Open operational culture both in teaching and research enables interaction with the surrounding society and promotes the visibility of expertise and increases the chances to collaborate. Open operational culture is based on reciprocity: you can use material made by others and share your material for others to use or combine material produced by someone else with your own material.
Open Learning or Open Education aims to enable learning access and participation for all. This means lowering barriers to learning and increasing accessibility and supply. Open learning means also various pedagogical and technical solutions which enable self-directed, learner-centred learning that is not dependent on time and place.
Key themes in open learning includes open educational resources and open educational practices (e.g. teaching co-development, open evaluation methods, use of open learning materials and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)). For a learner, open learning materials offer countless opportunities to learn, develop and find new perspectives. Material produced by someone else can, for example, provide you with new perspectives and thus enhance the learning.
The University of Eastern Finland offers possibilities for open learning, for example, in Open University, open online courses and with open learning materials.
Open educational resources (OER) are freely usable material, such as texts, pictures, podcasts, data, research publications or other materials. Possible restrictions from licences must be acknowledged when using the material. Open educational material can be used for learning and teaching. When planning teaching, it is good to consider how open the materials chosen for the course are: if the university’s credentials are necessary to be able to access the materials or if they are openly available to everyone over the Internet. Especially when planning open online courses, it is essential that the materials are open to everyone.
Open educational materials also benefit teachers. A teacher can use open material made by another teacher—so it is good to open your own material for others to use. Open educational material demonstrates the teacher’s expertise, enables new chances for collaboration and increases the quality of the material.
Learning materials open to the learner provide opportunities to learn development competencies and discover new perspectives.
Using open educational resources
Open educational resources can be searched from the national service for open educational resources and it is also good to deposit the information about your own open materials there. The service and the educational resources found there are available to everyone under the terms and licence. The educational materials of the Library of Open Learning Materials can also be found in Finna.fi, which compiles materials from museums, libraries, and archives. The Open Educational Materials Library is a service of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Board of Education, which is constantly being developed.
Library’s Search guide for open access publications introduces ways to search open access scientific publications. Open study materials (e.g. information retrieval, open science, research data management) can be found on the library’s web pages.
When you are using open resources notice the terms of use and licenses. Using Creative Commons licenses is recommended for open educational material. The terms of use of CC-licensed materials are easy to understand and safe to use in teaching. For UEF Heimo you can find CC-licensed material and guidelines how to use CC-license.
Please note that educational materials or other works drawn up by others must be based on agreements with the copyright holder’s consent/author, for a license permitting use (e.g. Creative Commons licenses).
Sharing your material
When designing open learning materials, check out the National Open Learning Guidelines (Open Learning Working Groups, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies):
- How do you consider quality in open learning materials?
- How do you consider accessibility in open learning materials?
- How do you consider copyright when publishing open learning materials?
- How to gain merit from open education or open educational resources?
- What should promoter of open education be able to do?
In particular, the national quality criteria for open educational resources should be used to assist in the production of open learning materials. Everyone can start at their own level and develop their competence and learning materials subdivision at a time.
Plan what material you want to open and where. Whether you want to open the whole course, a lecture record, presentation or something else. Choose a service which makes open access possible. Notice that some of the university’s services require university credentials.
Check the quality of the material. Share openly on the Internet only material that you yourself would want to find for use, that is material which is useful. Notice the target audience, if the material is openly available is it useful for everyone or could it be edited to serve a wider audience. Open digital material must also be accessible (UEF Heimo).
Check the copyright and ownership issues and your rights to open the material. If there are several producers of material, please remember to agree on the opening of the material with all authors. More information about copyrights in UEF Heimo. If you have questions about contracts related to open material contact: sopimukset[at]uef.fi
Go through the material you have produced and consider all the relevant issues related to sharing it. Check the permits to use material, such as pictures, from others and provide appropriate citations for work done by others.
Pay attention to any personal information that may be included in the material. Delete personal information from the material you want to share openly. Ask for a permission if someone else is presented in the material, for example, in the pictures or students’ assignments.
Add creator’s name/names and affiliation.
Express the terms and conditions with which others can use your material. For open material the Creative Commons licences are recommended. Suitable licences for open educational material are, for example, CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY 4.0. More information on the CC licences and how to choose them from the Creative Commons web page.
Open educational material is useful only when it is findable. In order to make your open material findable, describe it. Deposit descriptive information and the material or a link to it to a service where the material is openly available. It is recommended to deposit open educational material to the national service for open educational resources.
More information
Recommendations for Open education (Recommendations: on gaining merit in open education and open educational resources, Quality criteria for Open educational resources, Guidelines on the accessibility of open educational resources, Competence requirements for open education)
Recommendation on copyright issues to be taken into consideration in the open publication of educational resources (see Appendix 1 in Policy for open educational resources. Policy component 1.)
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources, Draft
Oppitupa offers pedagogical and usage support in ICT, social media, and learning environments for UEF staff
Information about tools available at the university and guidance on how to use them (UEF Heimo)
Data protection and personal data (UEF Heimo)