1. 1
Promoting policy uptake for OER and MOOCs
Gráinne Conole
Abstract
This chapter will provide a review of the policy perspectives on Open
Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It
draws in particular on the findings from two EU-funded projects: OPAL and
POERUP. The OPAL initiative focused on identifying the practices around OER in
terms of how they were created and repurposed. POERUP explored the ways in
which Governments stimulated the uptake of OER and MOOCs. The aim was to
enable OER and MOOC stakeholders to make more informed strategic decisions
to promote the use of OER and MOOCs. It also draws on the findings of the
OpenCred project, which focused on accreditation of informal and non-formal
learning. The chapter will conclude by discussing the policy implications of OER
and MOOCs.
Introduction
Digital technologies continue to develop at a pace. Smart phones and tables mean
that learning anywhere and anytime is now a reality, learning analytics provide
rich data on learning behaviours which can be used by teachers to help learners
or by learners themselves to improve their learning strategies. Digital
technologies offer a wealth of ways in which learners can interactive with
multimedia and to communicate and collaborate with tutors and peers. The pace
of change is evident through looking at the annual New Media Consortium
Horizon reports1 and the Innovating Pedagogy reports.2 The latest edition of the
Innovating Pedagogy report lists the following ten innovations that are likely to
have a significant impact on education in the next few years:
Massive open social learning
Learning design informed by analytics
The flipped classroom
Bring your own devices
Learning to learn
Dynamic assessment
Event-based learning
Learning through storytelling
Threshold concepts
Bricolage
Figure 1 shows the key digital technologies of significance over the last thirty
years or so, starting with the emergence of tools to create rich multimedia in the
late eighties through to learning analytics tools in recent years. Open Educational
1 http://redarchive.nmc.org/horizon-project/horizon-reports
2 http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/
2. 2
Resources (OER) emerged around 2001 and Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) in 2008.
Figure 1: A timeline of key digital technologies
OER and MOOCs are challenging traditional formal educational institutions,
enabling learners to learn through free resources and courses. As a result new
business models are emerging and we are seeing a disaggregation of education.
In the future learners may choose not to do a three-year degree, but rather pick
and choose learning opportunities to meet their needs. For example, they may
pay for high-quality learning resources, or for a learning pathway through
materials, or pay for some form of support through peers or a subject-expert
tutor. Finally they may choose to pay for accreditation for their learning.
The emergence of OER
It is now over ten years since the emergence of the OER movement, promoted by
organisations such as UNESCO and the Hewlett Foundation, who argued that
education is a fundamental human right and therefore educational resources
should be freely available. There are now hundreds of high-quality OER
repositories worldwide.
The Hewlett foundation define OER3 as:
3 Definition on the Hewlett Website, http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER/
3. 3
Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have
been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing
by others.
Whilst OECD define them as:
Digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self- learners
to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD, 2007, p. 133).
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration4 argues that the OER movement is
based on:
The belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and
redistribute educational resources without constraint.
It focuses on three suggested strategies to removing barriers to the use of OER:
teacher and learner engagement with OER, a general policy to publish openly and
commitment to open approaches at institutional and government levels.
Conole (2013) provides an overview of the emergence of the OER movement,
along with a list of some of the key OER initiatives. There are a number of
perceived benefits of OER. Firstly, they are free, providing learners who can’t
afford formal education with access to learning materials. Secondly, they can be
adapted and repurposed by teachers for use in a different learning context.
Thirdly, they provide examples of good practice, which provide inspiration for
teachers’ design practices.
The emergence of MOOCs
The first MOOC, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08), was
launched in 2008. It was based on the principles of Connectivism developed by
Siemens (2005). In particular participants were encouraged to harness the
affordances of social and participatory media to support their learning. There
was no right learning pathway; each participant created his or her own
Personalised Learning Environment (PLE) (Atwell 2007). They communicated
with peers through a variety of channels (blogs, wikis, social networking sites,
email, Twitter etc.). Fini published an evaluation of the MOOC (Fini 2009). He
concluded that the course attracted adult lifelong learners who were not
interested in course completion. Time constraints, language barriers and ICT
skills were listed as factors that influenced which tools learners used.
