the OER Engagement Ladder

OER Engagement Study:
Promoting OER reuse among academics

Joanna Wild
The Open University
12th June 2012

Motivation for the study
 OER impact study
 Research focus:
1. How do institutions, departments, individuals go about
raising teachers’ engagement with OER reuse?
2. What are the providers of ‘OER training’ trying to
achieve and how can they tell that they’ve been
successful?
• What is the optimal engagement with OER reuse in view of
different stakeholders and what are the intermediate steps?
• How can engagement be sustained/nurtured?

What I did
 Qualitative & exploratory
 Semi-structured
interviews with:
• Providers of OER
initiatives (10)
• Teachers (5)
• Teachers with a staff
development role
within their faculty (4)
 OER engagement ladder

Data analysis: old school   

What are the approaches?

Who are the main stakeholders?

Making OER an integral part of existing inst. strategies
 We wrote OER into our teaching and learning strategy a couple
of years ago
 Open Education was set as the priority for the year…
Getting buy-in of senior management in individual faculties
 Impetus from central L&T teams
…we had representatives from each faculty that liaise directly with the
centre
or
 Impetus from individual teachers
Lots of bottom-up activities…
…but don’t rely solely on bottom-up initiatives ( fragmented)
 If the buy-in to use OER is not high enough in your institution,
engagement gets to a certain point and then it just becomes something
that individuals are doing

Making OER integral to existing systems and services
 When you have a top-down person telling people to do it, they kick
against it, whereas having people that are trusted saying: ‘Have a go
with that!’ - that's more beneficial
Key stakeholders:
 People supporting module teams
 Academic Librarians
 Learning technologists (e-learning teams)
 Staff responsible for implementing graduate attributes
 Staff developers
 PG Cert in HE
I think the advantage of the PGCert is starting to catch every new
member staff coming in
 CPD etc.
…Sustainability is talking about OER in all the other workshops

What is the optimal engagement with OER reuse
and what are the intermediate steps?

How can engagement be sustained/nurtured?

The OER Engagement Ladder

The OER Engagement Ladder. ©2012 Joanna Wild, University of Oxford, CC BY

A good metaphor?

 Few Social OEP
It is a ladder and it’s a
steep ladder sometimes

 I quite liked the idea of
doing this like that […] I
don’t see it a sort of neat
move up the ladder thing,
it's more of you get so far
and then you suddenly
realise: ‘Oh, so this is
Many Self OER
why!’

Original image geezaweezer cc by;
adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by

 Directs students to online
resources as supplementary
Few Social OEP
material

 Uses digital resources found
on the web to enhance
teaching and learning

 Shares and reuses
educational resources
None: The Underpinning locally or within existing
Many Self OER
communities of practice

 Is confident that it’s ok to
use it Social OEP
 ‘It benefited others’!
I knew about the cc license but I
kind of put it at the back of my
mind and it wasn’t that important.
And it’s when I went to the
workshop that I realised: Actually
it is important!
 Is aware of OER & CC
None: The Underpinning
Many Self OER


Enabling factors:
 Realistic expectations
Few Social OEP
 Local repositories

 Networks of trust
 Recommendations
 Building community knowledge

Low: Piecemeal

 Reuses OER produced or
recommended locally
 Searches Self OER
Many for OER


Enabling factors:
We invite people to reconsider
their practices at the stage of
designing their course and
consider alternatives that
Few Social OEP
include OER

Step 2: Need
Low: Piecemeal  Is involved in (re)designing
a course
 …it all seemed a bit of a blind
panic at the beginning: ‘how I
am going to write all of
None: The Underpinning this?’ So when they introduced
Many OER, then I thought: ‘oh
us to Self OER
that's great!’

Enabling factors:
 Knowing where to search
for OER
Few Social OEP
 Support in locating relevant
OER
Medium: Strategic  Minimum adaptation
 Understanding CC BY…
Step 2: Need
Low: Piecemeal

 Attributes OER
 Integrates OER into core
None: The Underpinning teaching
Many Self OER
 Tweaks OER
Original image geezaweezer cc by;  Reuses OER produced
externally

 Shares own OER
 I now always go for images that
are labelled for reuse and have
Few license […] because I never
CC Social OEP
know when I might want to
upload it somewhere and share
it.
Medium: Strategic
 it's only at that stage in which
you begin to make sure
Step 2: Need everything is fairly attributed

Low: Piecemeal

 Appraises the effects of
using OER on students’
None: The Underpinning learning experience and
own practice OER
Many Self
 We’ll wait and see how the new
Original image geezaweezer cc by; module goes on a course

Enabling factors:
 Evidence
High: Embedded
 OER as a staff dev. tool
Few OEP
 Advocates OER
Medium: Strategic  Encourages others
Step 2: Need
 Reuses & re-shares
 Resource focused
Low: Piecemeal  Pedagogy focused
Does OER lead to a better practice? I
think it does, just because of the
dialogue around it

None: The Underpinning  OER is embedded into
teachers’ Self OER
Many every-day practice
 It becomes your second nature
Original image geezaweezer cc by;  The more confident you feel with it
adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by the more you use it

High: Embedded
Few Collective OEP

Medium: Strategic

Step 2: Need
Low: Piecemeal

Many Self OER

Original image geezaweezer cc by; Original image moedermens cc by,
adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by adapted by Joanna Wild ©2012 licensed cc by

 What are the providers of ‘OER training’ trying to
achieve?

 How can they tell that they’ve been successful?

“It’s early days” but :
 It’s when I went to the workshop
High: Embedded that I realised: actually [cc
license] is important
 Few Social OEP
I think it was one of the most
Gives Assesses important things, the
Medium: Strategic reassurance that it’s an
appropriate way of doing things
Integrates  I do know where to find them
Directs  It’s made me much more open
Low: Piecemeal to actually trying to find things
Knows where and embedding them into the
It’s ok programme
Is aware
 A part of [the course] is
available freely to other people
None: The Underpinning  We’ll wait and see how the new
Many Self OER
module goes on a course

Recommendations in brief
 Embed OER into existing systems and services
but follow up with targeted support
 Identify champions within the department and

capitalise on their enthusiasm & knowledge
 Engage staff developers, librarians, LT-ists:
build a network of support
 Collect evidence & examples

 Recognition = Time & Space to experiment

If you would like to find out
more….
 Go to:
http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/outputs
scroll down to my name (Joanna Wild) and
browse through the outputs of my research
 Download the full research report from:
http://bit.ly/UEcbPi

the OER Engagement Ladder

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