Arnold, 2012 - Centre for Community Networking Research (CCNR)

Transcription

Prato CIRN Community Informatics Conference 2012 Refereed Paper
Open Educational Resources: The Way to Go, or
“Mission Impossible” in (German) Higher Education?
Patricia Arnold
University of Applied Sciences Munich, Germany
Abstract: The concept of “Open Educational Resources” provides a powerful idea and a strong
ideal for innovation in education with particular appeal to higher education: the idea of a
worldwide community that can share, re-mix, build upon and improve existing learning and
teaching resources such as instructional material, software and even course practices. The term
was coined ten years ago and presently is extended to “Open Educational Practices,” so as to
include large-scale informal learning arrangements such as “Massive Open Online Courses”. In
German higher education, the idea seems to have been taken up slowly and the uptake appears
to have gathered momentum only very recently. This paper attempts to review how much of the
vision has been actually realized over the past decade, with a special focus on German higher
education. It will take stock of projects and initiatives worldwide that promote open educational
resources and practices, and will investigate in particular the present situation in German higher
education as to drivers and impediments. The investigation aims at a better understanding of the
factors that make the “reality check” for open educational resources in Germany so difficult.
Furthermore, it presents solutions that have been developed successfully. Both parts can help to
advance the cause of open educational resources and practices in German higher education and
beyond.
Keywords: e-learning, higher education, open educational resources, open educational practices, edupunks,
Introduction
A key article in the German weekly journal ZEIT had the title “The Edupunks Are
Coming!” (Werdes 2012, transl. PA) and announced major changes in higher education by
means of “massive open online courses” or “open courseware” provided free of charge by
prestigious (US-American) universities. Online platforms with innovative names like
“Udacity”1, “edX”2) or “coursera”3 “jump into existence”, embrace the idea of “Open
Educational Resources” and seem to offer “Ivy League for the Masses” (Ripley 2012). Even
before these latest developments in 2012 “Open Educational Resources” (OER) were said to
revolutionize education (cf. Bonk 2009). Is this newly developed attention to OER yet another
hype that will have little long-lasting effect, or does it in fact have the potential for true
innovation in education? Or can OER even be regarded as “disruptive technologies” (Bower
& Christensen 1995) that will fundamentally change higher education? And how do these USAmerican based innovations transfer to German higher education?
1
http://www.udacity.com
https://www.edx.org
3
https://www.coursera.org
2
1
The concept of “Open Educational Resources” (OER), indeed, provides a powerful idea
and a strong ideal for innovation in education with particular appeal to higher education
(OECD 2007, Geser 2007, Goertz & Johanning 2007, OPAL 2011, Ebner & Schön 2011a,
SIG OER 2012). Ten years after coining the term, UNESCO’s “2012 Paris OER Declaration”
aims at spreading and fostering the OER idea even more (UNESCO 2002, 2012).
OER, simply stated, refer to all educational materials, like learning resources, technologies
and structures that are easily accessible, with low or no barriers in terms of costs, technology
or license fees and royalties. Moreover, the concept of OER entails the idea that a worldwide
community can share, re-mix, advance and build upon existing learning and teaching
material. Thus learners all over the world can select their learning resources from a broad
variety of materials. Access to education is enhanced, augmenting in particular independent
and informal ways of learning. For teachers in higher education, the burden of designing a
“101” course in any discipline over and over again is reduced. Released “energy” can be put
into contextualizing and adapting already available materials for one’s own special context
and adding one’s own expertise, thus advancing the materials in scope and quality.
Of course, looking at OER in more detail reveals competing definitions, less-clearlycircumscribed understandings of what belongs to OER and what does not, and also critical
perspectives (e.g. Baumgartner & Zauchner 2007). Recently, it has been argued to change the
term to “Open Educational Practices” (OEP) to focus less on materials and software and to
include innovative educational designs such as “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) as
well (e.g. OPAL 2011). But even if we leave these questions concerning definitions and
evaluation aside, a very relevant question remains: How much of the vision of OER or OEP
has in fact been realized over the last decade? There are a few successfully operating
initiatives, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) OpenCourseWare4, the
Open University (UK)’s Learning Space5, or OER Africa6 by the South African Institute for
Distance Education; but the great promise of OER to make access to higher education more
equitable and to especially enhance higher education in developing countries seems far from
realized on a larger scale (Geser 2007, OPAL 2011).
