Feature: Open education resources g Importantly, the report also made
a series of recommendations on funds, leadership, policy and how to grow resources, including earmarking library budgets and supporting internal OE champions. Prosser agrees that OERs aren’t yet mainstream in terms of production and use, and reckons resources first need to find their way onto university reading lists. For starters, he advocates a reward
system being developed in institutions and departments that recognises the time and effort that an academic spends on creating a high-quality OER. ‘People need kudos and could get a tick against their names that manifests itself against, say, career development – we just don’t have this right now,’ he said. Prosser also points to the need for mechanisms of quality control in OERs. ‘For example, it would be really interesting if scholarly societies could ‘kite-mark’ sets of materials, which could also serve as reward or validation. ‘We’re really lucky in the UK to have
some very active and thoughtful societies that may have some ideas here. OERs is an area that the UK library community is increasingly interested in, and it would be interesting for us, or someone else, to convene a group that is interested in this.’
A flying start Across the Atlantic, US colleges are ahead of UK institutions on OER adoption. Myriad OER repositories exist, including Oasis from the Commonwealth of Learning, Merlot, set up by the California State University, and OER Commons, created by Californian non-profit organisation, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. Indeed, rising interest in OERs at the US state level as a means to make college education more affordable prompted SPARC to set up a State Policy Tracker that tracks OER policy on a weekly basis. So why the OER adoption gap between
the US and UK? Clearly each nation’s education system is based on very different models. But as Andrea Eastman- Mullins, founder and CEO of US-based West End Learning, points out: ‘The UK has been a little more forward thinking, in terms of recognising teaching and the tenure promotion process, so now the US is feeling the pain of student affordability more, which has resulted in more [OER] advocacy.’ Indeed, according to Eastman-Mullins, the early adopters of OERs in the US have been largely motivated by student affordability. ‘They really see the pain of the average college student paying $1,200
6 Research Information June/July 2021
“Why the OER adoption gap between the US and UK? Each nation’s education system is based on very different models”
on textbooks every year,’ she says. ‘In the US, deciding between buying a textbook or buying food is a real issue for some students.’ Despite advocacy, numerous OER
repositories and early adopters, issues exist. For example, an ongoing survey on OERs from the Babson Survey Research Group recently put faculty awareness at less than 50 per cent. Eastman-Mullins believes that many
lecturers may be using OERs in the form of open textbooks, videos and other materials without realising, but like RLUK’s Prosser she believes incentives, in the form of recognition, are needed to increase the use of OERs. ‘The OER movement in the US has sustained a lot of traction by giving mini- grants or stipends to faculty that are willing to take the time to convert courses to OERs,’ she says. ‘But what would go even further is to recognise the time involved [in creating and using OERs] in
the tenure and promotion process. We’re seeing movement in this direction but it’s definitely a steeper hill to climb.’ Yet, recognition aside, Eastman-Mullins
reckons one of the biggest motivating factors for academics is also inspiration. ‘Introducing [lecturers] to different open materials pedagogically is very inspiring,’ she said. ‘For example, using Underground Comics to teach in the humanities can brighten peoples’ ideas of what their course can be.’
Discovering OERs Still, as more academics turn to OERs, more issues around discoverability are emerging. As Eastman-Mullins points out, faculty ‘still has a way to go’ to recognise what resources are available. And then lecturers need specific material – be it a five minute video or relevant book chapter with the necessary copyright – that fits into their existing courses. ‘I’ve seen studies that say it takes an
extra 160 hours to prepare for courses using this kind of digital content, which means people give up and revert back to the text book,’ she says. UCL’s Ayris concurs but points out that the e-textbook material created at the university and deposited into UCL Discovery is primarily aimed at supporting its own students, and as such, is driven by the UCL curriculum. ‘Dissemination is very straightforward through our strong team of subject liaison librarians,’ he said.
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