Moving to Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University: A Case Study

Since the birth of the World Wide Web, educators have been exchanging ideas and sharing resources online. They are all aware of the turmoil in higher education created by freely available content, including some hopeful developments charted in this issue. Interest has grown steadily over the past decade in making a university-level education openly available to students around the globe who would otherwise be overlooked, and recommendations for how to do this are well documented (e.g., UNESCO, 2002; OECD, 2007). Initiatives in the United States (Thille, 2012), Canada (Stacey, 2011b), Africa (OER Africa, n.d.), and the United Kingdom (JISC, 2012) are easily accessed and case studies abound (e.g., Barrett, Grover, Janowski, van Lavieren, Ojo, & Schmidt, 2009). Supporting the widespread availability of OER is a goal that Athabasca University (AU) has embraced through association with the Commonwealth of Learning and by becoming a charter member of the OER University (OERu, 2011). The use of OER in AU programs has strategic local implications that go beyond the five reasons for institutions to engage in OER projects described by Hylén (2006). Recently at AU explorations have begun into the potential of using OER in course design and production.


Introduction
As leading open education advocate Stephen Downes (2007) notes, understanding the sustainability of OER includes knowing "what they are, who creates them, how we pay for this, how we distribute them, and how we work with them" (p. 29). This article reviews briefly what they are and looks at the other questions with respect to the AU case. It describes the context within which AU provides teaching and learning services, including the challenges and opportunities that have led it to consider moving to OER.
It outlines the design theory and instructional principles underpinning completed OER projects, with a brief illustration using two examples. The article concludes with a description of the current plan and expected next steps towards including OER in large numbers of AU online courses.

The AU Context
As is the case for all Canadian universities, Athabasca University is provincially accredited. It is a comprehensive research university with distance education as its mandate. AU is also an open university. When it was founded in 1972, "open" meant primarily that the university was committed to removing barriers that restricted learner access. But the notion of openness as a philosophical stance has continued to influence policy on diverse matters. Reflecting its mission to serve non-traditional students in Alberta and beyond, AU is one of the small number of universities that have no entrance requirements for undergraduate programs. The university does provide screening self-tests to help students decide which level they are prepared for in subjects such as math and English, and individual courses do have prerequisites. The year-round registration policy enables learners to begin courses on the first day of any month, completing them at their own pace. This open, continuous admissions policy is the first degree of openness at AU, "which admits students without regard to their previous educational background or achievements. To enter Athabasca University as an undergraduate student, you must be 16 or older. No other conditions apply" (Athabasca University, 2009

Challenges and Opportunities
Athabasca University is facing a number of challenges related to its transformation from a twentieth-century distance education university delivering mainly print-based course materials with tutor support to an innovative online university that engages students in dynamic and interactive learning environments. Digital learners in the twenty-first century have high expectations for anywhere, anytime service (Gabriel et al., 2012;Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). Academic and administrative systems at AU need to be completely re-conceptualized to support online learning. Some faculty and staff are reluctant to embrace the changes needed to move teaching and learning into a digital environment. Others lack the skills needed to adopt new practices. Opportunities to address these challenges are being sought while courses are being redesigned for the online world.
The cost of course materials, particularly textbooks and online learning resources, is rising faster than enrolment revenue and is contributing to already tight budget pressures of declining provincial funding, inadequate ICT infrastructure, and rising year typical of traditional universities. And the cost of these resources is often prohibitive for courses with lower enrolments.
Regarding intellectual property, AU owns all aspects of all its courses; copyright concerns are limited to the use of third-party materials embedded in courses (any source can be linked to without obtaining copyright clearance). In response to uncertainty in the permissions arena, AU is moving away from third-party resources that cannot be directly accessed in digital form-this is a long-term strategy which is quite different from historical practice. Advocates of OER within the university have proposed including priority for OER in the course development policy currently under review to bring it up to date with online teaching and learning. They believe it will speed up production and reduce costs significantly. The possibilities are just beginning to be tested.
Thus OER have become an attractive option. For a university in transition from printbased to digital course development, the prospect of having conversations in the academic community about digital resources is a real advantage. OER offer us a chance to collaboratively explore new ideas and to test new course development and production approaches that better support an online teaching and learning environment. These discussions are helping course developers at AU consider alternative sources for content and activities in support of learning outcomes. Improved quality in our courses is already evident. For example, faculty members are adding RSS feeds of free online information that provide updates on rapidly changing topics; students are motivated by the invitation to contribute resources they have found to the course content; rich image and video illustrations help to create an appealing, supportive learning environment.
And members of course development teams are now working collaboratively on the development of engaging learning objects to make these environments more interactive with the idea that these may be shared as OER.
Designing Open Educational Resources AU course designers and developers are influenced by a number of learning and instructional theories, and have established design principles aligned to these models. It is well established that interactive learning can enhance student motivation in an online world (Keller & Suzuki, 2004;Hamada, 2008;Clark & Mayer, 2011). Another reason emerges from a conception, supported by various learning theories, of learners as active co-constructors of their own knowledge rather than as passive recipients of the knowledge of others (Jonassen & Land, 2000).
AU learning designers do not emphasize the structuring and presentation of content; rather, the course design process begins with an exploration of the most difficult concepts and content in the course to be revised or created. Attention and resources are focused where they will support students' learning outcomes most effectively as well as address overarching needs for various literacy and lifelong learning skills. Since online courses are easily updated, formative evaluation is incorporated in an iterative design process (Scriven, 1996) for ongoing improvement.
The learning design approach at AU consciously attempts to apply design principles that can be inferred from recent research in learning sciences. To structure interaction, the guidelines for increasing motivation advanced by Keller's ARCS framework are followed: attention, relevance, confidence, and success (Keller & Suzuki, 2004). Since attention is often captured through images, multimedia, and other visual features including page layout, Mayer's (2005) principles of multimedia learning are considered good practice for online design. Application of the learning design approach to educational resource development is influenced by the work of Graínne Conole and her colleagues in the UK and Australia (Conole, 2010).
Suggesting that learning is enhanced for students when interaction is present, Anderson practice with automatic feedback (Kluger & DeNisi, 1998), learners are gradually led to a sense of accomplishment that will stick through their assignments and examinations.
While students' learning needs are supported as much as possible, mental effort is necessary, and students need to commit to working on their learning. The motivation that comes from engagement (Clark, 1999) will help support students' success. The research results on self-regulation in education (Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000;Winne, 1995;Zimmerman, 2008) have inspired AU learning designers to explore opportunities to embed learning strategies that support this in self-paced courses. Other design principles underpinning course development work include attention to inclusive design (Treviranus & Coombs, 2000) through simple navigation, captioning of audiovisual material, and other techniques that allow students with disabilities to successfully learn from AU courses.
With respect to OER specifically and other generally innovative approaches to course development, design-based research methods (Sandoval & Bell, 2004)   Expert reviews of most of the OER produced have been completed, and authoring interfaces for many of the resources are currently being developed. Later, with the results from formal formative evaluations with students, they will be improved using these authoring interfaces. These interfaces, or "editors," will be released as well, since they are being designed to support future development and improvement by non-

programmers.
Two examples will illustrate the value of attention to the authoring interfaces and openness to the process of ongoing improvement. First, the functionality of the AUTAT and usability of the open source MathML editor used to generate Flash tutorials were increased, and an AU XML editor was created. This editor simplifies the process of adapting the tool to alternate topics or disciplines. This new tool was demonstrated at the Open Education Conference in Utah in October 2011 (Ives, Graham, & Manuel, 2011), and several potential beta testers were identified. The source code and documentation will be provided to them so they can explore the possibilities of repurposing the learning activities and authoring interfaces in their own context. It is anticipated that suggestions for improvement will emerge from these tests.
The second example is a decision tree initially created for a psychology course in counseling. While the application turned out to be too complex for learners in this course to use, it was adapted as a different kind of learning tree for a biology course. It now lives as a bacteria classification tool, complemented by case studies that lead students through the interactive identification exercises. Since the project ended, the object has been further developed as an iPad app in an exploration of AU's capacity for developing mobile learning applications. Further development is planned for Android devices. It is hoped that testing with students and tutors will help confirm the observation that the tactile element of this learning resource engages students and helps them learn. The authoring interface for this tool will also be made available soon. The investment in institutional and individual learning about OER to date has been substantial, but further commitments of time and training are necessary to approach sustainable practice (Wiley, 2007). In time AU will be in a position to determine how fully the promise of OER is likely to be realized in this context.

Next Steps
In projects are consistent with its mission to remove barriers that restrict access and limit success in university-level study. Through a commitment to both increased equality and quality of educational opportunity for adult learners worldwide, AU is opening up many aspects of university practice, including course development. Issues such as sustainability (Wiley, 2007) and productivity (Thille, 2012) will guide the strategy for future OER practices at AU.