Curriculum, intellectual property rights and open educational resources in British universities—and beyond

Lorenzo

Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning

2013

The present study analyses the use of Twitter in the course Social Media and Digital Learning, taught as part of a master's programme at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain). The main purpose of the use of this resource was to develop a learning community. This was implemented through the micro design of activities. A mixed research study was undertaken with the aim of enhancing practice and sharing the findings with the scientific community. The initial phase of the study, involving virtual ethnography, utilised observation supported by a diary to detect problems and propose solutions. Implementation was followed by a statistical analysis of the main aspects explored in the previous phase. Thirty-nine people (20 male and 19 female) participated in the study, generating a total of 3026 tweets that were subjected to analysis. The findings indicate that students actively participate in training activities using Twitter but have problems integrating interaction mechanisms. Therefore, they need to be given guidance, insisting on retweets, as well as on improving horizontal interaction. There is a tendency to send tweets via browsers and HootSuite, which avoids viewing problems. Users tend to take full advantage of the maximum length allowed by this tool. They do not perceive the character number restriction as negative and believe it encourages reflection and analysis. Training activities on Twitter follow a classic pattern, concentrated around the days in which the activities are proposed. IntroductionAs a result of their constant technical, scientific and methodological evolution, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are in a process of continual expansion and emergence. With enormous speed, devices and applications become obsolete shortly after appearing or are replaced by others with greater potential and/ or interest for users. Today, however, Web 2.0 applications continue to be stimulating and useful to millions of people. Social media continue to attract the attention of countless users from different countries, ages, status, and so forth, and enjoy surging popularity. Nevertheless, we agree with Mayberry et al. (2012) that many of these applications are not being used properly in the educational field and that many

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of the use of Twitter as a learning strategy in master’s studies

Lorenzo

Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning

2013

Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning

“…Evidence gathered from academics through interviews also suggests that many academics want a design structure into which they can place their own content and through which they can adapt such content to their teaching (Nikoi, 2010). To be successful at creating and/or adapting teaching materials as OER, staff development departments within higher education institutions might consider the introduction of training programmes that build the capacity of individual academics to design open teaching and learning materials.…”

Section: Design For Openness and Usabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evidence of the impact of OER on teaching has become a subject of debate (Harley, 2008;McGill et al, 2008). The problem of lack of evidence could be attributed partly to the persistence of supply-driven OER development models, and partly to the concomitant neglect of demand-led models (Hawkridge, Armellini, Nikoi, Rowlett, & Witthaus, 2010) in response to expressed teaching and learning needs; for example, as identified by OER Africa (2008). In the development of CORRE, we devised a mechanism for gathering both quantitative and qualitative evidence on OER use, to enable us to gather information about the context in which a need arose and what difference an OER made.…”

Section: Oer Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

CORRE: a framework for evaluating and transforming teaching materials into open educational resources

Nikoi

Rowlett

Armellini

et al. 2011

Self Cite

Open education resources (OER) are taking centre-stage in many higher educational institutions globally, driven by the need to raise institutional profiles, improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning and achieve universal access to education. Many academics attracted to the idea of turning teaching materials into OER have, however, found the experience challenging and daunting. This article puts forward a workflow framework that provides guidance for evaluating existing teaching materials and turning them into OER using indicative questions against which they can be assessed on quality, ease of access, adaptability and potential usefulness. Recommendations are also made for moving the OER agenda forward, including changing institutional cultures, designing for openness, quality assurance and sustainability.

“…In the case of governments, most hold ownership of creations generated within their systems but this competes with the use of CC licenses, which are increasingly being used in many institutions to ensure greater distribution (Okediji, 2016). In academic institutions, institutional guidelines can lack clarity, making it difficult to gauge whether copyright is owned by the institution or the faculty member who developed the content (Hawkridge et al, 2010;Ncube, 2011). Poor knowledge amongst librarian and university staff is also an issue with developing countries being the most affected (Okiy, 2005).…”

Section: Oers and The Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Often, even stakeholders in the book-publishing sector are poorly informed of copyright (Mahama, 2012 While copyright law remains the prime preserving agent of authors' rights (McCoy, 2009), the CC movement has been making an impression in the educational and publishing sphere as an alternative or supplement to copyright (Garcelon, 2009). For OER providers, CC licenses are a more favorable option than seeking copyright protection due their cost-free nature (Collins, 2013) and the ease with which the community can understand them (Kapitzke, Dezuanni & Iyer, 2011 With the increasing number of educational institutions creating OERs, agreements requiring content-creating academics to consent to give away their intellectual property to the university has become more common (Hawkridge et al, 2010;Ncube, 2011 (Hawkridge et al, 2010). Similarly, the case study organizations also negotiate these matters early.…”

Section: Copyrightmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Primary Education in Developing Nations: A Case Study of India

Ganapathi¹

This research aims to identify how open educational resources (OERs) can contribute towards primary education, and what role they might play in increasing childhood literacy in particular, which has been identified as a prime component in ensuring educational attainment in primary school. Literature in the area largely addresses OERs and their potential to widen participation in tertiary education with a focus on developed nations, with little discussion about how OERs can be utilized in primary education. This thesis is particularly interested in the role OERs might play in primary education in developing nations where a range of challenges contribute to the low levels of literacy. In nations like India and South Africa, which are the locations of the case study organizations selected for this research, decentralized rural populations, combined with high levels of poverty, child labor and low levels of literacy and awareness cause poor attendance and access to schools. This research suggests that OERs aimed at developing literacy in primary school-aged children can overcome the distribution and access issues that contribute to low attendance and engagement with education in these nations. OERs have the capacity to bypass low levels of educational infrastructure by distributing high quality resources online in low definition formats suitable for downloading and under open licenses on platforms suitable for users to repackage, translate and re-purpose according to their particular need or audience. While there are a range of sustainability challenges for organizations with a social mission to use OERs to increase the equity and access of educational materials, these organizations have found innovative solutions taken from other online successes such as gaming and social media. Making use of volunteers and users in a community of practice to ensure that content is translated, quality is maintained and there is volume on their sites has some risks but also enables the maintenance of an open repository of materials for use, re-use, adaptation and sharing. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by shedding light into understanding these challenges from the experiences and perspectives of three case study organizations that provide OERs for children.