Open Education in Practice – How Policy Can Lead to Positive Change

Abstract

The use and creation of Open Education Resources (OER) is becoming increasingly prevalent with teachers and learning designers at universities around the world. OER allows educators to create content and make their content available to the world under an open licence, and also provides the opportunity to use and adapt other OER content. Whilst the use and creation of OER in tertiary institutions is not yet considered the ‘norm’, many jurisdictions around the world have taken steps, to fund, support and encourage the use of OER in their educational institutions. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has developed an Open Education (OE) initiative to support the use and creation of OER at QUT. Policy is often the foundation stone, which supports progress and change. The underlying policy provides the framework and often points to the legal parameters that guide the objectives of the project or movement. The importance of policy is evident in the way in which QUT has developed and implemented an OE initiative to promote and support the creation and use of OER. This paper considers the history and development of OER, using QUT’s OE initiative as an example of the ways in which policy and implementation can lead to positive change.

Keywords:

• Open Education Resources
• Queensland University of Technology
• open access
• open
• education
• policy

1. Background Literature – The Historical Development of OER

A significant amount of literature has been dedicated to the definition of OER and summarising the history and literature pertaining to the development and motivations underpinning the OER movement (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond, 2007; Baraniuk & Burrus, 2008; Geser, 2007; Gurell & Wiley, 2008; Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development [OECD], 2007; Plotkin, 2010; Wiley, 2003; Wiley, Bliss, & McEwen, 2014). This paper will not attempt to recount this history, but will provide a summary of the important developments leading to the initiatives impacting OER in Australia.

Conversations about the concept of openly available content commenced in the mid to late 90s. The first significant step in the open education movement occurred in September 2002, when the OpenCourseWare initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was released to the public (Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], 2001; Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] OpenCourseWare, n.d.; Plotkin, 2010). OpenCourseWare was the first web-based project of its kind which published MIT course materials. The content was made freely available using the Creative Commons Licence Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike licence (Creative Commons, 2007; Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] OpenCourseWare, 2017). Shortly after the release of OpenCourseWare, the term ‘Open Educational Resources’ was developed by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a result of the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education Institutions in Developing Counties (D’Antoni, 2009). OER was defined as:

The open provision of educational resources, enable by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaption by a community of users for non-commercial purposes. (United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2002, p. 24)

Since the adoption of the term OER, a number of studies have been undertaken to determine if there are benefits with respect to the creation and use of OER specifically, with respect to creating OERs, how OER can be used to improve student learning outcomes and access to education. As noted by UNESCO, ‘education is key to social and economic development’ and is the foundation stone to support ‘learning societies’. (D’Antoni, 2009; UNESCO, 2007).

OER supporters believe that:

At the heart of the open-educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge. (Smith & Casserly, 2006, p. 10)

In 2007, UNESCO made a commitment to ‘dramatically expand educational opportunities for children, youth and adults by 2015’. (UNESCO, 2007, p. 3). Increased knowledge and uptake of OER have been a catalyst in helping achieve the goals of UNESCO. Since this pledge, many initiatives have been undertaken across the globe including research studies into the benefits associated with creation and use of OER in learning institutions (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC], 2016).

Over the past decade universities, often led by their university libraries, have taken a focused approach to highlighting the potential benefits to using OER within their institution. Some of these potential benefits often highlighted include: increased learning outcomes for students, decreased costs associated for students, greater flexibility for teachers and learning designers to create their own material specific to a course, and the ability to reuse and modify content from other institutions from all over the world. Whilst, Australia is taking steps forward in the OER movement, the United States of America (USA) is one of the jurisdictions leading the agenda. They have taken the agenda to a State and even National level.

The creation and use of OE textbooks has frequently been used in studies to assess the potential of OER. Recent studies indicate that the provision of a free open textbook, available to all students, can have potential benefits on overall learning outcomes for students (Feldstein et al., 2010; Hilton & Laman, 2012).

Traditionally, students are required to pay for access and use of course materials such as textbooks. The cost of textbooks for students in the USA is estimated at approximately ‘$5.5 billion each year’ (Hilton & Laman, 2012). The notion that students must pay for learning resources in addition to their education ‘introduces inequality into the classroom, in that some students have the required learning materials to succeed in the course whilst others do not’. The primary concern with this model of learning is that ‘student success is directly impacted by this inequality in the learning environment’ (Buczynski, 2007).

