Open Source Business Resource, August 2008: Education
Why Give Knowledge Away for Free? The Case for Open
Educational Resources, Jan Hylén
"At the moment the OER movement is taking its first steps beyond a culture focused around "my site"
towards a culture that is focused around "our commons." Most people who create OER sites have a
sense of who they expect their users to be and what needs those users have. This is all to the good, if
it is not to the exclusion of those users whose needs--or innovations--we have totally failed to
imagine." Towards a Global Learning Commons
An apparently extraordinary trend is emerging. Although learning resources are often considered as
key intellectual property in a competitive higher education world, more institutions and individuals are
sharing digital learning resources openly and without cost, as open educational resources (OER). The
issues of why this is happening, who is involved, and the important implications were addressed in a
2006 study carried out by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation with the support
of the Hewlett Foundation. The main conclusions are summarised here, together with some insights
from a follow-up, and not yet published, study from spring 2008.
Higher education is facing a number of challenges: globalisation, an aging society, growing
competition between higher educational institutions both nationally and internationally, and rapid
technological development. OER is itself one of these challenges, but may also be a sound strategy for
individual institutions to meet them. The trend towards sharing software programmes through open
source software and research outcomes through open access publishing is already so strong that it is
generally thought of as a movement. It is now complemented by the trend towards sharing learning
resources: the OER movement.
OER are a fascinating technological development and, potentially, a major educational tool. They
accelerate the blurring of formal and informal learning, and of educational and broader cultural
activities. They raise basic philosophical issues dealing with the nature of ownership, the validation of
knowledge, and concepts such as altruism and collective goods. They reach into issues of property
and its distribution across the globe. They offer the prospect of a radically new approach to the
sharing of knowledge, at a time when effective use of knowledge is seen as the key to economic
success, for both individuals and nations.
OER projects can expand access to learning for everyone, but most of all, for non-traditional groups of
students. They thus widen participation in higher education. They can be an efficient way of
promoting lifelong learning, both for individuals and for government, and can bridge the gap between
non-formal, informal, and formal learning.
What are OER?
OER are digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use
and re-use for teaching, learning and research. They include: i) learning content; ii) software tools to
develop, use and distribute content; and iii) implementation resources such as open licences. The
learning content is open courseware such as educational material organised as courses and typically
distributed as PDF files, as well as smaller chunks of learning, often referred to as learning objects.
The content may involve websites, simulations, text files, images, audio or videos in digital format.
Content may be for use only or also open for adaptation and reuse.
Who is Using and Producing OER?
Although no definite statistics are available, there is a rapid expansion in the number of OER projects,
the number of people involved, and the number of resources available. In 2006, the OECD identified
over 3,000 open courseware courses available from over 300 universities worldwide. When
recontacted during the first half of 2008, six major OER initiatives reported an increase in the number
of resources available as between 35 and 300%. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of
content representing thousands of learning hours which are freely available in repositories all over the
world. The same six OER initiatives also reported that their visitors grew by 50 to 150% since 2006.
Translation of resources combined with a growing number of non-English OER projects provide
increased language diversity and global use. The potential number of users is enormous.
While the majority of producers of resources and OER projects are located in English-speaking
countries in the developed world, promising initiatives like cater for a global development. The OER
movement grows both top-down and bottom-up; new projects are started at the institutional level
while individual teachers and researchers also use and produce OER. The institutions involved so far
seem to be well-reputed internationally or in their own countries, rather than institutions that are
unknown or have low status. OER Africa
In exchange for an accurate estimation of the number of ongoing OER initiatives, we can offer a
preliminary typology of different repositories. There are both large-scale operations and small-scale
activities. Furthermore, there are different types of providers: institution-based programmes and
more community-based bottom-up activities. In both cases, there are all kinds of in-between models,
as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Categories of OER Providers
In the upper left corner of the figure, large-scale and institution-based or supported initiatives are
found. Good examples are the MIT OCW programme and LearningSpace from the Open University in
the United Kingdom. Both are large in terms of the financial funding provided and are entirely
institution-based in the sense that all materials originate from own staff. LearningSpace does have a
sister site called LabSpace, which is an experimental zone for downloading, remixing and sharing.
In the upper right corner of Figure 1, large-scale, non-institution-based operations are placed. The
best example is probably Wikipedia, one of the Internet's real success stories and a good example of
a large-scale community-based operation. Other examples would be MERLOT, Connexions, and
ARIADNE. In the bottom left corner of the figure, examples of small-scale institution-based initiatives
are listed. Finally, in the bottom right corner are examples of small-scale community-based initiatives.
Why are People Sharing for Free?
There are technological, economic, social and legal drivers behind this dramatic expansion. Educators
and researchers relish the chance to exploit new broadband capabilities, improved technologies for
creating and distributing content, and greater interactivity. The costs of these technologies are
dropping. Sometimes the driver is the need to compete with other universities; institutions use OER
initiatives to attract new students and to improve their public relations. There is a strong sense in
different parts of the community that OER offers a major opportunity to sustain or restore altruistic
notions of sharing for the common good.