Open Educational Resources:

Experiences of use in
a Latin-American context

Vladimir Burgos
Educational Innovation Liaison Officer at the Center for Innovation in
Technology and Education in Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM).

Project manager of OCW Tecnológico de Monterrey

& temoa.info (Knowledge Hub OER Index) Marisol Ramírez
Full time Professor at the Graduate School of Education (EGE),
and Principal of the Research Group of Investigation of
Open ED 2010 Innovation in Technology and education in Tecnológico de
Proceedings. Barcelona, España Monterrey (ITESM)
http://openedconference.org/2010/

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
 "We are in the midst of a literacy
revolution the likes of which we
haven't seen since Greek civilization"

Andrea A. Lunsford: Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

WIRED Magazine: 17:09 (TECH BIZ: PEOPLE))
Frame of reference
• Aware of the advances in technology worldwide and the
massive and exponential growth of information that is
published each day on the Internet, the way we see the
world has changed, this also has a significant impact on
education, both in the way of learning as in the way of
teaching.
Frame of reference

• Economic inequality exists within and between

countries and the gap continues widen.

• The emergency of the knowledge era has

redefined the basis for economic activity as well
as the societal role of universities.

• There is a danger that some nations and

communities within them will be left behind as
knowledge becomes the pre-eminent economic
driver.
Frame of reference
Information literacy needed

According the American Library

Association, “Information is available
through libraries, community resources,
special interest organizations, media, and the
Internet--and increasingly, information comes
to individuals in unfiltered formats, raising
questions about its authenticity, validity, and
reliability” (ACRL, 2000).

ACRL (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, ACRL Standards
Committee, January 18, 2000. Retrieved at
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm
--------------
Library image by Raysonho [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/SteacieLibrary.jpg
Computer keyboard image by User Gflores on en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Computer_keyboard.gif
 Frame of reference

• In a global digital ecosystem, knowledge flows freely

regardless of frontiers or boundaries. We need to
overcome the basic requirements for its use through
information and communication technologies and
communicate the legal frameworks to foster knowledge
transference.

• There is need of a greater awareness about the terms of

use of the OER and of its existence.

Earth image from NASA: Great Zoom out of

Orlando, FL: Epcot Spaceship Earth
 Open Educational Resources (OER)

“OER are teaching, learning and research

resources that reside in the public domain or
have been released under an intellectual
property license that permits their free use or re-
purposing by others. Open educational resources
include full courses, course materials, modules,
textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any
other tools, materials or techniques used to support
access to knowledge“
Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Atkins, D; Brown, J; Hammond, A (2007). Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (February
2007); pp.4, http://www.hewlett.org/oer
Smith, Marshall S.; Casserly, Catherine M. (2006). The Promise of Open Educational Resources; Change:
The Magazine of Higher Learning; Sep-Oct 2006; 38(5); p. 8 (EJ772126)
OER Global Initiatives

http://oyc.yale.edu/
www.ocwconsortium.org

https://open.umich.edu/
http://cnx.org

http://www.hewlett.org/oer

http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/ http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/

http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/

http://oer-quality.org/
http://wikieducator.org/

http://www.merlot.org/
http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
What is “temoa.info”
• A website that selects OER from the Internet so that educators
everywhere can improve their courses and teaching practices.
• Selection is done by an Academic Community, so they are:
• easy to find
• easy to adopt by other educators.
temoa.info (knowledge hub)
Criteria to evaluate OER

• Resources are public and inclusive (full content)

• Free (no charges or fees)
• Permanent publication (lifelong)

• Without subscriptions or further obligations for users

• Resources in the public domain or released under an

intellectual property license (we evaluate a formal
declaration of intellectual property and respect to
authorship of the resources; for example Creative
Commons (CC) licenses or customized licenses).
Quality assurance process

The Academic Community has suggested 20,481 resources to the

catalog and 12,512 has been approved through a lifecycle assurance
process considering educational and technical information criteria:

1. Information sources are audited by librarians and the resources are

suggested by the community.

2. Peer reviewing process is a dynamic activity

done by the community.

3. Information consistency is validated by a

cataloging process by librarians.

March 2, 2010
Legal terms from OER Providers (approved)

825 OER Providers audited by librarians

Customized
83%

July 7,
2010
 Hierarchical classification of knowledge…
based on the Library of Congress (LC)

Arts,
Engineering
Architecture Business &
& Applied
& Applied Economics
Sciences Knowledge Areas
Arts

Hierarchical Interface to LC
General
Health History & Classification” (HILCC), from
Sciences Archaeology Columbia University

Journalism Law, Politics

& Languages &
&
Communicatio Literatures
ns Government

Music,
Dance, Philosophy
Sciences
Drama & & Religion
Film

Social
Sciences Columbia HILCC: A Hierarchical Interface to LC Classification, Columbia University
Libraries Digital Program. Retrieved from
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/projects/metadata/classify/
OER Crosswalk Metadata
With the purpose to ease the task to learners and educators
the discoverability process of OER (search and adoption)

OER Metadata Learning Object Metadata

Browse by Media

Filters by
media type
Connecting educators with others educators…
fostering a community of learners

Users have profiles

searchable by other
users.
Personal profile in the Community
Sharable
information
through social
networks
• Twitter [t]
• Facebook [f]
• Linkedin [in]
OER Content Playlists to promote and facilitate
remixing of core components of courses… share new
ideas for teaching by creating new topics and course
subjects with OER from the catalog
Create new
content:
• Course
• Topic
• Activity

Index subjects

Examples of playlists:

1. OER as textbook alternatives

(anthologies of resources)
2. OER as reusable resource
3. OER as learner generated/
modified content
Course: Introduction to Physics- Mechanics

Course:
Introduction to Physics- Mechanics
http://www.temoa.info/node/38310

Topics

Subscribe to RSS
feeds

Share with friends

and colleagues
through social
networks

Legal terms of
use
Course: Introduction to Physics- Mechanics
Bibliographic references for OER

Syllabus (Educational context)

• Learning objectives
• Subject general
• Basic information
• Teacher information
• Institutional information

Instructional metadata
• Basic information
• OER from several content
providers
• Authorship
• Educational level
• Student information
• Lecture hours
• Teacher information
• Instructor's academic profile
• Recommended academic
experience
• Evaluation policy
• Institutional information
• Course type
• Type of academic term
• Course identifier
Course: Introduction to Physics- Mechanics

How to cite the

OER in the
playlist
Course: Introduction to Physics- Mechanics
The community may review and
rate the course

The “board” represents a [Topic]

The “student” represents an

[Activity]

The “World” represents an

[OER]
Course: Introduction to Physics- Mechanics

The community may discuss or

debate about the course
Proposed adoption process of OER
at the Tecnológico de Monterrey
Search, Selection and
1 Index of resources 2

Selection of Selection of Alignment

knowledge areas to OER sources Availability of Selected
resources
enrich courses OER
courses

In example: i.e: OCWC

• Management
• Computer science
Course Design
Professor OER

Instructio
nal Design

Adoption and use of OER

3
Sharing experiences of use of the
OER
Institutional call to faculty in 2009 to foster
the adoption process of OER into their courses
and learning activities.
www.itesm.mx/va/diie/concursoKHUB/

www.temoa.info/testimonials

33 campuses
Adoption of OER in a graduate course for the
master degree of education: “Research for the
improvement of educational practices”
As a result, students documented 30 cases through a methodological research
process on the subject of adoption of the OER in learning activities, in several
knowledge disciplines and educational levels.
OER initiative for basic education (K-12)

• Enrich the classification and indexation

catalog of OER for basic and elementary
education level for the Latin American
educators

• To support process improvement and distance education, professional

development of teaching

• Contribute in reducing educational gap, and to foster more equal access to

educational resources.
OER for basic education (K-12)
Research Team (CUDI-CONACYT)
11 professors, 5 teachers, 8 researchers
6 institutions of higher education

150 teachers in 20 schools involved in basic education in a

research pilot
• Using OER in K12 programs for learning and teaching in the
classroom
• Improving teaching abilities in technology competencies,
information literacy and didactic techniques .
OER for basic education (K-12)
Some results:

• Design of one diagnosis instrument to identify the competence on digital literacy for the
participants in the project.
• Design of one training workshop on how to identify, evaluate and classify Open
Educational Resources (all six participant institutions collaborated on the design and
teaching delivery).
• Creation and production of one workshop and course materials, such as: digital
resources, formats, handbooks, handouts, and video tape recording.
• Defining criteria for identification and evaluation of the website sources of OER.
• Develop of six research projects within the main project, using different methodological
approaches.
• Design of four workshops to train K-12 teachers on how to select, document, use and
adopt OER within class.
▫ Total of OER documented = 291
▫ Total of OER used and adopted = 101.
• Four articles published in Journals
Mobile OER for the training of educational
researchers (ongoing investigation)

• Generate a collection of open educational

resources (OER) for mobile learning, on the
topic of educational research and research
training to be available in a portal (web site) for
free use, reuse and distribution with educational
purposes.
Mobile OER for the training of educational
researchers (ongoing investigation)
Research Team (CUDI-CONACYT)
22 professors, 7 researchers
7 institutions of higher education

The expected results for the month of December 2010 are a collection
of at least 30 OER for mobile access, seven sub-projects published in
journals and conferences, as well as the training of undergraduate and
postgraduate research assistants and a workshop to produce digital
content according the criteria of OER.
Lessons learned
• As a group, we decided to integrate several working teams
to reach the best potential of valuable source of knowledge
generation and learning through the creation of a
Community of Practice (CoP) for each research project.
Lessons learned

• Some access barriers were identified for the use of

Open Educational Resources (OER) in México
▫ The need for a better technological infrastructure (lack
of internet access, projectors and computers to display
and use the educational resources),
▫ Awareness of legal issues (access of the resources in
terms of licensing),
▫ Relevance about the content of the materials available
on the Internet (resources mainly from other countries
making difficult to adopt them in the local context),
▫ Lack of resources in Spanish (language issues),
▫ Digital literacy gap in K-12 schools and lack of
awareness in the institutional level (lack of information
in managerial levels).
Lessons learned

• For project of Mobile OER for the training of

educational researchers, the group as experienced
several institutional challenges:
▫ Legal issues (lack of awareness of the legal terms and the process of
licensing the academic work); the group preferred the use of Creative
Commons (CC) licenses.
▫ The decision of use international standards of metadata such as Dublin
Core (DCMI) to describe and classify the resources produced in the
institutional repository.
▫ The planning, production and publishing processes according the OER
criteria in a digital content repository (included the lifecycle process of the
workflow, the definition of user roles, as well as the governing business
rules of the institutional repository).
▫ The decision to use open platforms for storing and publishing the
educational resources, such as DSpace; see http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx/