial purposes For example, PBS.org allows educators to freely use images and text from their website under certain conditions however some of the restrictions mean that many would not consider it a repository of OER Another example is an Organic Chemistry textbook that is freely available but could not be considered an open textbook due to its copyright restrictions OER are typically distributed as public domain or with an open license that allows others to share, adapt and use the content freely Ideally, OER repositories (such as OpenDOAR) should clearly display the policies for inclusion of OER to ensure that the content has some sort of open license that permits sharing and reuse We will explore this issue further in the Module on Fair Use, Copyright, and TEACH Act Background The Open Educational Resources movement is part of a global effort to make knowledge available to all The UNESCO's Virtual University Forum provides an overview about definitions, initiatives, and community-building OER is seen by some as a means to provide students in developing countries with access to affordable learning content For more about this global effort, see this article by Sally M Johnstone, founding Director of Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), in Educause Quarterly titled: Open Educational Resources Serve the World Richard Baraniuk, a Rice University professor, presents a vision for free, global education and introduces Connexions, an open-access publishing service, in this 19 minute video recorded at the TED Conference in February 2006 This tutorial will focus primarily on the OER movement in the United States, however If you want to become better informed about the global OER movement, go to UNESCO's IIEP to request membership in the international OER Community of Interest Open Educational Resources: Toward a New Educational Paradigm by Dr Laura Petrides and Dr Cynthia Jimes (October 2006) is a short article about the purpose of open educational resources, the challenges to realizing the potential of OER, and calls, and future research The Hewlett Foundation has taken a pioneering role in the development and use of OER with its support of many initiatives: "The Open Educational Resources movement began in 2001 when the Hewlett and the Andrew W Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), the first institution committed to making all of its course materials freely available Since then, more than 60 additional institutions have launched OpenCourseWare Web sites." For background about Hewlett Foundation's involvement in the OER movement, watch this presentation by Catherine Casserly, Program Officer: Open Educational Resources: Unlocking Knowledge to the Global Community Just some of the many OER initiatives supported by the Hewlett Foundation include:   MIT Open Courseware Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Sharing Of Free Intellectual Assets (Sofia)  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare  Tufts University OpenCourseWare  Utah State University OpenCourseWare  eduCommons  Carnegie Mellon University, Open Learning Initiative  Monterey Institute for Technology, Online Advanced Placement courses  Connexions  Internet Archive, Education Video Overview of OER As an alternative to reading text, you may prefer to get an overview of OER by watching Dr Cable Green's webinar video: Developing a Culture of Sharing and Receiving: Open Educational Resources Feb 11, 2008 Case Study In his May 2006 article Bye the Book My year of teaching environmental science without a textbook, Eric Pallant describes how he and co-professor Terry Bensel experimented with teaching their Introduction to Environmental Science course at Allegheny College with no textbook Instead they used a variety of open educational resources Based on self-report, 41 of 46 students in their first-semester class read the same or more than they would have in a textbook The experiment proved successful enough that the entire academic department has embraced the concept of OER Faculty have distributed the work of collecting and banking websites for common use We will address the use of Open Textbooks in more detail in another Module Other case studies are being collected at the Case Study Research Project wiki Benefits and Disadvantages In the recommended reading, you will some of the benefits of OER These include:    Fosters pedagogical innovation and relevance that avoids teaching from the textbook Broadens use of alternatives to textbooks while maintaining instructional quality Lowers cost of course materials for students Think of what other benefits there might be Some disadvantages of OER include:  Quality of available OER materials inconsistent  Materials may not meet Section 508 ADA accessibility or SCORM requirements and must be modify to bring into compliance  No common standard for review of OER accuracy and quality  Need to check accuracy of content  Customization necessary to match departmental and/or college curriculum requirements  Technical requirements to access vary  Technological determinism created by the delivery tool OER Mini-Handbooks An example of OER development in action is the OER Mini-handbook series The Center for Sustainable