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<< Access Initiatives | Proposals | Conclusion and next steps >>

Contents 1 OER training proposals to address lack of awareness and skills 2 A proposal to build documentation to support the setting up of OER centres 3 An OER exchange infrastructure 3.1 Scenarios 3.2 Uploading content 3.3 Offline content 3.4 Peer-to-peer sharing of offline content 3.5 Mobile access 3.6 The proposal 3.7 Certification 4 Notes

Having outlined the principle issues that affect access to OER and surveyed a broad range of potential solutions, the third week of the discussion was dedicated to developing proposals in areas where further work is needed. It was beyond the scope of the discussion to develop fully finished and detailed proposals; instead the aim was to explore which of the ideas from the previous weeks could be framed as viable proposals. In this sense what follows are really "proto-proposals". They are collections of ideas in proposal form, to help stakeholders think creatively about how to move forward on the question of access to OER.

The suggestions for proposals can be grouped into three overlapping themes:

• training,
• Open Educational Resource centres,
• OER delivery.

Readers may also find it helpful to refer to the original discussion and accompanying notes on the OER community wiki:

• OER training proposal and discussion;
• proposal notes for OER centres;
• proposal notes for OER delivery, including exchange mechanisms such as ideas around Miro and ideas for cascading OER downloads.

[edit] OER training proposals to address lack of awareness and skills

The need for training is evident. Many participants testified to the fact that awareness of OER remains low among educators (see, for example, the case studies in Chapter 2). Teacher skills and behaviours required for identifying, using and sharing digital teaching and learning content need to be supported and incentivised.

Training is needed particularly in the areas of:

• "technology literacy" for users that are not familiar or comfortable with computers or the internet and computers and, at a higher level, for ICT officers to enable them to evaluate and choose appropriate educational platforms;
• "information literacy" for users that do not know how to find and select information online;
• "design of learning environments", for example for technology-supported face-to-face instruction (blended learning) and for educational strategies like "active learning";
• "evaluation and assessment of educational programmes", to evaluate the success of in-programme OER use;
• "OER policy issues" for decision makers, to cover infrastructure, adoption, production and dissemination of OER, copyright issues, etc.

In terms of the classification of access issues, training proposals would address:

• Social, awareness, policy, attitude, cultural:
  • Access in terms of awareness;
  • Access in terms of local policy/attitude;
• Technical: receiving OER:
  • Access in terms of internet connectivity/bandwidth;
  • Access in terms of discovery;
  • Access in terms of ability and skills.

The key element in the design and execution of any training activity is the adoption of participative principles: participative development of course proposals; participative teaching of courses; and a train-the-trainer approach to maximise scalability and opportunities for independent replication. Workshops would need to be structured so that participants immediately become trainers, able to hold similar workshops themselves. Course could be delivered online initially; trainers could later expand this to face-to-face training in their respective countries. Finally, any new training initiative would need to integrate and build on existing initiatives, for example those of OER Commons.

[edit] A proposal to build documentation to support the setting up of OER centres

The following ideas build on the OER training proposal outlined above, but take a holistic approach to OER access and use, and also address infrastructure needs.

Scalable OER creation and use depends on ICTs - on improving existing structures and rural connectivity. There are various strategies to address those questions. It was proposed that the community attempt to sketch out what a comprehensive and coherent set of Open Educational Resources that address access issues would look like. Here are some of the questions that would need to be addressed:

• How do you connect a rural school? How do you get affordable connectivity? How do you share a connection?
• How do you manage the connection to make optimal use of the bandwidth?
• How do you design robust, maintainable, low-power ICT equipment? (What are the cost implications of solar power, deep cycle batteries or a generator?)
• How do you obtain OER materials for local use?
• What training do you provide on ICT and OER?
• How do you overcome "brain drain", whereby trained people leave for better jobs?

