University Participatory Experience building Open Education Resources

In the last years, there has been a vertiginous growth in developing and integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into Teaching and Learning practices. Knowledge Initiatives arose, impacting diverse levels of activity, for instance, it is possible to find ICT developments to support how to manage a full school or university or very specific learning objects; complex platforms as Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard among others have been developed, as consequence of distance education evolution. Abstract


Introduction
In the last years, there has been a vertiginous growth in developing and integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into Teaching and Learning practices. Knowledge Initiatives arose, impacting diverse levels of activity, for instance, it is possible to find ICT developments to support how to manage a full school or university or very specific learning objects; complex platforms as Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard among others have been developed, as consequence of distance education evolution.

Abstract
This paper has the objective to analyze the obstacles and opportunities of Universities knowledge construction throughout partaking process. In schools, teachers are the main knowledge trigger, not only producing and transmitting new knowledge, but also integrating new technologies in classrooms. Teachers´ participatory model to construct educational resources is proposed. Nowadays universities face the challenge to utilize Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in classrooms as part of day after day teaching-learning processes. Currently, there are available virtual learning objects, educational platforms, interactive systems besides others. However, universities curricula need to cover a big quantity of topics and not all of them has been enclosed, or has the quality, level and language required by each course.This paper also describes the recent experience of building educative resources following open resource philosophy. The construction of the Learning University Network (RUA for its Spanish acronym) by Mexican teachers has been documented. The processes comprise to assemble, to organize and to institutionalize Open Educational Resources with a unified criterion. At the end of the paper, the procedures to conform Open Educative Resources related to UNAM Curricula have been structured. The generated knowledge in RUA building should be useful to new experiences in further institutions. At the beginning of distance education systems, there were correspondence, cassettes and magazines distance courses, and later CDs. Even more, basic education in homeschooling modality with special books and certifications appeared since 1950s decade (Courtenay, 2011). Currently, ICT incorporation into education processes allow complex, flexible and interactive tools. ICT permit immediate information interchange and efficient communications, facilitating teachinglearning processes.
In the other hand, virtual education resources proliferation has not been enough. Now, it is possible to find a wide variety of this kind of resources in the World Wide Web, however not all topics of knowledge have related resources, there are different levels of developing. In consequence, it is possible to find conventional documents, books or journals; but some resources have been developed in very complex way. Some resources are very complex, with text, hyperlinks to navigate, evaluation and feedback, but it could be difficult to integrate digital resources into comprehensive curricula of schools or universities.
This paper is around the next research questions: How to develop reliable digital education resources related to big quantity of knowledge subjects? Is it possible to utilize participatory mechanisms to build complex resources as a community? The Mexican University case is shown as an experience of participatory process approach to answer these questions.

Literature Review
Teaching and learning processes characteristics, methods and efficiency has been discussed throughout human history. Some periods and societies education was only for rich or religious people; in many cases small or individuals' interaction with teachers. Education in ancient Greece was regarded as an essential component of a person's identity and the type of education a person received was based strongly on one's social class and the culture of one's poli (Gvelesiani & Javakhishvili, 2013).
Education challenges have multiple aspects to deal with, for instance: the quality of knowledge and its transmission, inequity access conditions to acquire knowledge, high costs, lack of infrastructure and educators, and high rates of demand (Kremer, et al., 2013), (OECD, 2012).

Learning Theories
Diverse authors since 1950's decade have proposed theories and models to understand individual and organizational learning. Each of them has identified variables that affect the way people learn and make decisions. Table 1, shows some of the main theories. To understand the factors that continuously affect an active participation it is needed to analyze: • The behavior is product of the individual beliefs; • To get a change, the information received by individuals and its acceptation will facilitate the change and participation level.