and Open Learning (COSL) and the Hewlett Foundation sponsor this is a dynamic wiki at wikieducator.org as a guide for those who are new to OER development and licensing Take a look at the different mini-handbooks available for:   Educators Institutions  Policymakers Instructions: If you want an additional introduction to OER, read the first half of this OLCOS tutorial OLCOS Intro to OER Tutorial Activities Experience Get connected and become a part of the OER movement community:   Go to OER Commons Join and sign up to receive e-news Go to Open Learn Browse topics, register to become a part of the OER community, sign up for the newsletter, and tell one friend about Open Learn  Go to Rice University’s Connexions to read the feedback from users, then click on Get Account to register  Remember to keep track of your login information for each membership Create a visual representation or Mind Map of your current understanding of OER   For information more information, see Concept Mapping or Open Learn Compendium Tools for creating Mind Maps include: o Open Learn o MindMeister o Exploratree o Bubbl.us Reflect: Learning Dialogue Question  Which advantages and disadvantages to using OER are most important to you and why? What other benefits and challenges can you add? Apply Now that you have a general idea of what OER is all about, you should be ready to make a couple of decisions: Do you want to learn more about OER?  Decide which Modules you want to complete in this course  Decide the order in which you want to complete the Modules that makes the most sense for your current learning needs Do you want to get the most out of this learning experience?  Invite a colleague to join you in this tutorial  Complete all the exercises listed in the Activities component of each Module Skills/Objectives Learners will be able to: Define and describe OER List the advantages and disadvantages of OER use Success Indicators Learner memberships in OER community websites Learner-generated posting to open forum about OER issues Readings Recommended:   OER Educator Mini-handbook Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (pages 12 - 19, 30 - 38)  Open Educational Resources Serve the World  Open Educational Resources: Toward a New Educational Paradigm by Petrides & Jimes, October 2006 Optional:  OLCOS Roadmap (pages 12 - 13, 15 - 18) Supplemental Resources   A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges  The Future of Free Information  A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities Module 2: Open Courseware Introduction The Open CourseWare movement began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and has now spread to over 120 other universities worldwide MIT first announced its Open Courseware program in 2001 The OCW provides open access to course materials for up to 1,550 MIT courses, representing 34 departments and all five MIT schools The goal is to include materials from all MIT courses by 2008 MIT OCW's goals are to: 1) Provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world, and 2) Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the opencourseware concept MIT has been so successful with its Open Courseware initiative that it now provides a How-To site for institutions wanting to launch their own Open Courseware project Making the Case for Open Courseware is outlined by MIT on their How-To site in terms of     Benefits for users and for global society Benefits for the institution and its community Open courseware cost components Answers to common concerns Many other Open Courseware projects are now underway: Top 100 Open Courseware Projects As far as I know, the only community college to offer Open Courseware is Foothill College: see the SOFIA Project According to MIT: The open courseware concept is a part of the larger movement that promotes free and unrestricted access to knowledge An opencourseware site provides open access to the primary teaching materials for courses taught at educational institutions, enabling educators to draw on the materials for teaching purposes, and students and self-learners to use the materials for the development of their own personal knowledge Furthermore, MIT defines an open courseware site as:  Publishes course materials created by faculty (and sometimes other colleagues or students) to support teaching and learning  Is IP-cleared, meaning that the open courseware publisher has the rights to make the materials available under open terms and that nothing in the materials infringes the copyrights of others  Offers the materials free of charge for non-commercial use  Is universally accessible via the Web Lulu lets you publish and sell and print on demand books, e-books, online music, images, and custom calendars Take a tour of Lulu to find out how to publish using their services Lulu makes 20% of total cost of the textbook you publish using their services Educause provides a convenient summary of Lulu services in Things You Should Know about Lulu SafariU allows faculty to create, publish and share customized computer science and information technology course materials SafariU was developed by O'Reilly Media in conjunction with substantial feedback from educators and trainers SafariU allows members to select chapters or sections from O'Reilly books and articles to include in custom print books and online learning resources that students can access directly Other print-on-demand services include Illumina and exlibris The eXe project is developing a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup eXe can export content as self-contained web pages or as SCORM 1.2 or IMS Content Packages Confused? View a video explanation Arranged in alphabetical order, the 80 OER Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives list includes 80 online resources that you can use to learn how to build or participate in a collaborative educational effort that focuses on publication and development of those materials Print on Demand is an experimental site designed to archive and publish public domain materials from sites including Internet Archive and Google Books Another way to put OER into a format suitable for do-it-yourself printing is to use PDF export of a WikiEducator Collection that you have created Read this WikiEducator blog for tips OLCOS Share OER Tutorial Instructions: See this OLCOS tutorial for more information and practical tasks in publishing and sharing open educational resources, and facilitating the sharing of this new content by using suitable formats OLCOS Share OER Tutorial Tagging and Rating in OER Commons Instructions: Complete the tutorial about Tagging and Rating in OER Commons Tutorial about Tagging and Rating in OER Commons ISKME Tutorial: What is Localization? Instructions: Complete the ISKME Tutorial: What is Localization? What is Localization Activities Experience Experience OER Commons If you haven't already done so, join OER Commons Go to the OER Commons website, then click on Join Now Click on Start My OER Portfolio Visit Shared Portfolios posted to the OER Commons website to see to see how others search, use, and interact with OER MERLOT View the Gallery of Sample MERLOT From the Author Snapshots then find out how to create your own Author Snapshot using the KEEP Toolkit Go to the MERLOT website o View a few Personal Collections posted by others o Create your own MERLOT Personal Collection Connexions Create a Course/Collection at the Connexions website Reflect: Learning Dialogue Question What is the best way for you to disseminate OER to your students? Do you want to share your OER for public use and repurposing? Why or why not? What are some of the print-on-demand services for disseminating OER? What tools and features are available to deliver OER? Apply Create a module to share at Connexions Determine the cost to your students to purchase OER for your course using Lulu Skills/Objectives Learners will be able to: Course participants will use various tools as well as peer collaboration to build a Public Domain Materials Portfolio of discipline-specific public domain materials suitable for use in their own teaching Determine cost-effective printing options for students Success Indicators OER added to learner's own online collection or portfolio OER review posted by the learner Readings  OLCOS Roadmap (pages 94 - 97) Supplemental Resources    Case Study: Promoting Use of MERLOT Learning Objects by Sharing Authors' and Users' Pedagogical Knowledge What Makes an Open Education Program Sustainable: The Case of Connexions Open Educational Resources: new directions for technology-enhanced distance learning in the third millennium (Paper presentation about Open Learn) Module 11: Support for OER Use on Campus In order to promote use of OER across campus, the challenges must be identified and addressed Results of a two-year study are presented in the article "Why Study Users: An Environmental Scan of Use and Users of Digital Resources in the Humanities and Social Sciences Undergraduate Education.” Based on this study, barriers to use of digital resources include the lack of direct relevance to their preferred pedagogical approaches, and insufficient time and classroom resources See article by Leigh Blackall in WikiEducator: Open educational resources and practices Challenges   Resources for faculty support Quality assurance of learning materials  Limited availability of fully vetted and comprehensive learning materials in some disciplines  Articulation and transfer issues  Printing and computer lab demands on campus by students  Identification of collaborative tools for development, use, and delivery of OER learning materials  Fostering use of the tools by faculty  Compliance with federal and state accessibility requirements Resources needed to support faculty use and development of OER:   Training Technical assistance  Software  Hardware  Release time Error! Hyperlink reference not valid provides a concise explanation of OER development models, sustainability, quality and accreditation Teaching without a Textbook: Strategies to Focus Learning on Fundamental Concepts and Scientific Process by M W Klymkowsky: "Clearly, the issue of whether to use a textbook is complex, and it is dependent upon course and curricular goals Students (and colleagues) expect a textbook; yet often, the textbook is not used, except as a reference Most textbooks are not written with current evidence about best teaching and learning practices in mind, so they