The provision of open, free textbooks reduces inequality in the learning environment and has been considered beneficial in terms of student learning outcomes. Open textbooks have also been considered to be potentially beneficial on a pedagogical level. ‘[A] professional development model aimed at increasing teachers’ capacity for designing learning activities by customizing and combining online learning resources to fit their local needs and context’ (Recker et al., 2007, p. 118).

In 2012, Hilton and Laman reported on a study that focused on the use of open textbooks in ‘Introduction to Psychology’, a core subject. The study involved 690 students using the textbook in the fall semester, 2011 (2012). The study identified that whilst, not conclusive, the use of an open textbook had numerous benefits to students such as ‘overall increase in the grade point average’ of the course; a ‘reduced dropout rate’; and ‘all students had free access to the textbook’ (Hilton & Laman, 2012).

The Florida Virtual Campus (FVC) reported on a number of bi-annual surveys on student expenditure resulting from the purchase of textbooks and course materials (Hill, 2016). FVC released their third survey in October 2016, which revealed that ‘the negative impact of the high cost of textbooks … is largely the same or worse’ (Florida Virtual Campus Office of Distance Learning & Student Services, 2016; Wiley, 2016) when compared to survey results from the 2012 version of the survey. Whilst, not conclusive, the studies indicate that the use of open textbooks in schools can have a significant impact on learning outcomes. These results can inform the way open textbooks, and OE in general can be used to improve learning outcomes for students. SPARC (2016) also analysed and reported on a number of other studies which found that ‘students who used open textbooks tended to have higher grades and lower withdrawal rates than their peers who used traditional textbooks’ (Feldstein et al., 2010; Hilton & Laman, 2012).

Following on from these studies a number of community colleges in the USA commenced ‘pilot initiatives’ for a project known as ‘zero-textbook-cost degrees’ (Tepe, 2015). California has admirably embraced the use of OER via a zero-textbook cost initiative by partnering with the California Open Educational Resources Council to develop OE resources for colleges. California is taking steps towards creating ‘zero-textbook-cost’ associate degree programmes, which are supported by Governor Jerry Brown who recently secured funding to the sum of $5 million for the project (Open Education Consortium, 2016; The State of California Department of Finance, 2016). The overall outcomes of zero-textbook-cost initiatives in the USA are yet to be formalised. At a basic level, the research indicates that socio-economic factors are no longer an impediment to students getting access to prescribed content.

Canada has also taken significant steps to increase the use and adoption of OER in the education sector. Most notably, is BCcampus OpenEd (BCcampus, 2017), which was established in 2012, to develop OER projects in British Columbia (BC), Canada. BCcampus OpenEd is supported by the Hewlett Foundation and the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education. Their projects include the BC Open Textbook Project and the OER Policy Development Tool. The BC Open Textbook Project notes that a total of 39,590 BC students are now using open textbooks and there is an overall student saving between the years of 2012–2017 of approximately $3,779,761–$4,450,762 (BCcampus, 2017).

In addition to this project, BCcampus have developed the OER Policy Development Tool created specifically to support ‘college and university governance officials, as well as individuals who have responsibility for developing institutional policy, to promote the utilization of OER and scale efforts to full OER programs’ (Coolidge & DeMarte, 2016). The development of this tool exemplifies the importance of strong policy to underpin OER efforts within institutions. This tool is the result of the tried and tested methods used by BC Campus to progress OER.

OER initiatives and projects such as those relating to open textbooks are established either through government intervention, philanthropic support or through the institutions themselves. In Australia, some preliminary government support has been provided to OER projects, specifically from the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT). The OLT funded a number of projects including the Open Education Licensing Project (OEL Project) and OpenEdOz (Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, n.d.). The OEL Project was a joint initiative of Swinburne University and the University of Tasmania to create an online decision tree ‘… to support the use and development of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Australian higher education sector’. This project utilised Australian scholar Carina Bossu who has written on OER practices in the education sector (Bossu, Brown, & Bull, 2014). Carina Bossu was also part of the OpenEdOz, which was a collaboration between Charles Sturt University, University of Tasmania, University of Technology Sydney and the OLT. OpenEdOz assisted in the development of a national strategy for OE in Australia (Australian Government Office for Learning & Teaching [OLT], n.d.).

Whilst, the Government has assisted in progressing a few projects in Australia, we are yet to see the Australian Government develop any form of National or State initiative to promote the use of OER or OER-specific initiatives such as OER textbooks. The necessity to implement policy and guidance to effect change became a focal point for institutions to facilitate progress in the OER movement.

