By: David Kernohan

David Kernohan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:25:58 +0000

Hi Andy, and thanks for your comment.The 33% [of departments/schools] using TLTP resources remains braggable – I wish we could make comparable claims for UKOER or even OER as a whole. But TLTP was a much greater proportion of the total available number of digital learning resources at the time. I agree that it doesn’t equate to “a third of academics”, but the point I was making (really badly :-/) was that convincing a department/school to use a set of external resources as a matter of policy (to the extent that they would actually admit to it in a survey) must be as hard if not harder than convincing an academic to teach using OER. TLTP achieved a lot, maybe the time has come to evaluate it’s impact again.Is an OER still an OER if no-one uses it? It’s a rhetorical question really, the answer is yes, obviously it is. But looking at a lot of OER projects you’d think that academic reuse was the entire purpose of release. And that worries me, as in a lot of cases this will fail and people stop releasing because they will feel they have failed.

By: Andy Powell

Andy Powell — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:15:55 +0000

Hmmm… jumping from “33% [of departments/schools] were using the products” to “a third of any given pool of academics” is a bit of a conceptual leap to say the least – the former statement tells you almost nothing about actual uptake (probably intentionally!).I’m not sure that you answer the question posed in the title. The trite answer is ‘yes’ I guess… it’s ‘open’, it’s ‘educational’, it’s a ‘resource’ after all.The point is, it’s not an effective/useful/valuable resource unless it’s used/re-used – irrespective of whether that re-use is by teaching staff or students.Here’s an alternative question for you? What is the sound of one OER clapping? 🙂

Comments on: Is an OER still an OER if no-one uses it?

By: David Kernohan

By: Andy Powell