In German speaking higher education (i.e. Austria, Germany and Switzerland) the uptake
of OER has been particularly slow. Up to now successful OER repositories in German
language are scarce. The whole “opening process” of higher education seems tedious and
barriers and obstacles paramount: from the “not-invented-here” syndrome to little awareness
of different licensing schemes and missing viable business models – more often than not the
ideals of OER seems to clash with academic cultures and reward systems.
However, recently, the OER movement seems to have gathered momentum even in the
German speaking countries: In 2011, in Austria, with “L3T”7 the first comprehensive teaching
and learning resource on technology mediated teaching and learning was created as an open
online book (Ebner & Schön 2011b). In 2011, the first open online course was organized in
Germany8). Additionally, the ZEIT weekly journal, quoted at the beginning of this
introduction, reported in 2012 with a feature article on various international OER initiatives
and MOOCS, also available for German independent and informal learners (to whom the
newly coined term “edupunks” refers).
4 http://ocw.mit.edu
5 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
6
http://www.oerafrica.org
http://l3t.eu
8
http://blog.studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de/opco11/
7
2
So how can the OER situation in Germany be summarized presently? Which factors make
the “reality check” for OER so difficult? What are the impediments? Where are the
“gremlins” at work? And which solutions have been developed successfully so far? The paper
will tackle these questions in detail, focusing on the realization of the OER vision in
Germany, sometimes extending the focus to German-speaking higher education.
Methodologically, the paper is based on a review of various research studies on OER
initiatives worldwide and a desk study of German OER initiatives.
The structure of the paper is as follows: First, I will give an overview of the vision of
OER, its transfer into practice, as well as recent developments by taking stock of OER
initiatives worldwide (Section Two). In a second step, I will describe the particular situation
of German speaking higher education as regards OER initiatives and practices with a focus on
Germany (Section Three). In the next section, I will investigate the drivers and motivators for
OER, but also the current obstacles and hurdles to overcome, again with particular attention to
higher education in Germany (Section Four). Conclusions will highlight main findings and
bring this paper to a close (Section Five).
Ten Years Open Educational Resources
A Vision and Some Realities
The term “Open Educational Resources” dates back to 2002 when it was first used in the
context of a UNECSO forum that aimed to enhance educational opportunities in developing
countries (UNESCO 2002). In this section the idea of OER will be elaborated upon as it has
developed over the past decade. In addition, some exemplary implementations will be
sketched out to show the wide scope and the very diverse approaches of realizing the OER
idea.
The Vision: Idea and Definitions
The OER movement is sometimes regarded as the most important impact of the Internet in
the educational sphere (Brown & Adler 2008). It is linked to a broader movement of (re)establishing the “Commons”: natural resources as well as access to knowledge to be
cultivated as a “common good” for society and as an alternative approach to constructing
economies (cf. Helfrich & Heinrich BöllStiftung 2012, Hess 2008). The “Open Source
Software” movement as well as “Open Access” initiatives also formed a helpful background
for the development and promotion of OER, even though there has been no direct
organizational connection or alignment between these different innovative initiatives.
The central idea behind open educational resources is that "the world’s knowledge is a
public good and that technology […] provide[s] an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to
share, use, and re-use knowledge“ (Atkins, Brown & Hammond 2007, 5). From the point of
view of (world) society at large it does not seem to make sense to create educational material
over and over again. Humanity could benefit much more from educational materials to be
used for free by learners all over the world and to be refined and advanced by teachers or
more experienced learners. In this vision, OER thus are seen as an important means to
“leverage education and lifelong learning for the knowledge economy and society” (Geser
2007, 12).
There is no clear definition of the term “open educational resources” up to now. Instead,
there exists a variety of defining descriptions with differences in detail (Geser 2007, 20).
Within the UNESCO forum the term was first used to refer to “the open provision of
educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for
consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes”
(UNESCO 2002, 26). In a later report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
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Development (OECD) OER are described as “digitized materials offered freely and openly
for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research”
(Hylen 2006, 1). The important adjectives “open” and “free” have also been interpreted
differently in varying contexts but, generally, “open and free” is understood as creating as few
barriers as possible in accessing and using the learning materials in terms of costs, technology
and property rights (Geser 2007).
The Hewlett Foundation that sponsored many OER initiatives defines OER with more
detail on licensing and genre of material. Their definition emphasizes that OER does not only
refer to content but also to software like learning management systems, as well as to
educational designs, including also comprehensive courses.
