Week 8 - OER
7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources
Educause (2010) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
Scenario
Dr. Bartlett is on the history faculty at a small, private institution, where his academic work focuses on U.S. race relations and the civil rights movement.
For several years he has cultivated his interest in the labor movement in the United States, and he hears from several students that they would like to
take a course on that topic.
Unsure whether he has the time or expertise to pull together a curriculum on such a course, Bartlett turns to educational resources online.
Among the materials that he finds is a full course on labor relations that initially looks like everything he will need to teach the course at his university.
It is available for free; it includes readings, a bibliography of supporting sources, assessments, and sample projects; and it comes from a repository of courses that were developed at a respected institution.
As he digs deeper into the materials and thinks about the specifics of the course he wants to teach, he starts to see gaps in the resources from the open course. He browses additional resources and begins to search through collections in related disciplines. Of course, materials from history programs are important, but Bartlett also uncovers free educational resources from political science, economics, and sociology departments that fill out the syllabus of the course as he envisions it. Much of the historical context for the labor movement parallels that of the civil rights movement, but Bartlett starts seeing his own specialty from a somewhat different perspective, based on the research he does for his new course.
In a relatively short time, and at no cost other than his time, Bartlett not only constructs a syllabus and coursepack for the course on labor, he also incorporates some of the open resources that he came across into his courses on race. Some of the resources he finds allow users to modify them and repost them online, and Bartlett takes advantage of this option for some of the materials he uses. The students who take his new course on labor relations tell him how much they like the course, and he also hears compliments about the new materials included in his civil rights classes.
1. What is it? Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. OER typically refers to electronic resources, including those in multimedia formats, and such materials are generally released under a Creative Commons or similar license that supports open or nearly open use of the content. OER can originate from colleges and universities, libraries, archival organizations, government agencies, commercial organizations such as publishers, or faculty or other individuals who develop educational resources they are willing to share.
2. How does it work? The term OER generally refers only to digital resources and, as such, tends to focus on usage in online or hybrid learning environments, though electronic content can certainly be used in faceto-face environments as well. Each resource is issued under a license that spells out how it can be used: Some materials may only be used in their original form; in other cases, learning resources can be modified, remixed, and redistributed. OER are typically found in collections or repositories. These can be offerings from a single institution, such as when a college or university makes available online the resources from its courses, or they can be collections of materials gathered from individuals or departments from a wide range of separate institutions. Instructors and individual learners can download OER and use them in formal or informal learning situations, and one of the hallmarks of OER is their flexibility—many are modular in nature, allowing them to be used in novel combinations to suit particular learning activities. Because open resources are so malleable, they can be adapted to keep pace not only with new technologies but also with changes to academic disciplines and teaching methods. Depending on the resource, these updates might be made by the creator or by users of the resource.
3. Who’s doing it? One of the longest-running and highest-profile OER initiatives is the OpenCourseWare project from MIT, which began in 2002 and today features all of the course materials from roughly 2,000 MIT courses. The OpenCourseWare model has been replicated by dozens of colleges and universities around the world, which are putting full course materials online for anyone to use. Having access to an institution’s course resources is not intended to be equivalent to taking a course at that institution, but users can take advantage of that access to supplement or direct their own learning. Other OER efforts include Connexions, which was begun at Rice University, and the Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Mellon, as well as the University of the People and even iTunes U. Although OER projects use different models for how they function, all endorse the notion that teaching, learning, and research are improved when educational resources are more open and more accessible.
4. Why is it significant? Educational resources developed in an open environment can be vetted and improved by a broad community of educators, resulting in materials that represent what the educational community sees as most valuable. By providing educators with new access to educational material, open resources have the potential to spur pedagogical innovation, introducing new alternatives for effective teaching. OER have the potential to expose students and instructors to the long tail of content, most of which never finds its way into widespread educational use. Moreover, learning resources that can be modified and reused promote collaboration and participation—two key elements of a Web 2.0 approach to teaching and learning.
The resources required to develop high-quality learning materials and activities for a full complement of courses can be prohibitive for many institutions and instructors. By distributing the costs over a larger number of users, OER brings a greater range of tools within reach of more users. OER can also lower the costs for students to obtain educational content. OER and online or hybrid learning are natural partners in efforts that take advantage of—and prompt—developments in educational technology that facilitate new media, new formats, and new means of distribution.
5. What are the downsides? Like all educational resources, the quality of OER can be uneven and depends largely on their sources. Some OER are simply ineffective at presenting content in a valuable manner, and not all OER collections have a feedback mechanism by which users can share their evaluations about the quality of a resource. The value of educational resources tends to decrease without periodic updating, and many open resources are not kept current. Even within an OER repository that is operated and sanctioned by a respected institution, individual resources might not be held to the same standard of quality as the institution’s other offerings.
The flipside of the flexibility of open resources is that many need to be adapted for use in a departmental or institutional context to meet local requirements or needs. Some open resources do not comply with accessibility requirements for users with disabilities. Whenever content is shared, and especially when it can be modified, questions arise over intellectual property and copyright concerns. In some cases, faculty resistance to opening their resources can be an obstacle.
