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Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Risks for K-12 Schools

Cassandra Gaul

Georgia State University

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Introduction

Over the past decade, rapid changes in information and communications technology

(ICT) have presented K-12 education with both a new charge to prepare students for the future

and a new network of digital instructional tools and resources. While many states and school

districts have updated their standards and curriculum for 21st century learning, they frequently

use outmoded instructional resources, specifically textbooks. Although publishers do update

their materials, and districts procurement processes focus on selecting the best resources,

scientific discoveries and changing political relationships outpace these efforts to provide

students relevant material. Tangentially, schools face economic pressure to reduce spending, and

textbooks themselves have risen in price. Open Educational Resources (OER) can provide a

solution to these problems, and many individual teachers already use the internet to find

engaging and relevant material (de los Arcos, Farow, Pitt, Weller & McAndrew, 2016).

However, many schools have not created a strategic plan to incorporate OER into every

students classroom. Many local educational leaders and policy makers would benefit from a

compressive understanding of OER, its benefits, and the barriers toward adoption. Wider OER

adoption within K-12 education requires top-down support to provide guidance and to facilitate

peer-to-peer diffusion.

Late June 2016, the U.S. Department of Education acknowledged the need for guidance

by publishing the #GoOpen District Launch Packet. The packet offers a detailed pathway for

OER adoption, and it follows the #GoOpen initiative first launched in February 2016. These

OER endeavors join the efforts of many international organizations, such as The William and

Flora Hewlett Foundation, UNESCO, and the OECD. These organizations realize the potential

for OER to provide open educational across the globe.

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What are Open Educational Resources?

A review of the literature shows that defining Open Educational Resources depends on

how one defines each term (Kelly, 2014; Tuomi, 2013; Wiley, Bliss, & McEwen; 2014). Despite

the variances, there is a consensus that definitions of OER all cover both the use and reuse,

repurposing, and modification of resources, include free use of these resources for educational

purposes by teachers and learners, [and] encompass all types of digital media (Camilleri,

Ehlers, & Pawlowski, 2014, p. 8). The most widely accepted definition of Open Educational

Resources comes from the Hewlett Foundation:

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 and re-purposing by others. Open educational

resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks,

streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or

techniques used to support access to knowledge.

This definition clearly describes educational as meeting the teachers, learners, or

researchers objectives. Yet, there are two limitations. First, it lists numerous examples of

resources, but it does not stipulate that these must be digital, about which there are opposing

views in the research (Camilleri et al., 2014). Second, it provides a narrow definition of open.

The term open presents the biggest challenge because it means not only free of cost, but it

also refers to which activities the resources license allows. The U.S. Department of Educations

renaming OER as Openly Licensed Educational Resources emphasizes the open license while

not addressing cost. The literature agrees that open is synonymous to free, but some scholars

recognize a continuum of openness (Cohen, Reisman, & Sperling, 2015; Tuomi, 2013; Wiley,
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2014). David Wiley stipulates that OER must include permissions for the 5R activities as

defined by the website Open Content here:

1. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download,

duplicate, store, and manage)

2. Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a

study group, on a website, in a video)

3. Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate

the content into another language)

4. Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to

create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

5. Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or

your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

(http://www.opencontent.org/definition/, 2016).

Research prior 2014 refers to the 4Rs, but in March that year, Wiley added the fifth R, Retain, in

response to commercial publishers shifting practices of providing access to materials but not

ownership (2016). The ability to own and retain resources is notable as more schools, districts

and states rely on cloud storage. The fifth R ensures teachers and students have the right to own

and keep their work.

When OER first began, there were several recognized licenses used by creators who

wished to share their work. Recent literature shows contributors primarily rely on the series of

Creative Commons licenses (CC) to grant permissions (Kelly, 2014; Kerres & Heinen, 2015;

Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014). Some, like Wiley and the U.S. Department of Education, explicitly

state OER use a CC license or a Public Domain license (2014; 2016). Creative Commons offers
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six copyright licenses that provide attribution and address whether others can make derivative

works or profit from the original content. Attribution, CC BY, is the most open and grants

permission for others to make derivative works and to profit from them. The most restrictive

license is Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs, CC BY-NC-ND, which prevents users from

profiting from the work and making derivatives. The growth of Creative Commons has

positively affected the growth of OER. Additionally, since October 2015, the U.S. Department

of Education requires all intellectual property created with discretionary competitive grand

funds have an open license (2016).

