User:Mverhaart/OER

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OER International

Mexico in the area of Technical and Vocational Education (TVET)?

Information about the website in English is at: http://www.temoa.info/about

[1]

  • Towards a Culture of Openness in Education in Latin America
  • Formation of Communities of Practice to Promote Openness in Education

eLearning Papers n° 23 (2011): http://www.elearningpapers.eu

[2] Open Educational Resources : Experiences of use in a Latin-American context Open Ed (7th : 2010 : Barcelona): http://hdl.handle.net/10609/5062

[3] Technology and Education: Search engine to look for Open Educational Resources (OER) TECNOLÓGICO DE MONTERREY: http://www.itesm.mx/technologyeducation


oer-university@googlegroups.com; on behalf of; mokurai@earthtreasury.org Mon 14/03/2011 11:48 a.m

> The OERU project will certainly, as Wayne and other has established, > cause a high impact in the education system. Unfortunately for > students who do not speak English, it will be impossible to have > access to this or other high quality OER projects originally conceived > in English.

This turns out not to be the case. There are quite substantial OER programs in non-English-speaking countries, notably Uruguay and Nepal, and for local languages in countries where English is also spoken, such as South Africa.

I am working with translation and localization projects for content and software, including Sugar Labs/One Laptop Per Child and FLOSS Manuals, and in contact with others, including a project of the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa. Work is going on in more than a hundred languages. For example,

http://translate.sugarlabs.org/

> For this reason, I want to focus my research on OER in the Latin > American region, specifically in the Spanish speaking countries and > specifically on the policies (the lack of or needed) to promote OER.

The leading organization in this area is Plan CEIBAL in Uruguay, which has given every student in its schools an OLPC XO with Sugar software and a content library in Spanish. They are trying to find the rest of the children not in school to do the same for them. OLE (Open Learning Exchange) Nepal is another excellent project.

Many other countries with a commitment to OER or with significant experiments going on are listed at

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments

Venezuela and Brazil have very large non-OLPC projects for educational computing, but I don't know what their policies are on OER.

> Research in this area is very scarce.

Indeed. Research on many educational topics is scarce, and what is known is not widely used. We should start a separate thread on the WSIS forum for exploring what is needed, and how to get education systems to use it.

Do you know about this work?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_research

> So I would like to ask for your help > for any reference, dissertation or thesis that you consider useful.

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Education_Team/Education_Bibliographies

Contacts

  • Chile: You may want to speak with Werner Westermann. He's the head of a Chilean group that focuses on OER called Educalibre: http://educalibre.cl/

Webinar: Producing quality OERs and building an Interactive OER Portal in Africa: A case study of the African Virtual University

2011-03-15

Dr. Bakary Diallo, rector of the African Virtual University (AVU) will present on the recently launched interactive portal called OER@AVU at the OCW Consortium webinar on March 15th, at 10AM EST. This talk is a must for those interested in production and use of open educational resources in developing countries. The AVU, in partnership with the African Development Bank and 10 African countries have developed 73 modules of Maths, Physics, Chemistry, biology, Teacher Education Professional courses, and ICT in education. The 73 modules are structured as 4 Bachelor of Education in Mathematics and Sciences. The modules are available in 3 languages, French, English and Portuguese, which make it a total of 219 modules. They are now offered as degree, diploma and certificate programs at participating universities and as AVU’s own programs A collaborative approach was used to develop the modules; the authors as well as the peer reviewers were selected from 12 universities in the 10 participating countries. Open content resources were used to enrich the existing programs of the participating universities, all modules are now published using a creative commons license, meaning that they can be used, modified, and re-submitted to AVU for further sharing. The process of producing the materials included policy harmonization for the 12 participating universities, design and development strategy, a pilot phase, quality assurance framework, and formation of the teacher education virtual consortium. If you would like to learn more about the issues in launching a project that involves institutions from 3 different languages and 10 different countries, please register by sending an email with your name and affiliation to webinars@avu.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject “OCW” to register. You will receive an email with details on how to join the webinar. We strongly recommend that you browse through the OER@AVU website before the webinar. If you have any questions or would like to start a discussion during the webinar, please post them on the OCWC Communities of Interest website. We will try to cover the posted questions and issues during the webinar as much as possible. For more information, please email meena@ocwconsortium.org.