2. Queensland University of Technology’s OE Initiative – OER in Practice

QUT has been a long-standing supporter of open access and the open movement. In 2003, QUT implemented the world’s first university-wide open access policy for research outputs (Cochrane & Callan, 2007). At the same time, QUT launched its institutional repository, QUT ePrints. The combination of high-level endorsement, proactive open access advocacy and the provision of support resulted in high levels of engagement with the repository by QUT researchers, as evidenced by the fact that the repository holds over 37,000 open access scholarly works and around 74% of QUT authors are depositing a version of their peer reviewed publications that can be made open access. QUT is considered one of the leading Australian Universities with respect to institutional open repositories. At the time of writing, QUT ePrints was the highest ranked Australian institutional repository in the latest Ranking Web of Repositories (Cybermetrics Lab, 2017).

QUT was a founding library of Knowledge Unlatched in 2013, a global initiative related to making scholarly books open access. QUT is supporting a number of other open access resources and services by taking up contribution-based memberships. This includes the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG), Luminos (University of California Press’ new Open Access publishing programme for monographs), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³).

The OE initiative at QUT commenced with the drafting of the policy to govern the use and creation of OER. As noted by Cochrane and Callan (2007), ‘[i]t is QUT’s experience that having a policy can certainly make a difference in terms of getting researchers to take the first step’. The success of any initiative such as this is generally underpinned by clear and concise policy and guidelines. Drafting of the policy commenced in early 2015, and was granted final approval on 20 April 2016. This policy outlines how OER is supported and used at QUT and the obligations of staff and students when using or creating OER. ‘Guidelines for QUT Open Education Resources’ (Queensland University of Technology [QUT], 2016) were developed to accompany the policy and provide more practical guidance and application on using and creating OERs. The University Copyright Officer manages the daily OER activity at QUT with all executive decisions relating to use and creation of OER being signed off by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Technology, Information and Library Services (DVC (TILS)).

QUT has chosen to adopt the OER Foundation definition, which defines OER as:

… educational materials which are licensed in ways that provide permissions for individuals and institutions to re-use, adapt and modify the materials for their own use. OERs can, and do include full courses, textbooks, streaming videos, exams, software, and any other materials or techniques supporting learning. (OER Foundation, 2009)

The OER guidelines were drafted alongside the policy to provide practical guidance on the creation, use and promotion of OER within QUT. They were implemented in August 2015 and updated in May 2016, to reflect the finalisation of the drafting of the OER policy. They include: a definition of OER; guidance on how to search for OER on various platforms; what to consider when making an OER resource; the copyright and licensing considerations; appropriate repositories to host OER content, and a workflow that acts as an approval process on how to make learning objects into QUT OERs.

The next phase of this initiative was to develop the workflow into a streamlined online approval process. This process maintained the two-tiered approval process commencing with the Head of School or Departmental Head, and final approval occurring from the DVC (TILS). An optional guidance/approval stage was introduced prior to the final sign off. The University Copyright Officer and/or a Learning Designer can provide guidance on the suitability of the learning object and the most appropriate platform to host the OER. At the time of writing, this online approval process is in the final stages of development and testing.

In addition to a clear policy and guidelines, QUT’s OE initiative is underpinned by the education, promotion and curation of OER content within the institution. QUT Library manages these activities and educating learning designers, teaching staff and academics on the benefits and potential positive outcomes associated with using and creating OER content is core to the service and uptake. Faculty Liaison Librarians (LLs) are integral to the success of the OE initiative. Their role in the OE initiative is to provide support and guidance to teaching staff on content suitable for OERs, licensing requirements, and the most appropriate repositories to host the final OER.

QUT Library manages several institutional repositories that can be used to curate OER content:

•	QUT ePrints – repository for journal articles, books, working papers etc.
•	QUT Media Warehouse – repository for video content; and
•	Research Data Finder – repository for research data.

QUT OER content can also be hosted by repositories outside of the institution, however, there are a number of requirements that those repositories must meet. The primary requirement is that the repository enables the content to be open, reusable and shareable. When considering the creation of OER, QUT encourages the use of an open licence such as a Creative Commons (CC) Licence (Creative Commons Australia, n.d.).

QUT has been an affiliate member of Creative Commons (CC) Australia since its inception in 2014, and CC at QUT is hosted by the Intellectual Property Law and Innovation Centre.