6. Where is it going? The abundance of OER can leave users spending a long time searching for a resource that fits their needs, and the volume of OER will only increase. OER repositories and the tools to search for and filter resources will need to build out their capacities and capabilities to help instructors and individual learners navigate the growing sea of open content. Part of this process is evaluating the credibility of individual resources or collections, and new mechanisms are likely to emerge to facilitate this. To some extent, partnerships (with certain publishers, for example) have begun to fill this role, allowing faculty members to choose from lists of reviewed (or “approved”) open resources; other means of assessing the quality of OER will surely be developed. Even when a resource is deemed accurate and effective, resources might need to meet even higher standards to be included in for-credit courses. What organization will have the authority to sanction a resource or a collection of resources for degree- or certification-granting programs?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning? Few disagree that the infusion of OER into higher education is likely to have far-reaching effects on the character of teaching and learning, though the nature of that change is the subject of some debate. One of the more radical viewpoints is that the OER movement will lead to a future in which all of the components of an education will be available online for free and that learners will have the opportunity to construct a course of study—though it might not be called a “degree”—from the wide and growing pool of open content. Others envision a less disruptive future for OER, suggesting that the model for higher education will persist in a form not wholly different from what it is today, but enhanced with highquality, open, digital content.
Regardless, OER will expand access to educational resources to more learners, more of the time. In particular, adult learners, students who work full time, and other nontraditional students stand to benefit from open resources because they are available for independent, self-directed study.
Open resources are one way to address the rising costs of education, and they also have the potential to facilitate new styles of teaching and learning. Giving faculty the ability to pick and choose the individual resources they want to use—and to modify those resources and “assemble” them in unique ways—promises greater diversity of learning environments.
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While I appreciate the sentiment in this statement, it made a red flag raise in the back of mind a bit. OER is a great movement that is occurring and is certainly bringing educational resources to many that would not otherwise have them, but to say that it is possible to “educate everyone” because of OER is a bit of a stretch. There are billions of people on the planet that do not currently have regular internet access and many without the luxury of being able to spend their money paying to use the internet at an alternative location. The article was a bit more realistic in their praise of OER by stating that “OER will expand access to educational resources to more learners, more of the time.”
While I believe that OER can help fill some of the gaps that occur in education, there are many other factors that determine whether or not someone has access to an education.
With that being said, I believe that OER are fantastic for being able to expand education beyond the walls of the classroom and allow people from various walks of life to be able to access a wide range of resources that they likely would not have access to otherwise. It can also help to equal the playing field between the “have” and “have not” schools, since OER are free and available to anyone with access.
Some OER that I like include:
ed.ted.com – Video lessons with quizzes that can be customized.
kahoot.com – Quiz game that you can create or find quizzes that have already been created by others.
code.org – Coding lessons of varying ability and skill levels.
commonsensemedia.org – Digital citizenship lessons and resources.
21things4students.net – Technology curriculum complete with all resources & directions for students and teachers.
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In regards to your comments on educating everyone- I really like how you picked up on that statement. To be honest I missed it and absolutely agree with you that “educating everyone” is a stretch. I feel like I say this each week but I hate to be a pessimist but I don’t think it is possible to educate all 7.4 billion people in the world. I’d like to think that is a realist perspective because like you said not everyone has access to internet or the funds to pay for it. There are also tribes throughout the world that don’t have human contact. I wonder how many people access OER today versus five years ago, ten years ago and what the trends will look like in the future. I predict that the percentage used would plateau but I couldn’t say how big a percentage it would be.
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I also hit a hault with this statement. Having worked inner city for a number of years, I have seen first hand the lack of technology use, and ownership in many student’s homes. I also agree that OER can help fill some gaps in education, but that there are many other factors that attribute as well.
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There is no magic tool or key or method or strategy that will reach ALL students. Each student is far too individualistic to learn in the same way as everyone else. I agree that OER can be a powerful method that allows many or even most students opportunities to be successful but I know many students who would struggle to navigate the process that was described in the video and be able to take upon themselves the specific tasks required to succeed in the field.
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OER is the start of Open education for everyone. I believe the the resources that have been build online have, in many cases, been intentionally done to break down barriers and increase their accessibility. The other side of this, however requires us to consider how people access to resources that are available to everyone. Also, there are some assumed skill sets involved with this particular type of learning. The example given, and many of the examples I know are for those who are both literate and able to navigate a computer. Certain tech requirements exists, which eliminates a portion of the population, as well as an awareness gap. There are great sites like Instructables that teacher specific skills sets, but unless you are a member and are aware of the free courses option, you would not know. Those who are savvy enough to find these resources are not always the most in need of them.
There are some great opportunities online, however, for both academic and life skills. Instructables is one of my favorites; I am currently learning how to sew for free, and I also took portions of a 3D printing course. Kahn Academy provides great tutorials online for math. I also know of individuals who use specific sites that allow them to audit college courses. All of these sites provide free and extensive opportunities for people who are looking for a help with specific skills. A friend of mine recently told me about Google Art Project and a site run by the Smithsonian. Both provide students with the experience of walking through museums from the comfort of their computer screen. Open Education Resources are a great start to leveling the playing field and providing opportunities that are as good as (or nearly) the “real thing”. There are just a few more steps in getting access to teachers, families, and individuals while building awareness of their availability.