“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, and any other tools,
materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” (Atkins, Brown &
Hammond 2007, 4)
Regardless of differences in detail, some core principles have been developed that
characterize at least an ideal version of OER (summarized and shortened according to Geser
2007, 20):
 Educational institutions as well as learners and teachers can access the resources
free of charge.
 All content is licensed in such a way that it is possible to re-use the resources for
educational purposes (e.g. with Creative Commons9 licenses).
 There is technical “openness” in the sense that all software used is Open Source
Software, and platforms used support open application programming interfacing
(“open APIs”) and permit the re-use of web-based content (e.g. RSS-feeds).
Recently, it has been argued to change the focus from “open educational resources” to
“open educational practices” (OEP) (cf. e.g. the OPAL-report 2011 entitled “Beyond OER:
Shifting Focus from Resources to Practices”). With OER the focus has been on access to,
infrastructure and repositories for educational materials. Critical voices pointed to lacking
educational designs, processes of quality assurance and educational innovation (cf. e.g.
Baumgartner & Zauchner 2007).
In order to mainstream OER and to foster innovation in education with OER, so the
argument runs, it is important to embed OER into educational practices that promote the
usage of OER by learners and teachers, devise quality assessment processes and enable selfguided, autonomous lifelong learning. Already the comprehensive report of the EU-funded
OLCOS-project (Geser 2007, 31) emphasized that access to OER alone is not enough to reach
innovation in education. The report called especially for adequate educational designs to meet
the manifold needs of an “open audience”. Such innovative practices include supporting
policies as well as flexible learning architectures that also build upon collaborative peer-topeer learning. OEP then are defined as “practices which support the (re)use and production of
OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and
empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path” (OPAL 2011, 12).
9
http://creativecommons.org/
4
Summarizing, the OER and OEP landscape can be mapped as follows: The building
blocks are OER learning objects such as texts, images, podcasts, sometimes assembled in a
complete online course as “OpenCourseWare”, assisted by open source learning platforms
and authoring tools, embedded in innovative educational practices that are supported by
policies, guidelines and best practice examples and comprise online learning opportunities
that allow for interaction and collaboration and – most important – assign learners the central
role as co-instructors for their peer learners (cf. Table 1):
OER and OEP Levels
Learning Objects
Instructor-focused Courses
Open Learning Architectures
Open Strategies and Policies
Example
Texts, Audios, Videos , etc. as building blocks
OpenCourseWare as a set of assembled learning objects
within a course, offered by an institution or a network of
institutions and run by a university instructor
OpenStudy / P2PU, MOOCs as learning architectures for
informal learning, using peer learning as most important
“educational design”
National Strategies, Policies and Research Programs that
define goals, methods and research questions (and funding
criteria) for a country (e.g. India’s National E-Content and
Curriculum Initiative, the Netherlands Wikiwijs Programme
Some Realities: International Examples
In the first decade several projects, initiatives and approaches have been developed to
realize the idea of OER and OEP. The following section outlines a few examples that indicate
the broad scope of implementations and sketch out the complex “power field” constituted by
OER and OEP.
The most well-known initiatives in higher education are MIT’s OpenCourseWare, US, and
the OU’s LearningSpace, UK. MIT actually started the movement by publishing their
teaching material publicly, thus lowering the threshold for accessing high-quality higher
education. The published material, though, was never designed for independent study but
consisted of regular teaching materials for on-site students. In contrast to that, Learning Space
offered complete course units, designed for distance education. However, both initiatives also
serve marketing purposes. For that reason, they have often been criticized for not realizing
fully the potential of “open education”. Mainly in the case of MIT, dominating the
educational scene with US-based content is another critical issue in the international reception
of the initiative (cf. e.g. Bergamin & Filk 2009, Didderen & Verjans 2012).
Moreover, these examples as well as later developments such as the OpenCourseWare
Consortium10, a network of higher education institutions worldwide, that publishes online
courses units, also started by MIT, remain institution-centered and instructor-focused. The
same applies to other OER networks in other regions such as OER Africa. Even though they
operate successfully for a great number of students, they do not provide truly innovative
educational designs or radically new educational opportunities, sought by independent,
autonomous learners who often do not find their learning needs being catered for by regular
educational institutions and who therefore look for informal learning opportunities in their
self-guided, non-canonical pathways of lifelong learning.
