This paper presents the findings of a research collaboration between the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) and the UK Open University-based OER Research Hub (www.oerresearchhub.org) and suggests that when user communities’ needs do not coincide with those of the majority, a model of OER development and sharing through open, transnational collaboration can offer a solution.
Open collaboration is at the heart of the VUSSC, which is a mechanism for 32 tiny nations to collaboratively develop, adapt and share post-secondary level openly licensed courses and learning materials in subject areas that are especially relevant to the needs of people in the participating countries – for example, disaster management, entrepreneurship, the fishing industry, life skills and tourism. Since 2005, educators from island nations in the Caribbean, Pacific, Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, as well as small states in Africa, have been gaining skills in the creation of learning materials and in online collaboration, and applying them to collaboratively develop a body of OER freely available to all via the VUSSC website (www.vussc.info) and published under a Creative Commons (CC) license.
The VUSSC relies on a community of practice model for its growth. An initial series of workshops led to 130 educators from 26 countries being trained in resource creation. These educators have subsequently formed international networks of peers in their respective areas of expertise, leading to a further 600 people being trained in resource creation through a cascade system. The VUSSC research study reported here explores the impact of OER and open educational practices (OEP) in settings that are often very different from those in which mainstream OER projects operate. As such, it builds on the comparative research on OER impact already conducted by the OER Research Hub (OERRH), applying the OERRH research instruments to the VUSSC in order to explore ways in which openness can increase access to education, can improve educational attainment and can foster collaboration and resource-sharing across geographical boundaries. The study also assesses the impact of the VUSSC Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF) (see Lesperance et al, 2010) – developed as a response to the challenges of adapting and offering OER-based courses in many different countries. The VUSSC is not an accrediting or awarding body and therefore the institutions offering its courses must accredit them locally. The TQF is intended to ensure that all the collaboratively created VUSSC OER can be adapted into recognised courses that students can take for credit through the recognized institutions of the small states.
Methods
Survey and Skype interview-based research with students, educators and informal learners in the VUSSC member states has allowed for a deep insight into the means by which OEP provide some of the world’s smallest countries with stronger economic opportunities and improved access to quality education, offering them the potential to become active contributors to global development. The survey was administered online and largely comprised questions drawn from the OER Research Hub question base (www.oerrhsurvey) to allow for comparison with existing data from OER projects around the globe.
The survey sample spans 18 countries (see Figure 1) and is dominated by educators (68%) over formal learners (25%) and informal learners (7%), with a 70%/30% female/male gender split. Perhaps unsurprisingly, bearing in mind the fact that the VUSSC is a Commonwealth entity, 72% of respondents identify English as their first spoken language. The majority of survey respondents across all three participant groups are well qualified, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 1: Geographical distribution of VUSSC survey respondents
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Figure 2: Sample breakdown by qualification
See https://artofoer.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/screen-shot-2014-12-08-at-18-17-30.png
Findings
The survey and interview data gives valuable information about the open educational practices of VUSSC educators and formal learners and, when compared with evidence from the OER Research Hub global dataset (see de los Arcos et al, 2014), shows how the VUSSC participants are using and developing OER to meet the very specific needs of the member countries. Table 1 paints a richer picture of the OER use practices of the VUSSC educators and formal learners, comparing the main sources of OER, the main types of OER used, and the most common reasons for using OER.
Table 1: Comparison of educators’ and formal learners’ use of OER
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Educators are at the heart of the VUSSC, taking a key role in resource creation and sharing, in policy discussions, in building subject-specific networks and in training peers. The surveyed VUSSC educators are very experienced (79% have been teaching for over 10 years) and most (80%) teach full-time, face-to-face. Respondents are fairly evenly spread across K12, FE/College, HE, work-based training and personal tutoring. Table 2 shows the ways in which the surveyed VUSSC educators use OER, the high scores across all aspects of teaching and learning mentioned in the survey indicating that OER use is deeply embedded in educators’ practice.
