Building Open Education Initiatives
Benefits of Sharing
Why is it Important to Share Openly?
Open sharing enhances access, collaboration, and innovation in education. Building a collective repository of ideas boosts retention and sparks new insights. Research indicates that open collaboration improves learning resource quality, promotes ongoing partnerships, and sustains content creation (Sapire & Reed, 2011; Petrides et al., 2008, 2011). As a result, open sharing enriches student learning, equips educators with global resources, and fosters new networks among researchers.
Benefits of Sharing
Students
- Applying knowledge in a wider context than their course allows
- Freedom of access and enhanced opportunities for learning
- Support for learner-centred, self-directed, and social/informal learning approaches
- The opportunity to test out course materials before enrolling
- Continued access to learning resources after the course ends
Educators
- Student/user feedback and open peer review
- Benefits to reputation and recognition
- Efficiencies through collaboration
- Sharing of ideas and best practices
- Reaching a wider range of learners
Educational Institutions
- Recognition and enhanced reputation
- Wider availability of their academic content
- Content production efficiency
- Increased sharing of ideas and practice within the institution
- Increased understanding of intellectual property rights
Other Sectors (Employers, Government, etc.)
- Access to re-purposable content
- Input to scoping, development, and endorsement of open content
- New potential partnerships with content providers and in other sectors
- Increased understanding of intellectual property rights, curriculum development, and learning technologies
A lack of institutional support for open education resources can present significant barriers. However, institutions that embrace open education have been shown to enhance their public image and their footprint in society (Skidmore & Provida, 2019). This next section highlights Ontario initiatives that support open education initiatives.
Activity : Reflection
After reading this section on the benefits of sharing, reflect on your own work in your institution.
Do you regularly share openly?
What are some ways you could be more open?
What are some ways you could be more open?