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Ashley, I completely agree with you that “OER is the start of open education for everyone.” You can’t just expect people to know where to find these resources and how to use them. Let alone, the technology needed to use the resources. It is great that they are free and anyone can use them, but there is more to it than that!
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I have to say that OER is a great initiative that has the potential to help people all around the world. The idea that resources are made available at little to no cost means that a bridge is being created between the people and the general public. I do however think it is an overstatement to say that OER creates the ability to educate everyone one on the earth. There are still many other educational barriers that need to be addressed. Literacy for example is a huge issue, even wth access to the information, many people around the world are lacking basic foundations of reading and writing. Additionally, it absurd to think that everyone has access to internet and computers.
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Indeed, I agree that technology access could be limited in some areas even though their citizens could benefit from free educational resources that could help them gain skills that could allow them to build a better life. The continent of Africa is an example of such a developing area. E-learning Africa News (2012) reported that “because of the high cost involved in the creation of OERs, African countries with fewer resources may not have the means to create and distribute their own materials and resources.” Therefore, they either rely on finding resources created by other continents and countries or they do without. The concern with the former is since “there is no quality control, there is a huge amount of bad material and resources available” and that would not help Africans catch up with modern nations (E-learning Africa News, 2012).
Reference:
E-Learning Africa News. (2012).Finding the sweet spot: open educational resources in the developing world. Retrieved from http://ela-newsportal.com/finding-the-sweet-spot-open-educational-resources-in-the-developing-world/..
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I have never stopped a video so quickly in my life. I had NO IDEA that colleges offered this option to students, let alone people who are not even registered to take classes at the university. The closest I came to this was auditing a course at MSU. I went to MIT’s website and have been sitting in shock for about the past 15 minutes. This is one of the best educational resources I have ever stumbled upon in my life, as a teacher and as a student!
I immediately thought back to the week we studied connected learning. What a goldmine for self-motivated students who want to explore new avenues! OER can help someone in my position immensely, in multiple ways. If you’ve followed any of my comments or posts, you know my school is pretty underfunded and a majority of our population is at poverty level (or below). We have groups of kids that we try to help “get out alive” and break the circle of poverty in their family. These are incredibly intelligent children. Unfortunately, many don’t strive towards living up to their full potential because of social traditions in the community, and an inability to believe that they can do more than what they have experienced through their families. Having access to look at information to see what higher education is like, or to explore at a later time when they are ready to take a step out, would in my opinion, increase the chances of helping students break that cycle.
In addition, our school is in the process of redesigning our curriculum maps— in some cases, creating one for the first time. Our district struggles with prepping students for college readiness, and I believe that being able to view the way courses are designed can help us be more efficient teachers for high flyers.
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I love the idea of using this resource to expose your students to “college life”. At the university we commonly talk about the importance of getting kids on campus and exposed to what college has to offer. I agree that this is especially true of students who may not have parents sharing those prior experiences or who may not otherwise have the opportunity. This gets at the “soft skills” that can go along with opening educational resources to more students. Students seeing these resources from places like MIT may start to feel like college is not such a foreign concept. They may even start to identify themselves as a future college goer. “I’ve seen what classes have to offer. This is what the teaching is like. I’ve ‘taken’ a course from a school already.” Allowing students to engage in an OER can demystify the experiences somewhat. I like this idea a lot.
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… I am asking you to contribute additional ideas — and resources — to this document.
The minimum number of comments for this week is just one, in which you highlight one significant idea from the video or text, and you include a hyperlink to an OER that you might find useful in your own teaching.
The maximum number of comments — and responses to your peers — is unlimited.
My hope is that you are still willing to engage throughout this busy final week of class and to provide the kinds of substantive, thoughtful comments and questions that you have all semester.
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In my search I found one OER resource that could be very helpful to teachers or anyone seeking education. This resource allows users to browse many different subject areas that that have a variety of useable learning tools.
https://www.oercommons.org/oer
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A couple of OER resources that I came across are Open Learn, http://www.open.edu/openlearn, that provides free courses in various subjects. There is also the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/selfdirected/, that offers free learning modules for teachers about research sources that could even serve as a form of professional development. Dell,http://www.delltrainingcentre.com/Main/Home/Home.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f,, offers tech related modules that users can earn a certificate for as well.
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Nearpod is probably my favorite resource that I use right now. Nearpod allows me to easily convert powerpoint presentation into a resource that I can use to formatively assess my students, get feedback from them, and see the work of multiple students. I use the free version, but there is a paid version that will allow students to self-pace through the presentation. Many teachers have created presentations that they have added to the gallery in Nearpod, and there are also presentaions on sites such as Prezi that have been created and are licensed to be used. You can easily make changes to these documents to make them serve the needs of your class.
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The designing of history courses can be a challenging prospect. Having designed several small lessons for history classes, I have had to utilize several sources of this nature. In the example, Dr. Bartlett is practicing on a much larger scale the same type of research that I have done while working on projects for my MA. I have found many OER that benefit my lessons while also providing perspective on how I design. Searching information that is vetted by fellow educators allows for a broader viewpoint.
