There has been a proliferation of facilities, content and services available online. This is clearly evident by the examples illustrated in Appendix Five. Organized according to categories such as Open Courseware (OCW) OER repositories, University OCW initiatives, content creation Initiatives, subject specific OCW and OCW search facilities, these OER sources provide a useful starting point with regard to the extent of content publicly available. Appendix Five is drawn from an online catalogue maintained by OER Africa, and accessible at:
Thus, educators who ask, ‘why should I share my educational content?’, should be aware that the real question is, ‘how can I stay in control of the process of my educational content being shared?’ And, the more useful the content is to students, the more likely it is to be shared, with or without the author’s permission. Those academics and publishers who seek to fight against this trend have been likened to the Spanish army fighting the Apaches or the music industry fighting music pirates (as described in a book titled The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organization) – the harder one tries to destroy the leaders of these decentralized movements, the more one ends up strengthening them (Brafman & Beckstrom 2007).
Consequently, on the teaching and learning side, educational institutions that succeed economically are likely to do so predominantly by understanding that their real potential educational value lies in their ability to provide effective support to students (whether that be in practical sessions, tutorials, individual counselling sessions, or online) and in their ability to provide intelligent assessment and critical feedback to students on their performance (ultimately leading to some form of accreditation). The market has not shifted fully yet, but it will. The efforts of universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Open University, UK, to release their content as OER reflects an understanding of this shift, as well as an effort to lead it and benefit from the publicity that such leadership generates. In such an environment, it is foreseeable that reputation will grow by making content available as a way of publicizing competence in providing support, assessment, and accreditation. Increasingly, people who seek to ring-fence, protect and hide their educational content and research will most likely place limits on their academic careers. They will also increasingly be excluded from opportunities to improve their teaching practice and domain-specific knowledge by sharing and collaborating with growing networks of academics around the world.
A new initiative called the Open Education Resource (OER) for assessment and credit for students (Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, Athabasca University 2011) aims to take the next logical step, given the proliferation of free tuition courses using OER. The aim of the project is to create ‘flexible pathways for learners using open learning materials hosted on the Internet to earn credible credentials from accredited higher education institutions’ (TEKRI 2011: 1).
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