C-change in GEES is totally committed to using JorumOPEN for the delivery of all its OER materials and has always considered it to be the primary interface for  our community to find and download C-change OER materials.

We therefore have high hopes for how JorumOPEN will work for the Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences community, but feel that there are still some areas where we would like to see some improvements in the user interface and workflow, before we can unreservedly recommend it to our community.

After talking with JorumOPEN, they recommended that we post our experiences and thoughts to their forum on Community Bay.

We have done this and the thread can be found here:

http://community.jorum.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=98#p142

We would really appreciate any further thoughts that you had – posted on the thread there or if you prefer do go ahead and leave a comment here.

cheers

eib

For some of our OER Partners, there is a slight worry about ‘how’ their materials may be used (or mis-used) in the future.

They are happy for their material to be released, even under a ‘share-alike’ CC license….but still they worry that it might be re-used in a way that they feel could mis-represent their original intentions.  This is particularly the case with some materials that are built on research into  sensitive issues of ‘climate change’.

Some authors have suggested they might be more comfortable if we were to tighten up the CC license for these materials and released them under a ‘No Derivatives’ CC license, but we have tried to discourage this as we felt it was an approach that lay outside our ‘open’ intentions.

But recently another idea was suggested:

Could these materials be protected at all under the author’s ‘Moral Rights’ which allows the author:

“to object to derogatory treatment of the work or film which amounts to a distortion or mutilation or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director”

This seems an interesting idea and certainly I think we should add a line to our ‘Back Page’ notes that specifically says that the author retains the ‘Moral Rights’ on the work……however, there are some examples of where these rights do not apply and these include:

“where ownership of a work originally vested in an author’s employer”

So we again return to the thorny question of who the primary copyright holder is.  If we work on the principle that as the academic author was employed to write this material, he does not hold any copyright in the work, then he isn’t going to hold any ‘Moral Rights’ either.  However if an institute’s IPR policy allows for the original academic author to retain (in part or whole) the copyright in their own works, then arguably they should also have the ‘Moral Rights’.

For further details on ‘Moral Rights’ in the UK see:  http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-moralrights.htm

Any other thoughts on this?

This is a question that I had very early on,  that somehow got brushed a bit under the carpet.

All our partners have undertaken a fair amount of copyright clearance work and now have a list of permissions, licenses, letters, emails etc covering hopefully all the material within their resources.

Although we did endeavour to try and standardise this metadata across the partners, in reality each partner had a different set of resources, that gave rise to a different approach and now have a different set of materials that make up their due-diligence files.

So, is there any chance of finding or establishing a ‘standard’ way of storing them?

Stephen Whitfield at Keele has suggested we keep the files (or electronic version of them) within their repository with the materials.  I like this idea…..but is this really the best place for it?  It isn’t really a teaching resource is it?

Any thoughts?

We are getting to a point where most of our partners have got a large amount of their OER resources ready and we have to make a decision on just how we ‘wrap’ our OER before uploading.

We have already decided not to use a common ‘design’ or ‘look’ to the resources across all the materials as our partners want to retain their institutes logos and corporate design on their own material.  There is also a very wide range of material, that will be delivered in wide range of ways including: JorumOPEN, Institute Repositories, YouTube & Flickr.

But all the same it would be good if we could agree across the partners on some basic metadata and wordings that could be used within all of the c-change OER materials.

Currently we are thinking that this should include:

Front Page:

• Title of Work
• Author and Institute
• Date of creation or last updated

Credits, Terms & Conditions:

• Details of CC license with link to Creative Commons Website
• Details of any other 3rd party licenses are within the work
• Acknowledgements to the programme, project and funders

Should it include a ‘Take Down Policy’?  We are discussing this, but are tending towards the view that only the repository can provide that and not the item itself.

Then there is the question of how this information is best kept with the item.  Certainly it can be put into a page and held within the resource, but I would really like to consider also putting this data into the file-tags so that it is also held within the file itself.

Any thoughts?

Very useful online session today with Simon Ball from TechDis.  Full of useful and sensible material for our partners about making our OER resources as universally open to everyone as possible.

The six videos used in the presentation are openly available from the following URLs

1. Introduction: Inclusive Learning 09:34  http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8184
2. Reasonable Adjustment 08:14  http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8388
3. Organisational Added Value 10:08 http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8080
4. Standards, Guidelines and User Testing 10:26  http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8086
5. Communicating with users 04:32  http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8089
6. Sources of Support and Guidance 20:07  http://www.InstantPresenter.com/techdisonline/EC53DD8382

Happy viewing!

At the recent steering group meeting the issue of having a common look and feel or house style was raised. It was generally felt that this should be kept light touch with just a front page for each resource. As a starting point for designing a common template for a ‘cover-sheet’ for each C-Change OER resource I have generated the following list of potential items. This list is presented in no particular order and is shared with you to stimulate debate. It is too long and needs refining. Have a think about how it might work for your potential OER offerings – clearly It will have to work equally well for all potential outputs. Your thoughts are welcomed.

1. Authors
2. Institution Name
3. Keywords
4. Level
5. Learning outcomes
6. Material Type e.g. assignment,
7. Media type e.g. Text/HTML
8. Language
9. Conditions of use
10. Copyright holder
11. Context – description of the context from which the resource came, how it is used with students (teaching methods), relevant ‘design’ history, relevant previous experience of students
12. Use – how is it used with students
13. Benefits / Evidence of success – how does this resource benefit the student learning experience?
14. Advice and tips – preparation required for staff, students, learning environment, common issues and barriers faced by students and how to overcome them.
15. Links to other relevant C-Change resources – For example, you may be offering numerous separate resources that all emanate from a single module (e.g. 10 lectures and 2 assignments) and it will be necessary to cross-reference these.