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Re: Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

NouraRaslan — 2008-03-12T20:35:41-00:00

Hello all
In my opinion, first of all teachers should follow courses in computer and Internet throughwhich they can be acquainted with this new technology. Next, computers and Internet lines should be provided in schools. Finally, Students will be happy to follow this new method, provided that they should be prepared and subjected to courses in Microsoft offices and Internet.Unfortunatelly, there are very few experts in this new technology in the developping countries. therefore,Sharing other expertises and communicating with global experts is necessary in my opinion to impose open education resourses in the developping countries,in particular, and globally in general. I think it is worthworthy to struggle for achieving this goal.

DISCUSSION INPUT: What are your personal experiences with OER?

mdeimann — 2007-11-15T11:02:46-00:00

Dear all,

our next and final OLCOS discussion forum is about to start. This time, we will focus on the following issue: Personal experiences with OER. More specifically, what are your lessons learned when using OER? How did I capitalize on them in my own teaching? What tips can I provide to other learners?

I would like to encourage you all to participate in this discussion and share your opinions.

Looking forward to your replies,

Markus

Re: Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

mdeimann — 2007-10-17T07:05:39-00:00

Dear all,

Thank you very much for your interesting inputs. It is really a pleasure to see how a movement such as OER has been evolving over the past years and how we all are part of it.

I agree with Ildiko that you need to have a critical mass of users in order to "persuade" other users and to disseminate the idea behind it. However, does this mean that we can lean back and leave it to the pure automatism, i.e. the movement is inevitable? No, I do not think so. Instead I think we should - as Susan mentioned - try to motivate learners and teachers by providing incentives. As soon as they perceive the idea of free usage and sharing as being relevant to them they will most likely "join the club".

On the other hand, I also agree with Veronika and Matthias that it is important to set up appropriate settings. For this purpose it can be highly valuable to draw on the concept of Instructional Design because it provides valid and practical guidelines for designing different kinds of learning environments. Although some might consider ID as somewhat "old-fashioned" it covers basic questions and is especially able to respond to current challenges (e.g. sustainability).

Looking forward to your replies,

Markus

Re: Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

mazar — 2007-10-12T10:19:34-00:00

Dear Susan,

I agree with you that usually students do not need much more motivation than getting satisfactory (free, prompt and user friendly) access to knowledge, but I believe that once a considerable proportion of students start using their own finding/choice of complimentary study material repositories, their teachers are more likely to get involved as well. - I still remember, that when I was a university student, we collected our laboratory reports on the dormitory's server, so that our peers could use them as a template, and surely soon enough the syllabi of the future experiments started being uploaded by our lab instructors (mainly PhD students, who assisted the profs in the lab experiments), as they realised that we were less likely to lose these documents if they are available electronically. I'm not saying that it's been a highly sophisticated repository, but it was clear the beginning of SHARING. I say we should reach such goals as using proper open educational resources step by step.

On the other hand you are right that it would be most efficient to motivate directly the teachers to start using OER. How? As Matthias said: "provide a setting - i.e. a learning-/teaching arrangement - that makes it possible for learners and teachers to actively explore and experience the benefits of OER".

Best regards,

Ildiko

Re: Discussion Input: Adequate settings for use of OER

vhornung — 2007-10-12T09:57:11-00:00

I would like to join the argument of Matthias that an educational institution should offer the possibility for adequate setting of using OER. This includes f.e. at the lowest level access to the Internet in face-to-face classes and then teachers can start using f.e. a web-quest search for a specific theme - however with free and adaptable material.

The OLCOS project offers some ideas on how to plan an educational setting on https://www.olcos.org/english/tutorials/ or http://wikieducator.org/Open_Educational_Content/olcos/intro duction

Veronika

Re: Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

susan — 2007-10-11T18:50:09-00:00

Hi all,

How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER? is the question of this forum.

I would like to maintain, that learners and teachers are two completely different kinds of human beings.

Learners, if they are self directed and motivated and are able to use the Internet need no "motivation": They just need the information that, where and how they can get OER materials fitting to their needs. The most convincing feature of OER is, that they will find it fast and for free!

Teachers have normally no need for free & online resources, if they have the possibility to use school-books (which means: no extra work, well known, not really worse learning materials embedded in a good structure and curriculum). Teachers should be enforced or should be honoured extra for using OER - by school directors, policies, new employers.