CCK08 is an example of a type of MOOC that has been called a cMOOC. The
emphasis is on learning in a social context, harnessing the power of social media.
Cormier (one of the founders of the CCK08 MOOC) has produced a video, which
describes cMOOCs. In 2011, a second type of MOOC emerged, xMOOCs, through
organisations like Udacity,5 EdX6 and Coursera.7 These courses were didactic in
4 http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
5 https://www.udacity.com/
6 https://www.edx.org/
4. 4
nature, consisting primarily of multimedia, videos and e-assessment elements.
The focus was more on the individual.
However, given the variety of MOOCs now being offered this categorization of
xMOOCs and cMOOCs is too simplistic. Conole has developed a new classification
schema for MOOCs based on twelve dimensions (Conole 2014). The first three
are to do with the context of the MOOC (how open it is, how diverse the learners
are and how massive it is). The remaining nine dimensions are to do with the
pedagogical approach adopted (the use of multimedia, how reflection,
communication and collaboration are fostered, the nature of the learning
pathway provided, what quality assurances processes are applied, whether there
are any certification mechanisms, links to formal educational offerings and the
degree of learner autonomy). The classification schema can be used to describe
MOOCs and also to design and evaluate them.
The list of MOOCs is growing,8 as are the publications associated with them,
these include descriptions of MOOCs and their evaluation.9 EFQUEL (the
European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning) have produced an excellent
series of MOOCs focusing on quality and MOOC development and use.10 There
are advocates and proponents of MOOCs. The advocates argue that the benefits
of MOOCs include the fact that they are free and that they enable participants to
be part of a global community of peers, providing them with experience of
learning online and at scale. It is also argued that because they are free, they are
socially inclusive, provide access to learning for those who cannot afford formal
fee-based education. The proponents argue that the drop out rates are high
(early MOOCs typically had drop out rate of 95 – 98 %) and that it is more about
‘learning income than learning outcomes’ and hence primarily a marketing
exercise.11
OER and MOOC initiatives – the OPAL and POERUP projects
When OER emerged, there was a naïve assumption that just making resources
freely available would result in teachers and learners using and repurposing.
Despite this evaluation of the use of OER repositories and participation in
MOOCs indicates that these resources are not being extensively used and that
there are high dropout rates (McAndrew 2006). Conole (2013) states the
following with respect to this:
The OER movement has been successful in promoting the idea that knowledge
is a public good, expanding the aspirations of organisations and individuals to
7 https://www.coursera.org/
8 See for example http://ww.mooc-list.com/
9 See for example the ICDE’s list of MOOC reports
(http://www.icde.org/en/icde_news/Recent+reports+and+papers+on+MOOCs+and+Online+ed
ucation.b7C_wRfSYa.ips), the MOOCs research reports site
(http://www.moocresearch.com/reports) and the MOOCs for development site
(http://www.moocs4d.org/media.html)
10 http://mooc.efquel.org/
11 For an online debate on the pros and cons of MOOCs see http://alternative-educate.
blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/audio-ascilite-2012-great-debate-moocs.html
5. 5
publish OER. However as yet the potential of OER to transform practice has
not being realised, there is a need for innovative forms of support on the
creation and evaluation of OER, as well as an evolving empirical evidence-base
about the effectiveness of OER.
Indeed more broadly there are still challenges with persuading teachers to use
digital technologies. A recent Pearson’s report12 on faculty attitude to IT states:
Few faculty members (7 percent) strongly agree that online courses can achieve
student learning outcomes that are at least equivalent to those of in-person
courses.
In terms of MOOCs the report states that:
62 percent of faculty members strongly agree that institutions should start
MOOCs only with faculty approval; nearly as many (59 percent) strongly agree
that MOOCs should be evaluated by accrediting agencies.
