Comments on: On the Lack of Reuse of OER

By: Open Educational Resources and the University Library Website « OUseful.Info, the blog…

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:46:58 +0000

[...] to kickstart the uptake of open educational materials has not be as easy as might be imagined (e.g. On the Lack of Reuse of OER), but maybe this is because OERs aren’t as ‘legitimately discoverable’ as other [...]

By: Interesting Research on the Reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER) | Mark Smithers

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:12:14 +0000

[...] stumbled on this interesting blog post on the lack of reuse of OER. It reports the findings of a recent PhD thesis examining the extent of [...]

By: Riina

Riina — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:33:32 +0000

Hi David, Interesting, but so not surprising! We've been looking at the same thing over here in Europe. Here's a complementary (not published!) study for your collection, where I looked at the use and reuse on 2 platforms: LeMill and Calibrate from European Schoolnet. My twist was to study cross-boundary use and reuse, i.e. teachers reuse of learning resources that are in a language other than their mother tongue and originate from different countries than they do. We also found that the general reuse stays around 20% (this was what Ochoa found in his ,PhD too), and that the cross-boundary reuse was notably less (37% to 55% of it). Moreover, in some of the repositories only around 10% of resources were ever added to a collections!

By: Riina

Riina — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:31:26 +0000

Hi David, Interesting, but so not surprising! We've been looking at the same thing over here in Europe. Here's a complementary (not published!) for your collection, where I looked at the use and reuse on 2 platforms: LeMill and Calibrate from European Schoolnet. My twist was to study cross-boundary use and reuse, i.e. teachers reuse of learning resources that are in a language other than their mother tongue and originate from different countries than they do. We also found that the general reuse stays around 20% (this was what Ochoa found in his , too), and that the cross-boundary reuse was notably less (37% to 55% of it). Moreover, in some of the repositories only around 10% of resources were ever added to a collections!

By: Tom Anderson

Tom Anderson — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:51:30 +0000

I’d be interested to see how often the learning objects were accessed by content designers. In computer programming, most code is not reused, but nowadays programmers rely on google code and other code search engines to find out how others solved similar problems. I’d guess that if content designers can observe the learning objects of others, the result would be better learning objects.

And an obvious next step would be to interview the users of the repository, to find out what makes them reuse the learning objects, or why they don’t. I’d have to guess that the teachers are afraid to reduce the novelty effect; when a student comes to a new class and the learning objects are old, the student might express disapproval. Another contributing factor in the use or disuse of the learning objects in the repository would be training and the support of a peer-network. If the higher-ups don’t encourage learning object reuse, then I’d suppose many will be inclined to use their old methods of designing lessons.

This was an interesting study, especially because it raised many more questions than it answered.

By: iterating toward openness » Blog Archive » Dark Matter, Dark Reuse, and the Irrational Zeal of a Believer

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:06:59 +0000

[...] recently reported the results of Sean Duncan’s dissertation, which calls into question the actual rates of reuse of open educational resources. A number of [...]

By: Kris

Kris — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:44:20 +0000

In OER, I think the differences between OpenCourseWare content and Learning Objects affect reuse.

By: How Much OER is Really Reused? « Open Education News

How Much OER is Really Reused? « Open Education News — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:50:14 +0000

[...] 7, 2009 · No Comments David Wiley, in a recent blog post, relates the results of research conducted around reuse with the Connexions repository. The [...]

By: Wayne Mackintosh

Wayne Mackintosh — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:51:42 +0000

Hey David — I echo my congratulations to DOCTOR Sean! This is a timely contribution — particularly as we’re beginning to think about the technological grease that could smooth and scale remix and reuse scenarios in the OER world. I’m off to read the dissertation!

Over at WikiEducator we’re exploring the reusability paradox and possible solutions. Assuming success with our funding proposal we’re hoping to build a bridge between Connexions and Mediawiki. This could create interesting opportunities for “remixing”: (1) Producer-consumer models of OER production with (2) Commons-based peer-production models.

Given WMFs recent announcement in migrating to Creative Commons Licensing — we could see some very interesting remix scenarios for the future

By: Leigh Blackall

Leigh Blackall — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:37:17 +0000

Nice one! This will be up there with the Reusability Paradox Dave! And very similar causes too. To my mind, it depends what we call OER… I’m personally suspicious of anything calling itself “educational”, more often than not because it simply results in a too narrow consideration of the issue. What if we thought of the Internet as the OER? The only real barrier to reuse is of course some people’s take on copyright, so how about we look to the open Internet – being all the information, media, and communications that is implicitly available for access and reuse. For example, Youtube. While OER purists reject Youtube content, it is actually openly accessible, and encourages reuse, and is relatively easy to make copies. Probably a better example would be Blip.tv and Flickr who do go to the effort to allow CC licensing. There are many others of course. If we were to include such things in our definition of OER, then the reuse is HUGE. I’d say the problem with OER is the E word.. resulting in resources that are too complex and too contextualised to be of any use to reuse. Your paradox again. If OER repositories and authoring platforms like Connexions and WIkieducator were to simply aggregate content from all across the open Internet, and if we measured the reuse of individual items of media instead of whole compositions, then the reuse would be impossible to count – not least because the line between educational and non educational is harder to see.