That's my opinion!

bg
Susan

Re: Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

schneider — 2007-09-18T10:55:13-00:00

Dear Markus,

one suggestion concerning your discussion input is to provide a setting - i.e. a learning-/teaching arrangement - that makes it possible for learners and teachers to actively explore and experience the benefits of OER.

To me it seems to be of vital importance that learners and teachers expect and know OER to offer substantial benefits for their learning and teaching. The way to create and foster this expectation and knowledge is working practically with OER.

Why not include exercises into curriculums at school and university? As for the students in my class, I try to include practical exercises covering research on the internet that students have to do on their own before the product/result is discussed in class.

Once again: Do not (only) point out the benefits of OER to learners, offer the opportunity to experience them.

Matthias

Discussion Input: How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?

mdeimann — 2007-09-18T08:28:21-00:00

Dear all,

we would like to invite you to a new discussion. This time we will be focussing on the following question:

"How can learners and teachers be activated to search for OER?"

If you have some experiences on this topic please go ahead an share them with us!

Re: Effective search of OER?

Cordula — 2007-06-20T12:23:18-00:00

Hi All,

for me a bog-standard search still starts with search engines such as Google.

Of course you do have to deal with questions of relevance and quality when being snowed under with data but I suppose after a while you do develop a strategy to intuitively find what you’re after.

I find it especially helpful to go to sites of well-known institutions such as MIT
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

They seem to keep an eye on the quality of their OpenCourseWare as they couldn’t afford to tarnish their good reputation.

Cordula

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

bennovolk — 2007-06-14T12:20:19-00:00

Dear all

For me it would be very interesting to know more about the users of the OERs who are a (special?) group of „informal learners“:

- What is the social background of the user (graduation, pre-university education, etc.)?

- What is their motivation to learn with these resources?

- What is the practical use of the resources (transfer of knowledge in learning process)?

- etc.

I find the questions about the user really fascinating.

Has anybody had any experience with this topic? Or does anybody know of any research projects?

Your help is very much appreciated

Cheers,
Benno Volk, Univ. of Zurich

Re: Effective search of OER?

bennovolk — 2007-06-14T12:10:52-00:00

Dear all

At the Univ. of Zurich the “Open Access Website” (http://www.oai.uzh.ch/) for a free publishing of scientific papers is hosted by the library. The normal data base with an “easy to handle” search can be used to find these publications.

I hope that in few years it would be possible to use the library not only for open access to scientific papers but also for an open access to educational resources.
Therefore it would be necessary that the development of learning content (with specific quality standards) should have the same reputation as a professional reference like a scientific paper or book.

Does anybody know of a library where this is already realized?

Cheers,
Benno Volk, Univ. of Zurich

Effective search of OER?

mdeimann — 2007-06-11T07:49:15-00:00

How can one effectively search for OER? What are your experiences and what tips can you give?
If possible, please rate your tips.

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

patrick_mcandrew — 2007-04-04T10:32:25-00:00

mdeimann wrote on Wed, 04 April 2007 11:17

how do you think the usage of OER could be fostered within higher education?

Something that could make a difference would be if institutions started to adopt OERs as they do texts - they might then wrap them around with additional support and assessment but assume that the learner can work through the resource themselves. This would bring OERs closer to the formal world of education. At the same time I can see opportunities in the other direction: making the benefits of using open resources clearer and more obvious.

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

mdeimann — 2007-04-04T09:17:00-00:00

patrick_mcandrew wrote on Tue, 03 April 2007

So I think that it is not necessarily the case that only [b

publishing[/b] has to become easier but also use, possibly through a variety of environments. At the moment I think the OER movement is rather supplier led, particularly with the focus on transferring content to other educators.

Patrick.

Thank you Patrick for your thoughts.

I agree with you that OER should definitely focus on the usage of the materials rather than on publishing. By doing so, peer assessment of the used materials could contribute to a constant improvement (assuming that only "good", i.e. valuable materials would be used).

Patrick,
how do you think the usage of OER could be fostered within higher education?

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

theobastiaens — 2007-04-04T06:56:43-00:00

Hi All,

I think that when it comes to OER especially for educational purposes (so not especially for sharing research findings between researchers) we should focus on quality of materials and quality of the didactical design. The value of OER has to prove itself. I think that by a good structure of for example an educational text ( summing up learning goals , summary, highlights etc., giving a comparison) it must be possible. Putting just information online will not do the job..