may be difficult to integrate into the design and presentation of a course that is based on this evidence Because many instructors provide detailed online or downloadable notes, it would be a worthwhile exercise to consider whether a textbook is required, or whether other materials could serve its purpose In the end, the result may be a more thoughtful approach to what is taught, how it is taught, and how student mastery is assessed." Use of open content or learning materials on a college campus represents a daunting paradigm shift for both faculty and the institution In their article Open Educational Resources: Toward a New Educational Paradigm, Petrides and Jimes analyze the on-going challenges of OER use and re-use in terms of contextualization issues, hierarchy, and community Orchestrating such a shift requires a coordinated and system-wide effort that marshals the expertise, resources, and skills from a broad spectrum of the campus community For more information, see Willie Pritchard's OER presentation to College of the Canyons Step One: Needs Assessment In order to promote use of Open Educational Resources across campus, the unique challenges on campus must be identified and addressed Conduct a needs assessment of stakeholders to determine knowledge of, interest in, and use of OER on campus Campus stakeholders might include:   Faculty opinion leaders Librarians  Bookstore manager  Campus printshop manager  Academic senate  Department Chairs  Faculty association  Academic deans  Curriculum committee  Faculty trainers  Tech support staff  Administrators  Boards of Trustees A needs assessment can be conducted in a number of ways:  Online survey (see OER Faculty Needs Assessment Survey)  Interviews with major stakeholders (e.g., librarians, individual faculty, faculty, academic senate, bookstore, campus printshop, etc.)  Review of existing needs assessments (e.g., Results of a two-year study are presented in the article Why Study Users: An Environmental Scan of Use and Users of Digital Resources in the Humanities and Social Sciences Undergraduate Education Based on this study, barriers to use of digital resources including the lack of direct relevance to their preferred pedagogical approaches, and insufficient time and classroom resources.)  Review of campus curriculum and syllabi for textbook requirements (e.g., Pedagogical approaches that rely heavily on proprietary textbooks for course content organization and dissemination are not consistent with adoption of OER.) Step Two: Identify and Prioritize Challenges Based on your campus needs assessment, identify and prioritize specific challenges Possible challenges:   Resources for faculty support Quality assurance of learning materials  Limited availability of fully vetted and comprehensive learning materials in some disciplines  Articulation and transfer issues  Printing and computer lab demands on campus by students  Identification of collaborative tools for development, use, and delivery of OER learning materials  Fostering use of the tools by faculty  Compliance with federal and state accessibility requirements Step Three: Overcome Challenges Recruit a Taskforce to develop specific strategies and an implementation timeline to overcome the top challenges Use Marketing Materials for Campus Presentations to recruit Taskforce volunteers and encourage participation in the campus OER initiative Consider distributing a free OER Introduction Booklet recently released by the dgCommunity of Development Gateway Foundation They are also providing a series of free Webinars The Booklet and the Webinar both provide: - a definition of Open Educational Resources, an introduction to Open licenses and Standards, an introduction to the Production and Distribution of OER, a list of OER content repositories, search engines and projects Possible Strategies:   Host Showcases or Case Studies (in person and online) in which faculty can demonstrate their effective uses of OER Provide OER identification, organization, and development tools that are easy to use  Offer training in OER development and use (see Introduction to OER tutorial)  Establish OER “mentors” such as faculty within academic divisions or librarians  Mainstream the process for ordering "class packets” of OER to be consistent with the textbook adoption process  Provide faculty with discipline-specific OER that have already been vetted for quality and appropriateness for specific courses  Set up website for faculty to dialogue and share (e.g., PBwiki, Edublogs, Blogger, WordPress, CollectiveX, WordCircle, Epsilen, Digication, Netcipia) Step Four: Sustainability In order to maintain use of OER on campus, engage faculty and staff in collaborative and mutually beneficial efforts to identify and produce OER For an example of such an effort, see the Plagiarism Module Project in which faculty are invited to contribute and share content to build a tutorial about plagiarism that will be made freely available to the public under a Creative Commons license OER Development Projects and Tools Projects that support the development of open educational resources include:   Open Course OER Commons  Rice Connexions  Instructional Architect  Wikibooks  Digital Universe  Edu2.0  