Barrierefreiheit

5. April 202228. November 2023

Criteria for good OER

In our last article, we presented various funding models for open textbooks and showed how easy it can be to integrate Open Educational Resources (OER) into everyday school practices. However, with regard to textbooks, there is still skepticism on the part of teachers: Compared to proofread textbooks, there is sometimes a fear of loss of quality, because there is no higher authority (such as usually the publishing industry) that checks the OER materials with expertise. Although it should be noted here that for the most part, publisher review is only concerned with whether textbooks are curriculum compliant. In the case of open educational materials, publishing staff are replaced by members of online communities who share their professional and instructional knowledge to evaluate existing materials and identify specific materials for closer scrutiny. The quality of OER materials is derived from the basic ideas of open thinking and can be assessed using the following OER-specific quality criteria:

Low-threshold

OER should be easy to access and understand. In terms of content, the materials are designed to be low-threshold through simple language and formats that appeal to multiple senses (e.g., video with subtitles). The temporal and spatial low-threshold nature of the OER materials is ensured by the decentralized nature of the Internet. The materials can be accessed at any time from any location, provided an Internet connection is available.

2. Accessibility

But making educational materials and offerings available online is only the first step. Access to educational materials is still often restricted or at least made more difficult by paid offerings and the condition of registration. The same applies to the provision of materials in exclusively proprietary and closed file formats (e.g., a worksheet only as a PDF). Access to OER should therefore be non-binding and unconditional, and ideally also free of charge, in order to reach everyone. More specifically, there must be different access points to the learning content as well as different teaching formats.

3. Customizability

If teachers have now found open teaching materials online, they are still faced with the problem that these are often not one hundred percent suitable for their purposes and must be adapted either in terms of layout, content or file format. Depending on the license form, however, the freedom of usability is quite limited (e.g. CC BY-ND, i.e. attribution and no editing as a default). Other Creative Commons license forms (e.g., CC ZERO) allow adaptation, remixing, and use of parts of other open materials to create new OER. The ideal forms of licensing for OER are therefore CC ZERO, CC BY, and CC BY-NC, as they are the most open and thus offer the greatest creative freedom.

4. Safety

In order to be able to use the OER in a legally secure way, they should be visibly and correctly labeled with a license (e.g. a CC license). This is because missing information means that they cannot or may not be used. If, on the other hand, sources are carefully indicated and changes to the source material are documented in such a way that they can be viewed by all users, long-term use and further development is made possible. If the rights of use are clearly and completely stated, OER materials can be used without hesitation.

In short, OER should be easily accessible and easy to use in a legally compliant manner, as well as flexible and adaptable, saving time and money and promoting educational equity.

This topic has already been discussed many times – here we have compiled more in-depth information:

Qualitätsmanagement von offenen Bildungsressourcen (OERinfo)
OER quality tips (Kawachi 2013)
OER-Qualität in der Hochschulbildung (Mayrberger & Zawacki-Richter 2021

Sources:

¹ https://wb-web.de/material/medien/qualitat-von-offenen-bildungsmaterialien-einschatzen.html

² https://www.bpb.de/mediathek/video/234998/oer-erklaert-ueber-die-qualitaet-der-materialien/

28. January 202228. November 2023

From Open Access to Open Source: definitions of openness in diverse fields

Openness is a movement and a guiding principle that originated in the software field and has since found its way into a variety of other topics and fields of activity. In this article we present selected topics and the significance of openness in them.

Open Source

Open source is a movement, a way of thinking, and a way of working. Beginning in open source software (OSS), it now goes far beyond this frame of reference to find new ways to solve problems in communities and industries. Open source is also often used synonymously with open source software and open source hardware.

Open Source Software

The term open source originally goes back to open source software (OSS). OSS describes code that is accessible to the public and can be modified and shared, i.e. the software is published under an open license so that the source code can be displayed to all users or modified by them. Such software relies on transparency, collaborative development and peer review. Advantages of open, decentralized and collaboratively developed software are the often significantly lower costs as well as its flexibility and longevity. The freely accessible source code is constantly checked and improved through peer review processes. All changes are transparent and can be reviewed and tracked. By continuously updating the code through the community, bugs can be found and fixed quickly. The community makes its resources, help and perspectives available to everyone. Open source projects are often hosted on GitHub. Other well-known open source projects include Linux, Ansible and Kubernetes.

