H817 / Open Learn Week 3 Activity 11 Big and Little OER
Saturday, 13 Apr 2013, 11:17
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Deirdre Robson, Saturday, 13 Apr 2013, 11:39
Blog Post: Benefits and Drawback of Big & Little OER
Characteristics of 'Big' and 'Little' OER
Big OER
Little OER
Public access to facilities
Public access to knowledge
Public access to knowledge
Student engagement
Student engagement
Faculty engagement
Widening participation
Widening participation
Encouraging economic regeneration
Institutional relationship/partnership building
Top-down model
'Bottom-up' model
Social engagement with course organisers
Community engagement & sharing a default
Institutional team generated content
User generated content
Contributor opportunity to explore ideas
Creativity and fun
Educator - ego and scholarly status
'short-tail model - high set up & technical costs.
'Frictionless' long tail model - reducing relative importance of set up and content generation costs.
Predictable - project and measurable output led.
Unpredictability welcomed
From the above it can be seen that the benefit of 'Big' OER is that it embraces 'openness' to a degree; it 'broadcasts' knowledge to a much wider community than conventional institutional learning has done before, and has a more demonstrable commitment to the wider community (both educational and public at large).. However, the most obvious disadvantages of 'Big' OER is that such 'openness' is relative. Any 'Big' OER is shaped, fundamentally, by its institutional roots. It tends to be 'top-down', and is driven by policies and procedures, projects and measurable outputs. It is relatively expensive and thus has sustainability issues.
In many ways (at least according to Weller) the benefits of 'Little' OER are often in what this offers in the way of greater opportunities for openness, for widening community, for 'bottom-up' initiatives, for re-usability and re-visioning of content. 'Little' OER offers the possibility of greater opportunities for content creators (educators) to place content and thus interact with the wider learning community (with the proviso that engagement will be unpredictable). As such OER is inherently low cost, however, even if there is little obvious 'pay back' there will still be benefits. The unpredictability might be said to be a drawback, however, as this does not necessarily enhance any sense of 'community' (except in an abstract sense). The issues of money and time are, as Weller notes, commonly posed caveats to this activity, as is the perception that such activity is 'additional activity'. Weller dismisses this, but if an educator works within an institution which does not take the view that such activity is 'genuine' scholarly activity then this will continue to be a 'minus' for any individual would-be participant in 'little' OER.
References Weller, M. (2011a) Academic Output as Collateral Damage [online], slidecast. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/academic-output-as-collateral-damage (Accessed 12 April 2013)
H817 / Open Learn Week 3 Activity 11 Big and Little OER
Blog Post: Benefits and Drawback of Big & Little OER
Characteristics of 'Big' and 'Little' OER
Big OER
Little OER
Public access to facilities
Public access to knowledge
Public access to knowledge
Student engagement
Student engagement
Faculty engagement
Widening participation
Widening participation
Encouraging economic regeneration
Institutional relationship/partnership building
Top-down model
'Bottom-up' model
Social engagement with course organisers
Community engagement & sharing a default
Institutional team generated content
User generated content
Contributor opportunity to explore ideas
Creativity and fun
Educator - ego and scholarly status
'short-tail model - high set up & technical costs.
'Frictionless' long tail model - reducing relative importance of set up and content generation costs.
Predictable - project and measurable output led.
Unpredictability welcomed
From the above it can be seen that the benefit of 'Big' OER is that it embraces 'openness' to a degree; it 'broadcasts' knowledge to a much wider community than conventional institutional learning has done before, and has a more demonstrable commitment to the wider community (both educational and public at large).. However, the most obvious disadvantages of 'Big' OER is that such 'openness' is relative. Any 'Big' OER is shaped, fundamentally, by its institutional roots. It tends to be 'top-down', and is driven by policies and procedures, projects and measurable outputs. It is relatively expensive and thus has sustainability issues.
In many ways (at least according to Weller) the benefits of 'Little' OER are often in what this offers in the way of greater opportunities for openness, for widening community, for 'bottom-up' initiatives, for re-usability and re-visioning of content. 'Little' OER offers the possibility of greater opportunities for content creators (educators) to place content and thus interact with the wider learning community (with the proviso that engagement will be unpredictable). As such OER is inherently low cost, however, even if there is little obvious 'pay back' there will still be benefits. The unpredictability might be said to be a drawback, however, as this does not necessarily enhance any sense of 'community' (except in an abstract sense). The issues of money and time are, as Weller notes, commonly posed caveats to this activity, as is the perception that such activity is 'additional activity'. Weller dismisses this, but if an educator works within an institution which does not take the view that such activity is 'genuine' scholarly activity then this will continue to be a 'minus' for any individual would-be participant in 'little' OER.
References
Weller, M. (2011a) Academic Output as Collateral Damage [online], slidecast. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/ mweller/ academic-output-as-collateral-damage (Accessed 12 April 2013)
Weller, M. (2011b) 'Public engagement as collateral damage' in The Digital Scholar, London, Bloomsbury Academic. Also available online at http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/ view/ DigitalScholar_9781849666275/ chapter-ba-9781849666275-chapter-007.xmll (Accessed 13 April 2013