Creative Commons ccLearn  Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) List of Institutional OER Policies Instructions: See this OLCOS list of exemplary institutional OER policies List of Institutional OER Policies ISKME Tutorial: Students and OER Instructions: Complete the ISKME Tutorial: Students and OER Students and OER Activities Experience Create a detailed plan to implement OER on your campus Include a marketing plan, timeline, objectives, resources, tasks, and sources of support Reflect: Learning Dialogue Question  What would be the most challenging barriers to promoting OER use on your college campus? Why? How can those barriers be overcome? Apply Implement OER on your campus Skills/Objectives Learners will be able to: Identify the tasks necessary to promoting OER use on campus Success Indicators OER are used at the learner's campus Readings and Resources Readings Recommended:  Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (pages 88 – 98) Optional:  OLCOS Roadmap (pages 101 - 104) Module 12: Future of OER Movement Sustainability As stated by Stephen Downes, a senior researcher with the National Research Council of Canada, "What constitutes 'sustainable' is unlikely to be reducible to a single metric or calculation; it will ultimately depend on the economies and the objectives of the provider This may well explain why, as we shall see, there are many models for sustainable OERs This indeterminacy, though it may raise difficulties for economists, may nonetheless be a good thing It may allow many organizations in many ways to see OERs as 'sustainable' even in cases where a broad social consensus does not exist" (http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=33401) Stephen Downes explains how to make OER sustainable in his 2006 article, Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources, and this slideshow: Open Educational Resources And The Personal Learning Environment A good grasp of the sustainability of OERs requires more than just knowing the various funding models, technical models or content models Sustainability also involves volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control Legislation President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research This is the first time the U.S government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency The provision directs the NIH to change its existing Public Access Policy, implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005, so that participation is required for agency-funded investigators Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central Full texts of the articles will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal A number of states are considering legislation in support of OER as well For example, legislators in California and Washington have introduced proposals to encourage open educational resources, including AB 2261 by California Assembly member Ira Ruskin Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources "The Foothill-De Anza Community College District in Silicon Valley, California is providing state and national leadership as the result of its public domain policy on the creation and use of open educational resources The policy encourages faculty to develop and use public domain and open content materials for their classes to provide affordable, high-quality alternatives to traditional textbooks Foothill-De Anza is also providing training for its faculty to better use OER tools and materials, and is supporting the new Community College OER Consortium." (from Turn the Page Making College Textbooks More Affordable, 2007, p 22) Take a look at how the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources is exploring ways to sustain OER efforts The CCCOER website contains many resources for educators interested in OER As members of the CCCOER, faculty will start reviewing open-textbook models for quality, usability, accessibility, and sustainability The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources was founded by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and the League for Innovation in the Community College in 2007 It is currently managing the Community College Open Textbook project, funded by a $530,000 grant to the Foothill-De Anza Community College District from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Content Models For a comparison of two content models, see this article in WikiEducator: Producer-consumer and Co-Production Models Producer-consumer models are those in which an institution or consortium develop materials and release courseware under an open license that allows the content to be reused by other providers Such models are more likely to be managed centrally and to involve professional staff and, therefore, greater control over quality and content Examples include MIT's OpenCourseware or the British Open University's Open Learn, Wikipedia and Wikiversity as well as Larry Sanger's blog about developing open textbooks with appeals to philanthropists To support Sanger's effort, you can sign a Petition According to the WikiEducator article: "Co-production models are those which encourage open and unrestricted participation aimed to leverage the benefits