Current State of OER Adoption in K-12 Schools

The use of Open Educational Resources in K-12 schools in the United States has yet to

reach its full potential. Cable Green, Creative Commons Open Education Director, notes OER

adoption is at 15% to 20% and concludes that OER is starting to hit mainstream (Alexander,

2016). Schools are mostly using OER to create open textbooks to alleviate costs. The recent

publication of the #GoOpen District Launch Packet reflects this trend. The document details

how schools can start OER adoption by replacing textbooks and offers case study summaries

that show districts savings (2016). Finally, it defines #GoOpen Launch Districts as those that

commit to replacing at least one textbook with openly licensed educational resources in the

next 12 months (p. 5). Currently there are 15 states and 40 districts participating in the

#GoOpen Launch.

At a granular level, research shows individual teachers incorporate OER not to save costs

but to get new ideas, to prepare for their teaching, and to supplement their materials (de los

Arcos et al., 2016). Teachers use a broad range of OER resources, but they rarely remix or adapt

resources. Despite reporting being unaware of OER repositories and Creative Commons,
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teachers frequently share resources through email or face-to-face (de los Acros et al., 2016).

Despite the national and international support for OER, many classroom teachers are unaware of

the movement and the opportunity to cut costs, provide relevant materials, and support

personalized learning.

Benefits of OER

OER benefits schools by reducing costs. The #GoOpen initiative emphasizes how OER

can alleviate straining budgets and make funding available for other projects, technology

investments, and professional development (Kelly, 2014; Kerres & Heinen, 2015; Mtebe &

Raisamo, 2014; Wiley, 2014). Case studies show school systems using OER in conjunction with

open textbook publishers, like Flexbooks or OpenStax, to cut costs. For instance, Pitt (2015)

cites, "Since 2012 OSC have provided a growing range of no-to-low cost, peer-reviewed, CC-

BY licensed open textbooks and report saving students over $30 million in a little over two

years (p. 135). In higher education, OER adoption enabled the creation of the Z-Degree, zero-

textbook-cost degree (Alexander, 2016).

Beyond saving institutions and students money, the literature also shows how OER

adoption increases instructional flexibility and enables personalize learning. Differentiation is

possible, and as Pitt (2014) notes, Access to materials in a range of formats enables every

student to participate in their preferred way (p. 142). Also, when students revise and remix

materials, they participate in collaborative learning and make visible the relevance of

producing and sharing reusable digital educational resources in the form of content, tools, and

learning activities (Chiappe & Arias, 2015, p.42). Teachers also have more ownership over

their instruction. Procurement processes are often hidden from teachers, and this contributes

directly to the deskilling of teachers and their sense that the curriculum is beyond their control
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(Pitt, 2015, p. 147) OER removes this institutional barrier. Finally, with more control, teachers

can update instructional materials with current scientific or political information.

Barriers and Risks

While Open Educational Resources removes certain cost and licensing barriers, teachers

and districts face multiple barriers to adoption. For teachers, the literature shows mixed results

regarding access and discovery of OER and quality assurance. Allen and Seaman in 2014 report,

The top three cited barriers among faculty members for OER adoption all concern the

discovery and evaluation of OER materials.38% of faulty rate the ease of finding OER as

difficult or very difficultOER advocates.do not fare much better, with 27% of faculty

offering the same ranking. Regarding quality, they found three-quarters of respondents rank

OER as the same or better than traditional resources (p. 2). These difficulties were also noted

by Kelly (2014) and Mtebe and Raisamo (2014).

For Camilleri et al. (2014) the reverse is true: quality assurance is the major barrier for

teachers and not access: We can deduce that, up to now, the main focus has been building

access to OER, and building infrastructure, tools, and repositories (p. 12). They push for

innovative forms of support for the creation and evaluation of OER, and also an evolving

empirical evidence-base about the effectiveness of OER (p. 12). Mtebe and Raisamo (2014)

and Pitt (2015) also focus on teachers need for quality assurance. One might think that weak

ICT infrastructure presents a barrier for teachers, especially in more rural areas, but most studies

do not show this; the exceptions coming from schools outside of the U.S.

