Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> The potentialities of information technology, together with economic concerns, have been forcing various organizations to go electronic in order to reposition themselves toward a sustainable future. This has also happened to libraries, whose primary value lies not only in their collections but also in their contribution to education through smart organization and management of collected information, which they make easily usable and accessible to users. The paper addresses these issues and discusses such aspects as what is meant by “learning”, how can it be pursued and managed in the library environment, what is the functionality of the e‐learning library, and how the e‐learning resources are included and organized in the e‐learning library. <s> BIB001 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> Metadata enables users to find the resources they require, therefore it is an important component of any digital learning object repository. Much work has already been done within the learning technology community to assure metadata quality, focused on the development of metadata standards, specifications and vocabularies and their implementation within repositories. The metadata creation process has thus far been largely overlooked. There has been an assumption that metadata creation will be straightforward and that where machines cannot generate metadata effectively, authors of learning materials will be the most appropriate metadata creators. However, repositories are reporting difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, and it is becoming apparent that the issue of metadata creation warrants attention. This paper surveys the growing body of evidence, including three UK-based case studies, scopes the issues surrounding human-generated metadata creation and identifies questions for further investigation. Collaborative creation of metadata by resource authors and metadata specialists, and the design of tools and processes, are emerging as key areas for deeper research. Research is also needed into how end users will search learning object repositories. DOI: 10.1080/0968776042000211494 <s> BIB002 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> This paper depicts the sustainability of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in terms of the three models: funding, technical, and content. Discussion and recommendations are focused on the sustainability of OERs and the requirement that we think of OERs as only part of a larger picture – one that includes volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control. <s> BIB003 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> Marshall Smith directs the education program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. A member of the National Academy of Education, he served as a professor and dean at Stanford and as undersecretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education. Catherine Casserly is a program officer with the education program at Hewlett, where she is responsible for the Open Educational Resources Initiative. Prior to joining the Hewlett Foundation, she was the program officer for evaluation for the Walter S. Johnson Foundation and worked as a policy analyst for SRI International. <s> BIB004 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> For teachers and learners, the proliferation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in combination with advances in information technologies has meant centralised access to materials and the possibility of creating, using, and reusing OER globally, collaboratively, and across multiple disciplines. Through an examination of a community of author users of the OER portal Connexions, this article explores individual and group authorship, OER use and reuse and the factors contributing to and hindering these practices. As such, the paper sheds light on how OER can be sustained and continuously improved, with an emphasis on the use and reuse of dynamic, relevant, and high quality materials over time. <s> BIB005 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> Access to education is not freely available to all. Open Educational Resources (OERs) have the potential to change the playing field in terms of an individual’s right to education. The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded almost forty years ago on the principle of ‘open’ access with no entry requirements necessary. The University develops innovative high quality multiple media distance-learning courses. In a new venture called OpenLearn, The Open University is making its course materials freely available worldwide on the Web as OERs ( see http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). How might other institutions make use of these distance-learning materials? The paper starts by discussing the different contexts wherein two institutions operate and the inequalities that exist between them. One institution is a university based in South Africa and the other is a college located in the United Kingdom. Both institutions, however, deliver distance-learning courses. The second part of the paper discusses preliminary findings when OERs are considered for tertiary education at these two institutions. The findings emphasise some of the opportunities and challenges that exist if these two institutions adopt OERs. <s> BIB006 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> Open licences are critical for defining Open Educational Resources. The goal of this article is to explain the logic of open licensing to teachers, funders, and educational policy‐makers – to explain the relatively simple but vital considerations that are necessary to build this global educational commons of free learning material. In particular, we will stress the importance of ensuring that supposedly ‘free’ materials are not restricted by seemingly reasonable licensing decisions. <s> BIB007 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009. <s> BIB008 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> The open educational resource (OER) movement has the potential to have a truly transformative effect on higher education, but in order to do so it must move into the mainstream and facilitate widespread participation in the sharing or creating of resources and in their reuse. To help in this process, experience can be gained from projects and initiatives which have acted as forerunners to this movement. Here we present the experiences gained and lessons learnt from one such project based around the open sharing of reusable learning objects in health sciences education. In particular we share our experiences of reuse, its patterns, measurement, drivers, barriers, and tools designed to balance the pedagogical tensions between use and reuse. Like many in the OER movement we promote an emphasis on the role of community-building. We also argue that in order to produce materials that are worth sharing, value must firstly be placed on developing materials suitable for primary use, including robust evaluation and an alignment to real-world learning needs. Lastly, unlike the prevailing trends in OER we urge a consideration of quality assurance and outline the role that it can play in promoting sharing and reuse. <s> BIB009 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> In an explorative study, we investigated on German schoolteachers how they use, reuse, produce and manage Open Educational Resources. The main questions in this research have been, what their motivators and barriers are in the ir use of Open Educational Resources, what others can learn from their Open Educational P ractices, and what we can do to raise the dissemination level of OER in schools. <s> BIB010 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> In most initiatives to publish Open Educational Resources (OER), the production of OER is the activity with the highest costs. Based on literature and personal experiences a list of relevant characteristics of production processes for OER are determined. Three cases are compared with each other on these characteristics. Most influence on costs are human costs and the type of OER created. <s> BIB011 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> Attitudes are changing in education globally to promote the open sharing of educational courses and resources. The aim of this study was to explore staff awareness and attitudes towards ‘‘open educational resources’’ (OER) as a benchmark for monitoring future progress. Faculty staff (n6) were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews that facilitated the development of a questionnaire. Staff respondents (n50) were not familiar with the term OER but had a clear notion of what it meant. They were familiar with open content repositories within the university but not externally. A culture of borrowing and sharing of resources exists between close colleagues, but not further a field, and whilst staff would obtain resources from the Internet, they were reticent to place materials there. Drivers for mobilising resources included a strong belief in open education, the ability of OER to enhance individual and institutional reputations and economic factors. Barriers to OER included confusion over copyright and lack of IT support. To conclude, there is a positive collegiate culture within the faculty, and overcoming the lack of awareness and dismantling the barriers to sharing will help advance the open educational practices, benefitting both faculty staff and the global community. Keywords: open educational resources; staff attitudes; sustainability (Published: 3 February) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20 : 14395 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/14395 <s> BIB012 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> The list of barriers and enablers that influence the use of open educational resources (OER) is extensive. Factors and influences relating to reuse may have been noted within projects, operating within a short time span, or within specific conditions which limit generalizability. Evidence of reuse in practice has often emerged as isolated examples or anecdotes. Which factors are the most significant and which have impact or influence on reuse, and other factors, is largely unexplored. While technical barriers and enablers to reuse have been well addressed in literature on reuse, from reusable learning objects (RLO) to OER, less attention has been given to the purpose of reuse and the motivation of those who choose to share or use reusable learning resources. This paper draws on 222 factors and issues recorded within a longitudinal cross case comparison of five cases within UK HE which collectively address different types of reuse (i.e. sharing and use) facilitation (Pegler, 2011a). Coding and comparison identified three broad and distinctive categories representing the reuse factors noted. These were: Technical (the technical or technological systems supporting reuse, including licensing and rights issues); Quality (the way in which sharers or users may establish or interpret the quality of one resource relative to another); and Motivation (the purpose or motive of the user or sharer of resources). The