Open educational resources: interpreting the new international recommendation

Application to open educational resources

The recommendation adopted on 25 November 2019 provides a policy reference for open educational resources.

Controls for open educational resources

In examining open educational resources: interpreting the new international recommendation, open access can widen participation, but users require clear information about authorship, licence, quality, accessibility, maintenance and the status of any learning or assessment.

When examining open educational resources, analysis should make its decision rule explicit.

• Who controls each stage?
• What action is required by the finding?
• Which evidence establishes operation?
• Where do exceptions occur?
• What outcome is intended?

Review of open educational resources

In examining open educational resources: interpreting the new international recommendation, across the defined scope, escalation should follow whenever the available record cannot support a safe conclusion for the affected learners.

The principal risks in relation to the matter are outdated or inaccurate material, unclear permission to reuse or adapt, inaccessible resources, and uncertain responsibility for learner support. For open educational resources, the relationship between the risks is material: one failed safeguard may remove the evidence needed to activate another.

Implications for open educational resources

In the context of open educational resources, each source should have a stated purpose in supporting or limiting the conclusion. The most relevant material is likely to include version and maintenance information, use and completion data interpreted cautiously, academic and technical review, and licence and provenance records.

Implementation of the applicable expectation can be tested without imposing unnecessary reporting. For the control, the reviewer should map the complete process, identify the intended result and responsible authority at each stage, and test normal cases together with exceptions. The conclusion should differentiate an individual error from evidence of a wider control weakness. When examining open educational resources, information should not be treated as sufficient merely because it is already available; its relevance to the present question must be established.

In examining open educational resources: interpreting the new international recommendation, interpretation of open educational resources should produce a test that another competent reviewer can apply to comparable evidence.

Evidence relevant to open educational resources

Availability is not equivalent to accessibility, participation or learning. Each outcome requires separate evidence. For the applicable expectation, the volume of documentation is not a measure of conformity.

Across the defined scope, decisions concerning the control should remain traceable to the information available for the stated reference period. For open educational resources, a revision should state whether the change concerns the underlying condition, the evidence, the method or the interpretation.