It is worth concluding this section by locating OER and MOOCs in the wider
context of openness. This consists of a full spectrum of open practices across
learning, teaching and research activities, from open access, through digital
scholarship (Weller 2011) and adopting open approaches to learning and
teaching through OER and MOOCs. Iliyoshi and Kumar provide an overview of
the open educational movement (Iiyoshi and Kumar 2008). The discuss the
notion of ‘openness’ and what it might mean in an educational context, in terms
of open content, technology and knowledge. They argue that this is beginning to
change the way resources are used, shared and improved. They suggest that the
central tenet of open education is that ‘education can be improved by making
educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the collective
wisdom of a community of practice and reflection’.
The importance of open practices for learning and teaching is evident through
the European ‘Opening up education’ initiative,13 which states the following:
The main goal of this initiative is to stimulate ways of learning and teaching
through ICT and digital content, mainly through the development and
availability of OER.
The website goes on to list the following as key benefits:
It will enable students to build knowledge from open and free sources
other than their teachers and institutions, and with different methods;
It will facilitate everyone to engage in learning/study groups, thus
creating learning communities beyond their classrooms;
It will make personalisation and customisation of education a much easier
task;
12 https://commission.fiu.edu/helpful-documents/online-education/12-ihe-survey-faculty-attitudes-
on-technology-2013.pdf
13 http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/initiative
6. 6
To will enable teachers to create communities of practice to exchange
teaching materials and best practices.
It will provide access to a wider range of educational resources across
borders and languages.
The OPAL initiative
The OPAL initiative aimed to address the issue of the lack of uptake and use of
OER.14 Over 100 case studies of OER repositories were examined. From this a set
of OER practices15 were identified, in terms of how OER were being created, used
and repurposed. From these an OPAL metromap16 was developed, which enabled
OER stakeholders (policy makers, managers, practitioners and learner) to create
a vision and implementation map for OER. Figure 1 shows the metromap, for
each stakeholder there are a number of relevant ‘metro stops’.
Figure 2: The OPAL metromap
These are:
Vision for OEP: what is the vision for the creation, use and repurposing of
OER? What institutional targets need to be set in relation to OER?
Strategies and policies: what strategies and policies are in place or need
to be developed to achieve the vision?
14 http://www.oer-quality.org/
15 Open Educational Practices are defined as “practices which support the (re)use and production
of OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and
empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path" (Ehlers, 2011). Initially eight
were identified: strategies and policies, Quality Assurance models, partnership models, tools and tool
practices, barriers and success factors, innovations, skills development and support, and business
models/sustainability strategies.
16 http://www.oer-quality.org/publications/guide/roadmap/
7. 7
Business models: what business models will be needed?
Partnerships: what partnerships with other organisations might be
useful?
Relevance: what is the relevance to individuals and institutions?
Copyright framework: what copyright framework needs to be developed?
Motivation framework: how can learners and teachers be motivated to
use OER?
Alignment with practices: how do we ensure that OER activities align with
existing learning and teaching practices?
Mindsets and attitudes: what are the current attitudes of learners and
teachers towards the use of OER and how can these be changed to have a
more favourable perspective on the use of OER?
Sharing and exchanging: what mechanisms need to be in place to enabling
the sharing of good practice?
Process for creating: how can the processes of creating OER be enabled?
Using OER: how can OER use be encouraged?
Repurposing OER: how can teachers be facilitated to repurposing OER for
use in different learning contexts?
Sharing OER: how can OER be shared and discussed?
Quality mechanisms: what quality mechanisms are needed for OER?
Skills of teachers: what are the current skills levels of teachers around
OER?
Digital literacy: what kinds of digital literacies do learners and teachers
need to make effective use of OER?
Support mechanisms for teachers: what support mechanisms are needed
for teachers?
The OPAL website states the following in relation to this:
The OEP Guidelines enable learners, educational practitioners, leaders of
organisations, and policy makers to plot their trajectory on the path to open
educational practices. This begins with assessing your current position, through
the creation of a vision for openness and a strategy for open practices, and
finally to implementing and promoting open educational practices.
The OPAL initiative made significant progress in identifying OER practices and
barriers to uptake of OER. The metromap provides useful guidelines to enable
stakeholders to create both a vision for OER and associated practice and a
roadmap for implementation.
The POERUP project
The POERUP project17 built on the findings of OPAL. POERUP collated an
inventory of over 500 OER initiatives worldwide. 33 country reports were also
collated, which described the following: the educational context (across schools,
the tertiary sector, adult learning and the VET sector), the level of Internet and e-
17 http://www.poerup.info/
8. learning maturity, and the types of OER initiatives. The following countries were
included:
8
The European Union: Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands,
Poland and United Kingdom
Outside the EU: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United States.
In additional a series of mini-studies were derived:
Southern Europe: Greece, Portugal and Spain
North/East Europe: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Romania and Sweden
The rest of the world: Argentina, Kuwait, Mexico, Oman, Qatar, South
Africa and Thailand.
The key conclusions from the country reports were that many countries seem to
be doing little around OER, however there is a lot under the radar, such as open
access approaches, the development and use of teacher repositories and specific
schools’ ICT initiatives. There is considerable variability in OER activity, which is
specifically related to the level of OER policy (and funding) available in each
country. The UK for example has a sizeable amount of OER initiatives and
activities, partly because of significant funding from the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA). Very few
countries (or institutions) have explicit OER policies. In some countries (for
example Portugal) almost every university has an open access policy, although
this may not necessarily specifically mention OER. Where there were national
policies these were often limited in scope and largely concerned with publically
funded research in HE.
Seven in-depth case studies of OER communities were carried out using Social
Networking Analysis (SNA), to ascertain the nature of the communities, the types
of interactions, and the factors that influenced the sustainability of the
communities (Schreurs, Beemt et al. 2014). This included the Dutch wikiwijs
community, ALISON in Ireland, the OERu consortium and the MOOC consortium
FutureLearn.
Wikiwijs18 is an open educational resources (OER) platform for teachers
launched by the Dutch Ministry of Education to 'stimulate development and use
of OER', 'improve access to both open and 'closed' digital learning materials',
'support teachers in arranging their own learning materials and
professionalization', and to 'increase teacher involvement in development and
use of OER.' Wikiwijs builds on the wiki philosophy of Wikipedia but customizes
an existing OER platform, Connexions, to host and distribute its content. Wikiwijs
is focused on all levels of education, from primary to higher education. All
content on Wikiwijs is available under CC BY.
18 http://www.wikiwijsleermiddelenplein.nl/
9. 9
The Irish ALISON website19 states that it offers over 600 free online courses.
Four stakeholders are identified: students, teachers, employers and publishers.
The benefits for students are listed as providing them with a means to gain
verification and certification, and the opportunity to take a free aptitude test.
The benefits for teachers are listed as mechanisms to support the management
of large groups and automatic testing. The benefits for employers are listed as
mechanisms to upskill employees and a means of verifying candidates’
knowledge. Finally, the benefits for publishers are listed as a means of reaching
millions of learners and a mechanism for earning advertising revenue.
The OERu20 is an international consortium of institutions, learners can choose to
learn through OER and/or MOOCs and then approach one of the partners for
recognition of their learning and accreditation via that institution. There are now
37 members of the consortium and a range of courses offered via the website.
The website states that all their courses are taught online, based on open
educational resources, and designed for independent learning. They claim that
the partner institutions offer qualifications through the OERu network, which
are equivalent to those offered on-campus. Some of the benefits listed are that
learners can ‘try before they buy’ as all OERu materials are free, and that
learners can customize their learning via micro courses. Three ways of engaging
with an OERu course are listed: self-directed interest, certification for active
participation, and learning for credit.
The FutureLearn consortium21 is the latest MOOC consortium, initiated by the
Open University UK, it now has 37 partners. FutureLearn was launched in
December 2012. A key aspiration behind the initiative is inspiring learning for
life and providing a means for globally connecting learners with experts. The
platform offers a diverse range of courses. The pedagogy associated with
FutureLearn courses is based on high-quality ‘bit size’ chunks of learning and it
is about learning through storytelling. Courses contain a mixture of text, audio,
video and activities. Participants can pay to get a certificate of participation. The
platform has a rich set of learning analytic tools, to help course designers
improve and refine their MOOCs.