Theo

Re: Goals using OER

patrick_mcandrew — 2007-04-03T15:23:55-00:00

There is an aspect of marketing about producing open content and then also offering fuller courses only learners register. I think that is inevitable as few would argue that the content itself gives the whole experience. If someone wants to study a topic in depth then the structure given by tutor support, assessment and accreditation provides a lot of the motivation.

However the move to open content just does not make sense as straight marketing: we can offer "tasters" without adopting creative commons, building units that stand alone or offering a learning environment. This also means that we need to offer more sophisticated arguments for why institutions should produce open content rather than simply pulling through student numbers.

Patrick.

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

patrick_mcandrew — 2007-04-03T15:15:27-00:00

Hi All,
Thank you to Marcus for the invitation to join your discussion. As a bit of background I am Research and Evaluation Director for the openlearn project at the Open university UK. See http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn for a bit more about this project which is providing open educational resources. We launched the site in October 2006.

Our experience in many ways has been very good – nice comments from people, a rapidly growing site and many visitors. It has also been quite revealing to experience at first hand the impact of operating an open site. Two things stand out for me:
1. That visitors do not behave like students. We need to offer a good experience to people who have less clear motivation for using the site.
2. That free content will leak out in ways that we do not initially expect. This has been helped by having content in XML that other people can transform and put in new environments. It then becomes hard to track the use but it is definitely interesting.

So I think that it is not necessarily the case that only publishing has to become easier but also use, possibly through a variety of environments. At the moment I think the OER movement is rather supplier led, particularly with the focus on transferring content to other educators.

Patrick.

Re: Goals using OER

theobastiaens — 2007-03-29T13:37:39-00:00

Hi everybody,

I know that I'm playing the 'devil's role' but I would say, OER is for me a marketing strategy. I'm responsible for a Master in Educational Technology and the only thing I want is students...a massive group of students .

So with OER I found a teaser. Giving little bit's of knowledge, this time not just-in-time but just enough to catch the fish.

(by the way, this is not my real opinion , but I see a lot of projects on the internet which use this strategy...

Re: Goals using OER

tpfeffer — 2007-03-28T18:35:03-00:00

Dear Viola,

with respect to your first set of questions:
I search for ways to reduce the main barriers for publication (additional work and costs) by trying to open learning management systems to allow for gradual, individual publishing, rather than to set up additional repositories, which I regard as cumbersome. Making publishing much easier for scholars should give them an additional way to communicate, express themselves (or even show off). Publishing OER should become as easy as blogging. (Please also refer this similar posting.)

with respect your the second set of questions:
I agree that there exist high expectations in interoperability and federated search. However, I also see a certain pre-maturity in this, due to the fact that "literary formats" and successful "types of repositories" are still in rapid development. Everybody knows, how journal articles, textbooks and the respective repositories (=libraries) have to look like, but similar formats and successful practices for OER in a digital environment have not yet evolved, at least not in the sense of broad, common use.

Thomas Pfeffer

Re: Goals using OER

Viola Naust — 2007-03-28T14:12:05-00:00

Raising the issue of repositories or portals I’d like to consider some points and any comments are welcome:

Local repositories are often of big value for the institution itself and its staff and students (esp. when it comes to sharing, co-authoring, collaboration, internal communication etc.).

But still:
• how can the existing repositories be leveraged?
• how and who can foster the installation of a feasible repository in an institution (to convince the board of the value and to convince “all” staff members to participate)?
• what could be the benefits for the people publishing content?

• For the general public what is needed is a localisation/identification of what is available, what the available technology can do, and how much infrastructure is needed to support each.
• Other topics are the interoperability and federated search in different repositories. Who takes care of that (rising awareness, providing the platform)?
• How important are the different languages?

OER would benefit a lot if on one hand existing resources would somehow be wrapped up and more and more people would contribute to publish new content/courses visible and available to the general public on well-known platforms or portals with easy access.

Viola Naust

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

tpfeffer — 2007-03-28T10:15:05-00:00

Dear colleagues,

How to foster learning with OER? I would have one argument, how to promote the idea, and one recommendation, how to promote action:

1) publishing OER as empowerment and eLiteracy
To publish OER should be regarded as a form of empowerment for the producer, as a way to allow for contribution to web-based communication. Virtual media constitute an entirely new form of communication, comparable to script (reading/writing). It is a question of literacy, if actors are able not only to passively consume, but also are empowered to contribute.

