Archive for the ‘OER’ Category
Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education
The rapid growth of OER provides new opportunities for teaching and learning, at the same time, they challenge established views about teaching and learning practices in higher education. This briefing paper provides the background to the current development of and future trends around OER aimed at adding to our understanding, stimulating ongoing debate among the JISC community and developing a research agenda. The briefing is structured in three sections:
- Discussion on the conceptual and contextual issues of Open Educational Resources.
- A review of current OER initiatives: their scale, approaches, main issues and challenges.
- Discussion on trends emerging in Open Educational Resources, with respect to future research and activities.
Opening Education Beyond the Property Relation
Open Education, and specifically the OER movement, seeks to provide universal access to knowledge, undermining the historical enclosure and the increasing privatisation of the public education system. In this paper we examine this aspiration by submitting the implicit theoretical assumptions of Open Education to the test of critical political economy. We acknowledge the Open Education movement’s revolutionary potential but outline the inherent limitations of its current focus on the commons (property relations) rather than the social relations of capitalist production (wage work, the company) and because of this, argue that it will only achieve limited, rather than revolutionary, impact.
Mainstreaming Open Educational Practice – Recommendations for Policy
Open Educational Resources, and open education more generally, is considered to have huge potential to increase participation and educational opportunities at large and to promote widening participation and lifelong learning. At the same time the past decade has shown that openness in itself is not enough to unfold these potentials. A number of elements need to be taken into account in order to move from OER to Open Educational Opportunities. These elements and strategies have been the subject of a two year project, the Open Education Quality Initiative, OPAL, the findings are summarised in this paper. The intended audience of this report is policy makers in the field of education, and science and technology. On the basis of the experience of the Open Educational Quality Initiative we are arguing that the focus of OER work to date has largely been on access to and the availability of OER, We argue that t is important to shift the focus more to the actual open practice of using, reusing, or creating Open Educational Opportunities: Open Educational Practice.
How Open Education is Changing the Texture of Content
Schools are moving from creamy to chunky — but not in relation to cafeteria peanut butter. The change in texture is happening with content. Instruction that was structured linearly, captured in books that were all-inclusive monoliths with a predetermined progression for a uniform, somewhat “creamy” consistency, is shifting to newer forms of instructional content that are more “chunky,” beginning as a scattered landscape of digital pieces that are then assembled to support full courses. The trend, steady and apparently inexorable, is inspired by higher education, driven by financial pressures, propelled by foundations and the federal government, and enabled by technology.
Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education
This article aims to share experience from a Swedish project on the introduction and implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education with both national and international perspectives. The project, OER – resources for learning, was part of the National Library of Sweden Open Access initiative and aimed at exploring, raising awareness of and disseminating the use of OER and the resulting pedagogical advantages for teaching and learning. Central to the project’s activities were a series of regional seminars which all featured a combination of multi-site meetings combined with online participation. This combination proved highly successful and extended the reach of the project. In total the project reached around 1000 participants at its events and many more have seen the recorded sessions.
Several unresolved issues beyond the scope of the project became explicit but which are absolutely crucial challenges. Firstly, the evolution from OER towards open educational practices (OEP) and open educational cultures (OEC). OEP and OEC imply the establishment of national and international policies and strategies where the use of OER is officially encouraged, sanctioned and developed. Secondly it became explicit that the issue of metadata is crucial for finding OER and facilitating their use and reuse for teachers and learners. Thirdly, the sustainability of OER must be stimulated by ensuring the creation of material that can easily be adapted and reused by teachers in other countries and contexts.
Testing the Feasibility of OER-Course Certification
The OERtest project is a two year (Oct. 2010 – Sep. 2012) project funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of European Commision. Its aim is to support the mainstreaming of OERs within Higher Education and to test the feasibility of assessing learning exclusively achieved through the use of Open Educational Resources.
In order to develop a framework of learning based on study using OERs, that is shared among several universities, OERtest will stimulate exchange between Higher Education experts in quality assurance, recognition of prior learning, credit transfers and institutional issues such as strategy development and HEI financing from our partner universities as well as researchers/practitioners of open educational practice.
Read also: OERtest Briefing Papers
Dramatically Bringing Down the Cost of Education with OER
We are in the midst of a revolution in education. For the first time in human history we have the tools to enable everyone to attain all the education they desire. And best of all this education is available at almost no cost.
The key to this sea change in learning is open education resources, or OER. OER are educational materials produced by one party that are licensed to be used free of charge by others. OER come in many forms—from curriculum to homework assignment to textbooks. And OER exist for all levels of education, from kindergarten through college.
Read also: bookboon – Online Textbooks for Free
The Saylor Foundation – Free Education
The Saylor Foundation is pushing the open education movement forward and creating greater access to Open Educational Resources (OER). Saylor.org features over 200 free, self-paced, automated courses. While we do not confer degrees, we do offer the knowledge equivalent of thirteen popular disciplines.
We hire credentialed professors to create course blueprints and to locate, vet, and organize OER materials into a structured and intuitive format. Our consulting professors also create original OER content and link to freely posted copyrighted materials to fill in any gaps. Each course culminates with a final exam, and students receiving a passing grade can download a certificate of completion.
Our current focus is on the undergraduate college level with the goal of producing high course and program completion rates. We intend to focus on the primary, secondary, and post-graduate levels in the future.
E-Learning Generations
The theme I would like to explore today concerns the growth and development of our idea of online learning, or as it is sometimes called, e-learning. What I would like to do is to describe a series of ‘generations’ of technologies and approaches that have characterized the development of online learning over the years. These generations of have informed the shape of online learning as it exists today, and will help us understand something of the direction it will take in the future.
Gooru – online learning resources
Gooru is an online study tool that allows you to explore and study over 2,600 standards-aligned and personalized study guides. Study guides cover fifth grade through high school math and science topics, and resources include digital textbooks, animations, instructor videos and more. All resources are vetted and organized by teachers or Gooru’s content experts, so you don’t have to sort through the mess of subpar educational resources available online yourself.
Gooru also makes it easy for you to connect with your worldwide peers to make learning a social experience. Post questions to an active community of students, teachers and experts, or find friends and peers to study with.
Best of all, Gooru adapts to you. Based on the topics you study and your performance on self-assessments, Gooru suggests resources and study guides that will help you master the concepts. You can track your study habits and monitor your performance on any of the topics you study.
