In Martin Weller’s 2012 paper, he explores the nature of open education resources (OERs) and suggests that there currently exists two “flavours” of OERs. The first he calls “big OERs” which are the “large-scale, externally funded projects”, like MIT’s OpenCourseWare and the Open University’s OpenLearn (ibid, p. 7), who have developed large repositories containing a huge catalogue of learning materials, great and small. Non-departmental public bodies in the UK like Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) have, in the past, required funded projects to submit their outputs, resources and materials into Jorum, a free online repository service for the collection and sharing of learning and teaching materials, thus allowing for their reuse and repurposing.
The second “flavour”, which Weller calls “little OERs”, encompasses all those resources created by individuals and “shared on sites outside the formal education portals” (ibid, p. 7), which would include the likes of YouTube, SlideShare, and Flickr to name but a few. Though I can see that TED Ed could potentially be a “game changer” as I think it sits somewhere between the “big” and “little” OER concept.
The table below considers the benefits and drawbacks of “big” and “little” OERs.
Big OERs | Little OERs | |
Benefits | Granular High-quality Explicit learning aims Uniformed-style (can be institutionally branded) Reputable knowledge domain expertise Metadata Creativity focused upon structure and guidance Predictable use More choice Clear copyright and licensing advice Accessible Interoperable Greater scholarly outputs Enhances institutional reputation and prestige Formally recognised |
Low-cost to free Shared through third-party sites / services Creativity focused upon production and aggregation Open filter – anyone can publish Sites facilitate social interaction / connection between user and producer Greater user hits / traffic to site Unconstrained creativity of material Unconstrained playfulness of material Enhances personal reputation and prestige Greater open access High reuse potential High searchability – can be found via public search engines like Google or Bing |
Drawbacks | High-cost Closed filter – specialists can publish Less social interaction / connection between user and producer Less user hits / traffic to site Restrained creativity of material Restrained playfulness of material Variances in open access Low reuse potential Low searchability – locked into a repository search engine |
Variances in granularity Variances in quality Variances in explicit learning aims Variances in knowledge domain expertise Variances in taxonomy / folksonomy Unpredictable use Limited choice Variances in copyright and licensing advice Variances in interoperability Variances in accessibility Variances in scholarly outputs Variances in formal recognition |
References
Weller, M. (2011). The Digital Scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Available at: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/files/thedigitalscholar.pdf [Accessed 12.3.2013].
Weller, M. (2012). “The openness–creativity cycle in education”. Special Issue on Open Educational Resources, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, Spring 2012. Available at: http://jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/view/2012-02 [Accessed 12.3.2013].
Wiley, D. (2007). “Defining the “Open” in Open Content”. OpenContent.org. Available at: http://opencontent.org/definition/ [Accessed 12.3.2013].
Great blog post. The presentation in list form enabled the reader to rapidly absorb a huge block of high value information. I think this type of conciseness is really crucial in presenting either ‘bigOERs” or “little OERs.” The globe is swimming in high quality information. The one thing that limits all humans is the number of minutes in a day or time. I think those content creators that get the most consumption will be those that are concise and engaging simultaneously. It does not dilute the value of the content, but rather enhances it.