Open Scotland @10 Plenary Panel synthesis & outputs

This summary of the Open Scotland @10 plenary panel at OER23 by Lorna M. Campbell was originally published at OpenWorld blog.

To mark 10 years of the Open Scotland initiative, Joe Wilson and I ran two events as part of the OER23 Conference at UHI in Inverness, which provided an opportunity for members of the education community to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade, and to discuss potential ways to advance open education across all sectors of Scottish education.

Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop

Joe has already written up our pre-conference Open Scotland workshop, which brought together around 40 colleagues, in person and online, to discuss key challenges and priorities. You can read Joe’s summary of the workshop here: Open Scotland Reflections on Pre-Conference Workshop.

OpenScotland @10 Plenary Panel

The closing plenary panel of OER23 brought together open education practitioners from within Scotland and beyond. Panel participants were Lorna M. Campbell, Open Scotland and University of Edinburgh; Scott Connor, UHI; Maren Deepwell, ALT; Stuart Nicol, University of Edinburgh; Robert Schuwer, consultant and former UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources; Joe Wilson, Open Scotland and City of Glasgow College. Each member of the panel was invited to briefly share their thoughts on future directions for Open Education, before we opened the discussion to the floor.

Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.

Stuart Nicol, Head of Educational Design and Engagement at the University of Edinburgh, acknowledged that while it’s disappointing that there hasn’t been more support from Scottish Government, there has been a support for open education at a number of institutions, including the University of Edinburgh. Stuart highlighted the important role of committed people who have pushed the open agenda within institutions. Short of having government level commitment and policy, Stuart suggested we need to provide opportunities for people to come together to share practice and to encourage institutions to work together.

Scott Connor, Digital and Open Education Lead at UHI’s Learning and Teaching Academy, outlined UHI’s strategic commitment to open education which is underpinned by an OER Policy and a framework for the development of open educational practices. Scott highlighted lack government mandates and funding as a barriers to engagement with open education and suggested that real impact would come through the government adopting the Scottish Open Education Declaration and using it to mandate that resources created with public funding should be shared openly to benefit everyone.

Both Scott and Stuart highlighted the OER policies adapted and adopted by the University of Edinburgh and UHI as a prime example of open education collaboration.

Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.

Robert Schuwer, independent consultant and former UNESCO Chair of OER, provided an overview of open education in The Netherlands where the government has supported a range of OER initiatives and stimulation grants since 2006. In 2014 the Education Ministry issued a strategic agenda stating that by 2025 all teachers should share their learning materials. Although some institutions such as TU Delft are front-runners, other smaller institutions are just getting started.

Robert suggested that the biggest challenge is to cross the chasm from early adopters and innovators to the majority of teachers to encourage them to adopt principles of openness in education. He suggested connecting to teachers passion, which is teaching, not sharing materials, and highlighting how open education can help them to become better teachers.

Maren Deepwell, CEO of the Association for Learning Technology, reminded us that we’re not just talking about openness in Higher Education we’re looking at all sectors including schools, training, vocational education, FE, HE, and research. UK Government looks at Open Access research and thinks the open box is ticked. ALT has tried to reach out to both Scottish Government and the Department of Education, but often there is no one with responsibility for open education policy beyond Open Access and Open Research funding.

Maren noted that we tend to see open education as another challenge alongside Brexit, the cost of living crisis, climate change, sustainability, etc., and ultimately it is never at the top of the agenda. She suggested that our opportunity is to present openness as a way to solve these challenges. It’s ingrained in us that openness is the extra step that teachers need more time, more funding, more skills, to take. Instead we need to highlight how openness could solve resource scarcity and training issues, and help small independent providers collaborate across sectors. We need to show openness as a way to solve these challenges, rather than as a stand alone challenge in its own right.

Open Scotland Plenary Panel by Tim Winterburn.

Opening the discussion to the floor, members of the community put forward a range of comments and suggestions including:

Taking a whole population approach to education rather than a sectoral approach. Open education is a way to educate for all our futures, not just those who can afford a good education. Open educators should collaborate with demographic data experts to see how open education could address key challenges of our ageing population, including health and social care.
Start with early interventions at primary school level. How do children learn, what do they learn, what role models do they see? Start to train a new generation of people to think in different ways. Currently there is no mention of openness in the General Teaching Council programme, but a logical place to start would be with teaching staff who are teaching children how to learn. However because of concerns about GDPR, teachers work in closed environments, there are challenges around safeguarding and managing digital identities.
Scotland’s baby box has been an import mechanism for learning for both parents and children, why not add a leaflet about open education?
Scotland has always had a very egalitarian tradition of education, the principles of openness fit well with this tradition, from school all the way up, so it’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to introduce open education at school level.
Maybe we’re trying too hard to change policy, perhaps it would be better to focus on doing fun stuff and sharing open practice. Do what you can at the small level; small OER, rather than big OER. This can be really powerful. Sharing in small ways can make a difference.
People hear about Open Scotland and are interested in open education, but they’re constrained by their local authorities or their college marketing teams.
The strength of open education is in the grass roots, as soon as it get sucked into politics, it gets watered down. There is a risk that comes with government policy and funding. You cede some control when policy is dictated at that level. At grass roots level we can control it, shape it and manage it. It’s hard work pushing upwards but there is a danger when it comes from the other direction that we lose something and open education gets co-opted by people we may not wish to work with.
Robert Schuwer countered this point by noting that this has not happened in The Netherlands. Government support is provided at all levels of education but there is a lot of autonomy within institutions. The only mandates were the 2014 strategic agenda and a 2020 Open Access research mandate, both of which have been beneficial. Robert also noted that students lobbied the Education Minister and had directly input to the 2014 sharing agenda. This was also the case at the University of Edinburgh, where EUSA encouraged the University to support open education and OER.
We have a political problem in that our education ministers don’t know much about education, so openness is never a priority. We need to trust ourselves and continue with the grass roots work. We need to feed messages up to government ministers that open education can be a solution to sustainability and other strategic agendas. We need to take our advocacy up a notch, perhaps take out an advert in the press.

Next steps

The next step will be to continue synthesising the outputs of the workshop and plenary panel, captured in this Padlet, with a view to drafting a new Open Scotland manifesto to share with the community and move the open education agenda forward.

#oer23 #oer2023 #OpenScot Open Scotland Reflections on Pre-Conference Workshop and in Conference Plenary

Reflections on the Open Scotland workshop and plenary at OER23 by Joe Wilson, originally posted on Experimental blog.

To mark 10 years of the Open Scotland initiative we held two events as part of the OER23 Conference to bring together members of the education community in Scotland and some of the international delegates to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade against the backdrop of global crisis and uncertainty (Campbell and Wilson 2021).

We held a pre-conference workshop and an in-conference plenary.

As ever grateful to ALT and the University of the Highlands and Islands for this opportunity. The OER Conference took place in Scotland for the first time since 2016. A main theme of the conference was.

“Open Education in Scotland #OpenScot – celebrating 10 years of the Scottish Open Education Declaration.”

I’m grateful as ever to Lorna M. Campbell my co-founder of Open Scotland and the many supporters we have found across the international and Scottish learning community. It’s now been some weeks following the conference allowing me some reflection time (as well as time to do busy and full-on day job) We both juggle workplace commitments while championing open educational practice.

It’s ten years since we set off on what we thought would be a short journey to get Scottish Education to embrace Open Education and open practice. Please dig into the commentary on our slides. It’s been more of an uphill journey than we ever anticipated.

It’s taken us and the Open Scotland Declaration all around Europe, but it has not had the impact we need in Scottish Education in the round.

Thanks to Jim Groom reclaim hosting for Polaroid.

The workshop and plenary went well but at #OER23 we were talking to the converts. It is really apparent that other countries have embraced the UNESCO declaration and are moving ahead of Scotland at a rate of knots.