There is of course much documentation available, but it focuses generally either on the ICT/hardware/connectivity aspects, or on the OER aspects - rarely both. For instance, there are plenty of instructions available for installing Ubuntu and plenty for installing Moodle. However, it appears that there is no comprehensive set of tutorials, organised as a training course, to take a novice user from a blank computer, through installing Ubuntu/LTSP, installing Moodle and adding OER packages into Moodle, to conducting meaningful training and learning with the installation and content packages. Individually, there are guides and instructions on the Internet for each of these elements, but they come from and are written for different communities. Of course, the creation and/or compilation of the course materials would only be the start; (community) colleges would need to use the materials to provide training. Moreover, in a rural context, the process described above is only one element. More skills would be needed. Overall, there is a need for training (and associated OER materials) that give the whole picture, taking the user from an empty building, to an OER-equipped training centre.

In terms of the classification of access issues this proposal addresses:

• Technical: receiving OER:
  • Access in terms of infrastructure;
  • Access in terms of internet connectivity/bandwidth;
  • Access in terms of ability and skills.

Relation to existing institutions

Any proposal would need to build on existing structures in the target countries. To take the example of Nigeria, there is the National Educational Technology Centre in Kaduna, education resources centres in regional capitals, audiovisual centres in universities and local school management boards. Any new initiative would need to cooperate with these centres in an integrated and participatory way.

Selection of existing materials

Kim Tucker suggested that it would be useful to list existing resources that could be adapted and updated for each implementation. Links to the following resources were shared with the community:

• OpenCourseWare Consortium OCW Toolkit Initiative,
• How to set up a wireless mesh network from WirelessAfrica,
• tuXlab "Cookbook".

Resources could be classified according to their suitability for different learning situations. A tool could then be designed to select and present the most suitable set for a given situation. The task of selecting relevant learning and other resources could be carried out when need. Compiling a full list of resources, however, might be a significant challenge. The project could focus on methodology, research, collaboration, preparation of the custom guide and mobilising multidisciplinary teams for implementation.

There is a separate wiki page with notes for an add-on proposal on "guidelines in action and research".

[edit] An OER exchange infrastructure

The third area of proposals focussed on improving infrastructure for OER. This was motivated by a number of "What if?" questions:

• What if any computer or storage device (be it a netbook, desktop, server, hard drive or memory stick) could come preloaded with a free content collection?
• What if when you placed an order for a device, you could choose from a large catalogue of preloaded OER with no further connectivity needed? However, when and where you had connectivity, your chosen content could be updated and extended automatically. (And content collections freely installed, transferred and shared from the internet.)
• What if any computer could be pre-ordered with a free content production suite and set of training materials? The suite would include a complete set of key OER applications, including OpenOffice, Audacity for podcasting, and Moodle and EduCommons to enable course development.
• What if the content you created could then be contributed back to the global community, even where there was little or no connectivity?

In principle, many of these ideas could be realised now, but for the moment there is not enough coordination within the worldwide OER community. Participants proposed the following steps to move the community towards those goals:

• hybrid information delivery strategies (North-South, South-North, South-South, North-North; seamless online/offline content delivery; caching);
• suitable strategies for content packaging so that content could be delivered in this way;
• content transformation/transcoding methods (would include wiki content transformation options for Wikipedia, WikiEducator, etc.), including bandwidth management and bandwidth-managed resource delivery.

In terms of the classification of access issues this proposal addresses:

• Social, awareness, policy, attitude, cultural:
  • Access in terms of local policy/attitude;
• Technical: provision of OER:
  • Access in terms of file formats;
• Technical: receiving OER:
  • Access in terms of internet connectivity/bandwidth;
  • Access in terms of discovery;
  • Access in terms of ability and skills.

[edit] Scenarios

The worldwide OER community has yet to realise the goal of downloading OER materials easily, without bandwidth problems. However, there are a number of strategies that could be implemented quite quickly and relatively cheaply, as they just depend on software.