10
http://www.ocwconsortium.org
5
OER or rather OEP that offer open and flexible educational opportunities also for this
special but also increasing group of learners are to be found in initiatives like “OpenStudy”11,
the “Peer-to-Peer University” (P2PU)12 or in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). These
initiatives are not tied to any particular institution; generally there is no uniquely privileged
instructor. Rather, various experts and peer-learners assume the instructor-role in an ad-hoc
online community (“crowd education”). Learners can thus assemble their (informal) learning
packages independently, not being restrained by any university’s pre-confectioned study
program.
OpenStudy provides a forum online for topic-based study groups where anyone interested
can participate. Study groups may form around specific OER or OpenCourseWare courses or
entirely independently. Within the frame work of P2PU, courses are offered where learners
provide guidance and instruction on a topic they feel particularly knowledgeable about.
MOOCs are online courses run by experts or institutions entirely online, with no restriction to
participation. They have generally a minimalist structure and little educational design,
sometimes having over 100,000 participants (e.g. Change1113. They are rarely instructorfocused but rather depend on participants’ contributions of reflections, insights and questions.
Each learner has to construct his or her own learning paths out of collaborative discussions,
pointers to learning resources, etc. “It is chaos with very many levels of freedom” (Didderen
& Verjans 2012, 14).
Recently, these C-MOOCs (C for connectivism as a new concept for learning, focussing
on community and connecting people) are tied back to institutions and well-known
researchers like Stanford professor Thrun runs MOOCs that are again instructor-driven and
completely structured but open to a large audience (Thrun’s class on Artificial Intelligence14
had over 160.000 participants). These so-called “X-MOOCs” (from edX for ivy league
education) are the latest development as of 2012 (cf. Daniel 2012).
Also, repositories and search engines for OER have been developed, free of any specific
linkage to an institution, such as the “Wikieducator”15 or the “OER Commons”16. Easily
accessible and to be used by anyone interested are video-taped lectures via ITunesU17, (U for
university) rapidly increasing both in number of lectures available and people using them. As
ITunesU is restricted to Apple devices, it cannot be regarded as an OER repository in its
narrow sense, but pushed the distribution of OER material and courses nevertheless
considerably.
With these examples various grades of openness are realized. A new dimension of
openness, only recently gaining attention, is “open assessment”, i.e. open procedures to
acknowledge participation and to accredit certain achievements within the framework of OER
or OEP initiatives (Didderen & Verjans 2012). There are some initial experiments with
“online badges”18 as visual representations for certain achievements or “statements of
accomplishments”. Whether or not such documentation will be valued in the long run is still
open.
11
http://openstudy.com
https://p2pu.org
13
http://change.mooc.ca
14
https://www.ai-class.com/
15
http://wikieducator.org
16
http://www.oercommons.org/
17
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
18
http://www.openbadges.org
12
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As part of open educational practices some countries have devised national strategies and
policies to promote and foster OER usage, the first one was India in 2007 (National
Knowledge Commission 2007), others followed with special subsidizing programs and
research funds (e.g. Brazil, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Poland, South Africa, Turkey,
United Kingdom, Vietnam, cf. Mulder 2012) or set up national OpenCourseWare initiatives
(e.g. Japan, Korea, China, or in Europe: Spain, Netherlands, and United Kingdom).
Open Educational Resources in German Higher Education
What is the situation in German-speaking higher education (Austria, Germany, and
Switzerland) and in particular in Germany? Generally, the uptake of the OE idea appears to
have advanced much slower than in the Anglo-American context. Using Rogers’ model of
innovation diffusion (Rogers 1983) German speaking higher education seems to be still in the
“innovators” phase (as opposed to the Anglo-American OER movement to be described rather
in shift from early adopters to early majority stage; cf. OPAL 2011, 11). This rather broad and
unspecific assessment can be found in several publications (e.g. Ebner & Schön 2011 a and b,
Goertz & Johanning 2007, Zauchner, Baumgartner, Blaschitz &Weissenbäck 2008) but also
has been criticised as lacking an empirical basis (Deimann & Bastiaens 2010).
To devise valid indicators to assess the diffusion of the OER vision is indeed a challenging
endeavour that also transgresses the scope of this article. In the following section I will
therefore use some proxy indicators to justify the assessment of a rather slow uptake in
German-speaking higher education.