The FutureLearn website lists the following as key principles: open approaches
and practices, listening to learners (and clearly analysis of the learning analytics
data is key to this), telling stories, provoking conversation, creating connections,
keeping it simple, learning from others, celebrating progress, and embracing
FutureLearners.
Analysis of these communities gives a picture of the OER and MOOC landscape,
the focus of different initiatives and any associated business models and the
mechanisms that are needed to make them sustainable.
19 http://alison.com/
20 http://oeru.org/
21 https://www.futurelearn.com/
10. MOOC evaluation
The University of Leicester is a FutureLearn partner, the Institute of Learning
Innovation undertook an evaluation of the first two Leicester MOOCs delivered
on the platform. The courses were: ‘England in the time of King Richard III’22 and
‘Forensic Science and Criminal Justice’.23 Each course was six weeks in duration,
with three hours of learning per week. The courses adopted the bite-site
chunking of learning through a variety of text, audio, video and activities.
Participants could pay £25 for a certificate of participation. The methodology
consisted of interviews with stakeholders (course designers, tutors, learners and
the Director of Education at Leicester who was the lead on Leicester’s MOOC
developments). An online survey was also sent to MOOC participants. In addition
the courses and the associated learning analytics data were analysed. The
number registered for each MOOC and the drop out rates were also collected.
The aims of the evaluation included:
10
The rationale for joining
The patterns of interaction in the MOOCs
The perceptions of the MOOCs by both course developers and
participants
The time needed for development
The time participants spend on different components of the MOOCs
The reasons for participating
The reasons for drop out.
Table 1 shows a breakdown of the activities associated with the Richard the III
MOOC. 96.5 % of participants liked or strongly liked reading articles. 94.1 %
liked or strongly liked watching videos. 91.6 % liked or strongly liked following
links to related content and 89.7 % liked or strongly liked doing the online
quizzes and getting feedback. Lower percentages were evident for reading the
comments posted by other participants (58.7 %) and discussing things online
with others (27.5 %).
22 https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/england-of-richard-third
23 https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/forensic-crim-justice
11. 11
Table 1: Breakdown of activities on the Richard the III MOOC
Figure 2 shows a breakdown of the age of participants. A significant percentage
were older learners. This can be attributed to the fact that the course was
primarily advertised to OU alumni. 52 % had prior experiences of MOOCs, and
most had some level of higher education qualifications. These findings mirror
those from evaluations of other MOOCs. The Richard the III MOOC was capped at
10, 066 participants. Most visited the site at least a few times each week and
posted an average of 8 posts each week. 87 % had little or no contact with tutors
and 47 % were still active in the final week.
Figure 3 Survey findings for the Richard the III MOOC
Overall the participants were positive about their experience of participating in
the MOOC (Figure 3). 97 % stated that the structure of the MOOC was clear. 91.5
% found the MOOC engaging and interesting, 91 % stated that it was a positive
12. 12
experience. They indicated that the course was about right in terms of level of
difficulty, time and length. The top three reasons stated for participation were:
learning new things (85 %), trying a MOOC (53 %) and experiencing online
learning (46 %). Three common words used to describe the MOOC were:
interesting, enjoyable and informative.