The possible options can be illustrated with a number of scenarios. Let us suppose that we are based in a rural school and have only slow connectivity available. We are using Miro - a free, open source application to download podcasts. However, we are using an enhanced hypothetical version of Miro, which we will call "SuperMiro", which is geared for use with low bandwidth connections. SuperMiro is also able to understand specialised very low bandwidth formats, such as AMR narrowband.

Suppose we use the hypothetical SuperMiro application to download a podcast. Normally, the connection would be made straight to the podcast server and would put immediate strain on the network, preventing others from browsing the web, or sending and receiving email. However, with the new and improved SuperMiro application, the subscription does not go straight to the podcast server. Instead it goes first to a local server at the school, then via a national school gateway run by the national research and education network operator (NREN) to provide an internet exchange point for schools and universities. Only then does it go to the podcast server.

Figure 3 illustrates this for generic OER/OCW content.^[1] Content providers have content on their website that is also mirrored into a global OER mirror. From the OER mirror the content is pushed to a national mirror (for instance with the NREN), and then to a local mirror in a school or university. To the user of the content this might be invisible: the user thinks that they are accessing (e.g. MIT OCW) content through their browser directly, just like any other web content, except that for some reason the OCW content is faster than the rest of the web.

Returning to the SuperMiro podcast scenario, it is important that the network talks back to the SuperMiro application, so that SuperMiro does not take up all available bandwidth. Instead, SuperMiro should be able to find out the total bandwidth available and restrict itself accordingly. The user is informed of the total download time and has the option to get a low resolution preview, while waiting for the high resolution file. This preview need not be generated by the podcast server itself: it could be generated "on the fly" on the global mirror server. The user chooses audio/image preview and has the file in an hour. Once the user has listened to and/or watched the preview, SuperMiro says: "A higher resolution version is available - do you wish to download it?" If the user proceeds they will receive an email in a day or so to notify them that the high resolution file is available on their school server. A copy of the audio/video file is kept by the full chain of servers: the school server, the national gateway server, and perhaps another regional internet exchange point. Others requesting the same file do not need to go back to the podcast server (or the global cache) to get the file. However, every time the file is requested from any of the servers, the originating podcast server gets a "ping" so that they have good statistics about how their media are being used.

The same mechanism would work for open courseware and other content packages, as well as audio/video files. For content packages (provided as zip files), SuperMiro would be able to look inside the package and - just like the audio/video file - the user would have the option of downloading a lower bandwidth version of the materials first, before downloading the whole content package. (That is to say, the content package could be downloaded in pieces, to be reassembled by SuperMiro on the user side.)

Finally, the system could also be "primed" with content packages downloaded elsewhere. A Zambian school server, for example, would not need to be on the internet. Teachers could request content packages from the national Zambian school server to be put on a DVD/memory stick/hard drive and mailed to them. Those content packages would be installed on the school server and made available to teachers "as if" the server were on the internet.

[edit] Uploading content

What happens when the user in the Zambian school becomes a re-mixer and wants to share content that they have created or adapted? They would normally just put it onto their school server, perhaps for other teachers to use. In the scenario outlined above, there would now be a channel back from the school, to the national server and the global mirror. This means that other users, whether elsewhere in Zambia, Africa or the rest of the world, would now have access to the content.

In this way the system is bi-directional: content produced by the Zambian school user is uploaded to their school server, but automatically mirrored to the national Zambian server and perhaps to the server near the African internet exchange point. When somebody from the North wants a learning resource from the Zambian school, they need not put any strain on the school network; the content comes instead from a server near the African internet exchange point.

[edit] Offline content

In the scenario described above there is at least a little connectivity. What happens when there is no connectivity and/or national server? (The server is greyed out in Figure 5.)

In this scenario, the content is taken off the global server in one location where there is connectivity. This might be in the nearest city, or while a teacher is abroad on an OER course. A content bundle could be transferred to a memory stick or perhaps fetched automatically using the hypothetical SuperMiro application. The teacher then returns to their school, where the content can be put onto the local server.