The Scottish system seems – and to use a good Scottish word “thrawn” Everyone we’ve reached out to sees the Open Scotland Declaration as an achievable aim but equally College Principals, agency policy makers all think that it is someone else’s responsibility to drive change across the system.

Have a look at the output of the workshop and the plenary below. The will is there but the policy leavers and policy makers remain tantalisingly out of reach.

The padlet is still open but as it has now been shared on the open web input is now subject to approval – but please chip in your ideas.

The padlet – highlights what might be. The output from the Padlet will become a manifesto for change from #OpenScot.

As a footnote I asked ChaptGPT about Open Scotland. The text it created is below it shows we’ve been making all the right waves- how else could ChatGPT pick up themes like this.

But Open Scotland is not yet a Scottish Government initiative – it shows how ChatGPT could create an alternative reality – it created a fantasy.

We’ve still to make adoption of UNESCO declaration on Open Education a reality in Scotland.

I hope we don’t have to wait another 10 years.

Once again thanks to the community around the #oer conferences – you give us the strength, love and enthusiasm to keep pushing at the open door. My last post I hope reflected all the great things happening around the world.

“The Scottish Government has been a strong supporter of Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) in Scotland. In 2013, the Scottish Government launched the Open Scotland initiative to raise awareness of the benefits of Open Education and promote the development and use of OER in Scotland.

As part of this initiative, the Scottish Government has provided funding to support the development of OER and the implementation of Open Education practices in Scottish schools, colleges, and universities. For example, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has provided funding to support the creation of OER through its Open Educational Resources Programme, and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has developed a framework for the use of OER in the development of qualifications. Education Scotland and HMIE support a number of Open Education initiatives across the school and College system.

In addition, the Scottish Government has endorsed the principles of the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, which calls on governments and institutions around the world to support the development and use of OER. This endorsement demonstrates the Scottish Government’s commitment to promoting the use of OER as a means of improving access to education and promoting social inclusion.

Overall, the Scottish Government’s support for Open Education and OER has helped to raise awareness of the benefits of open education and has supported the development and implementation of Open Education practices in Scotland.”

Would be nice if it was remotely true …

Open Scotland @10

To mark 10 years of the Open Scotland initiative we will be holding two events as part of the OER23 Conference to bring together members of the education community in Scotland to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade against the backdrop of global crisis and uncertainty (Campbell and Wilson 2021). Hosted by ALT and the University of the Highlands and Islands, the OER Conference is taking place in Scotland for the first time since 2016. One of the main themes of the conference is “Open Education in Scotland – celebrating 10 years of the Scottish Open Education Declaration.”

Thigibh a-steach! Come and join us at the OER23 Conference in Inverness to contribute to shaping the future of open education in Scotland.

Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop

When: Tuesday 4th April, 15.30 – 17.00
Where: UHI Inverness and online
Who: Open to all.

This pre-conference workshop, facilitated by Joe Wilson and Lorna M. Campbell, will reflect on the Open Scotland initiative and discuss ways forward for the open education community. We’ll briefly address the history and impact of Open Scotland and explore the role of Open Scotland and the Scottish Open Education Declaration going forward.

We’ll ask whether the aims of Open Scotland are still relevant, whether the Scottish Open Education Declaration has a role to play in the future, and how it can be reframed to reflect current challenges and priorities.

How can we encourage more teachers, learners and education institutions across the sector to engage with open education?

How do we ensure that the Scottish education community tunes in to global open practice and makes most of the possibilities of open educational resources , open research , open textbooks and other opportunities?

Can we effectively lobby the Scottish Government to adopt policies that support open education and OER at the national level?

How can we in Scotland, the UK, and internationally, align with the principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER (UNESCO 2019)?

We invite key leaders, influencers, educators, open practitioners and advocates across the Scottish education community to join us. This workshop is free and open to all. Remote participation will be available for those who are unable to join us in Inverness.

Registration
If you are not an OER23 delegate, please register here in order to participate: Open Scotland Pre Conference Session for External Delegates

OER23 Conference Closing Plenary: OpenScotland @10

When: Thursday 6th April, 16.20 – 17.00
Where: UHI Inverness and online
Who: OER23 Conference delegates

The closing plenary panel of the OER23 Conference will bring together open education advocates from Scotland and The Netherlands to reflect on the open education landscape in Scotland and internationally. We’ll discuss engagement with open education across Scotland, focusing on the benefits and affordances of open education and OER and how it can help to address local and global education challenges and priorities, while reflecting on the relevance of the original aim of Open Scotland: To raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education.

Panel participants: Lorna M. Campbell, Open Scotland and University of Edinburgh; Scott Connor, UHI; Maren Deepwell, ALT; Stuart Nicol, University of Edinburgh; Robert Schuwer, consultant and former UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources; Joe Wilson, Open Scotland and City of Glasgow College.

Background

Open Scotland is a voluntary cross-sector initiative, established in 2013, to raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education. In the decade since its launch, Open Scotland has been supported by Cetis, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the Association for Learning Technology, Reclaim Hosting, the University of Edinburgh and Creative Commons. Openness remains a key strategic principle for many of these organisations.

In order to achieve its aims, Open Scotland hosted the Open Scotland Summit (2013) and Open Education, Open Scotland (2014) at the University of Edinburgh, which brought together senior managers, policy makers and key thinkers to explore the development of open education policy and practice in Scotland. Members of Open Scotland contributed regularly to national conferences, and participated in international events including Open Education Global in Ljubljana, OERde14 in Berlin, Morocco Open Education Day, the Open Education Policy Network, UNESCO European Regional Consultation in Malta, and the 2017 UNESCO OER World Congress.

In 2014, inspired by the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration (UNESCO 2012), Open Scotland launched the Scottish Open Education Declaration (Open Scotland 2014), an open draft document that all members of the community were invited to contribute to. The Declaration called on the Scottish Government, the Scottish Funding Council and all sectors of Scottish education to endorse the principles of the UNESCO OER Declaration and ensure that educational materials produced with public funding are freely and openly available to all. With support from ALT Scotland and Creative Commons, the Declaration was brought to the attention of three consecutive Cabinet Secretaries of Education, however the Scottish Government declined to engage with these principles. Despite this lack of response, the Scottish Open Education Declaration has been influential elsewhere. It inspired the OER Morocco Declaration (Berrada and Almakari 2017), informed the OpenMed Project, and has raised awareness of open education within institutions, triggering discussions about open education at policy level.

References

Berrada, K. and Almakari, A. (2017) Déclaration du Maroc sur les Ressources Educatives Libres / OER Morocco Declaration. Available at: https://openmedproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/OER-Morocco-Declaration.pdf (Accessed: 9 January 2023).

Campbell, L.M. and Wilson, J. (2021) Open Educational Resources: An equitable future for education in Scotland. Available at: https://openscot.net/further-education/open-educational-resources-an-equitable-future-for-education-in-scotland/ (Accessed: 9 January 2023).

Open Scotland. (2014) Scottish Open Education Declaration. Available at: https://declaration.openscot.net/ (Accessed: 9 January 2023).

UNESCO. (2012) The Paris OER Declaration. Available at: https://en.unesco.org/oer/paris-declaration (Accessed: 9 January 2023).

UNESCO. (2019) Recommendation on Open Educational Resources. Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer (Accessed: 9 January 2023).

Open Educational Resources: An equitable future for education in Scotland

by Lorna M. Campbell and Joe Wilson

In the 8 years since the launch of Open Scotland, the aims of this voluntary cross sector initiative, and the Scottish Open Education Declaration [1], are more relevant than ever:

To raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education.

The global COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of open educational resources (OER) in achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 [2] to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Open educational resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions [3].

