OER is the answer: twillo as a guest at Campus Innovation 2023

On Sep­tem­ber 27–29, 2023, Mul­ti­me­dia Kon­tor Ham­burg (MMKH) once again hosted Cam­pus Inno­va­tion on site. In addi­tion to the fields of AI and sus­tain­abil­ity, the focus was on OER, par­tic­u­larly on Thurs­day (with lec­tures and the OER slam) and Fri­day (with the bar­camp).

Let’s turn the heat up to three right away!

Under this motto, Prof. Dr. Ker­stin Mayr­berger put for­ward the fol­low­ing the­sis in her lec­ture: “OEP as a col­lec­tive prac­tice cur­rently stands for higher edu­ca­tion in (post)digitality — and is con­stantly devel­op­ing in a com­plex envi­ron­ment”. To this end, she first addressed the range of OEP def­i­n­i­tions — from broad to nar­row — and then explained what is needed for the shift towards a cul­ture of shar­ing: Par­tic­i­pa­tion, rela­tion­ships, trust, trans­parency, resilience, equity, com­mons and sus­tain­abil­ity. She empha­sized that the focus of OEP should not be on the mate­ri­als alone, but rather on the fun­da­men­tal atti­tude towards open­ness with the asso­ci­ated val­ues and prin­ci­ples.

She cited trust as an exam­ple: In the old world, qual­ity assur­ance is very impor­tant as a pre­req­ui­site for OEP. For exam­ple, OER undergo a review process after cre­ation. In the new world, trust is placed in the fact that the actors enter the review process right at the begin­ning of the OER cre­ation process by seek­ing advice from their envi­ron­ment and engag­ing in a crit­i­cal exchange with the com­mu­nity.

The imple­men­ta­tion of OEP as a col­lec­tive prac­tice could start with an applied con­cept in the uni­ver­si­ties and then be trans­ferred to other con­cepts. How­ever, the pre­vail­ing approach of restruc­tur­ing 90% accord­ing to the old pro­ce­dure and only 10% accord­ing to open­ness prin­ci­ples would not apply. Once every­thing has been ana­lyzed under the OEP lens, the result should be 50/50. Mayr­berg­er’s prag­matic vision would be for ten coura­geous insti­tu­tions from dif­fer­ent areas of higher edu­ca­tion to lead the way with this restruc­tur­ing process and demon­strate con­sis­tent OEP so that oth­ers can eas­ily fol­low suit.

OER is the answer — but what is the question?

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Prof. Dr. Daniel Otto took us on a jour­ney through time “20 years of OER in Ger­many” and pre­sented var­i­ous stud­ies on the topic of OER. While the ini­tial focus was often on the atti­tudes of OER activists (result: dri­ven by emo­tions), the obsta­cles to the use of OER were later more fre­quently addressed. Based on a meta-study of 272 pub­lished stud­ies, Otto showed that less research has been car­ried out into the strate­gies of uni­ver­si­ties and incen­tive sys­tems for OER. But do we even have an eye on the real­ity of OER activists or is there a lot going on below the radar, namely in col­le­gial exchanges at schools and uni­ver­si­ties — the dark reuse hypoth­e­sis?

Look­ing back on 20 years of OER, it is at least encour­ag­ing that the infra­struc­ture, such as the state por­tals, has been expanded. Otto’s con­clu­sion is that OER started as an ide­al­is­tic bot­tom-up move­ment and should now very real­is­ti­cally be adopted more by uni­ver­si­ties as a top-down topic. How­ever, this cer­tainly has a chance, as some long-stand­ing OER enthu­si­asts now have a foot in the door through cer­tain posi­tions in the uni­ver­si­ties.

After the two pre­sen­ta­tions, four OER activists entered the OER slam ring. The pro­ce­dure and in par­tic­u­lar the strict time limit of eight min­utes per pre­sen­ta­tion pre­vented one or two of them from get­ting a final punch­line — but the courage to take on this new for­mat was rewarded by the audi­ence for all of them. Mar­tin Schultze was able to take the prize money of 500 euros back to Frank­furt’s Goethe Uni­ver­sity.

See you in 2050

The premises of the Depart­ment of Design at HAW Ham­burg were highly inspir­ing for the bar­camp on Fri­day. Some top­ics had already been sub­mit­ted in advance, but as is usual at a bar­camp, fur­ther ideas were spon­ta­neously added dur­ing ses­sion plan­ning. There was a wide range of ses­sions, such as the vis­i­bil­ity of OER com­mu­ni­ties at uni­ver­si­ties, a roadmap for dig­i­tal higher edu­ca­tion in 2050 and the legal impli­ca­tions of AI-gen­er­ated texts and images in OER.

As we are work­ing on dif­fer­ent aspects of the com­plex topic of open edu­ca­tion in the twillo joint project, we con­tributed two ses­sions. Klaus Wan­nemacher pre­sented the study on OER-pro­mot­ing infra­struc­tures. Accord­ing to the study, there are par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges with regard to bet­ter net­work­ing of exist­ing OER por­tals and tools as well as the estab­lish­ment and use of a stan­dard vocab­u­lary for teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als.

In an exten­sive dis­cus­sion round, very dif­fer­ent assess­ments and sug­ges­tions emerged in this ses­sion: Even recent approaches in the field of meta­data for open edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als hardly stood out due to a pro­nounced didac­tic focus. OER por­tals should facil­i­tate the index­ing of OER through appro­pri­ate assis­tance func­tions. OER por­tals should also con­sider enter­ing into a stronger dia­log with spe­cial­ist cir­cles and pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tions. It could also be help­ful to actively draw the atten­tion of aca­d­e­mics to sub­ject-related OER.

Axel Klinger’s ses­sion was a lit­tle more tech­ni­cal. Based on the key ques­tion of what we can learn from open source devel­op­ments, open col­lab­o­ra­tion on edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als was dis­cussed. With the col­lec­tion in OERSI, con­sid­er­a­tions about suit­able work­ing envi­ron­ments and par­tic­u­larly open for­mats (accord­ing to the FAIR Data Prin­ci­ples) became ele­men­tary. Com­mon require­ments in the devel­op­ment of open source soft­ware and open edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als are freely avail­able and openly licensed sources and results, the coor­di­nated joint edit­ing of files, as lit­tle depen­dence as pos­si­ble on com­mer­cial prod­ucts and trans­parency about changes and deci­sions in fur­ther devel­op­ment. GitHub/GitLab and OERSI already offer a global solu­tion for the cre­ation, joint fur­ther devel­op­ment and open use of open and attrac­tive edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als in all areas of teach­ing. With the right tem­plates and instruc­tions, the effort is man­age­able and the reach is great.

We would like to thank the orga­niz­ers and all par­tic­i­pants for two won­der­ful days and look for­ward to the next oppor­tu­nity for fruit­ful exchanges and excit­ing encoun­ters.