Engaging with OER at universities

At present, there is great interest over the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) in all of its forms: OpenCourseware repositories OCW, spare open resources, or even more recently as Massive Online Open Courses (also called MOOC). This panorama has generated considerable debate about their effectiveness in terms of learning, sustainability and especially the role that higher education institutions play in this context. We understand that students are involved on formal and informal learning activities, and require universities should have new model to recognize their skills and abilities on these scenarios. One case study is the MOOC learning framework, where universities are interested but there are nowadays some doubts and fears about the official recognition as a usual learning activity. In this article we analyse some data from the activity in an Open Course developed in the University of Granada and the implications regarding learning skills and recognition. Finally, we link this approach with the studies given in the Open Learning Framework developed within the European project OERtest, in which five higher education institutions have conducted a pilot on this issue. We can offer some conclusions regarding the feasibility of certifying and award credits to a student.


Introducción
Since the establishment of the European Higher Education Area, European Universities have expanded their activities within different areas of collaboration and cooperation around course provision and joint degrees.According to (MILLER, 2011) the opportunity for faculty members and institutions to openly share content beyond traditional institutional boundaries has also grown into an international movement.This movement is not isolated, as we also see how the open access movement has gained increasing traction within universities, leading to the creation of numerous open educational resources (OER) repositories.These kinds of courseware repositories are offered to all learners worldwide through the use of internet, offering self-guided learning and sharing possibilities to teachers (MITx, 2011) (WALS K, 2012), and in a explosion of great interest from students, institutions and educational associations, have evolved to the provision of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) (COURSERA, 2011) (Edx, 2012) (UDACITY, 2013) (MiriadaX, 2013) (UnedCOMA, 2013).
Many initiatives and projects were dedicated to the production of OER, the use and reuse of such material, the related legal issues, and the implications of OER within traditional institutions, as shown in Table 1.However, very few have explored the possibilities of gaining credits through OER-based learning (OERu, 2012).The recognition of OER-based learning and its feasibility within European Higher Education institutions are the main objectives of the OERtest project (OERtest, 2010), a two-year initiative funded by the European Commission (EACEA, 2010), with participant institutions 4 from across Europe.In the following sections we refer to its main outputs (OERTEST CONSORTIUM, 2012) and how it has positive affected to the Coordinating institution, University of Granada, resulting in a real experience in OER-based learning recognition.

A Massive Open Learning Experience
AbiertaUGR (abiertaUGR, 2013) is a good example as a case study to understand the relevance of involving universities at OER and informal learning activities.The University of Granada has started in april 2013 this experience in Open Learning with an initial offering of three online courses free of fee (even with free accreditation fee), and the possibility of awarding 3 ETCS to its own students.This proposal has been developed using features that should be taken into account in this kind of scenario: -Use OER for learning activities and promotion of user-generated contents (GEA, M. 2013).
The courses have been developed to a wide community in order to adquire transversal competences and skills currently required in graduated tittles.Some of the most relevant competences are the following: • Knowledge and skills for an autonomous learning by creating their own personal learning environment.• Enhancing the collaboration and work in groups.
• Enhancing the creativity, leadership, and reputation on a online community of learning.
These abilities are engaged in a context of social learning enhanced in the abiertaUGR platform using everyday technologies (blogs, twitter, groups, bookmarks, forums, etc.), and conceived as a social community where users have relevance (Figure 1), as a living community, and each member has the own personal learning environment or space (Figure 2).Analytic data of internet access seem also to be very interesting.We had had during the first weeks of the course more than 22.000 visits of users, with an average of 15 minutes per visit (Figure 4).Also we covered (with only one Spanish course) visits from almost all the world (Figure 5).
Using the data gathered in this first course (the second course has just started at the time of writing this article) is the following: • Students enrolled: 1.805 • Student passed the 4 week course: 620 (34'4%) • Student with high activity (more than usual) 162 (8'9%).So, these data confirms that this model is suitable for massive courses and also, as a model to construct online learning communities connected with hicher education institutions using OER and informal learning as a method for engagement.• Course methodology: What is the best approach to conduct this kind of informal learning?
• Which is the evaluation process?

