In activity 11 we are asked to compare the advantages and disadvantages of ‘big OER’ and ‘little OER’ approaches.

Weller (2010) describes traditional (big) OER as education providers producing high quality outputs tied to budgets, timescales and project constraints. Weller (2012) goes on to describe ‘Frictionless’ sharing. This approach refers to the low barrier of entry for scholars to create educational content then distribute at will through, for example, social networking.

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Big OER producers include:
• Universities such as Open University
• Large organisations such as BCCampus
• Television stations and broadcast companies such as the BBC (2020a) who collaborate with the Open University to commission education resources.

The advantages of Big OER approaches:

• Large organisations have access to significant funding to create high quality resources. (McAndrew et al. 2009) provides the start-up funding figure for OpenLearn of almost two million pounds.
With such funding specialised staff such as professors, writers, researchers, cinematographers, editors can be employed to work on new commissions.
• Highly recognisable brands in education delivery have, to a certain extent, the advantage of an established audience.
• The larger organisations already have established infrastructure to deliver their content in a reliable and consistent way.
• Large organisations have procedures and experience with projects which may lead to greater success rates.
• High quality course materials tend to need less alteration to allow them to be adapted to new settings.

The disadvantages of Big OER approaches:

• Projects are the subject of much pre-planning. Changes in direction for a large project may be more difficult. Alterations may also be very expensive. Weller (2012) relates his past experience of large projects spending much time considering what to share and how but not actually succeeding.
• Big OER projects have a responsibility to deliver on time and budget. The BBC / OU Commissioning site [BBC 2020b] and linked production page shows the complexity of requirements to fulfil a production brief.
• Audiences must be predicted by focus group and identified need.
• The predictable, project-based approach of big OER may miss out on important, accidental discoveries. (FORA.tv 2009) explains how Inventions such as Wikipedia gained popularity by accident whilst the author was attempting to make something entirely different.

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The advantages of little OER approaches:

• No Project goals to stick to:
Frictionless content creation suggests the possibility that anyone with an idea and an internet connection can start their own project.
• Materials can be produced with little skill or prior knowledge of technology.
• Projects can happen quickly
• There is no specific audience, in fact there may be no initial audience at all.
• There is little money at stake except for the time of the educator.
• Provided source material is referenced and properly licensed there need not be any time delay. Contrast with the complex license clearances, filming permissions and post production workflow of big productions.

The disadvantages of little OER approaches:
• No quality control means the outputs may be low quality. Bad audio is especially evident in low budget productions.  The importance of good audio is described in SaraBS23 (2013) video.
• No brand recognition can mean it is difficult for creations to gain any traction.
• Perhaps no access to high quality equipment or expertise.

In conclusion it appears that Big OER producers have the money and staff to produce high quality content at the expense of some flexibility. In contrast to this little OER producers have fewer constraints but are more likely to produce lower quality content as a result.

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References:

BBC (2020a) Open University Commissioning, Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/open-university (Accessed: 31st March 2020).

BBC (2020b) Open University Production and Delivery, Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/production/articles/open-university (Accessed: 1st April 2020).

FORA.tv (2009) The Disruptive Power of the Generative Internet – Jonathan Zittrain, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–viB3zTznA (Accessed: 31st March 2020).

FutureLearn (2020) Our Story, Available at: https://www.futurelearn.com/about-futurelearn (Accessed: 3th March 2020).

SarahBS23 (2013) Good vs. Bad Audio, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUb9kIwHfoE (Accessed: 7th April 2020).

Weller, M (2009) future interview, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6jt5bqMqY0&feature=related (Accessed: 31st March 2020).

Weller, M. (2010) Academic Output as Collateral Damage, slidecast [Online]. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/ mweller/ academic-output-as-collateral-damage (Accessed: 31st March 2020).

Weller, M. (2012) ‘The openness–creativity cycle in education’, Special issue on Open Educational Resources, JIME, Spring 2012 [Online]. Available at http://jime.open.ac.uk/article/view/2012-02 (Accessed: 1st April 2020).