Slow Uptake in German Speaking Countries
Reviewing German or English articles or empirical studies on the topic it is striking that
there are hardly any OER projects or initiatives of Austria, Germany or Switzerland
mentioned, analysed or used as case studies. In an international stocktaking desktop study
from 2007, examples from German speaking initiatives were also low in numbers (Goertz &
Johanning 2007). Interestingly, most of the German examples listed in this report do not even
regard themselves as “open educational resources” initiatives. They often stem from networks
of universities who share the production and development costs and want to enrich their study
programs. In fact, other than this network and resource sharing approach, there is hardly any
other “open” dimension in the initiatives or organizations categorized as OER. In a later
investigation (Braun 2008) these initiatives are not identified as OER initiatives any longer19.
At a national policy level none of the German speaking countries has devised a national
strategy on OER so far (Mulder 2012), nor do special research and development programs
focussing on OER exist. In addition, there is no national OpenCourseWare initiative like in
some other countries as part of national strategies on OER (see above).
Looking at participation of existing international OER initiatives or projects like the
OpenCourseWareConsortium or videotaped lectures via ItunesU, the assessment of a slow
19
Best examples are VHB (http://www.vhb.org) and VCRP (http://www.vcrp.de) who are network
initiatives based in Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate respectively) and collectively provide course
units and learning management systems for their university members. There is no sharing of teaching
resources on the lectures part nor a sharing on learning resources on the students’ part beyond the
clearly defined consortia and networks of institutions who authorize their members to use certain
materials (cf. also Rühl 2010).
7
diffusion of the OER idea seems also justified: Among the OCW Consortium members there
is only one Austrian university (Klagenfurt University) (as of September 2012). ITunes U
lectures started in Austria, Germany and Switzerland in 2009 and educational institutions
from these countries represent less than 5% of all educational institutions represented (as of
September 2012), a very active and renowned university here being the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich.
The DELPHI-study of Deimann & Bastiaens (2010) that focuses on the micro-level of
OER acceptance of higher education lecturers and their predictions for the future development
of OER in German speaking higher education also indicates only a limited diffusion of the
OER innovation. It especially reveals a moderate engagement by higher education lecturers to
push this movement forward. Even for the future (operationalized as five years to go in this
study) respondents who are already experts in the OER field do not anticipate a
mainstreaming of usage or production of OER in German speaking higher education. Within
this study as well as in Zauchner et al’s comprehensive collection of different perspectives on
the “opening process” of German speaking higher education (2008), many barriers feature
high that prevent a wider spread uptake (to be dealt with in more depth in Section Four).
In a certain sense, the high usage of the learning management system Moodle, both in
German speaking higher education as well as at secondary school level, could be regarded as
promoting open educational practices: Moodle is open source software for organizing online
education, there are free hosting facilities for Moodle and even an open Moodle course
repository (cf. http://moodle.org). On the other hand, in most occasions Moodle is rather used
for restricting access to learning resources to members of a particular higher education
institute, often only granting access to students enrolled in a particular class. For that Moodle
has also been described as “open source, closed doors” (Thibault 2010).
In Switzerland the “SWITCHcollection”20, a National Learning Object Repository has
been established, enabling the sharing of learning and teaching resources among Swiss
university lecturers and other affiliated organizations. “Openness” here is restricted as only
members of the participating universities can access the resources. This collection therefore is
rather a networking approach than an OER initiative.
Dürnberger, Hofhues & Sporer (2011) describe many examples of “Open Educational
Initiatives” in German universities. They fulfill some dimensions of the OER idea in that they
open up university teaching to informal learning, student self-guided study, peer-to-peer
learning, and sometimes produce open content (e.g. “Websquare”21). But these local, studentinitiated and managed projects generally only provide learning opportunities for registered
students in the respective institution and sometimes only in a particular study program. With
this very restricted accessibility they may be inspired by the OER movement but cannot be
regarded as OER initiatives within this paper.
Some Positive Examples
However, there are some OER initiatives in German speaking higher education that truly
merit being categorized as OER and which seem to recently push the OER movement
forward, also obtaining intentional attention.
20
21
http://www.switch.ch/collection
http://websquare.imb-uni-augsburg.de
8
The Austrian initiative “Textbook for Learning and Teaching with Technologies” (L3T)
(transl. PA)22 for the first time devised and successfully produced a comprehensive teaching
and learning resource on technology mediated teaching and learning. It was written and peerreviewed in a collaborative effort by more than 100 authors. The “textbook” is publicly
available free of charge on the net and licensed under an open Creative Commons licence (cf.
for details Alimucaj et al. 2012).
