LiDA#103 Activity, Defining OER: Outputs – Implications of OER challenge.

LiDA Activity Defining OER: Outputs – Implications of OER challenge –
Article Summary write-up

1.Link to article: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3009

2. Reference: Annand, D., & Jensen, T. (2017). Incentivizing the Production and Use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education Institutions. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3009

Article: Incentivizing the Production and Use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education Institutions

Summary:

Annand & Jensen, 2017 reviewing related articles discussed the financial and other issues that can affect adoption of OERs in substituting for conventional textbooks.  A survey conducted among US faculty by Allen and Seaman (2014) has shown that too much was needed to locate, evaluate, and incorporate material in to the curriculum. Kortemeyer (2013) has identified four main issues that prevented more widespread use of OER as: time spent, issues of quality control, faculty expertise levels and lack of faculty interest to the OER ideology.

Domination of commercial publishers to generate more income has been achieved by introducing frequent updated versions of textbooks and introducing costly e-learning supplementary activities for students to purchase. Wiley (2015) has stated that awareness of OER is more important to develop a critical mass of OER users. Despite these difficulties, several large scale OER initiatives have been successfully developed by institutions such as MIT, Open University of U.K., OpenStax College in Canada and BCcampus.

Financial models to sustain the OER adoption by institutions have been proposed to reduce the amount spent on conventional material cost savings by students.  Athabasca University (AU) has adopted open access policies offering fully online courses.  AU’s success story explains how a conventional textbook for one of their popular course in accounting has been converted to OER material in 2014 with the CC-BY-SA-NC license. Development of digital course material, consenting by the copyright holder for release under creative commons licence and AU’s strong incentive have contributed to this success. AU now enjoy reduced operation fees with this type of courses, faculty members feel happy to contribute in this scholarly activity and students need not purchase conventional textbooks.

4. Other Related Articles:

Allen, I. & Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the curriculum: Open educational resources in U.S. higher education, 2014. Report published by Babson Survey Research Group.

Kortemeyer, G. (2013) Ten years later: Why open educational resources have not noticeably affected higher education, and why we should care. Educause Review, Nov/Dec 2013.

Wiley, D. (2015, December 3). Reflections on open education and the path forward. Iterating Toward Openness. Retrieved from http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4082.