Open collaborative innovation in the context of OER

In a world of openly communicated knowledge and collaborative innovation, the educational sector can no longer rely on a closed, linear educational innovation model, but should adopt an open, collaborative one. In recent years an astonishing paradigm shift has occurred; user-driven, open and collaborative innovation practices have emerged and an increasing number of users mutually collaborate by openly communicating their ideas, sharing best practices, and creating new knowledge across various sectors.. However, there is lot of actions to be done for effective knowledge sharing, open and collaborative innovation. This paper discusses open and collaborative innovation in the context of open educational resources (OERs), proposes related innovation models and makes recommendations for adopting open collaborative innovation. The level of open collaborative innovation in the OER environment is assessed by examining a number of key initiatives in the field. Our analysis, conducted in terms of two dimensions - the orientation of the OER initiative (i.e., open content and open collaborative innovation) and the user orientation (i.e., users as participants and as creators/cocreators) shows that the initiatives under examination only partly meet the criteria associated with these dimensions, with the exception of only one initiative, namely, Open Discovery Space (ODS), which fully meets all criteria. The case study of ODS incorporated in the paper offers further analysis of the characteristics and potential of an initiative that combines the principles of “openness” and “collaboration”. Our findings indicate that with the integration of both principles, Open Educational Resources and Open Education (OE) have the potential to broaden the educational ecosystem beyond its existing boundaries.