Innovative experiences of

Open Educational Resources

towards academic knowledge
mobilization: Latin-American context

Vladimir Burgos
Liaison Officer of Innovation and Educational Technology 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)

Proceedings of OpenCourseWare Consortium Global

2011: Celebrating 10 Years of OpenCourseWare
Creative Commons Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 2

“The creation and transference of

knowledge is one of the strategies of wealth
and prosperity most promising and
challenging in the emergence of a
knowledge-based society”

We need to go beyond knowledge sharing and dissemination

of OER towards open educational practices (OEP).
 Frame of reference
Open Educational Resources (OER)
3

“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“

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)
 Frame of reference
Open Educational Practices (OEP)
4

“Open Educational Practices (OEP) are a set of

activities around instructional design and implementation
of events and processes intended to support learning.
They also include the creation, use and repurposing of
Open Educational Resources (OER) and their adaptation to
the contextual setting. They are documented in a portable
format and made openly available”

The OPAL Report 2011 “Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices”, The "Open
Educational Quality Initiative", retrieved at 23 February, 2011 from http://oer-quality.org/
 5

To move forward in the creation and sharing of knowledge

represented as open educational resources (OER), it is
important to recognize and properly document the use and the
type of knowledge being generated in educational institutions
(i.e. courses, articles, lectures, documentation, research, etc).

Open educational practices (OEP) may help us to make

evident the use we are giving to OER, this through the
documentation of teaching methodologies and strategies,
learning activities, study cases and any other forms of
presenting evidences of use of OER through the socialization
of educational experiences.
Knowledge value
6

The objective has to be the discovery, instrumentation

and operationalization of a sustainable cycle of virtuous
value creation, as a side effect of the capitalization of the
flow of information and knowledge in the activities
produced by the most valuable asset of the organization
(human capital).

OER
Comunnities of practice (CoP)
7

To succeed towards a knowledge-based economy,

organizations including educational institutions need
to recognize their knowledge assets and facilitate a
dissemination process through active local
communities.
 Barriers of academic knowledge mobilization
8

According to OPAL (2011) in its report “Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to

Open Educational Practices” there are five relevant barriers that need to be
addressed to ease the task to individuals to use OER:

1. Lack of institutional support;

2. Lack of technological tools;
3. Lack of skills and time of users;
4. Lack of quality or fitness of OER;
5. Personal issues (lack of trust and time).

The report argues for building confidence in the use of OER to enhance
their actual usage as well as the creation of open learning frameworks to
transform the way we see education nowadays.

The OPAL Report 2011 “Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices”, The "Open
Educational Quality Initiative", retrieved at 23 February, 2011 from http://oer-quality.org/
Study case: academic knowledge mobilization
9

The case that is presented refers to a Mexican

university, the Tecnológico de Monterrey
(www.itesm.edu) that has been working since 2007
on several open educational projects.

The Tecnológico de Monterrey is a private, non-profit

academic institution founded at the year of 1943 and
composed of 31 campuses across Mexico.

Since 1989 it has been a pioneer in distance

education, and with more of 20 years of experience
through its Virtual University, it currently reaches 29
countries and offers undergraduate, postgraduate,
continuing education, and social programs completely
online.
Academic knowledge mobilization
10

The biggest challenge we face is to foster the value of use of

existing knowledge in the process of sharing, assimilation and
application of focused knowledge to specific needs through
local communities of practice.
Sharing Selection Dissemination Mobilization

Academy
University
Government

Infomediary
INTERNET
--------------- Industry
Catalog of
OER
NGO

Communities

People
Towards academic knowledge mobilization
11

The idea with open educational practices (OEP) is to identify

(document) the activities of how educators are using OER in
their daily practice for teaching or research, as for example for
reuse, revision, remixing, redistribution and production of new
OER to promote innovative pedagogical techniques and
strategies to empower learners on their lifelong learning path.
 Sharing Selection & Dissemination Mobilization

[d1]
[d5]
OER content repository OER content lists
[a] http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx
Topics (learning activities)
OCW Consortium http://www.temoa.info/node/33487
www.ocwconsortium.org
[d2]
OER content lists
[c] Anthologies (course)
http://www.temoa.info/node/45210 [d6]
Knowledge Hub
OER Communities of Practice
temoa.info
Inter-institutional research
projects & training of faculty
www.cudi.edu.mx
[d3]
[b] OER eBook
Educational methodologies
OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.itesm.mx/ OER Catalog

[d7]
[d4]
OER for basic education “K-12”
Case studies http://khubk12.blogspot.com
OER content repository
http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx//handle/987654321/87

12
Sharing of knowledge (publication)
http://ocw.itesm.mx/
13
Selection & Dissemination of knowledge
www.temoa.info
14
 15

Criteria to select and 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).
Documented process of selection, categorization
and communication of OER
16

Identification, Searching, Filtering,

Selection, Documentation
INTERNET
Manual (human)

Socialize and share

Webpages

Semiautomatic
Repositories (technology/human)
Potential reuse, diffusion,
sharing discovery and
evaluation.
Common metadata
• Ease adoption
• Remixing OER to build
new knowledge
Metadata harvesting • One single window of
process discovery of OER
Mobilization of knowledge
17

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
 18

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
 19

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
 20

How to cite the

OER from the
playlist
 21

The community may review and

rate the course

The “board” represents a [Topic]

The “student” represents an

[Activity]

The “World” represents an

[OER]
 22

The community may discuss or

debate about the course
Mobilization of knowledge
http://tinyurl.com/bookREA
23

Adoption of OER in a graduate course for the master degree of

education: “Research for the improvement of educational practices”
As a result, 30 study cases were documented through a methodological
research process on the subject of adoption of the OER in learning activities,
in several knowledge disciplines and educational levels.

www.lulu.com
Mobilization of knowledge
http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx/
24

OER content repository

Mobilization of knowledge
www.ruv.itesm.mx/convenio/catedra/
25

 Integration of OER Communities of Practice

 Networking with research groups
 Inter-institutional research projects & training of faculty

www.cudi.edu.mx
Lessons learned and recommendations
26

 A good educational practice is to promote among the

academic community a culture of “prosumers” that,
according its definition, is about people whom produce
something (product/ service) for their own consumption.

 Support and recognize the relevance of OER initiatives at

the institutional level (involvement of decision makers
and staff).

 Promote a new culture and educational practice to

acquire the skills required to exploit fully the use of OER, for
example, digital literacy and information literacy.
Lessons learned and conclusion
27

 Promote a community-based system of open sharing of

educational best practices, with the intention of facilitating
the effective reuse of OER and learning of significant
experiences in the use of OER in teaching and learning
activities.

 Clarify and define licensing schemes and mechanisms

for the protection of copyright and intellectual property to
foster openness of OER, and to foster its use and
ownership of OER.
Based on:
28

Burgos, J.V, and Ramírez, M.S. (2011). Innovative experiences of Open Educational Resources towards
academic knowledge mobilization: Latin-American context. In Proceedings of OpenCourseWare Consortium
Global 2011: Celebrating 10 Years of OpenCourseWare. Cambridge, MA. USA

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

Project manager of OCW Tecnológico de Monterrey Marisol Ramírez

Full time Professor at the Graduate School of Education (EGE),
& temoa.info (Knowledge Hub OER Index)
and Principal of the Research Group of Investigation of Innovation
in Technology and education in Tecnológico de Monterrey
(ITESM)

Thanks!
vburgos@itesm.mx
solramirez@itesm.mx
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