Genesis of Altmetrics or Article-level Metrics for Measuring Efficacy of Scholarly Communications: Current Perspectives

The article-level metrics (ALMs) or altmetrics becomes a new trendsetter in recent times for measuring the impact of scientific publications and their social outreach to intended audiences. The popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin and social bookmarks such as Mendeley and CiteULike are nowadays widely used for communicating research to larger transnational audiences. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment got signed by the scientific and researchers communities across the world. This declaration has given preference to the ALM or altmetrics over traditional but faulty journal impact factor (JIF)-based assessment of career scientists. JIF does not consider impact or influence beyond citations count as this count reflected only through Thomson Reuters' Web of Science database. Furthermore, JIF provides indicator related to the journal, but not related to a published paper. Thus, altmetrics now becomes an alternative metrics for performance assessment of individual scientists and their contributed scholarly publications. This paper provides a glimpse of genesis of altmetrics in measuring efficacy of scholarly communications and highlights available altmetric tools and social platforms linking altmetric tools, which are widely used in deriving altmetric scores of scholarly publications. The paper thus argues for institutions and policy makers to pay more attention to altmetrics based indicators for evaluation purpose but cautions that proper safeguards and validations are needed before their adoption

Cloud Computing: Applications, Challenges and Open Issues

Cloud computing is one of the innovative computing, which deals with storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet [1]. It is the delivery of computing resources and services, such as storing of data on servers and databases, providing networking facilities and software development platforms over the Internet. It provides the flexibility of resources for everyone. These services are provided via data centers, which are located in various parts of the world [2, 3]. Cloud computing makes access to these resources to everyone on a global scale at a very minimal cost and significantly higher speed. These servers provide services to the users, which would have cost a lot of computational power to them if they had to buy them. The first mention of cloud computing was referenced in a Compaq internal document released in 1996 [4]. Cloud computing was then commercialized in 2006 when Amazon released elastic compute cloud (EC2). Furthermore, Google released Google app engine in 2008 and Microsoft Azure services were launched in October 2008, which increased the competition in the area of cloud computing. Since then these companies have done a lot of development in cloud computing

Promoting use and contribution of open educational resources

The presentation reviews acceptance of Open Educational Resources (OER) by teachers and student populations in India. It discusses attitudes, motivation, quality of sources and barriers to use, as well as adoption of OER. Some strategies for mainstreaming use and adaptation of OER are provided

Higher education faculty perceptions of quality of open educational resources in India

The presentation addresses attitudes, motivation, quality, and other barriers to taking up Open Educational Practices by teachers in higher education facilities through workshops provided at the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia conference. Key issues for teacher adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) materials are: OER must be accurate and authentic; they must be appropriate to learning objectives; up-to-date; reusable and trustworthy; materials must display and retain integrity. Teacher attitudes and perceptions drawn from the workshops are presented as tabled results

Promoting use and contribution of open educational resources

This research indicates that higher education teachers in India have a positive attitude towards Open Educational Resources (OER) and are motivated to use and share their resources for altruistic reasons. However, many survey respondents considered that major barriers to use and adaptation of OER are lack of understanding with regard to legality of licensing and copyright systems. Training and capacity building are thus requirements for teacher adoption of OER. Developing appropriate policies for sharing educational materials, along with providing technical facilities within institutions would create enabling conditions to support teachers in using and adapting OER

Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs and Transformation

Open Educational Resources (OER) — teaching, learning and research materials that their owners make free for others to use, revise and share — offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and effectiveness of worldwide education. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO co-organised the World OER Congress in 2012 in Paris. That Congress resulted in the OER Paris Declaration: a statement that urged governments around the world to release, as OER, all teaching, learning and research materials developed with public funds. This book, drawing on 15 case studies contributed by 29 OER researchers and policy-makers from 15 countries across six continents, examines the implementation of the pivotal declaration through the thematic lenses of policy, costs and transformation. The case studies provide a detailed picture of OER policies and initiatives as they are unfolding in different country contexts and adopting a range of approaches, from bottom-up to top-down. The book illuminates the impacts of OER on the costs of producing, distributing and providing access to learning materials, and shows the way that OER can transform the teaching and learning methodology mindset. Recommendations on key actions to be taken by policy-makers, practitioners, OER developers and users are also outlined, particularly within the context of Education 2030. Clearly, progress is being made, although more work must be done if the international community is to realise the full potential of OER. Contents Foreword by the President and CEO, Commonwealth of Learning Foreword by the Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO Introduction Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs and Transformation | Rory McGreal, Fengchun Miao and Sanjaya Mishra Chapter 1 Open Educational Practices in Australia | Carina Bossu Chapter 2 Open Educational Resources Policy for Developing a Knowledge-Based Economy in the Kingdom of Bahrain | Nawal Ebrahim Al Khater, Hala Amer and Fadheela Tallaq Chapter 3 The State of Open Educational Resources in Brazil: Policies and Realities | Carolina Rossini and Oona Castro Chapter 4 Open Educational Resources in Canada | Rory McGreal, Terry Anderson and Dianne Conrad Chapter 5 Caribbean Open Textbooks Initiative | Neil Butcher, Andrew Moore and Sarah Hoosen Chapter 6 Open Educational Resources in Germany | Ulf-Daniel Ehlers Chapter 7 Copyrights in OER Publishing in India: The Case of the National Programme on Technology-Enhanced Learning | Mangala Sunder Krishnan iv Chapter 8 The Promise of Open Educational Resources in Indonesia | Petra Wiyakti Bodrogini and Mohammad Rinaldi Chapter 9 Using Open Educational Resources for Undergraduate Programme Development at Wawasan Open University | Teik Kooi Liew Chapter 10 OERu: Realising Sustainable Education Futures | Wayne Mackintosh Chapter 11 Integrating ICT for Innovative Educational Solutions in Oman: Leveraging OER Policy to Enhance Teaching and Learning | Maimoona Al Abri and Saif Hamed Hilal Al Busaidi Chapter 12 The Polish Open e-Textbooks Project as a Policy Model for Openness of Public Educational Resources | Alek Tarkowski Chapter 13 Open Access to Educational Resources Through Federal Portals and OER in Russia | Svetlana Knyazeva and Aleksei Sigalov Chapter 14 Open Educational Resources for Early Literacy in Africa: The Role of the African Storybook Initiative | Tessa Welch and Jennifer Glennie Chapter 15 Developing an Infrastructure Support for Faculty Use of Open Educational Resources: The Case of the Washington State Community and Technical Colleges System | Boyoung Chae and Mark Jenkins Conclusions | Fengchun Miao, Sanjaya Mishra and Rory McGrea

Teachers’ perception of open educational resources : data collection through workshops

This conference presentation reviews workshops that were held with teachers so they could better understand the history and development of Open Educational Resources (OER); to enable them to consider the need of OER in their work environment; and to facilitate appreciation of the importance of open licensing in educational materials. The presentation includes barriers to adoption of OER, as well as motivational aspects, and perception of benefits of the use and practices of OER

Development and validation of a scale to measure faculty attitudes toward open educational resources

An ATOER scale (Attitudes Towards Open Educational Resources) was developed to identify positive and negative predispositions towards Open Educational Resources (OER) amongst teachers. Data was classified into three main constructs: awareness, sharing of resources, and adoption and use of OER. This instrument will help to understand psychological determinants of teachers that might influence adoption and use of OER. The content validity of the tool is explained in the presentation

Development of a scale to measure faculty attitude towards open educational resources

The study involves understanding why some teachers share educational resources and others do not. The paper describes the methodology for the development of an instrument to measure Attitude towards Open Educational Resources (ATOER) within the framework of research projects in the global south. It discusses various phases of development and validation of a scale which can measure faculty attitude towards Open Educational Resources (OER) and to present the findings through evidence of the impact of OER. The scale will help institutions to plan use of OER in teaching and learning by identifying positive and negative faculty attitudes

Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts