OER1062 Oral Presentation

Never mind the technology – why would we share?

Charles Duncan, Intrallect Ltd, Lou McGill, Consultant, Sarah Currier, Sarah Currier Consultancy, Peter Douglas, Intrallect Ltd

Conference Theme: Open Educational Communities

Abstract: This exploration of the motivations around open educational communities is based on many years experience working with communities sharing educational resources at international, national; and subject-based levels. It draws on work carried out in two major JISC-supported projects – Community Dimensions of learning Object Repositories and Improving the Evidence Base in Support of Sharing Learning Materials which are themselves based on a large number of case studies. Six different approaches to sharing education resources have been examined:

• open sharing
• sharing through Communities of Practice (CoP)
• subject-based sharing
• institutional sharing
• national sharing
• informal sharing

One of the key considerations in any educational resource exchange is who are the producers and who are the consumers? Do they overlap or are they completely separate? Around a dozen different sharing initiatives have been examined and compared to try to extract common factors and these are summarised under the five headings:

• General benefits of sharing for global community
• Benefits of sharing for national community
• Benefits of sharing for educational institutions
• Benefits of sharing for those supporting/facilitating learning
• Benefits of sharing for learners

Through this work a number of business cases have emerged. No single set of business cases can be applied – in every case each venture must examine its motivation and settle on the business cases that most suit its cause. We also discuss ways of measuring the success of an OER venture as it is necessary, having made a business case, to show that it can be achieved.

Keywords: Sharing, communities, models, benefits

References:
“Good intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials” (Final Report), Lou McGill, Sarah Currier, Charles Duncan, Peter Douglas, Dec 2008, http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/265/1/goodintentionspublic.pdf
“Good intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials” (Supplement: Business Cases), Lou McGill, Sarah Currier, Charles Duncan, Peter Douglas, Dec 2008 (Augmented Oct 2009)  http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/265/3/goodintentions_businesscasesAugmented.pdf
“Structured guidelines for setting up or evaluating LO repositories”, Anoush Margaryan, Colin Milligan, Peter Douglas, April 2007, http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/documents/CD-LOR_Structured_Guidelines_v1p0_000.pdf