At the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO estimated that 1.57 billion learners in 191 countries worldwide had had their education disrupted. In response to this unprecedented crisis, the organisation issued a Call for Joint Action [4] to support learning and knowledge sharing through open educational resources. The call highlights the important role that OER can play in supporting the continuation of learning in both formal and informal settings, meeting the needs of individual learners, including people with disabilities and individuals from marginalized or disadvantaged groups, with a view to building more inclusive, sustainable and resilient knowledge societies.

This Call for Joint Action builds on UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources [5], which represents a formal commitment to actively support the global adoption of OER. The Recommendation recognises that

“in building inclusive Knowledge Societies, Open Educational Resources (OER) can support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory as well as enhancing academic freedom and professional autonomy of teachers by widening the scope of materials available for teaching and learning.”

Open educational resources can also play an important role in addressing the key challenges facing Scotland in the coming decades; environmental, technological, social and economic change.

In the Scotland 2030 Schooling, Education and Learning Report [6], Scotland’s Futures Forum called for an education system of the future that engages with, challenges and influences all these changes, in addition to preparing young people for a world where fast-paced change will be the norm.

Without equitable access to diverse, customisable, high-quality educational resources there is a real danger that these changes will entrench, rather than overcome, existing inequalities. Access to open educational resources can help to dismantle the obstacles that prevent learners from accessing and participating in education and knowledge creation. Furthermore it is only through open and equitable access to education that we can ensure that every child can enjoy their rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [7], regardless of their ethnicity, gender, religion, language, or abilities. Ultimately, this is what knowledge equity and open educational resources are about; counteracting structural inequalities and systemic barriers to foster knowledge transfer, enhance quality and sustainability, support social inclusion, create a culture of collaboration and sharing, and enable learners to become fully engaged digital citizens.

Scottish Open Education Declaration https://declaration.openscot.net/
UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
UNESCO Open Educational Resources https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer
UNESCO Call for Joint Action: Supporting Learning and Knowledge Sharing through Open Educational Resources (OER) https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/covid19_joint_oer_call_en.pdf
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer/recommendation
Scotland 2030 Schooling, Education and Learning Report https://www.scotlandfutureforum.org/scotland2030-future-schooling/
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/

What can academic libraries do to improve OER support?

For the month of May 2020, Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) Sir Alex Ferguson Library are curating the Open Scotland blog. The topics GCU are presenting provide an insight into the work they do in supporting open practice, open education, and open educational resources.

In our fourth and final post, Senior Library Administrator Seth Thompson returns to present a summary of the findings of his MSc Information and Library Studies dissertation. Seth completed his postgraduate research at Robert Gordon University (RGU) in 2018. His work used a case study methodology to investigate academic library support of OER in Scotland.

Introduction and background

I began working in the library at GCU in January 2015. From a very early stage in my library career I became interested in the idea of open education and open educational resources (OER). I think this was probably because as I began working at GCU I was seeing and hearing about the library’s new edShare@GCU repository and the progress of the GCU OER policy project. As I attended the internal presentations and training sessions about these projects, I realised I had a genuine interest in open practice, the creation of resources that could facilitate future remixing and repurposing, and how these presented opportunities to further knowledge in a time-efficient and cost effective way. I completed my MSc in Information and Library Studies as a distance learner at RGU in 2018. Throughout my studies, openness, resource accessibility, licensing and OERs continued to be of great interest to me. In my final semester at RGU I decided that I could make Higher Education (HE) academic library support of OER in Scotland the topic of my dissertation.

The first step on my dissertation journey was to identify Scottish HE academic libraries that supported OER. I wanted to know if there were other academic libraries that supported OER outside of GCU, how they did this, and what made them want to support an open agenda. To this end, I conducted an environmental scan of all Scottish HE academic library webpages to find which university libraries actively mentioned support for OER. Purposive selection identified three potential cases, with each case providing detailed OER service webpages. I discovered two possible library cases: the Sir Alex Ferguson Library at GCU, and the University of Glasgow library (UoG). I also discovered that the University of Edinburgh (UoE) provided a specific OER support service, Open.Ed.

Stated briefly, the three institutions provide the following support:

The Sir Alex Ferguson Library provides practical support of the GCU OER policy, user support of edShare@GCU, and assistance to staff in resource creation, copyright, intellectual property rights, and licensing enquiries. Further information about our OER services can be found in my previous Open Scotland blog post, on our library website, and edShare@GCU webpages.

UoG provide the ‘EdShare at Glasgow’ repository and copyright, licensing, OER use and creation guidance and training.

Open.Ed support UoE’s OER vision and provide staff and students with advice, guidance and digital skills workshops on OER use and creation, copyright and open licensing, and engagement with open education.

After discussing with my supervisor, I decided that an exploratory multiple case study would be a suitable methodology to use. I used two data collection tools, semi-structured interviews (eight in total across cases) with librarians and staff responsible for OER support, and a thematic case document analysis. My interview questions and document analysis aimed to examine how the cases support OER, why cases wished to support OER, and identify any potential factors affecting each cases’ ability to support OER. At this point it is worth keeping in mind that due to the scale of the project and the use of a case study approach, the results of my research are not generalisable. Though the research may be of interest to libraries and librarians looking to develop strategies and services to support open practices.

Summary of my findings

Five broad themes were identified across cases:

Academic libraries and HEI department OER support
Institutional approaches to OER
Educators and OER
Approaches to OER service delivery
Copyright and licensing

Academic libraries and/or department OER support

There was strong consensus across cases that academic libraries and/or departments within HEIs should support OER. In line with good open practice, all cases highlighted a desire for co-creation in service delivery. Collaboration is identified as an enabling factor to library OER projects (Bueno-de-la-Fuente et al. 2012; Smith and Lee 2017), with OER seen as a catalyst for improved collaboration (McGill et al. 2013).

Each case displayed strong affinity with open practice and stated their reasons to support OER as including:

Supporting digital education
Showcasing educator teaching materials
Developing educator digital and information literacy skills
Supporting student learning through diversifying curriculums and cost reduction
To develop educator copyright and licensing knowledge to enhance teaching resources and protect institution copyright integrity

However, cases also highlighted tensions with educators and departments within OER projects and initiatives. This is concurrent with tension identified by McGill et al. (2015) when attempting to collectively develop OER.

Institutional approaches to OER

Each case identified differing levels of institutional support. Institutional OER approaches may incorporate funding, policy, senior and local management support and social culture, with each of these elements potentially impacting factors upon service success. Within HEIs institutional budgets may be key to OER funding and success (Mulder 2013; Barrett et al. 2009). Institutional conditions such as those found at Open.Ed, which included central funding, non-coercive policy, senior and departmental support, and high availability of educator and student support mechanisms, may assist in presenting an environment which is seen to motivate educator agency and OER decisions. Soft or flexible OER policies may gently encourage educator OER use (Nikoi and Armellini 2012; UNESCO 2011). Though policy may not singularly ensure sustainable OER practice (Cox and Trotter 2016), it may assist in clarifying issues of copyright, licensing and IP ownership (Gadd and Weedon 2017). Building an institutional OER culture may benefit from both student and staff involvement, as demonstrated at Open.Ed. Perceived conflicts between institutional support of research and institutional support of OER were suggested by participants at GCU and UoG. This is concurrent with Cox (2013). There is a lack of research discussing motivators to produce OER in relation to excellence frameworks such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) or Teaching excellence Framework (TEF). A lack of external motivators, such as professional incentives or recognition for creating OER, may also be a barrier to OER services.