Meena Hwang Director of Communications and Community Outreach OpenCourseWare Consortium www.ocwconsortium.org

OER Otago Poly

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 8:27 AM, Sarah Stewart <sarahstewart07@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Gene

Otago Polytechnic offers a Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Learning and Teaching which was initially developed for its teaching staff. However, over the last few years, staff such as Leigh Blackall and Bronwyn Hegarty have delivered a number of the courses that make up the Graduate Certificate via Wikieducator - these courses have attracted a number of informal students who have followed the courses for interest.

Now we want to offer the whole Certificate in an open environment, probably Wikieducator, so that the whole program is accessible to both informal and formal students. At this stage we are working to develop a funding model that ensures: • the program is sustainable and cost effective • the teacher gets job satisfaction ie he/she is able to interact with all students in a meaningful way • informal students have access to course materials • formal students have an excellent learning experience • informal students may become formal students if they wish, or pay for a middle tier of services ie 'mentoring' or 'support' from the teacher without full assessment or accreditation services. Hope that helps to clarify things a little better

Sarah

Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices -- OPAL Report 2011 released

22-02-2011 (Paris) The Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL) releases its Report 2011, entitled Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices. Among its conclusions is the fact that OER are more widely used where programmes or initiatives for open resources exist at the institutional level. The lesser the fear, insecurity or discomfort towards OER, the higher the frequency of their use. The report thus advocates building trust in OER in order to increase their actual usage and to build open learning architectures to transform learning. As a member of OPAL Initiative, UNESCO contributed to the international dimensions of the Report, especially policy development and institutional capacity building, and will also be responsible for its wide dissemination. Institutional policies for OER are still a long way from impacting on educational institutions, according to findings from the OPAL quantitative survey. The perception by respondents that OER lead to institutional innovation still does not translate into implementation at the organization level. This is further compounded, on the one hand, by the very modest levels of support to factors that induce or enable the implementation of Open Educational Practices (OEP) in educational institutions, and on the other hand, by the level of importance attached by respondents to institutional policy barriers to the use of OER. The report presents the following key findings in relation to supporting factors for OER. Policy support for OER:

  • Support and recognition for OER projects and initiatives is necessary in institutional policy in higher education and adult education.
  • Support for localization, adaptation and translation of existing OER and support for implementing appropriate licensing schemes are viewed as very important.
  • Infrastructure, access and availability are seen as necessary conditions.
  • Promotion of quality assurance for OER is viewed as necessary.

Role of networks and partnerships for the diffusion of OER in institutions:

  • 54% of all respondents stated that partnership with other organizations is a supporting factor for the use of OER.
  • Future OER-related support initiatives should focus their attention more on partnerships with other institutions.

Demand for specific quality assurance processes for OER

  • The report shows that systematic quality assurance mechanisms for OER are lacking in higher education and adult education in Europe.
  • Educational professionals give voice to considerable insecurity about how they can demonstrate the value of OER.

The Report (PDF, 64mb) can be downloaded from the University of Duisberg-Essen public repository: click here http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate-25907/OPALReport2011-Beyond-OER.pdf. OPAL is an international network that promotes innovation and better quality in education through the use of open educational resources. Partly funded by the European Commission, OPAL is initiated through international organizations like UNESCO, ICDE and EFQUEL, and a number of universities. UNESCO is contributing to the OPAL Open Educational Practices framework, as well as to the development of the Registry of OER Champions and the Clearinghouse of Open Educational Practices. Source: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31243&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

OER University

Summary of the open planning meeting to establish an OER university held in Dunedin, 23 February, 2011 now posted.

  • Phil Ker, Chief Executive Officer of Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand remarked that the OERU "is history in the making". Professor Jim Taylor, from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia suggested that "OER is the next big thing in tertiary education".
  • The OER university concept is off to a good start. If you missed the live stream of the open planning meeting, we have posted a summary including video highlights here:
  • Recordings of all the sessions are available on Ustream:
  • If you would like to continue participating in planning free learning for all students worldwide through the OER university initiative -- be sure that you have signed up for the OER university Google group: