OER Case Study Framework

Background to the Case Study Framework

Numerous organizations and individuals are creating and sharing open educational resources (OER) for the benefit of all teachers and learners. Partly because the field is so new and partly because OER projects are scattered across the globe, we need to create new opportunities to share program learnings and advances across projects and boundaries. We need to:

• Increase understanding of issues that are common across OER projects, such as engagement of online communities, volunteer recruitment, and licensing decisions
• Create synergies and networking possibilities for field-building and leadership development

The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) is working to develop ongoing mechanisms for knowledge sharing on open education initiatives worldwide, through research, field building, and innovations in web-based media. ISKME has been working with six projects over the past year to help create case studies and build capacity to track, analyze and share key developments in the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources (OER) within the projects themselves. The projects include:

• CurriculumNet (Uganda)
• Curriki (United States)
• Free High School Science Texts (South Africa)
• Mission 2007 Training Commons (India)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (United States)
• Teachers' Domain (United States)

The findings from the case studies of the projects above have been used to support the development of this OER Case Study Framework, which seeks to assist any open education project that wants to track, share, and advance their learnings and successes. A comparative analysis from these case studies will be available in fall 2008.

The case studies and the case study framework have been developed with support from the Shuttleworth Foundation, International Development Research Centre, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Curriki. For more information about the case study project or the framework, contact Lisa Petrides at lisa@iskme.org, or Cynthia Jimes at cynthia@iskme.org.

About ISKME

ISKME is an independent, nonprofit research institute that engages in research, innovation, and field-building around information and knowledge sharing in education. OER Commons is one of its OER (Open Educational Resources) initiatives, which supports knowledge sharing of freely available teaching and learning resources, strategies, and curricula online. In addition to OER Commons, ISKME’s initiatives include research and field-building efforts to build knowledge and share capacity around the development of OER globally. ISKME also offers education and strategic development to assist organizations, school districts, universities, states, and others in transforming knowledge sharing in an open, dynamic environment with resources that are shared, adapted, re-used, and improved by teachers and learners.