This page will look at issues related to the relationship(s) learners might have with Open Educational Resources; hopefully, material gathered here will inform our discussion on the cascade framework and ways in which we are planning to embed student engagement within that framework. Comments and contributions are very welcome!

According to the authors of the synthesis report from the OER pilot programme, most subject strand projects expressed frustration that they did not have the time or funding to research what learners actually want from open educational materials. This was certainly true in the case of C-SAP pilot project. For instance, originally we did plan to engage students in evaluation efforts but were prevented from doing so by time constraints. In the end, we only managed to secure some student involvement through one of the case studies, which included interviews with four students commenting on their experience of the module on feminist embodiment. At the same time, we made the issue of student engagement key element of the cascade project bid for the second phase of the OER programme, where we are looking at ways in which can be integrated sustainably into curriculum design processes in a manner which effectively engages the students. We are also planning to involve students at partner institutions in the process of reviewing the cascade support framework. While the framework for student engagement will keep evolving in the course of our project, in the meantime we can draw upon experiences of the individual strand projects who have been engaging directly with learners, either for testing prior to wider release, to build communities, or as producers of OERs.

Overall, the consensus from the individual strand projects was that students support the open sharing of teaching and learning resources and view OERs as supplementary resources that could improve the quality of their learner experience. In terms of potential benefits, OER can make it easier for students to access materials on topics that cannot easily be accommodated within the main curriculum. Furthermore, students can also benefit from applying knowledge in a wider context than their course would otherwise allow, such as for instance international dimension. Interestingly, in terms of students’ own readiness to share, according to the OTTER project at University of Leicester, a third of students say they would not be willing to turn their own materials (e.g. lecture notes) into OERs and share them with other students. At the same time, the involvement of students in producing OERs introduces additional issues related to IPR and copyright since not all universities have a clear IP ownership policy for student work.

OER has a broader potential for learning and teaching than simply making resources publicly available. Widely available learning content, is fundamentally changing the relationship between students and their institutions as sources of expertise. This presents a challenge to existing models of the production of academic knowledge and the role of the institution in supporting student learning. For instance, the researchers on the ChemistryFM project at University of Lincoln put forward the the idea of the 'student as producer', where OER production and licensing may be used to flatten the hierarchy between staff and students. Within that framework, student-producers collaborate with staff on the production of OERs, leading to a more collaborative approach to teaching and learning.