designed teaching and learning pathways, offer effective support to students (whether that be in practical sessions, tutorials, individual counselling sessions, or online), and provide intelligent assessment and critical feedback to students on their performance (ultimately leading to some form of accreditation). Although it may seem counter-intuitive, therefore, as business models are changed by the presence of ICT, the more other institutions make use of their materials, the more this will serve to build institutional reputation and thereby attract new students.
- In this changing environment, there is a strong case to be made for considering the marketing value and added exposure that can be derived from making this intellectual capital easily accessible under open licences, rather than seeking to retain all-rights reserved copyright. However, as there will be instances in which institutions and academics will need to protect all-rights reserved copyright, it remains important to create provisions in copyright policies to assert full rights over specific materials where this is considered commercially or strategically important. Having noted this, it is worth adding that a policy which requires staff to justify the assertion of all-rights reserved copyright can help to eliminate the corrupt practice of teaching staff selling their own teaching and learning materials to their students as a separate commercial activity.
Conclusion
OER encapsulates a potential vision for educational systems globally wherein individual educators, and then increasingly entire departments and institutions, come together in common online spaces (which, like the most successful Internet phenomena, are not ‘owned’ by any one institutional or corporate interest) to start sharing the materials they have produced, in an effort ultimately to ensure that all the material which students need to complete their studies successfully can be accessed – legally – without any costs of licensing. There are vast quantities of such material already available across the world, from which no-one is generating any meaningful commercial return – and many more being produced every week. These represent a common intellectual capital that should be unlocked to drive and support education rather than being kept locked away.
The potential of OER includes bringing transparency to educational processes, facilitating collaborations between educators and students at different institutions, and establishing a new economic model for procuring and publishing learning materials. Ultimately, a key to its success will be to demonstrate that, in the medium to long term, OER will help over-stretched educators to manage their work more effectively, rather than adding new work requirements to their job description. However, successful OER initiatives will be those that can work immediately and add educational value within the existing ICT infrastructure constraints of any participating institutions (including those from the developing world). Proving the potential of a concept that will only have an impact when
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