It is possible to imagine a scenario in which this happens seamlessly. The teacher clicks a few buttons while they have connectivity and SuperMiro downloads the required content packages. Once back at the school, SuperMiro talks to the school server and transfers the content. The content could even have been requested by other teachers and preselected with SuperMiro before the teacher left. To complete the scenario, the teacher could also pick up local content from the school server, to share with the global server once he or she is in a place with good connectivity.

[edit] Peer-to-peer sharing of offline content

Centralized infrastructure may be missing in many locations, but it is also possible to envisage full peer-to-peer sharing of content, without central infrastructure either at the local school or nationally.

Even over very low bandwidth, a content directory could be shared in SuperMiro, which would list all globally available OER. Each resource would have peer-to-peer sharing information next to it, to inform the user as to whether it:

• had been downloaded already and was available on his or her SuperMiro;
• was available on the local network and could be downloaded (estimated time, etc.); or
• was not currently available on his or her network.

[edit] Mobile access

Finally, a more organized presentation of OER content would make it possible to provide better mobile access. For instance, there could be a SuperMiro application for mobile phones, including for basic phones with support for Java. There may also be a need to provide access for even more basic phones, via voice and/or SMS. This may be particularly relevant for OER produced as bespoke resources for a certain community.^[2]

[edit] The proposal

How could such an infrastructure be realised?

Initially, a small consortium of stakeholders (such as content providers, NRENs and content users) would need to come together and carry out action research to find out whether the system outlined above would be acceptable to and work in schools and other educational institutions in developing countries. Following this, the consortium would need to develop guidelines for content providers (e.g. to explain how to make their resources automatically downloadable by SuperMiro), as well as to raise awareness about the system and obtain support from widely used content repositories (including Wikipedia, WikiEducator, Wikiversity, Connexions, installations of EduCommons, Le Mill, Kewl/Chisimba, OER Commons, and many more).

A strong feature of this proposal is that it would place very little strain on the actual OER user. All they would need to do is to download SuperMiro. The rest would be taken care of by the application and content providers.

It should also be noted that this proposal has not been plucked out of thin air. Related work is being carried out at the moment by the eGranary and the Global Grid for Learning, and similar ideas are being explored in the OpenCourseWare Consortium and OpenCast community. Nevertheless, there is still a need to bring these efforts together in a way that works for developing countries.

[edit] Certification

Such a proposal might be helped by promoting OER accessibility standards, through which content could be marked as accessible. There are already criteria in some areas, such as licensing and disability access, from which a comprehensive accessibility rating for OER could be derived.

In the classification of access issues in Week One, the community discussed issues qualitatively, rather than looking at how different elements of accessibility might be measured or assessed in a formal way. A nice application of the OER classification was provided by Stephen Downes, who used to assess the accessibility of the CCK08 open course. Another example can be found in a blog post by Jared Stein. In it, he develops criteria for estimating reuse and remix value, and applies this to a number of existing OER projects, including the Open University's OpenLearn, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, MIT OCW, webcast.berkeley and Connexions. The following criteria were used to evaluate resources:

• technical openness of media (e.g. Java applet vs. Javascript);
• quality of source;
• variety of media sources;
• semantic/standard structure (e.g. HTML tables vs. semantically-correct XHTML, IMS);
• Creative Commons license compatibility;
• hosted tools and support for remix.

The ratings process was to some extent subjective, but the criteria could be used to devise a more formal measure of accessibility that covers more than just legal openness. Bandwidth is another area that would lend itself well to objective accessibility criteria.

Finally, certification could be used in a top-level domain structure (e.g. oer.org/oer.int). All content within this domain would have to meet the criteria that had been established (such as Creative Commons licensing, a minimum amount of metadata, resource discovery, etc).

[edit] Notes

1. ↑ Diagrams illustrating more scenarios can be found on the wiki on the OER exchange cartoon page.
2. ↑ For more information about mobile access see the OER exchange proposal talk page.

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