Educators and OER

Educators professional relationship with OER was identified as a major impacting factor upon case OER services. Identified issues included resource proprietary, fear of judgement and anxiety regarding resource quality. All case concerns are not dissimilar to issues previously identified (Cox 2013; Beggam 2010; Sefton 2010). The lack of OER awareness amongst educators at each case was comparable to de los Arcos et al. (2016). However, in drawing together Cox and Trotter (2016) and Anderson’s (2010) findings, presenting a collegiate institutional culture that values opportunities for educators to freely engage with OER and exhibit high levels of OER agency may assist in encouraging OER use. Interviewee responses at Open.Ed suggested that an open collegiate culture such as this may be present. GCU and UoG participants reflectively questioned whether their services offering addressed the pedagogical needs of educators. Educator use of OER services without the creation of OER in mind may present a gap in knowledge and literature, particularly in OER repository services. If the option to share materials as OER is present, why are educators not choosing to do so? This may present evidence concurrent with the findings of Cronin, who found that performing open practice is a complex, personal and contextual decision that is continually negotiated (2017). A key OER support consideration is that educator attitudes to sharing and borrowing may be deeply rooted in professional and individual feelings (Rolfe 2012).

Approaches to service delivery

Open.Ed, GCU and UoG concurred in identifying a need to develop educator OER awareness and knowledge to encourage use (Smith and Lee 2017; de los Arcos et al. 2016; Cox 2013; Murphy 2013). However, cases presented contrasting approaches to services. GCU and UoG focused on repository services. Open.Ed focused on skills training. Both GCU and UoG highlight a lack of staff time and resource as a factor impacting upon abilities to deliver training and advocacy services. Time is acknowledged as a barrier to librarian OER support (Smith and Lee 2017; Okamoto 2013). Open.Ed’s focus toward developing digital skills identifies with research that suggests developing technical skills may encourage OER use (Anderson 2010) and counteract potential for digital skills gaps (Jisc n.d.). Open.Ed expressed different feelings towards institutional OER repositories than library service cases GCU and UoG, with Open.Ed being more inclined to resources being shared on broader social platforms such as YouTube, Flickr etc. as they felt that this may be more accessible. There would appear to be benefits to sharing using institutional repositories (Atenas and Havemann 2014) and sharing online on social platforms (Rolfe 2016). However, institutional repository sustainability may be dependent on funding and institutional approaches to openness. Therefore, budgets may be key (Mulder 2013). As stated, GCU Interviewees reflectively considered if OER services have fulfilled educators’ pedagogical requirements, and if future services could have greater focus toward educators’ needs. This would appear to agree with Ferguson’s statement that for academic libraries to continue to take part in OER conversations, such as those regarding creation, storage, preservation and versioning, they must adapt to the needs of departments, staff and students (2017).

Copyright and licensing

GCU, Open.Ed and UoG all identified a lack of educator copyright and open licensing knowledge, thus concurring with previous open practice research (de los Arcos et al. 2016). Services provided by all cases attempt to increase copyright competency. Findings identified that cases experiencing copyright predominantly in three of the framed contexts described by Morrison and Secker: as a problem, a recognised entity, and as an opportunity (2017). However, all cases presented evidence to suggest their experiences of educator copyright interactions provided opportunities to develop knowledge and understanding. In concurrence with Kleemeyer et al. (2010), Borchard and Magnussen (2017), and Smith and Lee (2017), evidence presented may suggest that librarians and OER support staff interviewed possess copyright and licensing skills that could be an enabler in OER support. Furthermore, copyright discussions with educators at Open.Ed are considered to have facilitated conversations around accessibility, diversity, inclusion, approaches to diversifying curriculums, and student collaborations. Good copyright and licensing practice are required from the start of OER creation processes to mitigate against retrospect resource checking and ‘copyright debt’ and can increase ways materials can be used in the future.

What can libraries do to improve OER support?

The following section provides a summary of my recommendations for each of the themes that were identified across cases.

Academic libraries and HEI department OER support

As mentioned, there was strong consensus that academic libraries and/or departments within HEIs should support OER. Libraries looking to support OER should look to create OER themselves. This was identified at each case and may set an example to educators. Each case sought collaboration to improve their service delivery. Collaboration can enable OER projects, whilst OER is a catalyst for collaboration, therefore libraries may wish to utilise OER within co-creative projects in attempts to improve projects and enhance collaborations. A multitude of reasons for supporting OER are presented by cases. If libraries are considering supporting OER, it may be beneficial to state agreed missions, objectives, and goals to focus service scope as this may guard against tensions such as those identified by McGill et al. (2015).

Institutional approaches to OER

Libraries may wish to consider lobbying senior executives to deliver an OER support statement. This may include policy development or OER inclusion in support frameworks. Policy documents are available as OER (for example GCU, Open.Ed and University of Leeds) which can be adapted to suite needs. However, it may not be advisable to solely rely on policy as a driver for OER. Libraries should consider their institutional culture and if OER philosophies reflect their institutional mission and vision. Libraries may wish to consider encouraging educators to think about open practice, as supportive collegiate culture may foster an environment within which educators feel free to exhibit high levels of OER agency (Cox and Trotter 2016). Student engagement with OER may also enable the transformative potential of OER (UNESCO 2011). Engaging with the student voice may provide service development opportunities as evidenced at Open.Ed. Acknowledging OER created by educators through social websites may represent an opportunity to address barriers such as a lack of recognition (Jhangiani et al. 2016; Cox 2013; Alevizou 2012). Libraries could consider utilising networks within academic departments to highlight UNESCO (2011) recommendations to position OER within professional development objectives, as this may also address professional incentive barriers (Alevizou 2012).

Educators and OER

Natural sharing instincts may be complex (Cronin 2017; Rolfe 2012) and potentially not easily modified (Anderson 2010). However, moral standing may be influenced by cultural surroundings (Anderson 20120). Therefore, it is recommended libraries looking to support OER create environments that value open practice and social responsibility which may boost educator attitudes to sharing. Solutions proposed by GCU and Open.Ed to educate staff in CC licenses, whilst reinforcing that OER are adaptable resources, are recommended to address loss of control and fear of resource quality judgement. As previously stated, libraries should consider utilising academic department networks to highlight UNESCO (2011) recommendations of OER within professional development objectives. This may also present career enhancing opportunities as identified by Rolfe (2012) and Browne et al. (2010), which may encourage OER use. Further research is recommended to investigate if OER services meet the pedagogical needs of educators, and examine why educators may engage with OER services, particularly repositories, yet not release materials as OER.

Approaches to OER service delivery

If libraries are looking to support OER, developing services that advocate OER benefits (Weller et al. 2015; McGill et al. 2013) and enhance educator knowledge, understanding and digital skills relating to OER and associated concepts such as copyright and CC licensing may be key to success. Academic libraries should also consider both institutional repositories and online social platform hosting. However, consultation with educators to establish OER related needs is critical to ensuring service developments reflect institutional and educator pedagogical needs.

Copyright and licensing

From case findings, facilitating copyright and licensing understanding amongst educators may be an ongoing task which requires continual support. Librarians may require training to support educators’ OER needs relating to copyright and licensing. Copyright and licensing service offerings should aim to empower staff with knowledge to guard against possible future ‘copyright debt’ and retrospective OER copyright and license checking.

In closing, and how to contact us

Under the guidance of my dissertation supervisor, an article version of my research which focuses on the two library cases is available from both the RGU and GCU research repositories. I also presented a poster about the case study findings of my dissertation at OER19 under the theme ‘Back to basics – Asking difficult questions about Open Education’.

My #OER19 poster has arrived! 😀Looking forward to chatting to lots of people about academic #libraries and services that support #OER at @nuigalway #galway next week. @SaltireCentre #GCU @uofglibrary @OpenEdEdinburgh pic.twitter.com/x7vCpV2KaA

— Seth Thompson (@sthom_23) April 4, 2019

If you would like to get in touch about anything mentioned in my blog or any our previous posts this month, please feel free to contact us edshare@gcu.ac.uk or me personally on Twitter. Finally, and on behalf of the Sir Alex Ferguson Library, I would like to say thank you to Open Scotland and the Open Scotland blog team for providing us with the opportunity to guest curate the blog during May 2020. It has been a really enjoyable experience for everyone involved at GCU, and during the current Covid-19 crisis has provided a welcome and fulfilling opportunity for creative output.

