Open educational resources create impactful new materials while lowering costs and barriers to access
The staid old world of textbook publishing has long been subject to disruption. New technologies have diversified how traditionally formatted textbooks are distributed, adding a range of digital mechanisms to existing hard-copy options. Far more impactfully, though, digital technologies have brought about exciting new ways in which educational resources can be created, enhanced and supplemented well beyond static words and pictures.
At the most basic level, having a textbook in digital format means it can be updated and kept relevant far more easily than under the constraints of traditional publishing where new editions were published only every few years and, depending on the subject matter, might have been overtaken by new information almost from the day they were printed.
The digital disruption of materials used by educators to provide learners with the very best resources goes well beyond this. Educational resources can be wholly digital, consisting of audio and video productions. They can be fully interactive, drawing learners into a more experiential way to acquire knowledge. Emerging technologies like augmented and virtual reality, and even game-based approaches, are finding powerful applications in everything from university curriculums to vocational college training materials.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, promotes the development and use of OERs, which it defines as, “learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”
UNESCO says an open license is one “that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.”
The idea of open education, of a library of open educational resources, is fundamental to the goal of making postsecondary education as inclusive, accessible and relevant as possible. It is such an important element of promoting digital learning across the province’s postsecondary sector that the Government of Ontario, through eCampusOntario, invested more than $70 million over the past few years in a Virtual Learning Strategy that seeded an explosion in the creation and adoption of digital learning resources, most of which are now freely available to educators and learners in eCampusOntario’s Open Library.
The development of new educational resources, especially as supported by VLS over the past few years, has brought educators and subject-matter experts together to connect and collaborate in ways they never had the opportunity to do before. Academics and researchers work with publishers and with content creators such as writers, graphic designers, software programmers and videographers. This process can even involve learners themselves, both in the actual production of materials and also in the review and testing of them. And it can more easily bring non-traditional and new sources of knowledge into the classroom, reflecting the diversity of Ontario’s postsecondary institutions and of its learners and educators.
Multimedia educational resources enhance the learning experience and cater to different modes of learning, allowing learners to use the materials in the ways that suit them best. It brings the best and most effective materials to educators and learners everywhere, while also providing options for those who may not have the connectivity and other digital resources to access more immersive formats. Above all, accessibility is enhanced by lowering the cost of materials, with learners having so far realised almost $20 million in reduced mandatory textbook fees from Ontario instructors using Open Educational Resources to replace one or more of their assigned resources.
While open educational resources are free to use, they are not free to create. Educators often require access to publishing tools, design services, and release time. VLS funding directs significant investments to the content creators and producers, ensuring that they are properly funded and that they retain IP and copyright ownership while allowing the materials to be used under Creative Commons licensing.
eCampusOntario provides free tools necessary to create OERs, including Pressbooks and H5P Studio that educators can use to author a new resource, or clone an existing resource and make it their own. Postsecondary institutions such as Fanshawe College, McMaster University and Brock University are providing support services and grant programs to assist their faculty in the creation and adoption of OER.
The development and adoption of open educational resources supports learners not only throughout their educational career but also in the broader employment market, indeed in society itself. By maintaining the currency and relevance of materials and, especially, by adopting appropriate new technologies as they become available, open education parallels the challenges faced by employers, employees and engaged citizens in staying current with a seemingly never-ending flood of emerging technologies. The skills and adaptability gained both by creators and the users of open education resources are now core employment and societal skills.
Traditional business models might well be disrupted, but exciting opportunities creating greater value for the broader ecosystem are being opened up. In Ontario, the development of rich, open educational resources is led by eCampusOntario. Through its Open Library eCampusOntario promotes the development of any educational resources that can support learning while doing so in a way that allows those materials to be used as free of cost and access barriers as possible.
To learn more about open education resources and eCampusOntario’s Open Library, visit https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/. Information on how these resources are licensed can be found at https://www.ecampusontario.ca/open-education-resources/.