Main Outcomes
The outcomes of this kind of course were conceibed with some keypoint in its design: -Creation of personal learning environments (PLE) connected with these courses.
-Course Content enriched with lots of comments and suggetion from the commnity.
-New resources generated by the users accessible to the community (some of them open to all).
-Creation of a stable community of practice with tools for communication, relationships, etc.
-Closing up conclusions obtained from the community users working in group team where anyone could contribute.

An Open Learning Framework for Traditional Universites
The successfull execution of AbiertaUGR is the fulfilment of two important sides: an not to the possibilities that it derivative actions could be taken.We also, face the theory of the project with the implementation of AbiertaUGR (abiertaUGR, 2013).

Model of social and informal learning
In the OERtest project, we focus on opening up possibilities for assessment of institution and between institutions participating in a consortium.
A traditional system would see all of the following processes happening within one course, within a single institution: • Course design -whereby a group of experts and pedagogues design a curriculum, course structure and materials.
• Teaching / Learning -whereby the materials created by the course designers are used to create a learning experience (often with the help of tutors / teachers).
• Assessment & Certification -whereby the knowledge acquired in the learning experience is tested, and thus the learning experience is validated.Certification serves as evidence of completion of the validated learning experience.
• Accumulation & Recognition -Whereby a student acquires validated learning experiences, and uses them as a passport to obtain more advanced learning experiences.
In an unbundled system, these processes are performed individually by separate teams, often in different institutions.This leads us to a set of situations from which we want to explore with you two according to their relevance.

To what extent is it feasible?
To what extent can the qualification be trusted?(Does it reach the quality standards of the accepting institution?).
Can (and how) can the qualification be compared to that applied to a traditional course?2. Regarding the procedure of implementation.
How do you imagine the procedure of implementation in your unit or edmetic, 3 (2), 2014, E-ISSN: 2254-0059; pp.7-28  edmetic, Revista de Educación Mediática y TIC regarding your responsibilities?How could your unit implement this new approach?(Question oriented to elicit a positive answer and a possible procedure or sub-procedure of the unit) To guarantee the quality of the assessment this report proposes the creation of a learning-passport: a credit-level diploma supplement which would give full transparency to award the qualification.The learning passport is structured around a process-model of course design, provision and assessment, which when fully completed, gives a comprehensive picture of the holder's learning pathway.
The OERTest process model consists of 4 stages, each containing a number of processes, as following: design, learning, assessment and awarding.
These stages are detailed at Figure 8.
In the context of abiertaUGR these requirements were satisfied as follows.
We have organised the guidelides of the courses using gamification techniques, where students are awarded with some points due to their participation in the course.The available situations to aquire such recognition may be in one of the following circumstances: -Participation in debates: comments, opinions and questions are valuable in order to promote the skills of belonging to the community.
-Creating knowledge and supporting new material to the course.
-Social relationships, making personal collection of friends, using internal message for helping other users, etc.

1.
Is it easier or harder to assess learning from OER with study at higher (e.g.Masters) or lower (e.g.University entry) levels?(high level: more 'difficult' LOs but more mature learners, lower level: the other way around).

2.
Can all LOs be assessed for learning taking place through OER, and if so, how?If not, what kinds of LOs could not be properly assessed?

3.
Focusing on assessment methodologies: How to assess all the learning outcomes that would lead to credit being offered?

5.
What kind of assessment methodologies for the assessment of learning outcomes are usually used in universities in Europe?(Is it possible to find "more" and "less" accepted methods for assessment? Is there a mainstream?)

6.
What are the main barriers for HE institutions to accept other institutions' assessments/ grades/ credits? 7.
Are the results of assessment between universities transferable?(If one university X in country Y assesses a student, can this assessment result be transferred to another university -and under which circumstances and conditions would that be imaginable?)

8.
Which factors determine the value of an assessment result?(e.g. if the assessment method employed has been conducted in a sound way, the value of the assessment result is still depending on the curriculum of the program and on other context factors)

9.
Are there certain subjects for which the "transfer" or "recognition" of an assessment is more likely between universities and others where it is less likely?
In the context of abiertaUGR, we have several assessment methods: -Automatic award system after participation in activities: positive points, rate.
-Recognition from the community and the training team: likes and badges.
-Working-teams developed in groups.This activity has been very interesting with exciting results from each team.
With the previous assessment tools the evaluation panorama is covered focusing in these contexts: activity, reputation and outcomes.Some of these tools need a pedagogical team behind (one teacher per week and at least two content curator / mentor).These activities are also linked with social networks such as twitter and facebook.

Conclusion
The specific focus on assessment and certification is justified by the concern that OER for learning may remain in the sphere of informal and non-formal -and non-recognized-learning.Through the development of the right quality and assessment tools, it can also form an important new-pathway for student-centre learning within formal education.
The danger is that Open Education may develop into a new and parallel system of education, that is already happening with the strong move towards MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) -assessed and certified educational programmers offered by major universities, whose certificates are expressly not edmetic, 3 (2), 2014, E-ISSN: 2254-0059; pp.7-28  edmetic, Revista de Educación Mediática y TIC equivalent to those awarded for "traditional" education, and which are not compatible with any system of qualifications.

Acknowledgment
This paper has been funded with support of the Lifelong Learning Programmed of the European Commission, (EACEA) project agreement number 2010 -3887-Virtual Campuses (OERtest).This paper reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Students profile enrolled in Digital Identity mooc course.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Students profile enrolled in Digital Identity mooc course.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.User satisfaction with the course is 8 in average.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. User satisfaction with the social platform is 8 in average theory and practice.In fact it was a labour of research and work which started with the OERtest project coordination from the University of Granada and the development of a formal framework for OER recognition.This project was the seed to future implementation of OER-based acreditation of informal learning, thouth in this article we focus on open question at the level of the project itself

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U2: represents an HEI which has signed an agreement with U1 for mutual recognition of qualifications and/or credit.-U3 & U4: represent third-institutions which do not have any formal relations on mutual recognition, neither amongst themselves, nor with other institutions.To take further steps to provide a framework which would allow this learning to be recognised, some open questions needed to be clarified or extended in further research.1.Exploration of intuitions, beliefs, thoughts and feelings about the accreditation process from OER provision.Based on the accreditation approach from OER provision, what is thefirst impression/reaction? (An exploratory question about their opinion about the issue).

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Figure 8. OERtest model for informal learning most important phases in the OERtest project is testing the feasibility of OER based learning assessment at the participating universities.To enable such a service offer at these institutions, the development of a set of regulatory standards is necessary.This framework should be based on the one hand, on the existing literature in the field of assessment and quality assurance, and the quality and standards of OER.On the other hand, it should also consider good practices and examples from the involved universities (assessment, quality, inter-institutional collaboration, good practices from OER related projects etc.) Regarding the connection with the higher education model AbiertaUGR represents an informal learning scenario where students and professionals meet in a open online space organized as a regular courses, planning and tools to acquire knowledge, skills and competences though social activities.The intended goal is to include informal learning through massive online courses as regular activities at the university.

Table 1 .
the OU and sharing expertise in OER across a national community of practitioners, SCORE is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).It draws on lessons learned through the operation of the OU's OpenLearn.European initiatives regarding OER , as a natural complement to the materials which are being made available.Mainly we move to the possibility of universities publishing courses as edmetic, 3 (2), 2014, E-ISSN: 2254-0059; pp.7-28  edmetic, Revista de Educación Mediática y TIC resourcesetc., equivalent to a unit/module offered in any HEI.The certifying framework assumes the possibility of unbundled course design, assessment & certification possibilities, and accumulation & recognition procedures, both within an What are the policy measures at the national and EU level to support mutual recognition of OER learning outcomes?