Digital skills for collaborative OER development/Orientation/FAQs

Invitation to help develop the FAQ page

As an open education initiative, the OERu works with learners and the community to develop and improve our course materials collaboratively. We use the pilot offering of OERu courses as an authentic opportunity to develop the frequently asked questions page (FAQs) for future iterations of the course.

Please help us in developing the FAQ page by posting any questions (and prospective answers) you recommend for inclusion based on your experience of the wiki skills learning pathway. Login to WikiEducator and post your questions on the source page in the wiki. Yes, this site was developed using a wiki and you can help to improve the course site for future iterations.

Wouldn't it be easier to use a standard forum for participant introductions?

Yes it would be easier for many participants to post introductions on a course forum. However, this would not scale well for courses with hundreds of participants. It's far easier to link to an existing profile on the web and we want to encourage new users to populate their userpages in the wiki. More importantly, this course focuses on developing digital skills and we know from data we have collected that few educators working in the formal sector are familiar with blog technology and how aggregated course feeds work. Using your course blog to introduce yourself to fellow participants is a useful way for newbies to familiarise themselves with the technologies we are using on this course before progressing with more substantive tasks.

Could my question appear here?

Yes, your question and our community developed response could appear here. Don't be missed by your absence.

--Valerie Taylor (talk) 10:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC) - The introduction mentions WordPress but doesn't provide any explanation. What is this about? Wayne provided the answer in his email on 14Apr. This is the answer to my questions... host their own course sites at no cost using free tiered cloud services and open source technologies. In this course we will develop a collection of wiki pages which can be harvested for publishing on your own course site using the popular WordPress content management system. At the OER Foundation, we "eat our own dog food" and the DS4OER course site uses the same technology you will be using to publish your learning pathways you develop openly in the wiki. For example, I have set up my "own" domain on OpenShift by Redhat Linux and installed WordPress which is hosting the DS4OER materials.

--Valerie Taylor (talk) 10:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC) - What are learning pathways? Where do I find a description? I think I how what they are, but DS4OER seems to have a specific meaning.

--J. Radney A general description is available on Wikipedia (Learning Pathway) From the orientation materials, it would seem that a learning pathway can be quite structured and well-defined for beginning independent learners or much more loosely defined and open to freedom for learners to explore their own interests and inclinations.--Jrradney (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point Valerie -we need a reference to explain the concept of a learning pathways, possibly similar to the page explanation for learning challenges. I'm thinking that inserting a page in the course guide on "how to navigate the course" where we can explain what is meant with a learning pathway would be a good solution, rather than an hidden FAQ. --Mackiwg (talk) 05:28, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

--Valerie Taylor (talk) 10:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC) - What is the plural of OER? Looks like you use OER to mean more than one, rather than OERs.

--J. Radney I think OER is open education resources (thus, plural by default), but the acronym may be used in a sentence such as I am developing an OER for use in my philosophy course. where the understanding would be singular. At the same time, WikiEducators are devoted to the development of OERs would be allowed and would best be understood as unambiguously plural 'resources' rather than 'resource'.--Jrradney (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

The general international convention is "open educational resources" and its common practice to use OER for both singular and plural. I think we may have adopted this as an editorial style. However J. Radney makes a good point that for clarity to learners which could use OERs. Either way, we will need to be consistent in the use of the acronym in the course. --Mackiwg (talk) 05:28, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

--Irit Alony (talk) 12:44, 21 April 2015 (UTC) - What are the benefits of developing an OER rather than a proprietary resource?