E-learning
E-Learning is an electronic education system or distance program that integrates ICT and didactic elements to teach and train students on-line, in other words, the system is based on knowledge acquisition within electronic media. E-Learning is a distance education modality (EcuRed, 2015).
At UNAM, specialized E-Learning courses situated on-line education advantages and disadvantages, when it is utilized a whole educative system, for instance an educative platform (CUAED-UNAM, 2012-1016): E-Learning is the elimination of distance and time barriers, and the permanent availability of virtual resources and communication media as forums, chats, videoconferences, e-mails, blogs, social networks, slides presentations, books, journals and magazine, wikis and others. Assessors can be present or not. Their benefits are: that content changes and managing are easy to control, systems are flexible to add or change contents and times to adapt it according to didactic requirements, organizing information, supervising, evaluating and feed backing constantly and individualizing is possible. Also, stakeholders of the systems can enhance communications among them and with similar institutions. It is possible to share digital resources with similar courses or sessions.
In counterpart, some challenges detected using virtual educative resources are: that it is necessary to obtain reliance, trust and available for each study level. In other plane, teachers must utilize educative resources with knowledge, not only about the subject of the course, but also about differences among face to face, semi-face to face and distance courses, considering furthermore the ICT skills. Even more, it is indispensable to integrate pedagogic approaches, ICT knowledge and psychological profiles. Adding to the requirement of infrastructure available for students and teachers as other critical factor, particularly in countries or zones with economical insufficiency. Same point with the norm to have access into virtual educative resources, In their study, Everlyn Kahiigi and coauthors conclude that there are two problems in e-learning implementation within the higher education context (Kahiigi, et al., 2008): 1) the limited uptake of technology as an instruction delivery method; and 2) the ineffective use of technology to support learning.

Educative challenges
Educative international organizations, like the UNESCO, already worked and developed studies about the obstacles and advantages on the use of ICT in education (UNESCO, 2008; OCDE, 2017). For instance, it is relevant to mention an OCDE study that shows four forces of change that will impact on high level education systems over the next decades (OCDE, 2017); those forces are: • Globalization: The curricula will be internationalized, impacting in two ways: by increasing the pair to pair collaboration and by increasing the competition.
• Demography: Countries belonging to OCDE registered reductions in the traditional 18-to-25-year-old student group will affect institutions. On the other hand, countries that do not belong to OCDE have also increased their education demands. Those demands are currently not fully covered; even more, there is an increase in educative demands among higher age groups. Mostly all countries are increasing their participation on higher education levels; and that demands are not overcome to date. in: Accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness, responsiveness and forward vision. All those components are now considered of primordial importance to assure good public governance.
• Technologies: ICT developing an innovation that has a large impact on education, but not in the expected magnitude. In contrast, elearning does have a great potential; even when, to date, there are not monitoring studies.
Institutions like the OCDE assure that there is an important increase in the number of students that opt for virtual environments.
On the other hand, the use of participatory virtual technologies, like Creative Commons and Web 2.0, to build digital contents does have rapid increase rates. This increase is mainly due to the increase of broadband and new software tools.

Mexico and Education
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Panorama 2017 study showed Mexican High Education Institutions that have an insufficient capacity to face up to the student's education demand. Among others, study concludes only 16.8% people aged among 25-64 years-old who received a university degree (OCDE, 2017).
To have quality attention, it is necessary to generate new ways to spread knowledge. ICT are offering, to general societies, more and more opportunities. The developed Virtual Systems enable easier productive and social processes. Teaching-Learning Systems are not far of that changes, organizations as UNESCO have formulated studies about the advantages and disadvantages (UNESCO, 2008), however in Mexico, there is not an accurate analysis of the situation and future actions to get teachers assimilation of ICT tools.

Open Educative Resources
Due to editorial and distribution costs -and the business model of traditional editorials -many scientific journals started charging the authors with a publication fee. The cost of scientific journals implied a barrier, especially for scientist in the third world. Even more, the mandatory research copyright cession, in favor of the editorialeven with fees for the author of the manuscripts -was the origin of a movement. Such movement, called Open Access, started mainly in the USA, but quickly spread on many countries. Peter Suber defines Open Access as; the movement that has the goal to assure the openness and freedom of scientific information to anyone. The academic activities supporting this idea started around 1966, spreading widely since then (Peter Suber, 2009

The Participatory Planning Approach Applied to the Education Process
Participatory planning definition is: to build a desired future for a given system with all the involved people's actions and opinions. This approach is common when doing interventions of social organizations. Some advantages of this approach over the people involved are that: • They assume the plan's ownership and act consequently • They know the system and it´s interactions; so, there is high confidence and reality when analyzing and collecting the data. including plenty knowledge of the today state and the past of the system.
• Many obstacles usually generated by the community on the system are overcome.
As Ming Sum and colleagues said: several studies on participatory process in education are focused on the students' participation (Ming-sum, T.B.K. et al, 2005 y Kucharčíková, A, 2016). This approach is straightforward for the education process since mostly all learning and teaching processes want to improve the students' capabilities and the enabling media to reach the goal are basically the professor and the information and knowledge, including the mechanisms teachers decide to transfer.
In education, there is the collaborative learning concept. Developed by Vigotsky in the nineteen seventies, this concept is defined as: the learning organization thru interaction of pairs (Vigotsky, 1978 Other projects, related to collaboration, are those that incorporate a specific ICT to stimulate collaboration. One example is given by Koschman, it is called: "Computer Supported Collaborative Learning" (CSCL); that is collaborative learning based on technologies for educative interaction (Koschmann, 1994). Also, Raidell Avello conducted a study focused on different sorts of ICT and their impacts when doing collaborative learning (Avello, 2016). Therefore, current collaboration research is mainly centered on the classroom and among students.
Despite the central role of teachers, the projects are not including in a systematic way the efforts from professors and researchers on the design and making ICT tools for learning, nor when building and electing tools during the teaching and learning process.
The system presented in the next section, focuses on encouraging teachers' participation during the digital resources building, associated with the UNAM curricula. From the pedagogic stand point, teachers' participation is critical, due to their role as designers of the learning objectives, contents and dynamics on the day to day class. The other part of this teachers' role; that is assuring participation of all the elements related to the teaching and learning process, is key when building tools. The main goal is to build the ICT according to the educative needs on each phase of the process, to have them evaluated and then to make them put in practice in the classrooms. Figure 1 shows the background of Learning University Network (RUA by its acronym in Spanish) within the main components of its macro-system: National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As a support to the system, infrastructure has a fundamental role; academic activities at UNAM included education from the equivalent to High school to postgraduates, continuing education courses, and seminars. Those activities are conducted in an area over 2,815,591 m 2 . That zone represents 2,183 buildings. The distribution of educative levels across the buildings is:

The Learning University Network Macro-System Analysis
•    • All OER can be used any time and everywhere.
• All members of the university have the possibility of publishing their own materials.
• Current participation channels are enhanced to all university members.

•
The society has now high quality and resourceful OER.
• RUA is an institutional media to review and spread OER.  Figure 2 includes the main processes, actors and activities needed to build, evaluate and divulgate OER. The efforts are focused to achieve the ITC incorporation to the educative process as efficient, effective and useful tools, capable to transmit abilities and knowledge at UNAM. Therefore, the RUA has been designed and built according to the current Mexican laws and following international agreements regarding publishing research and teaching findings. Findings include all scientific, technological, and innovation data, already included in the strategic program "Toda la UNAM en Línea", since 2011. This strategic program is the fundamental stone that sustain all RUA's activities.

RUA's Working Processes and Participation Mechanisms
Five central processes to build the RUA are shown in Figure 2. Each process is linked to a responsible actor. Each actor oversees conducting or makes possible the task, shown in the top of each process. All products and results are described in the lower part of each process. Relevant issues and characteristics are described in the lower section.  Each process implies large efforts and the need of involvement from authorities and professors.
Included process and interactions to achieve community participation are:

Call for participation on developing digital resources.
The call for participation has been the Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para la Innovación y Mejoramiento de la Enseñanza (Program to Support the Innovation and Enhancement Education Projects, PAPIME)" under the ministration of the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (Direction of Acade Employment Subjects, DGAPA). Each year, the PAPIME is funding projects that propose building manuals, programs and digital applications, associated with the curricula and focused on strength learning and teaching schemes (DGAPA, 2017). Independently from this call for participation, all university instances, teachers and researchers that develop or have developed their own materials are constantly invited to share them through the RUA.
The only request is that all resources must be published and developed using free Each process implies large efforts and the need of involvement from authorities and professors. Included process and interactions to achieve community

Call for participation on developing
has been linked to Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos para la Innovación y Mejoramiento de la Enseñanza, (Program to Support the Innovation and ation Projects, PAPIME)" under the ministration of the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal (Direction of Academic . Each year, the PAPIME is funding projects that propose building manuals, programs and lications, associated with the curricula and focused on strengthening the learning and teaching schemes (DGAPA, 2017). Independently from this call for participation, all university instances, teachers and researchers that develop or wn materials are constantly invited to share them through only request is that all resources must be published and developed using free technologies, without restrictions, with free copyrights and, with preference, to be interactive. There is not a predefined format, so, any document, practice, simulation, or game that is linked to the UNAM curricula can be included freely. DGTIC on their own is offering scholarships to teachers focused to achieve a RUA certification. This 180 hours' course, g to UNAM professors, is called "Digital resources for didactic planning" 2016). This task is conducted by the professors, who add their knowledge and expertise when giving courses and on the Open Educative Resources (OER) development (RUA).

Sending materials for the RUA
Any OER can be uploaded to the RUA through a Web Page form. In order to ease communication and take advance of the online infrastructure, all the interactions between the users and the RUA is virtu The RUA's Web Page has a section to login. All UNAM researchers and teachers are allowed to login. Once logged in, there is a "suggest resources" option to suggest materials. All OER materials must be provided with: a title, a short description, 10 __________________________________________________________________________

Learning University
Own elaboration, based on internal working documents and personal interviews with Dirección (UNAM, 2016).
technologies, without restrictions, with free copyrights and, with preference, to be not a predefined format, so, any document, practice, simulation, or game that is linked to the UNAM curricula can be included freely. DGTIC on their own is offering scholarships to teachers focused to achieve a RUA certification. This 180 hours' course, given to UNAM professors, is called "Digital resources for didactic planning" (UNAM, This task is conducted by the professors, who add their knowledge and expertise when giving courses and on the Open s (OER) development

Validation
Evaluating the pertinence of contents is a complex task. This task might be unnecessary in the near future, given that all materials are generated by the university members. However, the learning process from DGTIC when building collaborations among professors has motivated them towards content validation. Content validation has allowed to strengthen the academic collaboration within the institutions and members, to extend current collaborations, and even to build new partnerships.
Validation is conducted by an Academic Committee. Each school or institution designs an ad-hoc academic body in charge with validating the OER. The procedure includes a meeting with DGTIC personnel to set goals and mechanisms needed when validating OER. The procedure includes: • An evaluation, emitted from each participant professor.
• A collegiate judgment.
The process is reported online and the chief in charge of the institution is responsible to follow up the procedure. Final decision is registered in RUA's Web Page (UNAM, 2016).

Publication
Once the validation is done, there is a group of normalization and classification processes that must be met prior publication. Normalization includes sometimes, the reconfiguration of materials to forms, styles, orthography, and grammar reviews. This reconfiguration is mainly done to achieve a standard on quality, regarding readability and easiness to display. None of the contents are modified. The classification includes the adjustment of an international standard: LOM (IEEE Std 1484.12.1 for Learning Object Metadata); this adjustment is called "LOM-RUA". LOM-RUA is a metadata that describes features and relevant data about the OER. The metadata are grouped into eight categories: General, Lifecycle, Technical information, Educative uses, Rights, Classification, and Control and Captures (RUA 2017).

Spread, divulgation and use on the classrooms
The fifth and last process is may be the largest challenge to the DGTIC personnel.
The final goal of this effort is to achieve a full appropriation of the RUA contents by professors and students, mainly in the classrooms. This activity involved the willingness and decision from each teacher and researcher from every school and course to use OER and to encourage the students to earn knowledge; both elements out of the scope from the DGTIC. Consequently, to set spreading and use mechanisms is, in principle, a task that must be done by all (the teaching and learning actors, and the DGTIC personnel).
To date, DGTIC is conducting a project under the research-action methodology that supports the constructs and a model building that helps the use of materials in the classroom.

Conclusions
Teachers and researchers are, without doubt, the ones who better identify the needs, strengths, and obstacles on the teaching and learning process due to their responsibility on giving a course. Here we want to stress that teacher participation process must be incentivized right from the design of educative tools. Teachers participation is the key to overcome resistance to change problems. However, we must be aware that, in some cases, there are needs to be covered prior to the use of an OER. We must have the proper technologies (ICT), knowledge, and skills that allow the OERs use. This use includes building tools with relevant features to get the message thru and transmit the knowledge centered in the learning and teaching process. Those lacks make it harder for the production and use of virtual educative resources.
In UNAM case, participatory approach has encouraged participation and interest of teachers to learn and utilize OER into their classrooms. The Academic Program (PAPIME) to develop digital resources has had a good reception with teacher participation increasing each year. Therefore, universities must motivate the teachers work in creation and utilization of educative resources, associated with education budgets with the same goal.
At the moment, DGTIC is working in developing teachers' participation mechanisms. Currently, there is a consideration about how to measure suitable constructs throughout a technological appropriation model (for instance Saga and Zmud, 1999) and to the formulation of the use spreading strategy. Given the UNAMs' size, and the amount of institutions and curricula, it is very challenging for DGTIC personal alone to build the RUA. It is possible that in the near future, the OER integration and creation for each course will be done by each school and department.

Acknowledgment
To Dr. Guillermo Rodríguez, Mta. Rebeca Valenzuela and their RUA team from DGTIC-UNAM to provide all information to analyze and to develop this paper.