Towards a Devolved Model of Management of OER? The Case of the Irish Higher Education Sector

Abstract

This paper reports on the research findings from a national project examining the issues in creating, sharing, using, and reusing open educational resources (OER) in the context of the development of open education in Ireland. One important aspect of the research was to investigate the potential for using existing institutional research repository infrastructure for the purpose of ingesting, managing, and discovering OER produced by academics. This approach would imply a move from previous strategy around a centralised repository at the national level to a devolved model that relies on institutional research repositories. The opportunities and potential barriers to the adoption of this approach were explored through an online survey and focus groups with academics from a range of higher education institutions (HEIs). Also, a focus group of institutional repository managers was convened to discuss the potential of the institutional repositories with those leading their development. Analysis of the data indicates that the devolved approach to institutions would be possible if the right supports and protocols were put in place. It was acknowledged that research repositories could potentially also serve as repositories of teaching materials, fostering parity of esteem between teaching and research. However, a range of important challenges were present, and alternative solutions emerged, which are discussed in the context of the present and future of online OER repositories.

Impact and implementation of UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Educational Resources in academic libraries: SPARC Europe Case Study

“…Some of the earliest efforts were preserving OER in institutional or educational repositories (Risquez et al, 2020;Santos-Hermosa et al, 2020). Also, certain library competencies, such as knowledge in copyright, licencing and intellectual property, have allowed them to participate in the creation of OS policies (Atenas et al, 2020;Santos-Hermosa et al, 2020) and contribute to institutional governance (Walz, 2017).…”

Online Infrastructures for Open Educational Resources

“…Finally, the sustainability of OER and their infrastructures is a clear challenge to the continuity of initiatives (Orr et al 2015)as shown by some of the national, regional, and institutional cases discussed hereand there is not a single business model that may work in every context. For example, the decision to not continue the UKOER program (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) and the subsequent retirement of the UK OER national repository (Jorum) implied a shift from funding and responsibility at national level to individual institutions, favoring a devolved model where institutions have to find their own resources and meant optimizing resources by, for instance, including OER collections into open-access research repositories (Risquez et al 2020).…”

Forecasting Gender in Open Education Competencies: A Machine Learning Approach

“…There is an essential heterogeneity of open education practices. They have mainly focused on the production, use, and mobilization of various open educational resources [5]- [7], the analysis of the support infrastructure for teaching [8] and the organization and implementation of learning ecosystems [9]. Other practices include the performances of techniques for open learning spaces [10], innovative methodologies such as gamification [11], and Education 4.0 tools to support sustainable open education [12], [13].…”