independent effect of these factors recalls the classic two factor theory of motivation by Herzberg (1968). <s> BIB013 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> We analysed how teachers as users of open educational resources (OER) repositories act in the re-use process and how they perceive quality. Based on a quantitative empirical study, we also surveyed which quality requirements users have and how they would contribute to the quality process. Trust in resources, organizations, and technologies seem to be of particular importance when looking at quality. In our findings, we derive recommendations for learning object repositories and OER user-oriented quality assurance. <s> BIB014 </s> Questions of Quality in Repositories of Open Educational Resources: A Literature Review. <s> Reviewing the literature: themes and QI <s> This chapter begins by reviewing the many definitions of the term open educational resources and concludes by discussing challenges and opportunities for the approach. Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials either licensed under an open copyright license or in the public domain. Neither the term “open educational resources” nor the term “open” itself has an agreed upon definition in the literature. Research regarding open educational resources focuses on methods of producing OER, methods of sharing OER, and the benefits of OER. Significant issues relating to OER remain unresolved, including business model and discovery problems. <s> BIB015
Drawing from our analysis of the literature, we would argue that the ethos underlying the creation of ROER can be said to comprise four key themes, which we refer to as Search, Share, Reuse, and Collaborate. The purpose of ROER is to support educators in searching for content, sharing their own resources, reusing and evaluating materials, and adapting materials made by or in collaboration with other members of the community. The four themes can be understood in greater detail as follows: (1) Search: As Google tends to be the first reference point for many people, it can be considered a 'living index and repository for enormous content'  . Although the internet has among its archives billions of documents and multimedia materials that can be found by using search engines, it is a more complex task to ensure that the materials and documentation discovered in such searches are appropriate to a specific educational field and context. For BIB001 , it is difficult for educators to build and maintain personal collections and is 'very time consuming to locate and retrieve distributed learning materials'. For BIB012 , searching for OER in repositories facilitates the non-commercial reuse of content with minimal restrictions. (2) Share: According to  one of the possible positive effects of openly sharing educational resources is that free trade fosters the dissemination of knowledge more widely and quickly, so more people can access resources to solve their problems. For BIB009 the quality assurance and good design of OER can enhance the reuse and sharing of OER, as 'evidence suggests that those who feel empowered to reuse are more likely to themselves to share and vice versa' (p. 16). According to BIB013 , if OER are not shared or reused, the main objective of the OER cannot be accomplished; also, the number of times in which a resource has been shared can be considered a measure of resource quality, as it provides an indication of the impact a particular resource has had. (3) Reuse: A key concern of educators regarding the reuse of OER relates to the contextualisation of resources; to adapt, translate or reuse materials for use in different socio-cultural contexts could potentially be more difficult or costly than creating new resources. To alleviate these challenges, the main impetus BIB005 . The practice of reusing content has in the past been considered 'a sign of weakness' by the academic community, but this point of view has been changing as the OER movement is increasingly embraced by academics which are willing to share their content with others  ). (4) Collaborate: OER repositories, if well designed, can serve to facilitate different communities of users who collaborate in evaluating and reusing content and co-creating new materials by encouraging the discussion around improvement of resources BIB005 . Though traditionally teaching materials were produced within the context of a classroom, OER can be created collaboratively in virtual spaces (McAndrew, Scanlon, and Clow 2012) . ROER have potential as a framework in which 'various types of stakeholders are able to interact, collaborate, create and use materials and processes' (Butcher, Kanwar, and Uvalić-Trumbić 2011) . Assuming these four themes together make up the ethos of OER repositories, it is also worth distinguishing between the technical and social characteristics of a repository, and how these are transformed by openness. For  , Whereas openness in the social domain is fundamentally motivated by the expected social benefits and by ethical considerations related to human freedoms, openness in the technical domain, in contrast, is motivated by technical interoperability and functionality. (p. 9) Based upon our review of the literature, there are certain indicators of quality in the design and implementation of ROER, which, taken together, constitute a range of social and technical characteristics, and provide a support structure for the four themes. The 10 most recurrent QI identified in the literature are as follows: (1) Featured resources: Featuring (highlighting) certain resources held in a repository can benefit educators