On Monday 3 October, at the #OpenDataLDN meet-up, organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation, I sat in a group led by Javiera Atenas, an academic at the University of Hertfordshire, on open educational resources (OER) and marvelled at the number of tools that existed to facilitate resource sharing. The event was organised as an opportunity to discuss ideas and developments around open data and open knowledge projects – ranging from open governance to data journalism.
MIT's open courseware was lauded as an exceptional example of openness but there were also homegrown tools available such as the University of Nottingham's Xpert repository or Jorum.ac.uk, a site set up to enable teachers to find, share and discuss teaching resources, across all of the UK's HE and FE communities.
But just as I started to beam with pride at how open the sector was, Javiera put a spanner in the works: all these tools may exist but academics are not using them, and perhaps worse, HE management see little value in them. She explained that, counter-intuitively, academics were happier to share their research on the open web but when it came to teaching resources, their prevailing attitude is: "Hands off my PowerPoint!"
So in this talk point, I'd like to explore these claims: why are many so reluctant to share teaching resources? Is it for fear of not being properly credited? Are academics (and management) worried about the time constraints or that, with no mechanism to measure how much your resources are downloaded, amended and used, OER have little benefit in performance review?
We'd like to know what your experience is and what the open access policy at you institution is – if it has one. We're also keen to hear from librarians, whose responsibility it is to index OER, are your digital skills in demand? What do you see your role to be in the promotion of open educational resources?
Post your questions, comments and ideas below or tweet us what you think.
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