A number of themes emerged from the interviews with stakeholders. Firstly, that
participation was very much a marketing exercise and there was an aspiration
that MOOC participants might sign up for fee-paying Leicester courses as a result
of participating in the MOOC. Course designers noted the value of using videos
and bite-size chunks of learning, and saw these as pedagogical innovations, that
they planned to incorporate into their campus-based courses. The value of
learning analytics was also mentioned and in particular that the data indicated
that videos should be no more than 10 minutes in length. The importance of
working with experience learning technologist in the course design was also
noted, combining subject expert knowledge with general knowledge about good
pedagogy and learning design. A key concern mentioned by both course
designers was the issue of designing for an unknown audience, and in particular
not knowing the level of prior experience in the subject matter of the
participants. However as noted earlier this did not appear to be an issue as the
majority of participants stated that the level of the materials was about right. The
platform was considered good from the learner perspective but not from the
developers’ perspective, this has been fed back to the FutureLearn platform
developers to help improve the system. The course designers were disappointed
with the lack of discussion on the courses. The course designer for Richard the III
provided weekly email summaries, whereas the forensic science course had a
dedicated course tutor to address participants’ comments. In general the
stakeholders felt the MOOCs were good for raising the profile of Leicester
courses and for showcasing examples of good practice.24
24 See http://e4innovation.com/?p=800 for a list of good practice guidelines for MOOCs
13. 13
Figure 4: Overall experience of participating in the MOOC
These findings map well from evaluations of other MOOCs. Selwyn and Buffin
(2014) did a meta analysis of MOOC initiatives. They focused on stakeholder
perceptions of the MOOC experience and how these discourses framed some of
the wider concerns around higher education, in terms of access to education, the
relationship between different stakeholders and the nature of knowledge. They
listed the following distinct discursive themes:
Size and scale in terms of the number of students, course and countries
and the scale of the investment.
Higher Education marketplace in terms of competition between
universities for students and for credentialisation of degrees.
The general sense of transformation in terms of non-specific descriptions
of characteristics of disruption.
The business and economics aspects in terms of emerging business
models and methods of monetization and profit making.
The pedagogical approaches in terms of teaching and instructional design.
How free the MOOCs were
The nature of the subject content and knowledge and the subject areas
offered.
The nature of the students taking the MOOCs.
The perceptions of the teachers, tutors and others involved in designing
and delivering the MOOCs.
The nature of assessment provided.
The ways in which technologies were used.
14. Policy recommendations
Bliss (2014) argues that effective OER policy is critical for the entire open
education movement. Policies exist at a number of levels: international, national,
regional, local and institutional. He cites the OER impact map25 produced by the
OER research hub. He cites Vance Randall he argues that policy is nearly always
created to solve a particular problem or set of problems. He goes on to articulate
the nature of policy at different levels. At the international level it is about
raising awareness of OER and ensuring sustainability. At the national level OER
may help solve the sustainable OER development problem by requiring open
licensing on materials produced with public funds. Finally, at the institutional
level it is about ensuring the mainstreaming of OER.
POERUP concluded with the following recommendations for policy to promote
the uptake of OER and MOOCs:
14
Communication and awareness raising
Funding
Copyright and licensing
Reducing regulatory barriers
Quality
Teacher training and continuous professional development
Certification and accreditation
Infrastructure
Further research
In terms of communication and awareness raising POERUP concluded that there
was still a need to raise awareness of existing resources and, in some countries,
to clarify what OER are and what their benefits are. There also needs to be
continued support for existing programmes. To this I would add the need for
Continuing Professional Development to help practitioners find resources and
enable them to repurpose them for a new learning context. A study by Conole et
al. (Conole, McAndrew et al. 2010) explored how OER could be repurposed for
supporting collaborative learning. They concluded that using OER was hard for a
number of reasons. In particular, the practitioner needs to unpack the implicit
design of the OER and then find a way of repurposing it for a new learning
context.
Funding costs and ensuring sustainability are still key issues. More needs to be
done to ensure the outputs of publically funded research in this area are
continued to be used. We also need a better understanding of the cost basis of
university teaching and in particular the costs associated with producing OER
and delivering MOOCs.
Not surprisingly copyright and licensing issues were still evident. There needs to
be mechanisms in place to educate practitioners on IPR issues and to harness the
25 http://oermap.org/policy-map/
15. 15
knowledge of information specialist on copyright and IPR, such as library
professionals.
In terms of reducing regulatory barriers, the POERUP project cited ‘Bologna 2’26
and in particular that the focus should be on the competences learner gained
rather than the duration of study. They also recommended the standardization of
undergraduate syllabi across Europe.
