Introduction
The concept of open education encapsulates a simple but powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good and that the open web provides an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge. This represents a significant opportunity for universities to return to the core values of the academy, namely to share knowledge for the benefit of society.
Educators have a natural propensity to collaborate (Chow 2010). The nature of the academy requires the sharing of knowledge and building upon the ideas of others. An experienced researcher knows that a thorough literature review of existing knowledge is the natural starting point in resolving a research question. In research, universities have no issue with sharing and building on the ideas of others, yet in teaching there has been a perception that we must lock our teaching materials behind restrictive copyright regimes that minimize sharing at the expense of learning. Open Education Resources (OER) provide a unique opportunity to expand and integrate our research traditions associated with the notion of building on the ideas of others into our teaching practice. In this way universities can leverage the potential of the Internet and open education for research-led teaching and learning.
OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, games and simulations, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge (Atkins, Brown and Hammond 2007).
Universities are one of a handful of organisations, which survived the Industrial Revolution. It is plausible that history will repeat itself in the digital age. The traditions of rational and reflective practice of the academy will contribute to building sustainable futures for the university and the institution's rightful place in society as we move forward in the OER world. Brown and Duguid (1995) have alluded to the risks that in a digital age, blind adoption of technology-mediated degrees without due understanding of the institutional character and culture of the university, could impact on the value society attributes to post-secondary credentials. Digital learning and OER, for instance, could lead to a new form of elitism where the perception associated with online degrees using OER would not command the same respect as campus-based alternatives. In this regard, the awarding of credentials by the university is an important determinant for credibility and quality because this function is dependant on the value, which a community of scholars actively engaged in research, can provide.
Universities should be actively engaged in designing appropriate futures for credible assessment in the OER world. Processes appropriate for the assessment of digital learning using OER hosted on the web need to be properly researched and implemented with the academic rigour required. Tapscott and Williams (2010) suggest that universities may be losing their grip on higher learning because changing models of pedagogy and knowledge production may necessitate changes in how we credentialise. This project provides a contribution to building what Brown and Adler (2008) have called an "open participatory learning ecosystem" – an ecosystem in which formal education institutions have an important role to play by augmenting opportunities for open learning, assessment and credentialisation within the larger learning system now possible with the Internet and OER.
