OER Rebels

This week, I’m thinking about OER. I mean, it’s the inspiration for my sabbatical, so . . . I guess I better be thinking about OER.

OER (Open Educational Resources) is thriving today, thanks to contributors all over the world. The origin stories of OER are filled with rebels. Lots of people used their outside voices to inspire change.

Some say OER started in 2001 with MIT’s Open Courseware project—which is fantastic! But it’s not really true.

The rebel spirit of OER actually had its roots in the mid-1990s. There was a National Science Foundation project called “Authoring Tools and An Educational Object Economy” in 1994, led by Dr. James Spohrer with collaborators from industry (including Apple Computer), colleges, and government partners. This project aimed at creating a shared knowledge base of teaching and learning materials, particularly software.

By 1997, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) ran with the idea and began developing free online curriculum resources for higher education. MERLOT remains very active today in the OER space.

In 1998, Dr. David Wiley, who later founded Lumen Learning, identified the need for an alternative to traditional copyrights. Do content creators need to specify “all rights reserved”? Or are there situations where it would be far more beneficial to all if we could share even part of a larger copyrighted work?

In 2001, in addition to MIT’s development of Open Courseware, another group of rebels was hard at work. Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred became involved in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which challenged the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), a law that extended copyright duration. They fought this battle all the way to the Supreme Court.

And lost. (Insert sad violin music here.)

BUT shortly after the decision, The Hewlett Foundation gave them a million dollars to follow their dreams of a different approach to copyright. Not a bad consolation prize. This funding allowed them to start Creative Commons, which today is one of the leading hubs of OER worldwide.

The Creative Commons vision is inspiring:

A world where education, culture, and science are equitably shared as a means to benefit humanity. https://creativecommons.org/mission/

OER as a movement is not about stealing material. It is about innovation and access to information. Humanity benefits from collaboration and sharing resources.

What we can do together with OER is summed up in the 5 Rs:

1.      Retain

2.      Reuse

3.      Revise

4.      Remix

5.      Redistribute

It’s stealing like an artist! It’s remolding knowledge and finding new ways to make it useful.

Here are just a few incredible OER resources that are available to all of us because of this movement (and yes, most of these examples lean toward the arts):

All of Wikipedia’s articles (over 55 million) are shared openly with a Creative Commons license. https://www.wikipedia.org/

The Met shares images of all their public domain works through Creative Commons. https://www.metmuseum.org/

The Smithsonian has shared millions of images and data from their 21 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo through Creative Commons licenses. https://www.si.edu/openaccess

The Folger Shakespeare Library (the largest Shakespeare collection in the world) offers numerous OER resources for educators and learners. https://www.folger.edu/ 

I first learned about OER from one of the true rock stars of any institute of higher ed—a librarian. Once I got my head around the concept, I was obsessed. OER is the best of opportunities for anyone interested in teaching and learning.

Here are two reasons OER appeals to me:

1.      It removes barriers to education. There is a ton of research on the educational benefits of OER and another truckload of personal stories from students who didn’t take a class because the textbook was over $200; or they tried to pass the class unsuccessfully without buying a textbook because they simply couldn’t afford it. This is ridiculous! We’re robbing society of brilliant new thinkers because we’re clutching the learning materials to our chests. Give students access!

2.      We can keep educational material up to date. This one makes me happy, because I teach theater. Theater is constantly changing. Think about how bummed a traditional publisher of a comprehensive theater textbook was when they published a month or two before Hamilton exploded on the scene. When I create an OER theater textbook, I can go in and make changes and updates at any time. My colleagues also get to take what they like from my book and leave out what they feel is weak or unnecessary. Win-win.

I look forward to joining the ranks of OER rebels. I’ve created the outline and introduction for my Theatre Appreciation book, and this week I launch into Chapter 1. I can’t wait to compile wisdom from many sources, including our own students—all of whom will be respectfully credited. We can do great things when knowledge is shared and built upon.

If you would like to learn more about Creative Commons, check out this video:

“Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)” by Ryan Junell and Glenn Otis Brown for Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0 and includes adaptations of the multiple open and public domain works.