I found one website https://www.oercommons.org that provides thousands of materials useable when designing lessons. In all honesty I am disappointed I never found this site before since it allows you to search the Library of Congress. Having access to such a vast collection of materials is a major benefit to researchers in any field.New Conversation
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This sentence in paragraph eight in my opinion is a complete contradiction to the video above that explains how OER allows all learners to be at the same academic advantage. I think every teacher I know can agree that Technology is not equivalent in each district and certainly not equal throughout households. Some of these resources are great, but if students can not access them then it makes the learning activities and informal learning situation a little bit different. I think that OER resources are adaptable, but unless families have the latest technology to keep up with the latest method of teaching on OER, then students will fall behind the curve and miss opportunities other students have, when the materials don’t need to be modified or adapted.
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When it comes to OER, over the years I have done so many searches as a teacher/student looking for resources to incorporate in my own classroom. These resources have seriously helped me stay afloat as a 1st year teacher. I think OER is so important and I have even thought about sharing my work with people on line. As one of my professors told me one year, “a good teacher, is a teacher who steals ideas from others to enhance their own teaching and learning.” I found this so relevant and decided to do just that. With that said some of the resources that I have found, that I really like, were from Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers (which I have done once when I was desperate and needed something immediately), Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizzz, Ozzr, Weebly, and honestly just Google for random searches. I feel that as a teacher in the booming technology era it is important that we all engage in as many digital literacies as possible to provide our students with the most engaging ways to learning. I couldn’t imagine actually not having all the means to explore and obtain this information. I remember my parents saying “you don’t even know how good you have it.” Back then, all there was were libraries using a card catalog, and students would only hope they would find the resources they were looking for even after hours. Its crazy to now realize we have millions of resources within seconds and most people don’t even have to leave their house to find those resources. This is why its so important that we educate our students with the means to learn at a young age on how to research so they can be self sufficient, like Femi was in the video, and they can build connections all around the world and research the information that interests them. Knowing that we can all get educated on things, I do wonder how the world is going to change when it comes to degrees and backgrounds. If you think about it do you think one day degrees wont mean as much because people will educate others the same way online at a fraction of the cost, if anything. Just a thought but it really is crazy to think how great we all have it in this generation.
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I just had a conversation last night with a friend about how much I missed being part of an academic community. I do enjoy studying online for its ease of use and fast pace, but I truly miss a sense of belonging and acceptance in a learning community that collaborates together in the same place.
I was particularly happy to see that that Femi was able to make connections to other students through online learning communities and even discovered people in the same country studying the same coursework. However, this gets me thinking about the social discourse that occurs when interacting directly with other people. I really struggle with communicating online because I can’t put a face to words and I have difficulty interpreting intent. (Texting is awful and I misinterpret what someone means half the time I’m talking to them.) Hence, a lot of online discussion comes across as cold, or authoritative. Are there any studies being done on how education solely based around online experiences shapes anthropological developments in various societies? It would be interesting to see the impact that OER might have, especially in those societies where internet access is extremely limited.
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Its funny you should say online vs face-to-face as I have in a previous class for this masters program have done a research paper on this topic. I have always been curious to know at what impact it would have on students with their grades but also with their interactions with people. So far based on my research both classes are pretty even but they have pros and cons to both.
Personally for me, I also miss building a face-to-face connection with people and not being in an actual classroom. I feel like conversations are more “heartfelt” and/or more meaningful if you say.
When you stated about how you struggle with how certain words come across, I totally get you. With typed words you cant see someone’s face expression and you can’t hear their tone of voice, so many times we can misinterpret what the writer is saying….guess its time to start adding emoji’s into online classes too like they do our cell phones with text messaging… ;) LOL! However, one thing I can say that I like about online class discussions, is that I’m not afraid to give a valid reason or answer on the questions being asked. Normally when I was in a face-to-face classroom, I would not like voicing my ideas/answers and would hardly to speak in front of my peers due to possibly being judged…as stupid as that sounds. With online classes, I feel like I really don’t have connections with anyone (even though we technically went through this whole class/program together) and can usually say whatever comes to my mind. I have never felt like I have been judged in this type of classroom environment which is nice.
But yes it was nice to see that Femi was able to use OER and build new connections all around the world in order to fulfill her dream. Yes it would be interesting to know what people do in areas where areas of low income or opportunities to log onto a computer due to none around. Definitely makes you think. I’m trying come up with something…maybe a public library if they have one in the area that has computers.
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I can completely see your point. It is hard for me to associated a person with the names that I see on the screen as well.
On the other side of that, however, I will say that a positive can be the breadth of experiences that I have. While I may not develop as deep of an understanding of my classmates this way, I will say that I found that I interact with more people through my online classes; often people that I would not have the opportunity to engage with otherwise. I agree with what you said about the “judgment” side of things as well. It is nice to feel that academic anonymity sometimes. I feel fewer of the social rules that may keep me from responding to a comment or from engaging in a conversation with another person. The anonymity can pair down the other factors that can create a social culture in a classroom, so while there may be less of a connection, what is left can also be more focused as well. I find myself missing the connectedness as you do, while reveling in the positive sides to this kind of environment as well.