Since 2011 various massive open online course in German language were organized. In
2011 an “Open Course on Workplace Learning” (OPWL)23 started as a “blended massive
open online course”, combining a MOOC with a traditional on-site university seminar. In the
same year the OpenCourse 2011 “Future of Learning”24, run by Goethe-University Frankfurt
and the independent educational blogger Jochen Robes attracted over 900 registered
participants and discussed trends in learning over 11 weeks.
In 2012 the same actors, this time also collaborating with e-teaching.org, a project run by
the Institute of Knowledge media of the University Tübingen, organized a similar event called
“Open Course Trends in E-Teaching. Analysing the Horizon-Report”25, that had nearly 1500
registered participants. For formal recognition of participation it also provided “online
badges” and used peer-to-peer learning as its key learning method. All material from
discussions is freely available. The course thus provides German speaking autonomous
learners or “edupunks” (to pick up the term of the journal headline quoted at the beginning of
this article) with an informal learning opportunity).
The term MOOC therefore gradually stops to be associated with courses in English, for an
international audience, as was the case a few years ago. Nowadays (as of October 2012) also
German independent learners seem to ask themselves “at which MOOC shall I participate”
rather than “how do I participate at a MOOC” (Franz 2012, blog entry on OpenCourse 2012
website, transl. PA).
Open Educational Resources Backstage – Drivers and Impediments
Driving forces and impediments for the open educational resource projects and initiatives
are manifold and as varied as the approaches themselves. When analysing the motivations to
use open educational resources, but also the challenges that have to be confronted when
adopting OER and OEP, it helps to differentiate a macro and micro level. At a macro level
strategies or policies of countries, states or institutions come into focus. The micro level refers
the actual uptake and acceptance from lecturers and learners. In the first part I will summarize
what has been analysed so far internationally for the macro and micro level, and then go on to
shed some light on the specific situation of German-speaking countries.
Motivations and Barriers Internationally
At a macro level, the main motivation for devising national OER strategies with
corresponding policies is increasing efficiency and innovation in the educational sphere.
International studies (Hylen 2006, Geser 2007, UNESCO 2009, SIG OER 2012) reveal the
22
http://l3t.eu
http://ocwl11.wissensdialoge.de
24
http://blog.studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de/opco11
25
http://opco12.de
23
9
following general motivations and drivers for universities and other organizations to join OER
initiatives or to push forward the OER movement themselves:
 Conviction of knowledge as a public good, resulting in an obligation to also share
educational resources.
 Better leveraging public funding in the educational sphere by sharing and adapting
of existing materials.
 Reducing the cost of content development.
 Being able to reach new target groups.
 Gaining exposure and reputation as part of an international marketing strategy.
 Fostering networking with other institutions and amongst lecturers.
 Establishing internal quality assurance and faculty development by publishing
resources.
 Experimenting with educational innovation.
 Providing authentic material so that future students may take an informed decision
which study program to choose.
At the micro level for lecturers and other teachers, some institutional motivations for OER
are reflected: Lectures produce OER or engage in OEP such as massive open online courses
to gain a wider, international audience and thus enhance their own reputation (e.g. Stanford
professor Thrun in his highly featured MOOC on artificial intelligence). Lecturers may
produce or use OER because they share the conviction of knowledge as a public good and
regard OER as a better leverage of public funding. Others may use OER to save time, include
international perspectives in their teaching material, gain access to high quality and up-to-date
material, or relief themselves from designing introductory material all over again. Another
motivation for lecturers to use OER often is to collaborate with others or to belong to a certain
community. Yet others may be drawn by the enhanced opportunity to reach disadvantaged
groups of former students with their material (cf. UNESCO 2009, 11).
Students or independent learners engage in OEP or use OER material also for a variety of
reasons: Prospective students may use OER to get some orientation for their choice of
studying; students already enrolled in a university may use OER to broaden the scope of their
education and make their study program more flexible. Other students may be drawn by the
possibility to gain acknowledgement and reputation. Life-long learners may simply follow
their very individual learning paths (cf. Jelgerhuis 2012).
