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Owen Barritt

Big and Little OER

Sunday 21 April 2013 at 14:07
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Edited by Owen Barritt, Monday 22 April 2013 at 13:41

Big OER - Major institutional project in open education such MIT's Open CourseWare.

Little OER - Smaller individual outputs produced as a by-product of everyday work.

BenefitsDrawbacks
Big OER
  • Can easy have backing of major institutions with institutional branding.
  • Can be developed strategically, covering major topics.
  • Can pool resources of many stakeholders as necessary
  • Can deliver a common set of resources for all courses/topics if required.
  • Can target large audiences with potential for detailed planning.
  • Can cover large amounts of materials.
  • Costly, requiring backing of institutional budgets or trust funds.
  • One size fits all model across all individuals' work within institution/department.
  • Range of media presented may be limited.
  • Planning required to ensure materials meet requirements of all stakeholders.
  • Larger topics may be less suitable for reuse outside the organisation.
Little OER
  • Generally a by-product of individuals' existing work.
  • Materials can be developed at any time using any available tool in any style.
  • More adapted to long-tail approaches allowing very special interest materials to be produced for small audiences.
  • Materials naturally produced in a range of medias by a range of individuals.
  • Collectively have potential to reach a wider audience than Big OER although individual audiences may be small.
  • Smaller topics may be more suitable for reuse in a range of contexts.
  • Generally unplanned with no guarantees of audience/use.
  • Unlikely to produce much consistency in style between materials.
  • Needs for general topic materials may be sidelined by more specialised topics.
  • Reputation of materials' authors may not be as clear as for major institutions.
  • Generally only cover a very small section of a topic.

 

Tags: big vs small oer, oer, openness, h817, #h817open
Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Gilly Ferguson, Tuesday 23 April 2013 at 10:05)
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