There were a number of key issues around the quality of OER and MOOCs. Ways
of improving the visibility of OER included encouraging practitioners to include
OER on approved course reading lists. It was also stated that it was important
that OER and MOOCs met appropriate accessibility issues. Mechanisms for
improving the quality of OER and MOOCs included the suggestion that peer
review mechanisms are put in place, perhaps through an OER/MOOC evaluation
and adoption panel. It was suggested that an in-depth country cost-benefits
analysis should be undertaken to assess the potential savings that might be
achieved through implementing an OER strategy. POERUP also recommended
establishing a European quality assurance standard for OER content. Finally
there is a need to consider the implications of OER and MOOCs on quality
assurance and recognition.
Teacher training and CPD was highlighted as a key way of increasing the impact
and uptake of OER and MOOCs. The POERUP project stated that very few CPD
programmes cover teaching online and even less on how to use OER and MOOCs.
Suggestions to address this included: establishing (and adequately fund) a
professional development programme to help teachers and administrators
understand the benefits and uses of OER/MOOCs and open licensing. This would
support teacher / trainer / lecturer CPD on the creation, use and re-use of OER,
with coverage of distance learning, MOOCs and other forms of open educational
practice, and also IPR issues, and establishing incentive schemes for teachers
engaged in online professional development of their pedagogic skills including
online learning.
In terms of certification and accreditation the project recommended the
establishment of transnational accrediting agencies and mutual recognition of
accreditation across Europe. Also to ensure that there are appropriate
mechanisms for APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning), including the ability to
accredit knowledge and competences developed through online study and
informal learning.
Finally the infrastructure of the design and delivery of OER and MOOCs needs to
be improved, to make it seamless across Europe and easy to use.
The project concluded with a number of recommendations for further research.
Firstly, this includes focusing on sustainable business models for OER and
innovation. Secondly, encourage research into the verifiable benefits of OER,
26 The Bologna process is a series of agreements between European countries to ensure
comparability in the standards and quality of Higher Education qualifications – see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process
16. with greater efforts to integrate such analyses with its ongoing research on
distance learning, on-campus online learning, and pedagogy. Thirdly, future
research in the K-12 sector should explicitly embrace Repositories, Federations,
Portals and Tools and should consider off-campus learning (both institutional –
virtual schools – and self-directed or home-tutor led). Fourthly, it is important to
support educational institutions in developing new business and educational
models around OER and MOOC. Finally, the project recommended the
establishment of large-scale research and policy experimentations to test
innovative pedagogical approaches, curriculum development and skills
assessment.
Accreditation of informal and non-formal learning
Clearly OER and MOOCs offer opportunities for learners to learn for free and
potentially enable individuals who cannot afford formal education to learn. A
number of accreditation models have emerged for the accreditation of informal
and non-formal learning through OER and MOOCs; such as badges for skills and
competencies, certificates of participation and completion, and formal
recognition of learning, through organisations like the OER University.27
Figure 4 illustrates the relationship between formal and informal learning. There
are two axes: learning individually or socially, and learning informally or
formally. Traditional campus-based course and Distance Learning courses, sit in
the top left hand side, mapping to learning individually in a formal learning
context. Added a social element shifts this to the top right hand side, examples
include blended courses and Distance Learning courses with an addition of social
media. Learning individual and informally can be achieved through OER and
xMOOCs, as shown in the bottom left hand side of the diagram. Added a social
dimensions shifts this to the bottom right hand side, examples include learning
through OER and social media, and cMOOCs. Transition from an informal to a
formal learning context can be achieved in a number of ways: through traditional
Accreditation of Prior Learning (APEL), via e-portfolios that evidence how the
learner has achieved the learning outcomes, through organisations like the
OERu, and through badges for accreditation.