Another driver for OER and OEP uptake in general is the community aspect: There are
various indicators that OER usage and production is greatly fostered by communities where
members have already established a certain level of trust for interaction. In fact, the successful
thriving of OER initiatives is likely to depend on the initiatives’ capacities to build
communities of practice around the OER materials (cf. Geser 2007, Attwell 2008, Arnold
2009). Furthermore, trust and a general feeling of security seem important success factors
(OPAL 2011, 171). In this line of argument the development of widely accepted licensing
models such as Creative Commons can be also seen as a general driver for OER and OEP as
they may help to reduce legal insecurity.
However, all stakeholders of OER initiatives remain faced with a great number of
challenges: At a macro level there are barriers and impediments that slow down the uptake of
OER by organizations, and at a micro level barriers and impediments that prevent individuals
to produce or even use OER, sometimes they intersect (OPAL2011, Masterman & Wild
2011).
As for the macro level, for a national strategy, a clear vision has to be elaborated and goals
to be reached in the specific cultural context defined, which requires a complex process of
negotiation among all stakeholders concerned. In federalist countries, this process gains
another layer of complexity. Also, for a single organization a clear strategy and goals have to
10
be developed when getting involved in OER. Reaching consensus on organization-wide goals
is also often difficult. Other challenges are to devise sustainable business models, to reach
critical mass or to establish necessary support and training structures for staff respectively
faculty (Jacobi 2012).
At the micro level, individuals who want to take up OER face the following five main
barriers, according to the OPAL study (2011, 8): “1) Lack of institutional support; 2) Lack of
technological tools; 3) Lack of skills and time of users; 4) Lack of quality or fitness of OER;
5) Personal issues (lack of trust and time)”. What is subsumed here as “personal issues” such
as “lack of trust and time” seems to be of utmost importance. The study (OPAL 2011, 171)
concludes that “regardless of educational professionals considering OER to be important for
themselves or for others (e.g., students), the lesser the fear, insecurity or discomfort vis-a-vis
OER, the higher the frequency of OER use”. This again points to the importance of
transparent alternative license systems – and educational professionals knowing about them –
to reduce legal insecurity and fear of copyright infringements.
As regards institutional support, the absence of a reward or incentive system to use and
share OER seems to be another very important hurdle. The UNESCO report (2009)
emphasizes the significance of incentive systems: “To establish a credible academic reward
system that includes the production and use of OER might, therefore, be the single most
important policy issue for a large-scale deployment of OER in teaching and learning”
(UNESCO 2009, 140).
Specific Motivations and Barriers in German-speaking Higher Education
Generally, driving factors and motivations for the OER-movement as described above
internationally, apply to German-speaking higher education as well. Results of the two
empirical studies focusing on acceptance of the OER idea by faculty in German-speaking
higher education (Braun 2008, Deimann & Bastiaens 2010) match those of international
studies to a great extent (e.g. an anticipated or de facto extra work load to produce OER as
compared to regular, not-shared teaching materials, technical hurdles such as the lack of
suitable and easy-to-use infrastructure, and a lack of sustainable business models). Especially,
the internationally often-cited observation that OER are best promoted and shared in
(disciplinary) communities are in line with recent findings focused on German-speaking
higher education (cf. Deimann & Bastiaens 2010).
Nevertheless, the uptake of OER seems to be particularly slow in this sector – even more
so considering the fact that German-speaking higher education is mainly publicly funded. The
argument that the production and usage of OER could leverage public spending could have
special appeal here, but, up to now, has not shown much effect in reality. Rather, there seem
to be special barriers embedded in German academic culture that prevent the wider usage of
OER. What is known so far about these special barriers? The interview studies in Germanspeaking higher education, focusing on the micro-level of faculty acceptance of the OER idea,
analyze the situation as follows:
Braun (2008) distinguishes barriers for the production of OER from barriers to the usage
and integration of OER into academic teaching. According to her findings, barriers to OER
production are mainly a lack of awareness of the OER movement and little knowledge of
open licensing systems. In addition, materials in German language are perceived as less in
demand due to the language barrier of less people having a command of German as compared
to those being able to use materials in English. Moreover, teaching in general is valued less
than research in German academic culture. Especially, it is less relevant for career tracks.
Confronted with the option to publish one’s own teaching materials as OER or with a
publisher as a higher education textbook, the latter option is chosen much more frequently
due to the higher academic value attached to such a publication. More in general, sharing
teaching materials is perceived as not being part of the dominant academic culture, an
unwanted possibility for external control or as a restriction of the “academic freedom” as a
high value. In close combination with lacking knowledge and awareness of new licensing
possibilities, often members of faculty fear misuse of published OER material. For many,
11
MIT’s pushing for OER is dismissed as solely marketing and an attempt to dominate the
discourse with a US-focused perspective (cf. also Bergamin & Filk 2009).
Specific barriers to OER usage and integration in Germany are, according to Braun
(2008), other than the internationally often-reported cumbersome retrieval and lack of
comprehensive search systems are:
(1) The deeply up-rooted practice not to employ teaching material other than that that is
self-produced.
(2) The difficulty to find resources that match the specific cultural context and competence
level, aggravated by the fact that with OER the focus is too much on resources and too little
on educational designs and student-student interaction.
(3) The language barrier – as it is still rather unusual to use learning resources in English
(as opposed to research articles).
(4) Too few good practice examples or well-known OER initiatives in the Germanspeaking countries to encourage the individual uptake of OER.
In general, customizing the resources to match the perceived requirements of one’s own
context seems to be more effort than to design the resources from scratch.
Deimann & Bastiaens’ study (2010) delivers similar results as regards the specific barriers
in German-speaking countries. They cluster the barriers perceived by faculty in German
speaking higher education into four categories:
(1) Cultural barriers: similar to Braun they point especially to the “not invented here”
syndrome of little acceptance of resources that are produced by others, in different contexts or
other languages.
(2) Lacking examples: too few German OER resources and initiatives resulting in little
awareness of the OER movement and too little choice of resources.
(3) Legal issues: fear of copyright infringements due to hardly spread knowledge on legal
status of different licensing models (this barrier is in line with international studies).
(4) Technical issues: few easy to use repositories and search engines.
Summarizing motivations, driving factors and currently known barriers, the OER
movement in German speaking higher education needs support on the macro and micro
levels. Top-down strategies such as organization-wide incentive systems to produce and use
OER as well as information on adequate licensing systems could move the OER idea forward.
Bottom-up approaches, for example, sharing of materials in already existing communities,
and a general focus on establishing communities around OER projects, are also needed.
Furthermore, the shift from open educational resources to open educational practices that
include innovative educational designs and learning architectures with a focus on student-tostudent interaction and informal learning opportunities might also accelerate the uptake of the
“open education” idea in German-speaking higher education.
Conclusions
With this paper I set out to investigate the current situation of open educational resources
and open educational practices in German-speaking higher education on the basis of recent
empirical studies internationally and focused on Austria, Germany or Switzerland. What are
the key results? Neither open educational resources nor open educational practices are
perceived as “disruptive technologies” about to fundamentally change German speaking
higher education (cf. Introduction). Rather, there is a slow uptake of the OER idea with its
many facets, in reality often much more restricted compared to the comprehensive vision
when the term was coined a decade ago. Nevertheless, with a few successful examples, the
OER and OEP movement also gathers momentum in German speaking higher education.
Looking at the driving factors and motivations behind the OER movement as well as the
barriers to overcome, it became evident that many challenges are the same in German higher
12
education as internationally, but the uptake is slowed down due to some additional barriers
embedded in German academic culture and the language.
To help push forward the OER and OEP idea also in German higher education, several
starting points at different levels could be identified: At a macro level organizational or
national strategies are needed that establish incentive systems and spread the knowledge of
alternative licensing models and thus reduce legal insecurity. At a micro level the community
aspect around OER measures should be focused and the shift from open educational resources
to open educational practises, including innovative learning architectures, encouraged. It also
needs more bottom-up approaches and examples of good practice to provide orientation for
educators and “edupunks” alike and to inspire more actors to experiment with OER and OEP
even within an academic culture not perfectly geared to openness in education.
Further research is needed to investigate each one of these aspects in more detail – for
example, which incentive systems could be developed in German higher education, how to
build communities around an OER repository, or how to integrate new and most likely
heavily-informal learning opportunities into the higher education framework?
For a final conclusion, I would like to re-use an insight of Didderen & Verjans (2012, 15)
and transfer it from the Netherlands to Germany: “the key question here is whether our higher
education institutions and individual instructors can afford to adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude
in the light of these [OER and OEP] movements. Asking that question in fact amounts to
answering it!”
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany
(BMBF) within the framework of the university’s development project “Well Equipped for
the Future” (duration 2011-2016), being part of the “Quality Initiative for German Higher
Education”.
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Arnold, 2012 - Centre for Community Networking Research (CCNR)

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