by exposing them to additional materials that can be either interesting, original or novel, or by showcasing resources indicated as high quality by peers  BIB013 BIB005 . (2) User evaluation tools: Allowing users to evaluate resources promotes the successful development of OER user communities, and might facilitate content retrieval, as academics tend to trust scholarly opinions. Trusting users to evaluate content can help in gaining a critical mass of OER engaged users which support the quality control of resources BIB014 BIB003 BIB010 . (3) Peer review: The literature highlights the value of evaluating OER through a formal peer review process, as it can improve the quality and usefulness of resources. A comprehensive way to assure quality for OER is to specify a series of standards for peer review instruments in order to evaluate the resources. This quality assurance of OER can thereby ensure the users' confidence in the materials  BIB011 BIB009 ). (4) Authorship of the resources: Attributing authorship to the resources can encourage academics to feel confident in making use of existing OER, and might also act to encourage others to share their resources with the full confidence that their intellectual property is recognised. As Timmermann (2014) notes 'The function of intellectual property rights is primarily instrumental: it is a societal tool to stimulate innovation' (p. 2). Ensuring authorship of the resources is recorded and displayed is key in motivating use, reuse and sustainability of OER  Butcher, Kanwar, and Uvalić-Trumbić 2011; BIB005 . (5) Keywords of the resources: Contextual description in the form of keywords or descriptive concepts which are user generated (rather than standardised taxonomies) for OER can be provided on upload to the repository as this enhances opportunities for users to retrieve and evaluate the usefulness of a resource   (OECD 2007, p. 101) , and also should be interoperable between repositories, thereby maintaining OER pedagogical quality and objectives. In order to achieve quality metadata, it might be necessary to employ a team of information science professionals to improve the existing metadata in ROER to facilitate content retrieval across different disciplines  BIB002 BIB004  BIB006 ). (7) Multilingualism of the repositories: As suggested in point G of the Paris OER declaration  , it is important to 'Encourage the development and adaptation of OER in a variety of languages and cultural contexts. Favour the production and use of OER in local languages and diverse cultural contexts to ensure their relevance and accessibility'. One of the biggest challenges of searching for OER is to find relevant resources that have been produced in other countries, particularly when the user does not possess a profound knowledge of the local language. Therefore, ROER must provide information in different languages to facilitate content retrieval  . The critical point of creating multilingual ROER is the risk that language barriers and cultural differences may consign less developed countries to the role of consumers of OER rather than contributors to the expansion of knowledge (OECD 2007;   . (8) Inclusion of social media tools for sharing resources: The advantage of integrating existing online practices such as social media use with ROER is to produce a single powerful environment where people can be part of a community  . For  and Butcher, Kanwar, and Uvalić-Trumbić (2011) , one of the essential elements of OEP is social interaction; increased online access to OER and the use of social networking 'has created opportunities for pedagogical innovation' (UNESCO 2011, p. 2) . For BIB005 , 'OER serves to facilitate Á through accessible technology and alternative licensing Á a community of users who collaborate, discuss, critique, use, reuse' (p. 100). Finally, the Paris OER declaration, recognising the value of communities of practice sharing educational content, recommends that OER initiatives facilitate and encourage sharing via user-friendly tools (UNESCO 2012). (9) Specification of the type of creative commons licences per resource: The use of CCL is implied in point D of the Paris OER declaration which aims to 'Promote the understanding and use of open licensing frameworks. Facilitate the reuse, revision, remixing and redistribution of educational materials across the world through open licensing, which refers to a range of frameworks that allow different kinds of uses, while respecting the rights of any copyright holder' (UNESCO 2012). CCL have become the standard licenses for the sharing of OER materials BIB007 BIB015 BIB008 ) , as they provide accurate information regarding intellectual property and the terms for fair use of the resources (Jacobi and van der Woert 2012). This flexible licensing scheme affords 'opportunities to reserve some, but not all, rights' (OECD 2007, p. 119 ). (10) Availability of the source code or original files: The provision of source code (or of the original, editable file or files that make up a resource) is based on the General Public License 2.0 (GNU) and sustained by the CCL scheme. Both GNU and CCL aim to protect the intellectual rights of the authors of the resources while at the same time enabling and facilitating access to the source code or original files. This, in turn, enables users to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute OER  BIB005  UNESCO 2011) . Thus, any development of ROER must consider three main areas, which are the social and technical characteristics of the ROER, the specific QI, and the extent to which the repository supports the themes, as summarised in Table 1 .