Feedback on Version 1.0 of the elevator pitch.
I agree with Dave, our research and anecdotal evidence shows that executive leaders do not know what "OER" is.
The concept of "Open educational resources" (OER) is complex. We know from the Babson survey that the majority of educators and adminstrators (+70%) can't define OER and don't know why its important.
I don't think that its prudent to attempt defining OER in an elevator pitch - some things are complex and we need to live with that ;-)
Perhaps the approach is:
- Treat "OERu" as a "brand" without defining the acronym. Create interest in the OERu to find out more.
- Say things like "Open education is about removing barriers to access using the power / afordances of the Internet"
My concern with treating "OERu" as a pure brand is that we'll effectively be defining OER in a roundabout way to describe what the brand stands for, but without doing so explicitly, which I think might result in more confusion rather than a bit of clarity...
When trying to describe what I do to people who voice an interest, I usually tell them something like "we are democratising tertiary education by helping educators create open curriculum materials that are available for anyone with an internet connection to access and learn from, and for any tertiary institution to incorporate into their own materials, often contributing their improvements back. It's open sourcing education - it's a quietly and gently disruptive, collaborative and profound revolution." :)