A foundation of all the CC licences is the requirement of the attribution condition. This condition requires the user to attribute the work to the copyright holder. If a work is created as part of a staff member’s employment within QUT, the University is the copyright holder and therefore, attributed. If the work is created by an individual outside the course of their employment or by a student, they are the copyright holder and therefore, they would be individually attributed. Specifics with respect to intellectual property rights within institutions should be covered by the institutions intellectual property policy. QUT has a comprehensive Intellectual Property Policy, which incorporates the use of OER (QUT, 2015).

The next phase of the OE initiative was to imbed the use of OER into the educational structure. This commenced with a case study using student assessment items to create OER content.

2.1. OER in Practice – Case Study of a Global Teacher

The Global Teacher, is an elective unit in the undergraduate degree programme for pre-service teachers at QUT, and it is coordinated by Dr Erika Hepple, School of Cultural and Professional Learning, Faculty of Education. This unit has been offered since 2004, and in 2012, it became part of the public pedagogies project which focused on ensuring ‘schools and colleges across the world … engage with diversity in a more interconnected world’ by applying a public pedagogy that ‘explores the learning opportunities made possible through different processes and spaces of education being offered outside formal schooling’ (Hickling-Hudson & Hepple, 2015). The underlying pedagogy is a result of collaboration between the unit co-ordinators and the State Library of Queensland (QUT 2017). One of the significant assessment items in the unit is the production of a three-minute digital narrative (Hepple, Hickling-Hudson, & Mascadri, 2016), which will be used as an educational resource within classrooms.

In 2016, the OE initiative utilised the unique learning and teaching design as an opportunity to undertake a case study on OER in practice. The student’s final assessment item, the digital narrative, involved the students using only CC content and self-made content to construct the final work. This made the learning objects ideal for online distribution as OERs. To support the students in developing their OER, a workshop on CC licences was provided, as well as consultations with the University Copyright Officer. The final learning objects were uploaded and hosted on QUT’s Media Warehouse under a CC licence as OERs (QUT, n.d.).

The Global Teacher Digital Narratives case study illustrated how student teachers/early career teachers can use openly available content to make real world resources to be used in practice within the classroom. The overriding benefit is that under the public pedagogy, the themes of the digital narratives are global and widespread. These student-created OERs can be used in classrooms all over the world; they are shareable and reusable and freely accessible to other educators and the public alike.

Research into the use and potential benefits of using OER in university curriculum is ongoing and requires further attention. QUT aims to continue undertaking case studies into using OER in practice to contribute to this growing body of literature.

3. Evaluation of the OE Initiative and Implications for Practice

The OE Initiative at QUT commenced in 2015 and since this time, QUT has successfully implemented a policy, guidelines, streamlined approval workflow and commenced case studies into the use of OER in the classroom. Whilst, awareness regarding OER at QUT is increasing, the use and creation of OER is still low. Overall, the initiative has provided framework, guidelines and a case study example of OER in practice. The initiative will benefit from more promotion of the benefits associated with OER and awareness-raising to teachers, academics and learning designers on the specific aspects of OER including the licensing requirements and use of repositories.

There is limited research and findings about OER on a localised and national level. Whilst, there is data with respect to the benefits of OER in other jurisdictions, it is important to undertake this research within Australia to continue to measure the take up and potential benefits for Australian students and universities.

OERs ‘… change the way we conceive of and pursue authorship, teaching, peer review, promotion, and tenure. And by encouraging contributions from anyone, anywhere, OERs have the potential to aid in the democratization of the world of knowledge’ (Baraniuk & Burrus, 2008). OER has the potential to positively affect the way education is accessed all over the world and to remove barriers such as socio-economics and geographical location from providing access to educational content.

One significant factor which potentially impacts the OE initiative and OER in Australia in general is the absence of government intervention with respect to promotion, use and creation of OER. Unlike other comparable jurisdictions such as the USA, the Australian Government has not taken a vested interested in providing ongoing funding for OER initiatives or support for the research investigating the potential benefits on student learning outcomes. This work has been left primarily to Australian Universities to leverage the results and data from other jurisdictions. Exploring the impact and benefits of OER within the tertiary education sector is the essential next step to determining whether OER can be effectively used to bridge the gap in providing cost efficient, easily accessible education to all students regardless of their geographic location and socio-economic standing. QUT’s OE initiative commenced with a policy, and through continued high-level support, advocacy, greater awareness-raising and more research, it will increase its influence and potential to make a significant positive change.

Notes on Contributors

Jessica Stevens is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology.

Stephanie Bradbury is the Research Support Manager at the Queensland University of Technology Library.

Sue Hutley was previously the Director of Library Services at Queensland University of Technology and is currently working as a Library Executive.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.