Emergence: peer-review and open feedback processes

In Internet forums, programmers were able for the first time to enter into a joint exchange worldwide and share their source codes with each other and develop them further. They took advantage of the open and collaborative environment, which favored open feedback processes, and created new standards for open communication and collaboration in the exchange.

Initially, OSS was referred to as free software – based on the freedom to use the software as you wish. But this caused some confusion in the meaning of “free” and “open”, so that it came to the final separation of the terms at the end of the 1990s. Today, however, free software does not mean the same as open source, because with free software only the owners are allowed to access its otherwise closed source code. This is not released for the community for changes. Open source, on the other hand, dispenses with such provider ties and does not primarily stand for the debates about user freedom, but mainly for methodological, production and business aspects of free software.

Open Source Hardware

Open Source Hardware (OSH) also follows the principle and values of Open Source Software. OSH is hardware that is constructed according to open or free blueprints, i.e. the blueprints are made available to the public so that they can not only be viewed, but also shared, further processed and adapted for various new purposes. In the case of modifications, preference is also given here to components that are openly licensed.

Open Government und Open Data

The two terms Open Government and Open Data, which are often used synonymously, originate from the field of politics and administration and stand for a movement to make government data available for the use of the democratic public.

Open Government

Open Government is a democratic approach to participation-oriented opportunities for civil society in the field of politics and administration. It means opening up government and administration – or, more precisely, disclosing their data – to the citizens of the state. In addition to participation, this opening is also intended to create transparency and new forms of cooperation between the state, politics, administration and civil society, to intensify the newly forged bonds and thus also to strengthen common interests and concerns as well as more legitimate political decisions. These goals are also reflected in the four substantive pillars that support the open government movement: citizen participation, transparency, anti-corruption and accountability. To achieve this, however, it is not only data that must be disclosed. The condition for this strategic project, which is intended not only to strengthen democracy but also to increase efficiency in administration, is collaborative cooperation with the population, based on transparency in all decisions and actions. In short, the aim is to use Web 2.0 technologies and an open way of thinking and acting to make administration and government more open and thus more transparent, participatory and cooperative.

Open Data

The Open Government movement is based on the concept of Open Data. Open Data is data of general public interest that is made freely accessible and may be freely redistributed and processed. The focus is primarily on official data, such as statistics, maps, laws, court rulings and other documents and information carriers (open government data). Personal information or other information subject to data protection is excluded. However, the approach is not limited to public administration, but also includes data from universities, non-profit institutions and private-sector companies. Overall, Open Data describes all data. In practice, the data is to be made accessible in as simple and structured a manner as possible, without legal restrictions, in a machine-readable form with the help of Web 2.0 applications. Here, too, the goal is to increase administrative transparency and the social control function.

Open Access

The Open Data ambition to be able to freely share and use data and findings led to the emergence of the Open Access movement, which aims to make public research freely available to the general public. Open Access (OA) means free and open access to scientific publications, such as literature, peer-reviewed research results or other materials for all interested parties worldwide. OA files are always online publications, as research results can be used more flexibly and freely on the Internet. The OA movement emerged in the 1990s on the premise that previous publication structures had led to a privatization of knowledge financed by the general public. In addition to financial aspects, rapid relevance checks, enabling and accelerating scientific collaboration, and better findability of OA publications also speak for the concept of sharing and advancing knowledge.

Publishing and licensing

If a scientific paper is published under OA conditions, anyone with Internet access is given the opportunity and permission to use it free of charge, i.e. to read it, save it, download it, link to it, etc. Further rights of free use, reproduction, distribution or modification of the publication are regulated by free licenses. In principle, this is done under Creative Commons licenses (CC licenses). The most free form of CC licenses, which corresponds solely to the OA claim, is the so-called CC-BY license, which ensures that the authors are legally protected and always named as authors of the work.
There are two primary ways of OA publishing: the gold way (Gold OA) and the green way (Green OA).

Gold OA

With golden OA, the final version of the publication appears directly in an OA medium, such as books or OA journals that use peer-review processes. In this case, publication fees are often charged to the author. If these are paid by publishers, we speak of Diamond Open Access – the simplest and most fairly perceived form of OA. On the golden way, authors also have the option of hybrid OA, in which they can “buy” their works from publishers. In this case, publishers earn twice.

Green OA

In green open access, the final version of a publication is not made freely available. Instead, parallel publications, secondary publications, or self-archiving on private or institutional websites of the authors occur in addition to the publisher’s version. This means that the authors do not incur any costs when they make their work available free of charge. Such green-published documents are mostly pre- or postprints that have been submitted to the publishers as copies.

Open Science und Open Education

Finally, let us turn to the field of education. Open Science is often used synonymously with Open Access and refers to a collaborative knowledge and science practice in which research data, lab reports, and other research processes are freely accessible. Data, documents, and other material are published for reuse, redistribution, and copying to advance and advance knowledge and research and its underlying data, methods, and concepts. The situation is similar in the field of Open Education, which aims to make education freely available. However, in terms of free access to education, open education is not limited to Internet-based knowledge transfer with the help of free teaching materials (OER) – and is therefore not to be equated with e-learning processes – but is also to be understood as a movement or concept for the development of models that enable all people to participate in education.

We have compiled further, detailed information on openness in education in the following articles:

Sources:

8. November 202128. November 2023

Open as standard! But what does “open” mean?

We encounter openness in various contexts: The German government wants to do more for open data, open source software is supposed to be better and literature is supposed to be accessible online through open access – what is actually behind this?

“We are open!”

When something is “open”, it expresses an idea, a conviction. At its core, openness is based on an egalitarian understanding of collaboration and thrives on the conviction of the quality of the many. In short, openness means that something is accessible, free and transparent. This is intended to enable, for example, more communality and accessibility. The idea comes from software development: software packages such as Microsoft Office have to be purchased, and fixing bugs in the software and developing new functions is the exclusive responsibility of Microsoft. The source code, in a sense the “blueprint” of the software, is secret. Open alternatives such as LibreOffice publish their source code so that bugs can be worked out and new functions can be programmed worldwide. With open software, the risk of viruses is minimized and costs kept low.

Free as in free speech, not as in free beer

Open does not necessarily mean that something is free. Rather, it’s about being able to make better use of data and media: Take the example of open science. Behind the term is a scientific practice in which access to scientific publications, research data and software is facilitated through collaboration – with the simple aim of advancing research. Quality assurance and improved information supply are just some of the keywords when it comes to sharing research data worldwide. This process encompasses a whole range of implementation possibilities: from publishing lab reports and datasets in open networks, to making scientific materials available as open resources, to opening up scientific processes to the public. However, if all this is done under the condition of dissemination and copying, the question arises as to how intellectual property can nevertheless be protected.

How can this be compatible with data protection?

Openness as a lived ideal clearly excludes an obligation to freely use one’s own data and media. Everyone should decide for themselves to what extent something can be used. This is made possible by Creative Commons licenses (by the way, the copyright symbol is not legally valid in Germany!): Different license categories specify, for example, whether something may be used for commercial purposes, whether something may be multiplied, or whether the source must be named.

Data security, comprehensibility and transparency, but above all the topics of accessibility, barrier-free access and flexibility guide the complex OPEN.

What does that mean?

In schools, for example, teaching materials can be improved by teachers sharing their lesson plans, proofreading each other’s work, expanding assignments or adapting them to age groups. In this way, the same subject matter can be taught better and better, instead of having to start from scratch every time to prepare a lesson. The key here is not just to use the findings of others for your own purposes, but to contribute something yourself. The digital transformation that everyone is talking about does not simply mean that texts are being digitized and more computers are being used in schools. Rather, it is accompanied by an essential change in values that relates to various professions, but also strongly to personal attitudes. Therefore, an awareness of digital events and a critical reflection with current topics around media and digitization are of great importance.

A look into the future

For sustainable societies, the following will apply: Openness as the fundamental engine of all social practices.

Open is innovative because it always creates new spaces for collaboration, and open is disruptive because it always overturns established ways, systems and structures. Openness is the real core competence of the so-called “21st century skills.” As a social practice, openness is always political, never private. Especially not when we are increasingly talking about topics like quantancomputing and artificial intelligence, open data and borderless data traffic. When we talk about promoting digital education, this alone is far from sufficient, because simply transferring educational resources and processes from analog to digital in fact builds up barriers to competence and in many cases makes access to education more difficult due to the predominantly profit-oriented offerings.

In order to advance free access to knowledge, political and economic incentives are needed to place open access software, open education and open science at the center of education policy action. UNESCO put the topic of OER on its agenda a long time ago, and the EU should do the same. At OESA, we see ourselves as an independent institution for which openness is a top priority and we drive it as part of our work.