Beyond the classroom, one possible risk to wider adoption deals with sustainability. Kelly

(2014) notes, Although there is some financial support for the creation and maintenance of

OER collections, funding is limited (p. 28). Kerres and Heinen (2015) also find a lack of
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organizational support as a major barrier (p. 26). Additionally, there is a risk for institutional

or cultural bias within materials. Weiland (2015) cautions that OER and Massively Open Online

Courses (MOOCs) reflect the American case for educational transformation via technology

and that these good intentions can come to be seen as threats to national autonomy and local

preferences (p. 7). Kerres and Heinen (2015) also see language and cultural barriers to

teachers adoption of OER. In 2014, the OCW Consortium contained more than 26 million

items, a majority in English (Camilleri et al., 2014). The ability to remix, and thereby localize,

materials depends on teachers level of digital literacy

The Future of OER

The continued OER implementation across schools and states depends on educational

policy makers and leaders ability to remove these barriers. The literature suggests ways of

improving OER repositories and ways of providing training and support for teachers.

An improved OER repository design and tools will help users locate specific resources,

recommend and rate resources, and create collections. Kelly (2015) discusses teachers difficulty

in finding resources, and concludes, Quality in user interface design is essential in the adoption

of these resources (p. 37). Pitt (2014) and Camilleri (2014) both focus on quality assurance,

which suggests a better design would have a built-in rubric, a rating system, and a peer-to-peer

sharing tool. OER adoption spreads by word of mouth and creates a domino effect (Pitt, 2014,

150). Teachers who have used OER are more likely to recommend them to others. Kellys

results (2014) support this theory: motivation to use these resources came from practitioners

and not from administrative guidance (p. 31). A rubric would address questions about quality.

Finally, better use and moderation of metadata is necessary for maintaining the repository.

Kerres and Heinen (2015) suggest, It should provide a semantically richer search environment
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with meta-data that make it easier to find the needed resource (p. 32). Better repository design

and tools would encourage teachers to explore and would cut down on the time spent searching

for resources.

Once teachers do find resources, they need ways of saving and sharing their work. Cohen

et al.s research (2015) on the use of MERLOTs Bookmark Collections show it is the most

widely used component and that such tools allow a user to annotate each collection to easily

explain its purpose, a pedagogical approach, and if it relates to a specific course (p. 157).

Public and sharable bookmarking tools helps teachers curate and share their resources.

There is also a need for private spaces for teachers to create and remix OER. Such activities will

need to be incentivized either by social networks created within the repository or by

organizations. Cohen et al. show only a small percentage of teachers remix and create resources:

of the 9,802 [members] that created collections, 1,288 members have contributed materials and

peer reviews and 2% of members were markedly using the collections and uploaded a large

number of materials (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 164, 166). A dedicated space within repositories

will help teachers experiment with reusing and remixing, which are necessary activies to sustain

the movement and to discourage institutional or subject-specific bias. As Chiappe and Arias

(2015) conclude, If OER starts to be a relevant issue for content creation, a wide understanding

of reusability should lead to proper and sustainable processes (p. 50).

However, better designed repositories are only part of the solution. Teachers comfort

with technology and feeling of self-efficacy directly relate to their willingness and ability to use

OER (Kelly, 2014). Teachers not only need a better understanding of copyright, but they also

need training on locating, using, and sharing. Kelly (2014) recommends, Opportunities to

explore well designed and technically elegant OER will improve teachers perceptions, and
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demonstrating or embedding the application of OER in teacher education programs will show

that OER are easy to locate and incorporate into instruction (p. 38).

Conclusion

Open Educational Resources have the potential to change K-12 education by leveraging

information and communications technology for teachers and students benefits. Despite

international efforts and the recent push from the U.S. Department of Education, individual

teachers still lack the basics of OER: where to find OER, how Creative Commons supports

OER, and when to remix and repurpose OER. Research shows teachers are comfortable using

the internet to find resources, and they frequently share resources. In order to accelerate the

diffusion of OER, districts should refer to Rogers five Perceived Attributes of Innovations:

relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability (2003, p. 222). From

there, they can ask the following questions:

Do teachers know how OER benefits their teaching practice? How it save them time?

Do teachers know that many of their sharing practices are similar to OERs 5Rs?

Do teachers believe finding, adapting, and using OER is too complicated? Is there a way

to simplify it?

Do teachers have the time and the instructional freedom to experiment with OER?

Do teachers have the chance to see others using and supporting OER?

K-12 education can take advantage of OER and realize open education, but districts and

educational leaders must support individual teachers. Although the movement is promising,

growth depends on more individuals choosing to support OER.

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References

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Alexander, B. [Bryan Alexander]. (2016, April 20). Future Trends Forum #11: open education

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Allen, I. E. & Seaman, J. (2014) Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S.

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