of mass-collaboration and the principles of self organization They may involve numerous partnerships, and may involve volunteer contributors." While there is little control over quality and content in coproduction models, they require much less funding Recently, several websites have become available that provide tools to support the identification, development, use, re-use, collaboration, and delivery of open learning content including searching and organization of content Some websites, such as: OER Commons, Open Content, WikiEducator, Connexions, OWL Institute, and OERderves, are devoted to nurturing online learning communities, wikis, and blogs on various aspects of OER For more information and examples of co-production models, see:  Collaborative Development of Open Content  Material Peer Production: Part Effort Sharing  Building a Digital Library the Commons-based Peer Production Way  DIY Open Educational Resources - UNESCO Funding Models Flat World Knowledge and MITE utilize two cost-shifting models Flat World Knowledge offers a proprietary solution supports open textbooks by selling textbook by-products This approach is similar to what is described in Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business by Chris Anderson in Wired Magazine The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education utilizes a cost-shifting model in which institutions are charged for content and support materials rather than students or faculty Other funding models are described in Money Makes the World Go… Open? Research In order to ensure a dynamic future for OER, much research needs to be done on OER A report on a research agenda is available from UNESCO that poses questions about:  Economic analyses  Creation of OERs tools, collaboration, best practices  Quality assurance  Finding OERs research on tagging, metadata, search  Use of OERs research on effective use of OERs  Localization  Scenarios research  Policy Interventions Future of OER To keep up with the ever-changing landscape of OER, consider attending conferences and subscribing to OER blog newsfeeds  Open Education 2008 Conference September 24-26, 200  OERderves  OER Blogs Also, a new professional journal is poised to launch this year that promises to keep us abreast of OER development: Eduforge: The International Journal of Open Education Resources Resources about OER Sustainability   Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources (Downes) Open Content and Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education (Caswell, Henson, Jensen, & Wiley)  Open source, openness, and higher education (Wiley)  Access to Education with Online Learning and Open Educational Resources: Can they Close the Gap? (Geith & Vignare)  Open Educational Resources - Anonymity vs Specificity  The case for creative commons textbooks Activities Experience Create a visual representation or Mind Map of your current understanding of OER  For more information, see Concept Mapping or Open Learn Compendium  Tools for creating Mind Maps include: o http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?name=KM o http://www.mindmeister.com/ o http://www.exploratree.org.uk/ o http://bubbl.us/ Reflect: Learning Dialogue Question How can you build a sustainable business model around giving away educational materials? Should governments fund open educational resource projects? Why does OER matter, how does it work, and what are the possibilities for the future of use and re-use of open education content? Apply Volunteer to help with OER projects at WikiBooks, Wikiversity, Community College Consortium for OER, Edu2.0, etc Skills/Objectives Learners will be able to: Identify the challenges of sustainability for OER projects Success Indicators Active membership in an OER movement organization by the learner Readings and Resources Readings Recommended:   Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (pages 118 - 119) Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources Optional:   OLCOS Roadmap (pages 117 - 118, 119 - 128) Open Educational Resources: The Way Forward (PDF)  Open Educational Resources and Practices Supplemental Resources   The Future of Free Information Advancing Sustainability of Open Educational Resources  Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials Print version (Benkler, 32 pages)  Advancing Sustainability of Open Educational Resources (Koohang and Harman, 10 pages)  On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education (Wiley, 20 pages)  The Discourses of OERs: How flat is this world? paper presented at the Open Education Conference, Utah State University, September 2007 ... an Introduction to Open Educational Resources: The Wikiversity online course about Composing free and open online educational resources started March 3, 2008 Introduction to Open Educational Resources. .. Educator Mini-handbook Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (pages 12 - 19, 30 - 38)  Open Educational Resources Serve the World  Open Educational Resources: Toward... invited to contribute to and edit this list themselves OpenDOAR OpenDOAR (The Directory of Open Access Repositories) provides a vetted listing of Open Access Repositories (OAR) across the world OpenDOAR