Big OER, little OER

It's funny how you take things for granted... I hadn't realised just how much I use OER in my own practice. What prompted this was a post in another galaxy far, far way, where the question was 'do you, or have you ever used OER in FE?' I thought about this for a while before I realised that I had been using computing resources/notes from the Colleges Open Learning Exchange Group (COLEG) for over 10 years, heck I even produced and vetted support packs for them!! Anyway, I dug a bit deeper to find that COLEG doesn't exist anymore and resources from the now [Scottish] College Development Network now utilise Jorum as well as a European funded resource (in conjunction with SQA) called TranSETT - I've yet to investigate further.

Rambling aside, a quick definition of...

• Big OER: produced formally in a large scale, for example by big institutions - MIT Open CourseWare or OpenLearn.
• Little OER: produced by individuals, for example, on a smaller scale, perhaps the by product of already existing resources.

Big OER advantages:

• Development of institutional relationships/networks
• Provision of knowledge to the public
• Wider access (easier to find)
• Product of substantial investment
• Good quality
• Free

Big OER disadvantages:

• Production high costs
• Not very re-usable
• Difficulties incorporating Web 2.0/social technology

Little OER advantages:

• Re-use/re-purposing of existing resources
• Can be produced using little effort
• No planning needed (project management?)
• Scope for better promotion of sustainability
• Cheap 
• Better integration with Web 2.0/social media

Little OER disadvantages:

• Perhaps too contextualised
• May require culture change with individuals/small institutions (for production)
• Resources require updating digitally (re-purposed)
• problems with legitimate re-use
• Poor quality/lack of reputation

This list is of course not exhaustive, there are many other pro's and con's of big and little OER. Whilst compiling, I was thinking about overlaps that exist between big and little OER and their co-existence, 'A mixture of the two then is complementary and viable I would argue.' (Weller, 2009)

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References

Weller, M. (2009) Big OER and Little OER. [Online] Available at: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/12/the-politics-of-oer.html. (Accessed 8th April 2013)