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At this time, I am part of the committee that is looking into using OER. My role will be to see if the content can be imported into the LMS (Canvas). One very important reason that we are looking into using OER is because of cost. The administration is hoping to have the faculty develop courses that do not require textbooks. By not having textbooks, we will be reducing the cost of college for the students.
The questions that are asked in this article are the same questions we in the committee are asking. There as been quite a bit of debate about the quality of the content and how the content is being vetted.
At the higher education level, the libraries are developing web sites that provide to links to OER resources. http://nmc.libguides.com/oer4mcc/resources The hope is that the libraries will be able to provide faculty with vetted content.
Just in the last couple of weeks, I have been working with faculty on importing content into Canvas. We are running into some issues that will make using the OER resources difficult because it will be more then a 2 steps process on get content into the system. I have learned that the more clicks it takes the less likely faculty are to using the content. If we are hoping to use OER resources, I will need to find a way of converting the files so it will be an easy import into the system.
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Marcia, thank you so much for sharing this resource! Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed and unsure of what to click on but after digging around I am really surprised at the wealth of information. It will definitely take some time to get used to but I look forward to all the help this will provide!
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They had a very interesting webinar about the same concerns that we are discussing in the article. They are a wonderful group and I will be attending more of their sessions.
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Hi Marcia,
I have to agree with Maria, it takes a little getting used to but this resource has so much information! It will certainly be useful and I hope to have more time to really dig in.
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I think that it is every teacher’s wish to find low cost materials to enhance their teaching and help students understand the subject, products that are actually relevant and useful. OER is the means of granting such a wish. These resources that are becoming more available are created primarily based on what skills, subjects and teaching practices are in demand.
I am reminded of the site Teachers Pay Teachers as an example of a rudimentary site for OER. I feel it provides educators with many examples of fellow teacher created materials that greatly assist other educators in creative and unique ways. Of course, not every resource is wonderful, but they are very low cost , and there have been multiple times that I have found a powerpoint presentation, a SMART Board lesson or internet activities that actually approached a subject in a different way than I had thought about before. So, through downloading and using such products, my teaching practices have broadened and I have been able to reach more of my students.
A specific example would be when I discovered ways of teaching some digital skills and STEM topics to students from a download on Teachers Pay Teachers entitled,“Teaching Digital Technologies & STEM” from Innovative Teaching Ideas. Interestingly, the product contained computer based activities and “unplugged” or those not needing a computer to teach important skills like coding and computational thinking. STEM materials are in high demand especially in our increasingly digital world and with the push to get students interested in pursuing the STEM field. However, not all classroom teachers may have access to all of the programs usually needed to promote such skills, so it was both useful and interesting to find a resource with both.
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I noticed that within the MIT OCW site many of the courses still required students to purchase books online through Amazon, and that MIT actually received up to 10% of your purchase towards their OCW system. As discussed earlier this semester, this may lead to potential corporate interference. This almost feels like the professor who asks you to buy the new version of the book they wrote because they updated two words on page 49 of the second edition. In some situations, I think OER is more At-Your-Own-Risk than we like to think.
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I have the same concerns as you. I hope that MIT OCW does not have a hidden agenda of making a profit on book sales after advertising free courses. However, I do see how a book might be necessary to work through a course. And, it is understandable that a book might cost money and may be written by someone designing the MIT course. I hope, even though this freedom could be misused, that courses continue to be offered online for free, and branch out to include courses for younger students on coding, computer science, and things related to STEM. These classes are difficult for middle schools and high schools to integrate into their curriculum.
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I can see this being an honest problem for a lot of sites. I have been that teacher who has relied on a source, only to find it gone or not working from year to year. With the desire to keep a resource free, comes the struggle to pay or find a passionate party to keep of the information and site.
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MIT’s website had courses that were taught all the way back in 2005. While the resources were pretty good (medieval music doesn’t change much anymore!) I feel like many of the theories in the lectures may have changed, or new research may have been discovered in the area since the class was taught at the university. While it was irritating to me that there seemed to be a direct tie with Amazon regarding books, you bring up a valid point: the money has to come from somewhere. The resources may be open, but there is still a cost to someone eventually.
I find it highly unlikely to happen, given our new political outlook, but I wonder if there is (or could be) federal funding for a project like this.
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When we’re challenged, as educators, to teach students as best as we can, it is required of us to borrow from other teachers. The internet has provided a wealth of resources that are a couple clicks away from being used. As such, the more that is shared, the more there is to flip through and the more irrelevant and useless information you’ll find. My old school had 4 different syllabi for the class I taught and, despite seeking advice and help, I found that I was using the wrong one for my first semester.
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I have a difficult time finding the best quality in my resources in general. I believe this same issue arises all the time with OER. There is a huge issue with information being dated and no longer relevant to the present day. If I find information from the 90’s about the Cold War, chances are it won’t be upkept enough for me to make the content relateable to my students. Is there a way that OER’s can be monitored to maintain their upkeep without subtracting information that is always relevant and timeless? A great deal of information that is available today on the web lacks quality and is so dated that students today cannot understand it well enough to utilize it. Furthermore, when the “out-of-touchness” of a document detracts from the content and the lesson, then it becomes a burden more than an aide. I love the idea of OER’s and I believe that, if you want to create a culture of learning, then well structured OER’s are a great starting point that can help many students achieve beyond their expectations.
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I completely agree with this sentence and feel like it is very frustrating how long it takes to search for resources while also making sure that they are quality resources with accurate information. One thing I have found that helps limit the amount of time spent searching for resources is to use https://padlet.com.. This allows you to combine different resources all in one place so that you can get to them whenever you need them. Here is one I started creating for my students as they get ready to take the SAT’s. https://padlet.com/serenasallen/r4yb8jb6ukn7 This helps me to keep all of the resources that I have found that are helpful in one place. That way I can look at them whenever I need them and I really only had to spend the time searching for the resource once. And whenever I find a new resource, I can just add it to my padlet to save it for later.
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Students can get in without a log in and post. They can do it from their phones and they can also share content. Here is an example from a year ago where I asked kids to find a picture that represented how Shakespeare used techniques to characterize Hamlet. https://padlet.com/thebookeater/hamlet this is one of my favorite applications!
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When reading about where it is going I think it would be valuable for there to a way for the information to be reviewed or meet some sort of standards. This is will correct the problem of the quality being uneven and it will hold the developer accountable for what they are making available to people seeking the information.
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I think that is movement is starting, but has not reached formal higher education. There are so many courses available online for learning specific skill sets. Most are free or very low cost. It reminds me of that parallel world we often talk about in literacy. Are we starting a culture of people who earn their degree to earn a degree, while learning skills and topics of interest through alternative means? Or are these two threads becoming more connected, allowing learners to get the best the both have to offer?
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I was speaking with friend that work for a large corporation and I was showing him the OER sites. He wanted to know more about the OER courses. His first reason for wanting to know more was in regards to using content for professional training. His second reason was because of the shortage they are experiencing with finding qualified people. In looking at some of the courses in the technical area he would consider hiring people that was taking OER courses.
Just a month ago we had a former K-8 teacher speak to us about a program he started at his former school. The 8th grade students took Microsoft courses on Word, Excel,and Access. In collaboration with the company he works with now, they paid for students to take the Microsoft Certification Exam. When I think about these 2 scenarios, I wonder – Will OER courses being a whole new apprenticeship for the corporate world?
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When I first heard about OER a few years ago this thought crossed my mind. While I think OER is a great idea I still have many questions about it that cannot necessarily be answered at the moment but can be speculated about. It will be interesting to see how OER impacts higher education. Will it ever gain enough traction and credibility that a traditional college degree will not be the main qualification in getting a job? I wonder whether OER will impact the number of students who attend colleges. I think the fact that individuals like Femi are able to access education they may not be able to otherwise is awesome.
I had a conversation with my Grandma who is in her 80’s about OER as she said she said she felt she wasn’t being intellectually stimulated enough. I think she is a great example of an adult learner who could benefit from OER. While she has a degree and worked as a registered nurse for many years she still feels a need to be educated and further her knowledge about many topics. I think OER is not only a great resource for adult learners but it could also be valuable for those who are unsure of what they want to do as a career. Using OER would be a much more cost effective way to explore college courses than to change majors multiple times.Overall I think that OER has great potential to impact education in ways greater than it already is. When thinking about OER one site that comes to mind is Kahn academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/ As I was scrolling I saw that a classmate already mentioned this site so it challenged me to think a little deeper into my experiences with OER. Another site that came to mind was blendspace by TES https://www.tes.com/lessons/gallery.. Blend space allows users to curate content and pull from multiple sources to create lessons that contain videos, activities, and formative assessments. I also spent a little time this week exploring https://www.oercommons.org/ and am excited to have taken some time to look at it as there are alot of great resources. You can also search by grade level, subject, and set of standards.
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I credit that quote to my Grandpa Farrell. My mom brings it up whenever I talk about college. I am one of very few in my family who had the opportunity to go to college, and she helps keep me grounded about the value of our very expensive pieces of paper on the wall.
I like to think of OER as the fight against the social concept of degrees defining intelligence. When I graduated from high school I remember being tracked into the college prep group. There was also a business group and a basic skills group. I remember, even then, finding a certain level of smugness amongst my peers that we were headed to bigger, better things than the rest of the group because we were smarter. Apparently smarter meant that you were gifted with academic prowess but still struggled with changing a tire and sewing on a button.
Now we are faced with a situation where we have many heavily educated young people entering the workforce but not enough jobs that fit what they were trained to do. This brings to mind the following: do we encourage students to attain higher education because it is economically appropriate and logical, or because we’ve allowed that fancy piece of paper to become the status quo?
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If you think about it, with knowledge limited to only a select few, they have power. Like in the case of before the printing press,the educated elite could make up their own truth since no one else could dispute it.