16
27 http://oeru.org/
17. 17
Figure 5: The formal/informal learning landscape
The OpenCred project28 investigated mechanisms for the accreditation of OER
and MOOCs. The purpose was to gain an understanding of the landscape of
accreditation of informal and non-formal learning and to inform a broader
project on opening up education, OpenEdu,29 which is investigating the
challenges and opportunities in the recognition of learning achievements via
open learning with the aim of supporting policy development at a European
level. The study started with a desk research phase, which sought to identify the
ways in which the main open education collaborative networks, consortia and
platforms in Europe offer recognition for open learning. The concept of
recognition was broken down into different levels of formality, with reference to
some key recent discussion documents in the literature, and descriptors were
given for each level in the resulting hierarchy. Various European open education
initiatives were then described in terms of this hierarchy of levels of formality of
recognition. The researchers also carried out four in-depth case studies to
investigate the experiences of a small number of participants in open education
in Europe from different perspectives. Six interviews were held: two with
teachers based in higher education education/research institutions, two with
MOOC learners, and two with employers/employer bodies that are beginning to
recognise non-formal, open learning. The findings revealed that the following
aspects of open learning had a significant impact on recognition of open learning:
robustness of assessment, affordability for the learner, and eligibility for
assessment and recognition.
Related initiatives
OER and MOOC activities continue at a pace and there continues to be significant
investment to investigate how OER and MOOCs can be developed and used. In
28 See http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/OpenCred/ISUNITWEBSITE-IPTS-JRC-EC.htm for a
summary of the project
29 http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/OpenEdu.html
18. addition to the projects described in this chapter, it is worth highlighting some
related research. The VMPass project is developing an accreditation framework
for OER and MOOC. This is being achieved through a ‘learning passport, which
has three sections to be completed: a section from the OER/MOOC provider, a
sector to be completed by the learner, and a section from the accrediting
organisation or body.
The European Mutiple MOOC aggregator project, EMMA,30 aims to showcase
excellence in innovative teaching methodologies and learning approaches
through the large-scale piloting of MOOCs on different subjects. EMMA provides
a system for the delivery of free, open, online courses in multiple languages from
different European universities to help preserve Europe’s rich cultural,
educational and linguistic heritage and to promote real cross-cultural and multi-lingual
18
learning. EMMA operates in two main modes; as an aggregator and
hosting system of courses produced by European universities; and as a system
that enables learners to construct their own courses using units from MOOCs as
building blocks. The EMMA team are taking a deliberate multi-lingual, multi-cultural
approach to learning by offering inbuilt translation and transcription
services for courses hosted on the platform.
The eMundus project31 focuses on the state of the art of MOOCs. It ims to
strengthen cooperation and awareness among European Higher Education
Institutions and their strategic counterparts worldwide by exploring the
potential of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and Virtual Mobility (VM) to
support long term, balanced, inter-cultural academic partnership.
A recently project (OpenEdOz)32, funded by the Australian Office of Learning and
Technology is developing a national policy for fostering the uptake of open
resources and courses. It has two main activities: i) curriculum design case
studies to answer the question of how student learning outcomes can be
enhanced with OEP and ii) a National Policy Roadmap for fostering relevant
uptake of open resources and courses. The project is due for completion in
September 2015.
Conclusion
The chapter has provided an overview of OER and MOOC initiatives and
developments, with a particular focus on the policy lens for uptake. It has drawn
on a number of key research projects exploring this issue. The chapter concludes
with a set of policy recommendations derived from the POERUP project.
As stated at the start of this chapter, OER and MOOCs are challenging traditional
educational institutions and their associated business models. OER and MOOCs
are an example of what Christensen terms ‘disruptive innovation’ (Christensen
1997). A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new
market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value
30 http://project.europeanmoocs.eu
31 http://wikieducator.org/Emundus/Home
32 http://openedoz.com
19. network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. It is
about change, about something new, about the unexpected and about changing
mindsets. OER and MOOCs are disruptive in that they are challenging traditional
educational institutions, to rethink their business models and to rethink the
ways in which they design and deliver courses. It is unclear what the future of
OER and MOOCs will be, and whether or not they will have a fundamental impact
on the educational landscape. But if they make traditional institutions rethink
their values and distinctiveness and what is the learner experience of attending
one institution over another then that is for the good. My feeling is that there will
be a spectrum of educational offerings from entirely free resources and courses,
through to the Oxbridge model of the one to one tutorial. This spectrum will offer
learners a variety of possibilities to engage with learning, matched to their
individual preferences and needs.
19
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