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Saide’s OER Africa initiative is delighted to partner UNESCO IITE in putting together this important publication. This builds on a long relationship between the organizations, based on our mutual commitment to enabling successful open learning for all, and on our belief in the potential of open educational resources (OER) in pursuing those ends. Unfortunately, the claims of OER in relation to equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as in improving pedagogy cost effectively, remain largely untested.
Based on 15 case studies from across the world, this publication seeks to shed light on these important issues: the economic and pedagogical value of investing in OER; the role of OER in fostering diversity, inclusion, and in purposively pursuing quality improvement and innovation; and, finally, the extent to which these important issues are being researched.
Creators: Sarah Hoosen; Neil Butcher
Year: 2019
License Condition: Creative Commons: Attribution Share Alike 4.0
Type: Case Studies
Section: OER research in Africa OER Africa Key Publications
#OER 19 the conference that, according to the welcome message in the programme “goes beyond hero narratives”. I wasn’t exactly sure what that the conference co-chairs Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz actually meant by that phrase when I read it, but now a few days after the conference I think I do. The stories I heard, the narratives were not of the great, I am, look and me and do what I do kind. They were diverse, challenging, not perfectly boxed solutions. They were the narratives of humanity, the narratives of the forgotten and the unrepresented, the narratives of critical hope.
These days, students and their parents expect information to be immediately available. And while the internet has a wealth of resources, users are rightfully not always confident in their accuracy. Furthermore, many works are protected by copyrights, which prevent them from appearing online in their entirety. So educators must find creative ways to meet students’ expectations of easily accessible digital resources while still adhering to copyright laws and strict budgets. As a result, open educational resources (OERs) are gaining popularity among teachers and students. Here we look at five questions you may have as you evaluate open educational resources to help you consider the best way to provide materials to use in your classrooms.
A collection of open policy resources that the Open.Ed service has developed and contributed to. All resources have been released under open licence and are available for re-use with attribution.
We intend this book to act as a guide writ large for would-be champions of OER, that anyone—called to action by the example set by our chapter authors—might serve as guides themselves. The following chapters tap into the deep experience of practitioners who represent a meaningful cross section of higher education institutions in North America. It is our hope that the examples and discussions presented by our authors will facilitate connections among practitioners, foster the development of best practices for OER adoption and creation, and more importantly, lay a foundation for novel, educational excellence.
The study by the Babson Survey Research Group, Freeing the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2018, was supported by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is based on responses from more than 4,000 faculty and department chairs. The study shows improvements in OER awareness, and growing concern among faculty regarding the cost of course materials.
You might find creating OERs to be much easier than you first anticipated. Or, you might already have materials you can share with the “right” licenses. From simply digitized materials to carefully staged video lectures, OERs can add a whole new dimension to your teaching. It can improve your teaching method, and it can also improve student performances. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can create OERs.
The number of colleges running efforts to help professors shift from published textbooks to low-cost online materials known as OER is growing rapidly. That was one key finding in the latest Campus Computing Survey, one of the largest annual surveys of college technology leaders in the U.S., which was released today.
In a recent blog post, we explored some of the questions authors are asking about open textbooks. In this post we have continued the discussion with several leaders in the open textbook movement to identify some of the common misconceptions associated with open educational resources (OER) publishing.
Below, Barbara Illowsky (co-author of one of the first open textbooks, Introductory Statistics), Amy Hofer (Open Oregon Educational Resources), Apurva Ashok and Zoe Wake Hyde (Rebus Foundation), and Nicole Finkbeiner (OpenStax, Rice University), share the top nine myths they have identified, and the facts related to each.
Over the past twenty years, school districts have become much more prescriptive about what happens in their classrooms. Teachers no longer open up a textbook and start on page one and progress through the book until they get to the end (or the school year comes to a close). Many districts not only provide a scope and sequence so a teacher knows what to teach and in what order, but in many cases, they also provide lesson plans so that every student gets the content taught in the same manner. The creation of OER for these districts is the next logical step in tailoring the state standards for their student’s needs.
How is a textbook developed as an open educational resource and how should open educational resources be promoted? In this interview, Dr Maximilian Heimstädt reports on his experiences in the production of the OER textbook `Organising Openness´ on the one hand, and on his research findings regarding the organisation of openness and the promotion of open science on the other.
he term open education has recently been used to refer to topics such as Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Historically its roots lie in civil approaches to education and open universities, but this research is rarely referenced or acknowledged in current interpretations. In this article the antecedents of the modern open educational movement are examined, as the basis for connecting the various strands of research. Using a citation analysis method the key references are extracted and their relationships mapped.
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- We specialise in delivering effective learning experiences for adults which fit around their lives, whether it’s a busy mum in London working toward her degree, or a primary school teacher in a remote area in Kenya, improving her classroom practice. Over 70% of our students remain at work while studying.
- We use appropriate technology to break down barriers – for those with disabilities, isolated or economically challenged.
- We are open – we aim to remove all barriers to education and set no entry qualifications.
- We use a mixture of business models (free, fee, and donor support) to provide scalable and sustainable solutions.
- We deliver quality learning experiences on scale to over 170,000 students. Of the UK learners, 61,000 are eligible for financial support and 44% start undergraduate study without the entry qualifications they would need at a conventional university.
OER18: Open to All 9th annual conference for Open Education research, practice and policy18 – 19 April 2018, Bristol, UK OER18 turned the focus on one of the often-cited benefits of ‘open’ – the promise of inclusivity. How do the resources, methods and projects that make up Open Education support making education available to all? As a movement over 15 years old, has Open Education made an impact – on learners, on society and on education? What can we do to to support learning in the open – and how can we use open to support learning? The conference was chaired by academic and Open Education researcher Vivien Rolfe, alongside Wonkhe Associate Editor David Kernohan
We present an analysis of 50 repositories for educational content conducted through an "audit system" that helped us classify these repositories, their software systems, promoters, and how they communicated their licensing practices. We randomly accessed five resources from each repository to investigate the alignment of licensing information between the resources themselves, metadata pages and overall site policies. We identified a high level of incongruity that could lead to a limited impact in OER use and reuse. We discuss the lack of guidance in implementation of such repositories, particularly to those who do not have wide institutional support to implement such systems. We finalize with a critical discussion on the emphasis given to licensing in the OER movement, and how it may be an evidence of a clash between the social and legal commons.
Key Points - Open data can help researchers and policy makers understand the education landscape, can provide information for parents and children about education facilities and their performance, and can be used as an input into education: making a connection between open data and Open Educational Resources (OER).
- Attention must focus beyond the simple availability of education data to also question how the data is shaped, presented, and used. This should address the ways in which, without wider policy interventions, making data available about education performance may ultimately reinforce stigma and social divides.
- There has been relatively limited overlap between OER and Open Data communities, although since 2013, the Open Knowledge Education Working Group has sought to build connections between them. There are opportunities for future strengthening of these links, increasing the use of open data as a key educational resource, and supporting more applied civic education.
Whilst is is possible for an individual to quickly make their own materials open by hosting them on the web through their own website or through a community wiki or 'shared space' it is important to consider a range of issues affecting release. Most individuals have some connection to an institution and may need to consider issues such as ownership, licencing and branding of learning materials produced for enrolled students.
Pictured above is our top pick of artists and writers whose works will, on 1st January 2019, enter the public domain in many countries around the world. Of the eleven featured, six will be entering the public domain in countries with a “life plus 70 years” copyright term (e.g. most European Union members, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, etc.) and five in countries with a “life plus 50 years” copyright term (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, and many countries in Asia and Africa) — those that died in the year 1948 and 1968 respectively.
A lot has changed since MIT first announced that it would be making its course materials freely available online. Back in 2001, the idea that university-level content could be accessed at no cost by users anywhere in the world was virtually unheard of, and the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative was a major driver in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.
Good afternoon! A note about accessibility before I begin. If you would like to follow along with the written version of this talk, you can visit http://bit.ly/palakeynote. That link will also have the images on the slide deck with embedded descriptions for your screen reader, and the embedded video has closed captions.
I was really honored to be asked to keynote this luncheon for the Pennsylvania Library Association’s College and Research division at the PaLA annual conference… particularly because I fancy myself a parallel-universe librarian, and I know that out there through a wormhole somewhere, it is 1979 and I am using one of those thunk-thunk machines to date-stamp library book cards.
Everyone who has attended a college or university has had a moment where they discovered the cornucopia of digital resources available from their library. Or they could have had it if they were library-inclined. Not everyone is in love with libraries as much as yours truly, but there does come a time when Google isn't going to cut it for that final paper. It turns out there are many extremely helpful article databases one can only access when connected with an institution of higher education. The fancier your institution, the more access you typically get. (Harvard has everything, which will surprise no one.)
The U.S. Department of Education’s first grant for open educational resources, totaling $5 million, will be awarded in late September to between one and three applicants, the department announced today in a call for proposals published in the Federal Register.
Latest in the EDUCAUSE "7 Things" series is 7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Content. Just 2 pages long it addresses the questions (those are the "things") 1. What is it? (This starts "Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or that have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others.") 2 How does it work? 3 Who’s doing it? (Giving examples of repositories and use: I think all the examples are North American) 4 Why is it significant? 5 What are the downsides? 6 Where is it going? 7 What are the implications for teaching and learning? Download (open access) from https://library.educause.edu/resources/2018/6/7-things-you-should-know-about-open-education-content?
"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be full courses, course materials, lesson plans, open textbooks, learning objects, videos, games, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge.
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Scoop.it!
