Teachers' toolkit for creating and re-purposing OER using FOSS/A toolkit for creating and re-purposing OER using FOSS tools

In a society that is becoming increasingly digital, it is no surprise that educational processes are also getting impacted by digital technologies (popularly known as Information and Communication Technologies, or simply ICTs). A significant development in the educational domain has been the rise of Open Educational Resources (OER), with the promise of delivering quality education. An essentially, digital phenomenon, OER seek to leverage the possibilities of digital methods for accessing, creating, modifying and sharing educational content. OER has redefined the copyright regime, stimulating the sharing of content with license to re-use, modify and share / publish. While the advantages seem obvious in terms of increased availability of curricular materials and reducing costs of education, research suggests that OER seems to have not achieved its potential for adoption.

What is OER

This toolkit proposes to enable teachers to use FOSS tools to create and re-purpose OER. . The term Open Educational Resource (OER) was coined at the 2002 UNESCO Forum on Open Courseware. Subsequently, its definition has been updated to the following:

…teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (2012 Paris OER declaration).

Even with this definition, what constitutes an OER can still be subject to interpretation and is sometimes confused with other learning resources. However, a more practical description as provided by Hoosen, Moore, and Butcher (2012) gives a clearer indication of the range of possibilities under this definition:

“They are educational materials and resources that are offered freely, are openly available to anyone and, under some licences, allow others to reuse, adapt and redistribute them with few or no restrictions. OER can include lecture notes and slides, lesson plans, textbooks, handouts given to students, videos, online tutorials, podcasts, diagrams, entire courses, and any other material designed to be used in teaching and learning. Thus, the scale of OER can vary significantly. They can be as large as a textbook or as small as a single photograph. They can make up an entire course or curriculum or can be used to enhance existing textbooks” (p. 2).

Using this definition, we can see that OER can support the free sharing and expansion in availability of educational resources. In any case, this toolkit should enable teachers to create and re-purpose OER, materials that are available freely for re-use, revision and re-distribution.

What limits OER adoption

‘’Build it and they will come?’’ This perhaps captures the current paradigm in the OER space, with more and more materials being made available from educators and institutions, but with limited uptake from users. One important reason behind this is the low level of awareness about OER and its possibilities. Causes could be:

1. legal - with limited awareness of open licensing possibilities amongst people
2. cultural - OER availability is more in English than in local languages, thus limiting access and use
3. social - OER creation is largely ‘expert-driven’ with limited participation of teachers and other resource creators and hence participation and even awareness is limited
4. pedagogical - teaching is often restricted to ‘text books’ in many education systems and teachers are yet to look beyond the text books for sourcing materials for their teaching

In addition the technology ecosystem plays an important role in OER adoption. With OER being essentially digital, the means of accessing OER for reuse, revision and sharing must be freely available. The digital allows creation possibilities in multiple ways – textual, graphics and audio-visual – and the availability of software applications for creation and re-purposing becomes critical. OER began as a digitization of textual resources and thus text format has dominated. Secondly, in a proprietary software dominant desktop environment, where the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is limited, it becomes prohibitively expensive for most individuals and institutions, to license proprietary applications for creating resources in audio, video and other media formats, thus limiting their creation. With the dominance of text format, and the lack of appropriate software applications, users did not have the means and tools for accessing and re-purposing OER in multiple formats, thus affecting its adoption.

However, we now have a wide variety of mature and high quality FOSS applications which can allow resource creators and editors to create, re-mix, revise and re-distribute OER in multiple formats. These are available on the desktop environment, on the web and on mobile phone platforms. The power of OER comes from its ‘openness’, that it can be freely re-used, revised and re-distributed. Similarly, software that is 'open' and can be freely re-used, revised and re-distributed can create a rich learning environment, by providing the tool-set for OER creation and re-purposing.

Free and open technology environment

An important power of the digital is the negligible marginal cost of production of digital resources, whether software or content. The following quote is popularly attributed to Bernard Shaw xxx - use APA style referencing.

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

This is applicable to digital resources as well. If digital resources are allowed to be freely shared, modified and shared again, then it can result in a resource rich environment. This is the idea that triggered of the Free and Open Source Software and the Open Educational Resources movements. Promoting a free and open digital technology environment will thus have a positive influence on OER adoption (including production and consumption) as well.

Democratizing OER production and consumption

Popularizing the use of FOSS applications amongst writers, editors and course developers can be hugely beneficial in enabling the larger and wider development of OER, and in richer formats. This process can help us move from a paradigm where OER is created by 'experts' for all, to a more participatory process where many more people can participate in OER production and exchange. Every teacher usually has to make or customise materials for her teaching-learning. This toolkit is an introduction to possibilities of OER creation and re-purposing through the use of various FOSS applications. We hope that access to a free and open technology environment will encourage every teacher to become an OER creator, an OER 're-purposer' and an OER publisher.

Facilitating Technological knowledge

Many, if not most users of ICT, restrict their use to a few software applications. However, if you are able to become familiar with many more applications, over time you will acquire a 'technology felicity', which will enhance your confidence. The FOSS universe has thousands of applications, many of which, you will find useful. In any area of work, you will find more than one application. Your learning need not be restricted to just one application in any area, learning more applications will increase your expertise and confidence. For instance, even in the area of text editing, you can familiarise yourself with LibreOffice Writer, gedit, KWrite etc. This process will enable you to explore any new application and learn its features on your own. Such 'learning to learn' ability can be a useful outcome from fearlessly exploring multiple applications, on your own.