Seth Thompson

@sthom_23

References

ALEVIZOU, P., 2012. Open to interpretation? productive frameworks for understanding audience engagement with OER. In: Cambridge 2012: Innovation and Impact – Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education, a Joint Meeting of OER12 and OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2012. Cambridge, 16-18 April 2012. [online]. Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/33452/ [Accessed 17 December 2017].

ATHENAS, J. and HAVEMANN, L., 2014. Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review. Research in Learning Technology, 22(1), 20889.

ANDERSON, M.H., 2010. To share or not to share: is that the question? EDUCAUSE Review, 45(4), pp. 40-49.

BARRETT, B., GROVER, V., JANOWSKI T., VAN LAVIERENA, H., OJOA, A. and SCHMIDTA, P., 2009. Challenges in the adoption and use of OpenCourseWare: Experience of the United Nations University. Open Learning, 24(1), pp. 31-38.

BEGGAN, A., 2010. Opening Up: staff attitudes to open learning. [PowerPoint presentation]. OCW Consortium Global, Hanoi, Vietnam. Available from: https://www.slideshare.net/AndyBeggan/opening-up-staff-attitudes-to-open-learning [Accessed 16 September 2018].

BORCHARD, L. and MAGNUSON, L., 2017. Library leadership in open educational resource adoption and affordable learning initiatives. Urban Library Journal, 23(1), Article 1.

BUENO-DE-LA-FUENTE G., ROBERTSON, R.J. and BOON, S., 2012. The roles of libraries and information professionals in Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives: survey report. JISC Cetis.

COX, G., 2013. Researching resistance to open education resource contribution: an activity theory approach. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(2), pp. 148-159.

COX, G. and TROTTER, H., 2016. Institutional culture and OER policy: how structure, culture, and agency mediate OER policy potential in South African universities. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(5), pp. 147-164.

CRONIN, C., 2017. Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(5), pp. 15-34.

DE LOS ARCOS, B., CANNELL, P. and MCILLWHAN, R., 2016. Awareness of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practice (OEP) in Scottish higher education institutions: survey results: interim report. Edinburgh: Opening Educational Practices in Scotland.

FERGUSON, C.L., 2017. Open educational resources and institutional repositories. Serials Review, 43(1), pp. 34-38.

GADD, G. and WEEDON, R., 2017. Copyright ownership of e-learning and teaching materials: policy approaches taken by UK universities. Education and Information Technologies, 22(6), pp. 3231-3250.

JHANGIANI, R., PITT, R., HENDRICKS, C., KEY, J., and LALONDE, C., 2016. Exploring faculty use of open educational resources at British Columbia post-secondary institutions. BCcampus research report. [online]. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. Available from: https://bccampus.ca/files/2016/01/BCFacultyUseOfOER_final.pdf [Accessed 6 January 2017].

KLEEMEYER, P., KLEINMAN, M. and HANSS, T. 2010. Reaching the heart of the university: libraries and the future of OER. In: Open ED 2010 Proceedings. Barcelona, 2-4 November 2010, UOC, OU, BYU, pp. 241-250.

MCGILL, L., FALCONER, I., DEMPSTER, J.A., LITTLEJOHN, A. and BEETHAM, H., 2013. Journeys to open educational practice: UKOER/SCORE review final report. [online]. JISC. Available from: https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/60338879/HEFCE-OER-Review-Final-Report [Accessed 5 January 2017].

MORRISON, C.M and SECKER, J., 2017. Understanding librarians’ experiences of copyright: findings from a phenomenographic study of UK information professionals. Library Management, 38(6/7), pp. 354-368.

MULDER, F., 2013. The LOGIC of national policies and strategies for open educational resources. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(2), pp. 97-105.

MURPHY, A., 2013. Open educational practices in higher education: institutional adoption and challenges. Distance Education, 34(2), pp. 201-217.

NIKOI, S. and ARMELLINI, A., 2012. The OER mix in higher education: purpose, process, product, and policy. Distance Education, 33(2), pp. 37-41.

OKAMOTO, K., 2013. Making higher education more affordable, one course reading at a time: academic libraries as key advocates for open access textbooks and educational resources. Public Services Quarterly, 9(4), pp. 267-283.

ROLFE, V., 2012. Open educational resources: staff attitudes and awareness. Research in Learning Technology, 20(1), 14395.

ROLFE, V., 2016. Web strategies for the curation and discovery of open educational resources. Open Praxis, 8(4), pp. 297-312.

SEFTON, P., 2010. My Fave Two Reasons not to Release OpenCourseware. [online]. 12 August 2010. Available from: http://ptsefton.com/2010/08/12/my-fave-two-reasons-not-to-release-opencourseware.htm [Accessed 16 September 2018].

SMITH, B. and LEE, L., 2017. Librarians and OER: cultivating a community of practice to be more effective advocates. Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, 11(1-2), pp.106-122.

UNESCO, 2011. Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education. Paris: UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning.

WELLER, M., DE LOS ARCOS, B., FARROW, R., PITT, B. and MCANDREW, P., 2015. The impact of OER on teaching and learning practice. Open Praxis, 7(4), pp. 351-361.

YIN, R.K., 2018. Case study research and applications: design and methods. 6th ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

We created an OER – The GCU Copyright Advisor

For the month of May 2020, Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) Sir Alex Ferguson Library are curating the Open Scotland blog. The topics GCU are presenting provide an insight into the work they do in supporting open practice, open education, and open educational resources.

In this post, Resource Librarian (Systems) Nicky Stewart of the library’s Collections and Discovery team discusses the development of GCU’s very own OER – The GCU Copyright Advisor – and what the future might hold for it.

The image is a comic by Marion Kelt which succinctly illustrates the process of developing the Copyright Advisor in 11 colourful panels

The image above is a comic by Marion Kelt which succinctly illustrates the process of developing the Copyright Advisor in 11 colourful panels. Copyright Comics: the UK Online Copyright Advisor by Marion Kelt, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Introduction

How do you get people to engage with copyright legislation?

How do you get them to apply it correctly?

Here at GCU we asked ourselves these very questions back in 2014. And the solution, we decided, was to make it easier for people to do these things. From that realisation was born our first open educational resource (OER): the GCU Copyright Advisor.

Background

In 2014, the Digital Development team within GCU Library was given responsibility for providing copyright advice to members of the university community. This followed major changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that same year. The team provided a copyright advisory service via a team mailbox, finding many of the queries were simple and often repeated from different sources. As the team worked to merge with the Resource Management team in 2015 to form the Collections and Discovery team, a project was devised to empower users to make informed decisions about copyright and resolve routine copyright queries by themselves.

Copyright Advisor 1.0

To do this we needed a tool that would allow users to find solutions to their copyright queries with minimal effort, something they could use online whenever the need arose. The team’s belief in open education guided them towards creating the tool with reusability at its heart. This meant producing something with a relatively simple design using non-proprietary software that could be easily updated to reflect future changes in copyright legislation. Additionally, the tool should be something we could publish as an OER, providing the means for others to remix and repurpose for their needs.

The Copyright Advisor project group was assembled in 2016 to develop content for the Copyright Advisor. The team decided that the advisor would provide advice on the formats we most frequently received queries about: audio recordings, book chapters, computer code, images, journal articles, maps, and videos. Over the course of many meetings the group designed decision tree diagrams that led the user through various questions regarding their resource and their intended use, with the result being appropriate advice based on their particular requirements. Once the content was complete, Marion Kelt transformed our diagrams into a usable tool using iSpring software. The following link shows an early version of the Copyright Advisor.

