Experts from the Commonwealth Asia Discuss Quality Guidelines for Open Educational Resources on 13-15 March 2013 at MANUU, Hyderabad

New Delhi/17/03/2013: Experts from the Asian region discussed and debated the necessity, usefulness, and relevance of the draft criteria and guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in a three day regional consultation workshop held at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) campus at Hyderabad. Participants from the Commonwealth Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia deliberated in the event from 13-15 March 2013 in the historic city of Hyderabad during the second World Open Education Week (11-15 March 2013).The workshop hosted a mix of keynote presentation, paper presentations and group discussion on quality criteria for OER developed and facilitated by Prof. Paul Kawachi, Professor of Instructional Design, and Editor of the Asian Journal of Distance Education.

The issue of quality OER has been raised often in different fora ever since the emergence of the phrase -- Open Educational Resources -- in the “Forum in the Impact of OpenCourseWare on Higher Education in the Developing Countries” in 2002. Notwithstanding various OER projects and initiatives, teachers and users of OER do not have a set of criteria and guidelines to consider before using any OER in their own context. While it is argued that the quality indicators should be same for use of learning material in any context, the nature of OER and digital networked environment brings in new dimensions. Considering the complexity, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) has been engaged in developing quality guidelines for OER. The objective of this activity is to assist users of OER to assess quality from a lens devised by them using the criteria in the guidelines.

Inaugurating the three day consultation workshop, Prof. Mohammad Miyan, Vice Chancellor of MANUU emphasized the need for quality learning materials that are backbone of distance education. The emergence of OER and availability of free learning materials will help distance teaching institutions to quickly develop courses and programmes at a reduced cost, he added. However, he emphasized the quality of OER should be ensured to help the student learn. He urged the faculty of MANUU to look into the OER movement critically and embrace the best practices to be discussed in the three day event.  Prof. V.S. Prasad, Guest of Honour in the event emphasized that the quality guidelines should be useful to the three stakeholders of OER – teachers, students and institutions. Thus, the guidelines should be developed in such a way that each of the stakeholders gets the best out of it, he stated. Tan Sri Prof. Gajaraja Dhanarajan, Former President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, delivered the keynote address in the inaugural session and highlighted the quality concerns in higher education system the world over. He discussed the quality criteria stipulated by international and regional agencies, and linked that the quality of OER should be within the international frameworks acceptable to the community. Prof. Dhanarajan within the contemporary developments of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), and the availability of open courses, asked several questions of openness and quality, and emphasized that some of these are challenges to all educators in the world. In the inaugural session, Prof. K.R. Iqbal Ahmed, Director of the Directorate of Distance Education, MANUU welcomed the guests, while Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA proposed a vote of thanks.

The workshop was facilitated by Prof. Paul Kawachi for the discussions on criteria of the guidelines, while Prof. V. S. Prasad, Former Director, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), India chaired the two technical paper presentation sessions. Ten experts presented their views on the quality issues affecting OER. The group activities on the OER quality guidelines looked at the comprehensive work done by Prof. Kawachi, including the international consultations over the Internet with 50 experts. Post this consultation workshop, Prof. Kawachi will prepare a revised draft that may be called “OER Quality TIPS: Guidelines for Creators” for further implementation and validation exercise. The acronym TIPS can be expanded as Teaching and Learning Quality, Information and Content Quality, Presentation Quality, and System Quality. Under each of these headings, the guidelines will be elaborated, and the participants stressed the need for focussing on “Openness” of the teaching and learning materials, as a quality parameter, and how this aspect of OER makes it different from other educational resources. It is expected that a draft set of guidelines will be ready by May 2013 for further circulation.