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I feel that OER provides a unique opportunity for future college students to actually try out a class or get a feel for a subject before they enroll. In this way, I feel that OER could improve learning outcomes in that students would not end up dropping out because a degree program was not what they thought it would be or because they lost interest. People change over the years too and what seemed like a good idea at the start may end up not being a good fit. James E. Rosenbaum, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, noted that college students unfortunately “often lack the know-how to direct their own progress. Further, their work revealed that although students ‘are assumed to be capable of making informed choices, of knowing their abilities and preferences, of understanding the full range of college and career alternatives, and of weighing the costs and benefits associated with different college programs…many students have great difficulty with such choices’”(Jones, 2011, p. 4).
I feel that high school students just entering college do not have a lot of experience with making such monumental decisions. They often have no reference for the degree programs or an idea about the job market for such programs. They just go with what sounds cool. For these reasons, OER courses would be great resources for students to have access to may even as part of the actual application process to aid in choosing a degree program.
Reference:
Jones,S.(2011). Freedom to Fail?The Board’s Role in Reducing College
Dropout Rates,p.4. Trusteeship. Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Retrieved from http://completecollege.org/docs/Freedom.
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I love the idea of providing education for all students. The opportunity for all to be able to grow and learn is the goal of the majority of teachers I know. The opportunity for this OER program are limitless in the ways we can use them to help many. Over the last year I have become very interested in parent education and in fact my groups PDI was on parent education. Within my class this year, I had several parents who have never graduated high school. However, one of my families actually had not even finished junior high. The idea of having access to these tools for parents no matter their language and the way they could improve their lives and their students are countless. How awesome! I look forward to exploring this topic more and looking for more important growth opportunities it can offer my families.
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Interesting enough, I really did not hear about OER or open educational resources until I was working at Bryon Center last year in the special education classes, this was totally new for me. I have not had many opportunities to use OER’s but I do find it being the new thing for our generation. It is a way for education to be connected to everyone, all over the world, and this is the way through the internet. Education is at an all-time high cost, and a great way to eliminate this, is by using the internet more often. It may be a new way of teaching and learning, but it is the way that it is happening now. This also gives teachers more choices to choose what they want to teach, and to connect students with more of what is happening in the world today.
The website that I have used in the past is Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/, this has proven to be a very helpful website. This is also an awesome site for OER, because not only can teachers use it in their classroom, their students can use it on their own. I was told when I was working on my Bachelor Degree, that if I needed a little extra help on math, I could go on the website and refresh my memory. I ended up doing it right before my final exam in my first math class, and it actually helped me a lot more than I thought it would.
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Hi Katie,
I too love Kahn Academy. As a math teacher I often recommend that students visit the site if they find they are stuck on a problem at home. I have also suggested it to parents who are looking to help students fill gaps from previous years or brush up on basic concepts. i think it is a great example of an OER.
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I also love Khan Academy. It has helped my students so much when they are struggling with their math assignments online. I am not certified to teach math so I have to use my resources and Khan Academy has been a great one that I can sit with my student and watch it together and figure out what they are supposed to be doing in their online lesson.
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When I think about my school, I think how lucky I am to work at a school that values new ideas and wants to push the limits of education. My school was not a popular idea when it first came about. Many people in the community were against it for various reasons, some legitimate and others not; while there was a lot of controversy, the superintendent went ahead with the plans because he had seen how effective it had been in another district.
One of the greatest challenges that has come out of this approach to education is the fact that we don’t have any set curriculum. We have to use Common Core and our state standards but that is all the direction that we get. Because of this, I rely heavily on OER and collegiality. Coming up with every project from start to finish is difficult and time consuming so the more resources I have, the easier it becomes to create projects and the quality of those projects increases. Two resources that I’ve used for project ideas and for assessing in a variety of ways are copied below. I think it is so important for us to share resources, advice, and strategies because if we don’t we are only hurting the children we want to help.
For project ideas from elementary to high school: https://engage.intel.com/docs/DOC-52038
53 ways to check for understanding: http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/blogs/edutopia-finley-53ways-check-for-understanding.pdf
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It sounds like you have some great opportunities as a teacher at your school to develop your own curriculum and do what you think is best for the students. As an art and technology teacher, I also have a lot of flexibility with my curriculum and have found OER to be very helpful in creating the curriculum for my classes.
Do you have the same classes from year to year or do you start your curriculum from scratch each year?
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As long as we are assigned the same class as the year prior, then it is easier to repeat projects. However, we are encouraged to have a business partner with each project so that makes things change from year to year as different community members have needs met. This year I am teaching two new classes that haven’t had projects created so we are doing everything from scratch.
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When I think back to college, there were times when I would hesitate to buy a textbook for a class, not only because of the cost but because I didn’t think I would use it. Often times, the “required textbook” would be used sparingly throughout the semester and I felt as though I wasted money. Other times, I realized I could have shared the textbook with a classmate. I like the idea of OER because when reflecting on classes, unless your professor wrote the book, I have to ask myself, “Are we really going to go through this entire textbook?” College classes and even grade school/high school are moving away from textbook teaching to more effective and engaging components. If textbooks can be replaced with OER, money is definitely being saved. Thinking on how rapidly education is changing, textbooks are often filled with outdated information. There are old science textbooks sitting on a shelf in my classroom that I haven’t touched since the day I got my teaching job. There are so many resources to pull from and it provides more flexibility. This allows teachers and faculty to be creative and more meaningful in the resources they choose and adapt it for the class and individuals.