2) publishing OER has to become much easier
Current practices in publishing OER often require 2nd storage of educational resources, their transfer from a learning management system to a content management system. This is inefficient and cumbersome. It would be better to open learning management systems for publication, e.g. to distinguish between public and private elements of a course.

Re: Goals using OER

tpfeffer — 2007-03-28T09:57:50-00:00

In the past, the main goal of OER was seen in their potential benefit for consumers (e.g. institutions or students from developing countries). Too much focus was put on re-use, following physical metaphors (e.g. copy/paste of OER without change).

In contrast to that, publishing content and information about courses also could have more local benefits for the producers of OER:

1) improved internal communication at a higher education institution
*) sharing of practices among educators (how do others use eLearning?)
*) coordination accross study programs (what do others teach?)

2) improved consumer information
e.g. prospective students are better informed about courses/study programs, before they are formally enrolled

3) increased visibility
*) within the institution
*) within the disciplinary community
*) within the general public

4) empowerment
to publish is a form to contribute to the web, maybe more important than just to consume

Goals using OER

mdeimann — 2007-03-28T07:38:57-00:00

In general goals of using and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) are to help equalize access to knowledge and educational opportunities across the world.

However, this is a rather wide-ranging goal as there are numerous factors (e.g. institutional settings) to consider.

Therefore, I would like to discuss with you the following: Regarding your standpoint and profession, what do you consider to be the goals of OER? For now and for the future?

Let me start with myself: I am working at the FernUniversit�t in Hagen, Germany, which is the only public distance teaching university. In my opinion, establishing a digital repository for researchers and students would be a great idea. There are many interesting ideas circulating around different institutions and within the university. However, one seldom comes across them before those ideas are being published in peer-reviewed journals. Providing free and unlimited access prior to a final version may enhance the quality of the papers and also enrich one owns ideas.

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

Cordula — 2007-03-27T12:43:16-00:00

Dear all,

as the very essence of teaching is the sharing of knowledge it is somewhat sad to see how few teachers in Germany are prepared to openly share their educational materials.

In the context of the development of the multimedia-based learning environment „Interactive Whiteboards – authentic learning“, from the Department of Instructional Technology and Media, FernUniversit�t Hagen, research has been conducted into the usage of interactive whiteboards. As this new medium can only be as good as the teachers that integrate it into their lessons and the materials that are prepared for it, the efficiency of developing high-quality content has come under the spotlight once again.

Great Britain leads the world in the introduction of interactive whiteboards into schools and is experiencing the need of teachers to share lesson materials in order to maximise the use of common resources. Teachers have spoken about the need of filing systems that enable easy recall and the classification of materials for example by topic to make the exchange feasible. In a response to this need file sharing system such as the Scottish Teacher Resource Exchange , a moderated database of resources and activities has been created by teachers. Contributions can vary in those systems from simple ideas and questions, to complete lesson plans, which enable other teachers to use these resources within their own lessons.

Although ICT in schools might have been the first trigger for German teachers to share their ideas online, it is still a minority of teachers who have overcome old habits. School networks, for example file sharing systems in each individual school might help to take another hurdle as some teacher would prefer to share resources only in a somewhat limited and sheltered environment.

Open Content initiatives such as this one might help teachers to wake up and smell the coffee as materials they are paid to develop are not their private property but a valuable common resource and should be reused and distributed for colleagues and students alike. In my opinion, the participation should not be compulsory, but it should be made clear that the sharing of educational resources would make the teachers’ lives easier and the preparation of lessons more efficient.

Cordula Orth

Re: DISCUSSION INPUT: How to foster learning with OER?

dreina — 2007-03-26T22:11:13-00:00

I think there are several (theoretical) approaches to this subject. There is an easy door to bring OER to the people interested: through matters related with the learning of free software in the universities (it's the case of UOC). You can hardly keep close such information. This step is not very significant at the moment (in volume), but it is important as an opening.

Another way can be the use of wikis and blogs inside the academic structure of any university working with a web. These are tools created for open communication, once you start working with them may be difficult, at some moment, to keep it closed inside any particular academic circle.

There is a good point in the OLCOS r.m.w: “important change occurs in two phases: first you do the old job better, then you redefine the job”.