Improving the Copyright Advisor with SLIC funding

Despite the success of the original Copyright Advisor, there were several flaws with the service:

The iSpring design was not particularly easy to navigate or visually appealing
The tool was neither HTML5 nor mobile responsive
While iSpring was free to use, the tool had been built using proprietary software

The project team saw possibilities for improving on their creation. However, to realise our vision we knew we would need to employ the skills of a designer and/or developer, and to do that we would need money. It was at this time we became aware of a potential funding opportunity from the Scottish Library & Information Council (SLIC) through their Innovation Grant fund. We put together a funding bid based on the terms of reference for our project, articulating our vision for the improved Copyright Advisor.

Objectives

HTML5, mobile responsive OER
File formats easily updated and maintained by the GCU Copyright team
Not tied to any proprietary software
Shared under a Creative Commons licence(CC-BY)
Visually appealing and easy to navigate

Target audience

UK education community, including academics, students, and support staff

Overall style

Professional, friendly and positive

We were delighted when our funding bid was accepted and SLIC awarded the £6,000 that would allow us to take the project forward. We immediately set to work liaising with our university Procurement and Information Compliance teams on the production of a short-term service contract for use with the selected designer/developer, before posting the opportunity to work with us on Creative Scotland Opportunities Tool. The post garnered attention from several designers, but having been aware of the great work they had produced for other copyright related projects, we were pleased to award Worth Knowing the contract following an interview conducted over Skype.

Following our design brief, Worth Knowing provided some early prototypes which helped us get a sense of the improved usability we would see in the final product, delivered by the new content management system underpinning the tool produced using Markdown coding language. The prototypes were followed by many discussions around design options, focusing on topics such as accessibility and legibility, media format icons and colour schemes.

With the designs finalised and prepared by Worth Knowing, the files were uploaded to our GitHub account along with an explanation of the content management system and instructions on how to populate the content. Marion then set to work learning Markdown using online tutorials and trial and error. Once the tool had been populated there was time for a final proofread by the Copyright Advisor project team before launching on our educational repository edShare along with all files and instructions on how to reuse.

Promotion and reception of the improved Copyright Advisor

Marion took to the road promoting the redesigned Copyright Advisor at conferences both home and abroad, including:

Open Educational Resources (OER) 2017
Icepops (European Conference on Information Literacy) 2017
CILIP ARLG-SW DARTS Conference 2018
OER 2019

It was also our great honour to be the recipient of the George Pitcher Award 2017 for the Copyright Advisor.

Image of Marion Kelt accepting the George Pitcher Award 2017 for the Copyright Advisor

We’ve been able to follow the use of the advisor in its various iterations through analytics from edShare. Below you can see the number of page hits and file downloads as of 14^th May 2020:

Version 1
- Launched October 2017
- 338 downloads
- 151 hits
Version 2
- Launched March 2018
- 2658 downloads
- 168 hits
Version 3
- Launched January 2019
- 1438 downloads
- 168 hits

Future developments

Prior to her untimely passing, Marion was working with a number of groups who were interested in remixing the Copyright Advisor for their own purposes, and we hope that we’ll see take up by other institutions in the future.

However, the potential of the advisor is not limited to the field of copyright, as the format of the advisor will work with any decision tree type process. To that end, the library has identified two new projects where the advisor will be redeveloped to meet completely different needs. At present we are working with the university’s Research and Innovation Office and School of Professional Services to produce an advisory tool for principal investigators to correctly complete research application details into our research information system (Pure). And in the future we are looking to repurpose the advisor to produce an eresource access troubleshooter which can be used by both staff and students.

We’ll also be keeping an eye out for any changes to UK copyright legislation to ensure the Copyright Advisor is always up to date.

Nicky Stewart

edShare: GCU’s Educational Resources Repository

In our second post Toby Hanning, the library’s Research Information and Systems Manager, provides some background on the development of edShare (GCU’s educational resources repository), describes the challenges involved in implementing and managing the service, and asks what the future holds for open education at GCU.

edShare@GCU is Glasgow Caledonian University’s (GCU) educational resources repository. Its origins can be traced back to the Spoken Word project (2003-2008), led by GCU in collaboration with the BBC and two US institutions, Northwestern University and Michigan State University. The project made multimedia resources from the BBC archives and other sources available for educational use in the UK, US and EU. When the project was mothballed all BBC content was withdrawn but what remained was a lot of multimedia resources created by staff at GCU. Many staff continued to create resources even after the project ended and were keen to still share these widely with colleagues across the globe. By 2013 demand for the service was such that support for open education was enshrined in the University’s Strategy for Learning, a document which would shape the development of learning, teaching and assessment across the institution until 2020.

Following extensive consultation with staff, a successful business case to fund the development of a new repository, and the formalisation of the University’s open educational resources (OER) policy, edShare@GCU was launched in autumn 2016.

What is edShare?

edShare is built using an educational resources flavour of the open source repository software Eprints. There is a small but growing community of edShare users in the UK with repositories at the University of Southampton, Edgehill University and most recently the University of Glasgow.

edShare@GCU is a repository primarily for the GCU community which allows educational resources to be securely stored in a central location and shared with staff and students at GCU, or published as OERs. All teaching, research and support staff can deposit resources, whilst students are granted “read” access; they can view content but cannot upload resources themselves. The repository accepts all permanent educational resources, defined as resources which can be retained in perpetuity and are not subject to a retention schedule.

Alongside edShare sits a service run by the Collections and Discovery team in the library. As well as managing the system this service offers users training on depositing resources and runs OER advocacy sessions. There is no formal review process for resources uploaded to edShare so the service also provides formal advice on copyright, licensing and intellectual property rights (IPR) to members of the GCU community, ensuring users have the knowledge and skills to create and upload copyright compliant resources. The service can also assist with technical queries relating to the creation of OERs, and accessibility queries.

As part of GCU’s common good mission edShare also hosts OERs free of charge for a small number of external organisations including the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Gathering the Voices Project. If you represent a not-for-profit organisation and are interested in having your OERs hosted on edShare then please contact us.

Is edShare well used?

Whilst we encourage our teaching staff to create dedicated OERs or even MOOCs, we realise that this can be a labour-intensive endeavour and that many well intentioned staff simply don’t have the time to create these resources. As a result we have taken the approach of encouraging staff to share their everyday learning and teaching resources via edShare and to licence them openly for reuse. This approach significantly reduces the barriers to deposit and as a result edShare currently hosts over four thousand resources, over half of which are OERs.

At the time of writing resources in edShare have been downloaded or viewed over 600,000 times since August 2017. Popular teaching resources include a wide range of lecture videos, interactive HTML resources and software tutorials. Support resources are also very popular, such as the library’s referencing guide, programme handbooks and an interactive ICT induction resource for new students.

Challenges

We have encountered a number of challenges implementing edShare and our associated OER services. Foremost was the challenge of managing educational resources in a repository environment traditional used for static, permanent resources such as research outputs or theses. By definition educational resources are not definitive; they are regularly reviewed and updated over time with new versions created regularly. For this reason edShare has in-built version control. When used correctly users are pushed to the latest version of a resource automatically but can choose to browse previous versions should they wish to do so. Internal policies have been developed over time to manage the various issues that can arise when managing educational resources. For example occasionally resources will be updated to reflect new standards in a particular field and older versions need to be removed. This is one of the few instances where resources will be deleted from edShare, with tombstone citations left in place to prevent broken links. Equally we have learnt over time that whilst edShare supports version control it is not intuitive to use and our key takeaway here has been to include information on versioning in our training sessions and online material.

Another challenge we have faced is how to ensure copyright compliance and good practice without a formal review process. The idea of implementing a review process for resources before publishing them was discussed in depth prior to launching the service, but it was agreed that the difficulty of assessing individual pieces of content in a resource would not only be overly onerous but also impractical. After all an image used in a lecture may appear to be proprietary but could in fact be openly licenced or have been purchased by the creator. Reviewing resources would require an in-depth dialogue with the creator of each resource about how and where they sourced content, and we felt that time could be better spent empowering staff to create copyright compliant resources and showing them how to find and reuse openly licenced content. As a result we offer face-to-face copyright training sessions as well as online materials. We also encourage a self-policing policy whereby if anyone has concerns about a deposited resource they can contact the team who will investigate further and liaise with the creator to resolve any issues. This policy is backed up by a robust takedown policy. To date this overall strategy has been successful; staff have the opportunity to upskill and learn good practice in relation to copyright and licensing, whilst barriers to deposit are reduced as resources are published immediately upon deposit.

The final challenge we have faced is how to encourage staff to publish their resources as OERs when we offer them the opportunity to restrict access. In edShare depositors have the choice to publish their resources openly, with all members of the GCU community, with only GCU staff, or to a select group of individual users. We have found that for many staff the idea of sharing their resources, and the potential scrutiny which comes with that, was a significant barrier to publishing resources as OERs. To combat this we have worked hard to advocate the benefits of open education across the GCU community and to emphasise that scrutiny in particular can be a positive when it comes to increasing the quality of resources. We also took the decision to set the default publishing mode for resources in edShare to “open”, making restricting access an active decision rather than a passive one.

What does the future hold for edShare?

Sustainability of our service is at the forefront of our long term thinking. Technical developments such as migrating the system to a scalable cloud-hosted solution are attainable but require some additional financial investment. An upgrade to the system software is also on the horizon, bringing an improved design and a responsive template for the repository, as well as improved statistical reporting.

The current situation with Covid-19 has precipitated an enforced move to online teaching for most Universities and in this respect GCU is no different. The last two months has seen a significant increase in the number of new users depositing resources in edShare, resulting in increased demand for the services we offer. A silver lining to the pandemic perhaps, but with more users comes the requirement for more resource to undertake training and advocacy, and to deal with copyright and licensing queries. Of course we are competing for finite resource, and often we are competing with ourselves. At GCU we have a small team who manage all the library systems including our library management platform (Alma), our discovery system (Primo), and our research information system (Pure), as well as edShare and a number of smaller systems. What should take precedence for the team in the next year: scaling up our OER services to meet new demand, supporting the hurried move to online learning, managing the institution’s REF submission, or implementing new research data management and digital preservation systems which will offer new functionality and opportunities for our staff and students? All institutions will be having similarly difficult conversations at this time but in reality supporting teaching and research will always be our priority. To this end planned developments for our OER services may have to wait until we have assessed our priorities in a post-pandemic world. Undoubtedly this is disappointing but perhaps not surprising given the uncertain landscape we find ourselves facing and the inevitable financial constraints which will follow.

However there is a positive note on which to end this post. In many respects edShare and our OER services have been built to be self-sustainable and it has been heartening to see the manner in which our team have adapted so quickly to a new way of working. We have guidance and tools in place which enable users to deposit resources without any formal training, including the GCU UK Copyright Advisor tool, which will be the feature of our next blog post. In essence this means staff have all the tools and knowledge at their disposal to continue to create OERs or openly license their everyday learning and teaching materials. Regardless of resourcing or financial constraints open education can and will continue to persist. With parents around the world home schooling their children and students studying remotely, open education is perhaps more relevant now than it ever has been in the past.

Toby Hanning

If you have any questions about edShare or our associated OER services please email edShare@gcu.ac.uk

Supporting open practice at the Sir Alex Ferguson Library, Glasgow Caledonian University

In this first post, Senior Library Administrator Seth Thompson of the library’s Collections and Discovery team provides a brief and recent history of how GCU came to support open education, with an overview of some of the areas in which the library provides this support.

Image of the entrance to Sir Alex Ferguson Library with Icarus filter.

Sir Alex Ferguson Library entrance, by @sthom_23, licensed under CC BY 4.0

The Sir Alex Ferguson Library is situated in the heart of GCU’s Glasgow campus. GCU is committed to the social mission to promote the common good. A major aim of this is to widen access to higher education for individuals regardless of their backgrounds, and to leverage the institution’s intellectual and social capital for the benefit of GCU and wider communities served both in Scotland and internationally.

In line with supporting GCU and wider communities, and as part of our commitment to the common good, the library aims to provide welcoming, friendly, helpful, accessible and open physical and digital environments for our students, staff and members of the public to use. As well as the services we offer to GCU students and staff, we have an ‘open door’ policy, meaning anyone can use our physical library space as a study area. We also offer a free community membership, meaning members of the public can gain borrowing rights to library resources. Additionally, our webpages highlight and promote openly accessible databases, journal sites, textbooks, and resources that may be of interest to our students, staff, community members and wider publics. Our open educational practices also include support for GCU’s open access policy and open access repository.

Image of Sir Alex Ferguson Library Level 0 and spiral staircase

Level 0, Sir Alex Ferguson Library by @sthom_23, licensed under CC BY 4.0

In 2016 the library implemented edShare@GCU. edShare is GCU’s learning and teaching resource repository. As part of our library strategy, we encourage the GCU community to submit educational resources to edShare as Open Educational Resources (OERs) for use, repurposing, and development worldwide. edShare is designed around the key themes of storing, sharing and preserving educational resources. The repository accepts permanent resources created by GCU staff and also provides a point of contact for resource creation, copyright, intellectual property rights, and licensing enquiries, advice and training. Our second blog post of the month will be an in-depth piece about the edShare development project, how the repository is used by staff, students and the wider public, the challenges associated with its use, and what is next for edShare@GCU.

To support the submission of educational resources as OER, and in conjunction with the development of the edShare@GCU repository, the library also led on the creation of GCU’s OER Polic y. Our policy provides support and clear guidance to GCU staff wishing to create OER. The policy is based on the University of Leeds’s guidance on the use and publication of OER. The University of Leeds policy is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which facilitated our reuse and modification of the original work. Our policy, the original Leeds policy, and an additional policy from the University of Greenwich, have then gone on to be reused and adapted by the University of Edinburgh in the development of their own OER policy. Some might say this is a fine example of open practice and OER in action!

A driving force behind the development of GCU’s OER policy was our colleague Marion Kelt. Marion is sadly no longer with us and is greatly missed by all at GCU. Marion was a strong advocate for open education and well known within open education communities in Scotland and beyond. I know she would have been very pleased and enthusiastic in her support of our guest curation of the Open Scotland blog. If you would like to learn more about the trials and tribulations of creating an OER policy, Marion has written pieces on this for both the Open Educational Practices in Scotland project (OEPS) and WONKHE. Marion’s work has been instrumental in developing our library’s approaches to open education and the services we provide.

Image of Marion Kelt at OER18 in Bristol

Marion at OER18 in Bristol, by @sthom_23

Marion was also a key figure in the development of the subject of what will be our third blog post of the month, the GCU UK Copyright Advisor. The GCU UK Copyright Advisor is an online tool developed to assist with frequently asked copyright queries. It provides basic UK copyright guidance on seven types of resources: audio files, book chapters, computer code, images, journal articles, maps and video files. The Copyright Advisor is openly available for anyone to use, and the code is openly licensed so any person or organisation can adapt and modify the resource to suit their needs. We are always interested to hear from anyone who might like to use the Copyright Advisor for their own project, so if this is you please feel free to contact us at edshare@gcu.ac.uk. Our third blog will provide greater insight into the steps involved in the Copyright Advisor’s creation, the challenges we encountered during development, it’s many versions and iterations, the reception it has received, and what is next for the GCU UK Copyright Advisor.