I’ve started exploring: http://www.ck12.org/ for resources, videos and digital text for a wide range of k-12 subjects.
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One of the school districts close to mine has switched over to an entirely digital curriculum. Teachers have their lessons in digital format and available for download through iTunes. This allows them to have flipped classrooms, even for economically disadvantaged students. They can download the lessons onto their computers at school and take them home to study. While this isn’t a “free” resource for the school, they do save a considerable amount of money on textbooks and information is as up to date as the teacher makes it.
I will openly admit I will look to borrow or download a copy of a book before I buy a brand new physical copy for a class. The prices for a textbook are outrageous. Our school is also in the same boat with unused texts— we have French books from the 1960s, but the vernacular and standards are completely different, so there is no point to pulling them out of the closet.
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OER has made my job much easier. I have used YouTube as OER since I first graduated from CMU. I use it to educate myself on many things regarding my life at home and my school duties. It has a mass amount of resources for middle and high school science. I do have problems filtering my results and spend a lot of my time trying to find a resource that fits my need.
Besides, YouTube, I find most of my OERs by doing a Google search for my current topic. There are so many wonderful websites with interactive lessons, readings, animations, videos and images that I don’t bother keeping a list of them all. Science is a subject that has many resources online for free that are easily found. Chem4Kids.com, Chem.Perdue.edu, BrainPop (only partially free), StudyJams by Scholastic, and PhET.colorado.edu are some of my most commonly used resources. These provide pieces to a puzzle of a complete lesson but are invaluable. They replace and enhance my dry lectures or readings from book. In middle school, money is not always available for lab equipment that will only be used once a year. Online labs from PhET.colorado.edu are free and help students gain an understanding I couldn’t otherwise give them.
Gooru
http://gooru.org/welcome/
Featured courses are available for free now in Gooru (which recently replaced ExitTix – I used ExitTix to host my assessments because it offered immediate feedback to my students and reteaching options). The featured courses have some of the difficulties I have experienced with any OER. You may need to remix (copy and edit) the user-made courses to meet your specific need and there are many to choose from (which takes time to filter through). However, Gooru is an OER that took all of my favorite resources and put them into an online lesson that I can assign to my students. Gooru grades all the embedded assessments and allows me to modify the courses. As we switch to new science standards, I don’t know if I will have books available to guide me through the curriculum. So, I am thankful for Gooru and all other OERs. They have significantly, positively impacted by job and my students.
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I think this sentence best describes my use of OER. Outside of my job as a teacher for the deaf I teach American Sign Language class at our local community college. This class is not for college credit, it is considered a community education class. This means that people of any age are welcome to take the class. They do have to pay $29 for 11 classes. I just started doing this last spring and plan to continue through March 2017. Because the class is a community class and not for college credit I do not want to require my students to buy textbooks. Instead I use an OER called ASL University. The person who created the sight Bill Victors says, “I designed this communication-focused curriculum for my own in-person college ASL classes and put it online to make it easy for my students to access. I decided to open the material up to the world for free since there are many parents of Deaf children who NEED to learn how to sign but may live too far from a traditional classroom. Now people have the opportunity to study from almost anywhere via mobile learning, but I started this approach many years ago — way before it became the new normal. You can self-study for free (or take it as an actual course for $483, see here for more details). Many college students use this site as an easy way to support what they are learning in their local ASL classes.”
I use this site as a way to build a curriculum and for my students to access free resources. I enjoy using this site and I think my students find the videos extremely beneficial.
http://www.lifeprint.com/index.htm
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I think it is awesome that you were able to make things easier for your adult students at the community college by incorporating OER in your course since it was a non-credit class and the course itself was inexpensive. I think that expensive textbooks are one of the chief complaints of college students especially since after the course is over their resell value is much less than what they bought it for if they try to sell it back to the university library. I remember being quite distraught about purchasing one particularly expensive textbook for my Worldviews class during undergrad that I did not even use. Therefore, I think that OER may make college slightly more affordable and in turn more available for students by drastically reducing this cost, if not eliminating it altogether. In fact, UMUC students piloted a program in 2014 that did just that, and they reported that “students saved $130,000 in the first semester. UMUC [further] estimates that this initiative will [ultimately] save students millions of dollars”(Marcum 2016). With that sort of savings, I feel like colleges could attract a broader audience of people who may not have been able to attend before.
Reference:
Marcum, D. (2016). Helping Students Save Money With Open Educational Resources [blogpost]. Ithaca S+R. Retrieved from http://www.sr.ithaka.org/blog/helping-students-save-money-with-open-educational-resources/..
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I feel OER allows for professors to develop content that reaches more than the traditional college student who attends four years of college on a campus. When they are able to develop their own, they can reach students in different contexts-online or in person. I feel this is necessary because I think online courses are gaining popularity and this will continue to happen.
OER Resource:https://www.oercommons.org/
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