[Open-education] [OER] [OER-advocacy] OER in Educause Study of Undergraduate Students and IT

Wed Oct 16 22:22:50 UTC 2013

Thanks Doug, Valerie, Jackie and others...  nice catch.

Correct - the survey instrument and the report mistakenly interchanges
"free" and "OER."

CC just sent the following note to the report authors and to the Educause
leads.

Warm regards,

Cable

========================

*<excerpt>*

The language in the Educause
Survey<http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/SI/ESI1302.pdf>and the
Report <http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS1302/ERS1302.pdf>co-mingled
"Free" and "OER" which confuses the distinction between them.

   - Free = no cost access to resources
   - Open (as in OER) = Free + the legal rights to reuse, revise, remix and
   redistribute resources

This is a critical legal and practical distinction. For example, imagine my
University sees content it wants to use in this Coursera course:
https://www.coursera.org/course/powerofmarkets

Students may access this course for "free," though the course is not
"open."  It is not OER because the course materials are not openly
licensed<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/>or in the public domain.
 If my University faculty download parts of this
course, revises that content to meet my students' needs, and then offered
those modules through my University LMS, Coursera could sue my University
because my University violated* Coursera's Terms of
Service<https://www.coursera.org/about/terms>:

*

   - *All content or other materials available on the Sites, including but
   not limited to code, images, text, layouts, arrangements, displays,
   illustrations, audio and video clips, HTML files and other content are the
   property of Coursera and/or its affiliates or licensors and are
   protected by copyright, patent and/or other proprietary intellectual
   property rights under the United States and foreign laws. In consideration
   for your agreement to the terms and conditions contained here,
Courseragrants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license
to access
   and use the Sites. You may download material from the Sites only for your
   own personal, non-commercial use. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce,
   retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer
   any material, nor may you modify or create derivatives works of the
   material.
   *

The Educause Survey asked:

   - *3.9 In the past year, to what extent have you used freely available
   course content external to your college/university (i.e., OpenCourseWare,
   Khan Academy, iTunes U, Mayo Clinic, etc.)?*
      - *( ) Experimented with open educational resources
      ( ) Use open educational resources on occasion
      ( ) Use open educational resources all the time
      *

 Note: the question asked about "free" content... and the answer options
used the phrase "open educational resources."

Moreover, while the survey question asks about "free" content, the results
of that question are discussed in the Report as:

   - *Seven in 10 students (71%) say they have used freely available course
   content / open educational resources (OERs) in the past year...*

The survey question was asked and the findings presented in a way which
leads the respondents and readers to believe "free course content" and
"OER" are interchangeable... though they are not.
 Two ideas:

(1) It will be very helpful, to the increasing number of faculty and
Universities / Colleges creating and using Open Educational Resources
(OER), if Educause would use the Hewlett OER definition in its publications
and surveys... and clearly distinguish between "free" and "open."

   - *Open Educational Resources
(OER<http://creativecommons.org/education#OER>)
   are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in
   the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits
   their free use and re-purposing by others.*

(2) Creative Commons is always happy to review future drafts or survey
instruments, reports, etc. that address OER (or other "open" topics) prior
to publication ... at no cost to Educause or its members.  Feel free to
contact me anytime for "free" "open" consulting ;)   cable at creativecommons
.org

I'm happy to discuss this on the phone / Skype / Hangouts at your
convenience.

Warmest regards,

Cable

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
* reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*

==================

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Douglas Levin <dlevin at setda.org> wrote:

> Cable, do you have further information on how OER were defined in the
> study?
>
> It is not clear to me if they were referring to OERs or merely freely
> available resources. The survey instrument is not appended to the report.
>
> Douglas A. Levin
> Executive Director
> SETDA // Leadership :: Technology :: Innovation :: Learning
> 202-715-6636 x700 | dlevin at setda.org | @douglevin
>
> Follow us online at: @setda and setda.org
>
> On Oct 13, 2013, at 7:41 PM, Cable Green <cable at creativecommons.org>
> wrote:
>
> Good news re: mainstreaming OER in the latest Educause Study of
> Undergraduate Students and IT.
>
> Report <http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS1302/ERS1302.pdf>
> Infographic <http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS1302/Eig1302.pdf>
>
> Sample tweet:
>
>    - 2013 @Educause Study of Undergraduates: 71% of students use #OER,
>    54% think #OER are very or extremely important: http://ow.ly/pMk2s
>
> Good weekend all,
>
> Cable
>
> --
>
>
> Cable Green, PhD
> Director of Global Learning
> Creative Commons
> @cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
> http://creativecommons.org/education
> * reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
>
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-- 

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
* reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
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