Our fourth and final blog will look at wider academic library support of OER in Scotland. I looked into this topic in 2018 as the focus of my dissertation for an MSc Information and Library Studies from Robert Gordon University. I also presented a poster about the case study findings of my dissertation at OER19 under the theme ‘Back to basics – Asking difficult questions about Open Education’. In this post we will look at the institutions who participated in my case studies and discuss some of their motivations for adopting support for OER, whose interests they felt were served by their approaches, and who they felt they were actually open for. I will also present some participant reflections on their approaches to open practices and the services they provide that support the open agenda, and how they feel they might be able to develop and enhance their service offerings moving forward.

I hope this introductory blog has given you a flavour of what we have planned for the month ahead. If you would like to contact the Sir Alex Ferguson Library regarding any of our planned blog topics, or anything open education related, please feel free to contact at edShare@gcu.ac.uk. You can also keep up to date with the more general ‘goings on’ from the library on Twitter @SAFLibraryGCU, via Instagram, or on Facebook.

Seth Thompson

@sthom_23

Openness and COVID-19

Back in October 2019 when I signed up to contribute a post to the Open Scotland blog, I chose April 2020 as ‘my month’ rather arbitrarily. Back then, I certainly did not foresee the current state of global affairs or the impact a global pandemic would be having on education and society beyond.

In just a few weeks, campus closures and remote working/learning have become the new norm for many. As a result, diverse communities of staff in universities and colleges are being forced to learn together (and no doubt painfully in some cases) how to confront serious existential challenges such as maintaining teaching and research activity during this period of upheaval.

Fundamentally, the COVID-19 pandemic is an awesome reminder of the interconnectedness of individuals, communities, social institutions and of our fragile relationship with the planet itself. It may seem trivial to look for positives in a global health crisis that is claiming thousands of lives each day. However, there is evidence that a spirit of cooperation and reciprocity is being rekindled at all levels of society. Within this context, the principles of open educational and the work of groups like Open Scotland are arguably more important, and more relevant, now than ever before. Open principles have already played key roles in assisting higher and further education institutions to respond to COVID-19.

When faced with the considerable challenge of digitalising teaching, assessment and feedback activities, for example, many turned to Open Educational Resources (OER) in the form of books, journal articles, wikis and blogs for inspiration, support and guidance. Moreover, many have drawn heavily on OER to populate these newly-digitalised modules. This is certainly the case for the module and programme design teams that my colleagues and I support at Strathclyde. Open Data and Open Hardware Projects (including, for example, the sharing of blueprints for emergency ventilators) have also formed part of the research and public health response, which many educational institutions are contributing to admirably.

Furthermore, statements such as the following words of Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, Chair of the Russell Group on 27^th March 2020, are being echoed by senior colleagues across the world:

“Now more than ever it is crucial that the higher education sector works together and harnesses our resources in support of the national response to the COVID-19 public health emergency.”

On March 20^th 2020, an earlier JISC statement on access to content praised a number of providers of digital content and software for their implementation of open educational principles:

“[We] have seen publishers, aggregators and suppliers of digital content and software come forward in offering a range of solutions to help institutions maintain their teaching and research activity during this time of crisis […] providing open access to research in support of coronavirus/COVID-19 and putting in place access options that remove limitations on use and users.”

It is likely that, when the dust settles, many in higher and further education will owe a considerable debt of gratitude to those who have championed open education for many years, even if they may remain unacquainted with the wider project. Yet, despite the role played by OER in recent weeks, questions remain about the receptivity of the ‘warp and weft’ of the academic community to participate fully in open educational practices, both now and beyond the current COVID-19 crisis. Many of the concerns introduced in relation to notions of care, and the questions of privilege, justice, equity, power and sustainability that were introduced during the OER20 Conference, will demand attention long into the future.

Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr once wrote ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ (the more things change the more they remain the same), and it will be interesting to observe how the spring of 2020 is remembered. As a decisive moment when a critical mass of educators and leaders in HE finally saw themselves as co-creators of an open society? Or as a period when many successfully leveraged others’ openness to their advantage?

As a member of this community, however, I believe that there are many reasons to be hopeful. The swift and widescale adoption of models of remote, distributed and online learning – however imperfect – mean that more and more academic staff are being forced to operate in an environment in which openness thrives naturally; the Web. Moreover, those who promote open education are also likely to be playing key roles in providing formal and informal peer support to colleagues who are at an earlier stage of their digital journey in teaching, research and knowledge exchange. In our actions and in our words, we can inculcate the idea that an open sharing of practice and resource is as much a part of online practice as, say, discussion forums and Trello boards.

If remote, distributed and online working and learning are indeed the ‘new norm’, let’s be upfront with our colleagues about the value of open educational principles in enabling FE and HEIs to perform what history is likely to record as one of the most significant and rapid transformations the education sector has ever witnessed since the turn of the year. Let’s encourage them to learn more about open education, and to participate in open practices, and to share our knowledge, experience, tools and resources for the benefit of all.

Dr Sean Afnán Morrissey (sean.morrissey@strath.ac.uk) is an Academic Developer at the University of Strathclyde. His current interests include technology-enhanced teaching, learning, assessment and feedback, peer-support networks, and inclusive approaches to module design. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technology.

Sean and his colleagues in the Organisational and Staff Development Unit have curated a bank of resources to support staff with the transition to remote and online working, including opportunities for training, resources and online support. A copy of the list can be accessed here: Curated Resource Bank.

Openness, Precarity and Equity

As part of Open Education Week, the ALT Open Education SIG and Femedtech facilitated an asynchronous event Open Policy – Who cares? The organisers invited provocations from members of the open education community in the form of Flipgrid videos and writings on femedtech.net. This Open Scotland contribution was written by Lorna M. Campbell.

I’ve worked in the domain of open education for over ten years now and I passionately believe that publicly funded educational resources should be freely and openly available to the public. In fact this is one of the founding principles of the Scottish Open Education Declaration. When we talk about open policy the focus tends to be on “open” and “free”, however I think what is critical here is “funding”, because as we all know, open does not mean free. If we want to support the creation of open knowledge and publicly funded open education resources, then the education sector has to be supported by adequate funding and, perhaps more importantly, by equitable working conditions. And this is where problems start to arise; at a time when casualisation is endemic in the UK higher education sector, too many colleagues are employed on exploitative precarious contracts. This is why we are currently in a period of sustained industrial action that is protesting universities’ failure to make significant improvements on pay, equality, casualisation and workloads. If you are a teaching assistant employed on a fixed hourly rate that doesn’t even begin to cover the preparation time for creating your teaching resources and lecturing materials, it’s hard to make the case, ethically and morally, that you should release your resources under open license, because you’re effectively giving your labour away for free, and very few marginalised workers have the privilege to be able to do that. So while I still believe that we do need more policy around open education, and that we have an ethical responsibility to make publicly funded educational resources available to all, we also need equitable working conditions that will enable us all to contribute to the shared knowledge commons.

Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop

OpenScotland @10 Plenary Panel

Next steps

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Open Scotland Pre-Conference Workshop

OER23 Conference Closing Plenary: OpenScotland @10

Background

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Introduction and background

Summary of my findings

Academic libraries and/or department OER support

Institutional approaches to OER

Educators and OER

Approaches to service delivery

Copyright and licensing

What can libraries do to improve OER support?

Academic libraries and HEI department OER support

Institutional approaches to OER

Educators and OER

Approaches to OER service delivery

Copyright and licensing

In closing, and how to contact us

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Introduction

Background

Copyright Advisor 1.0

Improving the Copyright Advisor with SLIC funding

Objectives

Target audience​

Overall style

Promotion and reception of the improved Copyright Advisor

Future developments

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What is edShare?

Is edShare well used?

Challenges

What does the future hold for edShare?

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Target audience