On your Ubuntu GNU/Linux system you can download innumerable free and open source applications (Applications -> Other -> Software Centre) in different domains/areas, from the Internet. For instance, you could type 'mathematics' and see all the mathematics software applications available in the Ubuntu GNU/Linux repository, which you can download and install on your computer.

About the tool-kit

The “Hands-On Toolkit for Teachers to Create, Re-purpose and Publish Open Educational Resources (OER) using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)”, aims to promote the creation, re-purposing and publishing of OER using FOSS applications. The toolkit has been developed by IT for Change, an organization working with teachers and school systems on the use of FOSS for OER creation. This toolkit is aimed at native and non-English native speakers, hence the language has been kept simple and accessible.

The toolkit is available in two formats. One is this print edition, (soft copy through a PDF format, which you can use for printing, if you need a hard copy). The second format is an on-line edition in the form of a “Wiki book”. The Wiki book edition will also be shared off-line on a DVD, with the printed version of the tool-kit, which will enable user to read the digital version without internet connectivity.

Along with the tool-kit, a custom software distribution which contains the FOSS desktop tools covered in the handbook is shared as a DVD, which you should install on your computer, to create OER.

In line with the philosophy of OER, the toolkit is released under the CC-BY license, and the custom software distribution is released under the General Public License (GPL). The CC BY license enables you to make copies of the tool-kit with or without modifications and distribute it for profit or not for profit. The GPL license enables you to make copies of the software applications with or without modifications. Modifications if any, can be distributed only as FOSS.

How to use this tool-kit

The “hands-on toolkit for teachers to create, re-purpose and publish Open Educational Resources (OER) using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)” discusses the creation of OER in three separate chapters, dealing with text, image and animations, audio and video OER respectively.

Each chapter begins with information on commonly used open repositories for that resource format. In creating OER, keeping with the OER principle of ‘give and take’, it is necessary to first check for OER that is already available for the topic you are working on, and use these OER as an input to your own creation processes. Many find it easy to create based on what they currently know, ignoring existing OER. However, it is an academic principle to actively build on existing knowledge, hence accessing OER is the first step in creating OER.’’’

Subsequently, in each chapter, the features of a few applications that will enable you to create and re-purpose OER are explained. The selection of the tools from its universe is been based factors such as its popularity, ease of use, level of community support currently available.

In order to provide a step by step guide through real-world examples on how to create and re-purpose OER, the toolkit takes a case of “How to create an OER on Digital storytelling”. Over the three chapters, the toolkit will develop the OER for digital story telling, in text, graphic and audio visual formats. This is followed by a chapter on ‘Publishing OER’, to help you publish your OER on-line, for re-use by others.

You are now ready to begin using the tool-kit. The first step is to ensure you have the software applications required.

Install the custom distribution of Ubuntu GNU/Linux on your computer

You need access to the FOSS applications taught in this tool-kit, for which you should install the custom software distribution provided. The distribution includes the Ubuntu GNU/Linux free and open source operating system which can be installed as a full fledged software system on your computer. You can install it ‘side-by-side’ with any other operating system on your computer as well. A video on installing this custom distribution is available here.

Install the FOSS applications on your computer with Windows operating system

Many of the desktop applications discussed in this toolkit are also available on the Microsoft Windows operating system. You can download the software installation kit (.exe files) from the internet and install on the Windows operating system, see Annexure for information.

Install the FOSS applications on your mobile phone

You can install the FOSS applications discussed in the tool-kit, for the mobile phone (Android operating system), using the link for the app installer for each app, see Annexure for information. The installation can be invoked using Google Play Store or FDroid.

Create your own OER as a part of using this tool-kit

Identify an area which you are very keen to learn more about, or where you feel you need resources. Your own work as a teacher may require you to have materials for classroom teaching-learning processes, or for sharing with colleagues for mutual learning, or simply for your self-development. It will be much more meaningful learning, if as a part of using this tool-kit, you could access, create, re-purpose and publish a OER on a topic which you want to learn/ know more about. The topic could be from the subject you teach (a science topic like ‘Light’ or a mathematics topic such as ‘number system’ or a geography topic as ‘forests’), or a larger issue in education ('Challenges of teaching in inner-city public schools'), or larger social issue ('global warming'). You could create this OER in English or in your own native language (where the need for such an OER may be even greater).

Assumption about the user of this tool-kit

The toolkit assumes that you have a basic comfort in using computers, you can start and shut down a desktop computer. It assumes very basic familiarity with the commonly used applications on a computer, such as file explorer, web browser and text editor. The toolkit assumes similar basic comfort in using a feature mobile phone (aka ‘smart phone’). The toolkit also assumes that you are aware about the concept of OER and familiar with the copyright / licensing requirements of OER. If not, you can read the A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) book or undergo a two hour course on OER, from the CommonWealth of Learning.

Help

You can any time access this tool-kit, off-line or through the on-line Wiki repository to learn the FOSS tools to create, re-purpose and publish OER.

References