DEHub/Research Themes/Open Education Resources (OERS)



= Open Educational Resources (OERs) =

Research in this area will investigate the issues surrounding .....

= Guiding question = Open Education Resources are rapidly expanding around the globe, if Australian universities are to take advantage of the OER movement what will they need to do, in the immediate future, to catch up with the rapidly developing provision and use of OERs in Europe, Asia, the Americas and other regions?

Research Questions

 * Australian universities have been slow in adopting OERs so what are the policy implication for Australian Universities?
 * What are the most viable sustainability issues for Australian universities?
 * OERs are typically provided for teachers and learners what other users and forms of OERs might be viable?

= Highly Recommended Priority Links =

EDUCAUSE
7 Things you Should Know About open Education Resources an 2010 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The paper sets out a scenario with the development of a new course in Labor History using resources of the web then outline 7 issues that need to be addressed when creating OERs. -

TEDx
David Wiley Open Education Resources This is a 15 minute video from the April 2010 TEDx conference from New York. He provides an excellent description of open education, which he argues is about generosity, sharing and giving. He point to his belief that "education is right on the rickety edge of its own reformation". a great start to understanding the underpinning philosophy of Open Education Resources.

WikiEducator
Towards a new Institution of Learning by Simon Fenton - Jones and created in April 2009. A great site with good discussion on the models on OER development, sustainability and other paradoxes concerning OERs.

OER Commons
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration The Cape Town Open Education Declaration arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Cape Town in September 2007. The aim of this meeting was to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. The site provides access to the declaration, membership, FAQ, Related Initiative and other resources.

Advancing Sustainability of Open Educational Resources Quoting from the Abstract: "This paper discusses the concept of Open Educational Resources (OERs). The discussion then shift to OER sustainability, a fundamental element essential for the success of OER. Special attention is given to the following as they relate to the OER sustainability: instructional design &amp; presentation; cost of production and maintenance; support; and OER communities of practice as relate to scalability. The paper concludes with recommendations for OERs future research."

ICDE
Open Education Resources site. The site provides access to the ICDE Task force report as well as the Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources report. The site also lists a range of articles dealing with OErs.

Centre for Educational research and Innovation (CERI)
Cultural responses to open licences and the accessibility and usability of open educational resources by Richard McCracken, Head of Intellectual Property, The Open University, United Kingdom, written for the OECD. This paper stems from an expert meeting on Open Educational Resources at Malmo, Sweden, 6-7 February 2006. Quoting from the paper: "This paper addresses some of the licensing issues raised by creating and licensing Open Educational Resources. Flexibility and ease in accessing educational resources, remixing and imbedding them in other, more culturally specific materials, is central to the OER movement. Flexibility can only achieved through a combination of resource design and licensing models." The CERI site also provides access to a range of other articles such as David Wiley's Open Educational Resources: On the Sustainability of OER initiatives and Brian Fitzgerald's Open Educational Resources, Open Content Licensing (OCL).

First Monday
Open educational resources in a global context by Paul Stacey, Volume 12, Number 4 — 2 April 2007. "Can open educational resources help solve the global education shortage? Will a social authoring process enable developing and developed countries to create educational resources together? This paper analyzes these and other questions around the emerging use of open educational resources in a global context. Global perspectives are provided via analysis and extracts from discussion and case studies that took place in a UNESCO online discussion forum involving 480 participants from 90 countries. Open educational resource types, benefits, business models, and futures are explored."

TED (Technlogy, Entertainment and Design)
Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning, a 2009 video on TED. Richard Baraniuk is founder of Connexions, a free, open-source, global clearinghouse of course materials. People in some 200 countries tap into its vast store of texts on everything from engineering to ornithology to music, adapting the content as they see fit.

educational technology & change (etc)
An Interview with Terry Anderson: Open Education. An interview by Judith V. Boettche in December 2006.

= Sites that provide OERs =

Carnegie Mellon University
Learning Initiative Quoting from the site Carnegie Mellon University are:&lt;blovkquote&gt; Using intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent opportunities for assessment and feedback, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) builds courses that are intended to enact instruction - or, more precisely, to enact the kind of dynamic, flexible, and responsive instruction that fosters learning.&lt;/blockquote&gt;

Subject areas include:

Institutions can provide student materials for credit by joining the Initiative and using the Academic Courses. Quoting from the site it states that: "Credit for course completion will be provided by your academic institution. Academic courses include all (or part) of the materials and activities included in the Free Courses, plus a Gradebook and may include tests."""

Academic Earth
Free online video courses from leading universities The site provides current video lectures from American leading universities, Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale. Videos can also be searched by 21 subject areas, top rated lecturers and editor's pick.

OpenLearn
LearningSpace The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others. Sunject areas are:

The site also provides access to Learning tools and the Learning Club.

OER Commons
Browse OER Materials Subject areas include:

OERs can be search by school level: primary, secondary and post secondary. Additional areas to search by are Materials Types, Course Related Materials and Libraries and Collections.

Curriki
Home Page Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible. Subjects include

An Advanced search covers pre-school through to College & Beyond and Professional development.

Alison
Free Online Training Courses ALISON is a for-profit social enterprise based in Galway, Ireland. It is a resourceful and determined multi-national team of socially-aware technologists, educationalists and marketers who understand that today, they have the opportunity to make universal education free to access via the Web. It provides Training Subjects on

The Global Text Project
Global Texts The project developers state: We maintain the chapters for all Global Text Project books in open document format with extensive use of style sheets so that we can quickly then convert them into different media or formats. Global Text Project books have been internationalized and converted to the our standard format using OpenOffice.

You can access individual chapters in open document format and modify them to meet your needs. We control changes to the master version of each chapter, so please report corrections and suggestion changes to the Associate Editor.

The books have been categorized under 7 main fields of study. Click on any of the categories below to access the books. We need your feedback to improve on quality so if you download one of these books, please complete the linked form.

= Delicious = More related sites can be found at the DE Hub OERs site.

Alan Wylie 01:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)