Book Review: Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective.

Textbook Details: Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective Edited by Gajaraj Dhanarajan and David Porter 2013, 274 pages, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada, www.col.org and OER Asia, Penang, Malaysia, www.oerasia.org ISBN: 978-1894975612 (PDF) http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 'Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective' offers a look at the current utilization of open educational resources (OER) in higher education (HE) in Asia. This compilation of country perspectives and cases studies is co-published by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in Vancouver, Canada and OER Asia operated out of the Institute for Research and Innovation at the Wawasan Open University in Malaysia. It is the latest in a series of publications addressing OER from the COL, which is an intergovernmental organisation comprised of more than 50 countries whose mandate is to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies (www.col.org/about). While there are several different definitions of what exactly OER are, the common thread among all the proposed explanations is they are educational resources, from individual lesson plans to entire course modules, that are openly available and can be used by teachers and students for free. Further to this, OER users are actively encouraged to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the resources, although in reality there are often barriers to accomplishing this goal. Following a brief overview of the state of OER in HE in Asia generally, the book includes ten in-depth country perspectives, in addition to ten case studies showcasing specific uses of OER. The perspectives and cases studies highlight both the opportunities and barriers of using OER in HE. While some institutions have been quicker to adopt the use of OER than others, it is evident that the use of these resources is on the rise and major investments are being made to integrate them into the HE environment in Asia. The country perspectives provide a detailed report on the use of OER in various HE institutions in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam. Every chapter in this section presents an overview of how OER have been adopted in each of the ten countries, followed by a survey conducted by the authors to further explore the level of acceptance and engagement of OER by HE institutions, and more especially by faculty members and teachers. While the results vary from country to country and from institution to institution, a number of issues appear consistently. Copyright and intellectual property concerns are cited by all the authors, with the exception of the Virtual University of Pakistan, which makes all of its OER courses available under a Creative Commons license and requires OER producers to assign all intellectual property rights over to the university. In many of the countries perspectives, the authors identify a need for education on copyright and intellectual property rights for faculty members. The surveys indicate that many do not fully understand the implications of both using OER or producing and contributing OER. And while almost all of the HE institutions reported upon are either already using Creative Commons licenses or in the process of moving in that direction, there is also a lack of understanding of what this actually means for individual faculty members. I believe part of the challenge is this is a major shift in the way most faculty and HE institutions are used to working; a shift away from having personal ownership and control over educational resources to making those resources openly available with little to no control over how they are used. Quality assurance is also cited as an ongoing concern and potential barrier to making educational resources openly available. …

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