Table 2: OER use by the VUSSC educators
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Supporting evidence for this assertion is offered by the data on sharing and OER adaptation. Educators showed evidence of sharing OER with their peers, though just 22% had added a resource to a repository. 22% had made quality-related comments to a resource in a repository and just 10% comments related to OER use. Interestingly, one educator highlighted the advantage of English being commonly spoken across the VUSSC member states, explaining that ‘we don’t have to worry about translation, I can easily share resources with people across a wide geographical space’. Adaptation of OER remains a key priority for the open education movement and it is encouraging to see that 72.5% of VUSSC educators have adapted resources to fit their needs and 47% have created them for study or teaching. One educator explained how her teaching has changed due to reflecting on the different pedagogical approaches she encounters in other teachers’ materials:
Using OER puts you in contact with other teachers and you can learn from how they do things differently to you. I’ve changed a lot from using other people’s materials. You can also share your own work with many more people than you could by just publishing it in a journal and as a teacher you can benefit greatly from their feedback and learn how to improve things.
The VUSSC study also explores educators’ awareness of open licensing. To date the OER Research Hub global evidence (de los Arcos et al, 2014, p. 14) indicates that awareness of CC licensing is low amongst educators with just 12.4% having published a resource on a CC license. Interestingly, the figure is identical for the VUSSC educators, 40% of whom also indicated that they had never seen the Creative Commons logo and a further 7.5% that they had seen the logo but did not know what it meant. However, 76% of VUSSC educators said open licensing was important or very important when using OER.
The research with the VUSSC also adds to the existing OER Research Hub data on the impact of OER on student performance and satisfaction. Figure 3 shows that while both educators and formal learners are positive about the impact of OER use on many aspects of the learning experience, the latter are consistently more positive than the former – a finding that is echoed in the OER Research Hub global dataset (see de los Arcos et al, 2014, pp. 11-12).
Figure 3: A comparison of educators’ and formal learners’ views about the impact of OER on student learning
See https://artofoer.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/screen-shot-2014-12-07-at-15-58-42.png
A selection of the VUSSC educators were interviewed via Skype about their experiences of developing and using OER and of working within the VUSSC community. Detailed findings are reported in the full paper, covering the importance of being able to create resources that are pertinent to the small states’ local contexts, the benefits of collaborating with professionals from the same field across geographical boundaries, increased understanding of cultural diversity, the effectiveness of the skills cascading system and the culture of peer support. One educator summarised her experience of being part of the VUSSC: I have gained new skills, a deeper understanding of the challenges facing other Commonwealth nations, increased confidence and optimism in the ways in which lack of funds, remoteness and lack of resources can be overcome when people collaborate’.
Implications
The VUSSC study adds to the OER Research Hub data about educators’ sharing practices and the impact of OER on teaching and learning. In addition, the study shows how geographical borders can be traversed working collaboratively online, especially when communicating in a common language. However, it is clear from the VUSSC study that finding up-to-date, high quality, context-relevant resources remains a challenge, as do infrastructure problems in some areas. This is reported more fully in the main paper. In addition, while there is evidence that openness is spreading throughout the member states the study also indicates there is still much scope for expansion. Furthermore, it appears that outside the member states the VUSSC is not well known and there is a need for increased global awareness of its work.
Conclusion
The research reported in this paper should be of value across the open education movement, adding to the growing picture of the power of OER and OEP in diverse contexts and presenting a compelling view of the potential of open collaboration in growing small states’ educational capacity and in helping increase educational and social inclusion in remote and isolated areas of the world. A VUSSC participant summarises:
Meeting people from so many different countries and working with them towards one aim has been a great learning experience. Small countries like ours all share a common pool of problems and needs. Leveraging technology to overcome these is good, but doing it together is great!
References
de los Arcos, B., Farrow, R., Perryman, L.-A., Pitt, R. & Weller, M. (2014). OER Evidence Report 2013-2014. OER Research Hub. Available from http://oerresearchhub.org/about-2/reports/. [Accessed 6 December 2014]
Lesperance, J., West, P., Allgoo, K., Bradshaw, M., Wah, R., Waheed, A.H., Gertze, F.E., & Marshall, Y. Transnational Qualifications Framework for the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth. Commonwealth of Learning/VUSSC. Available from http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=354. [Accessed 6 December 2014]