Open Educational Resources taking off
27-February-2007
permalink email thisThe OER Commons id designed as a teaching and learning network with links to OER materials as well as related links, such as news stories, articles, conferences, discussion forums. It aims to expand educational opportunities by increasing access and facilitating the creation and re-use of OER.
Also it is well worth looking at a study recently been released by the OLCOS project. OLCOS, the Open Learning Content Observatory Services project (1/2006-12/2007), is funded under the European Union’s eLearning Programme and aims at building an online information and observation centre for promoting the concept, production and usage of OER, in particular, open digital educational content (ODEC) in Europe. The report is called Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012.
I'm working on ideas for new projects around Open Educational Resources. Just for the record this is a quick list of what I see as teh major issues to be addressed:
- The interoperability of OERs
Despite the increased adherence to standards, there remains much work to be done in ensuring that OERs are interoperable between different platforms and applications.
- Discovery and access
It remains difficult to find resources. Centralised repositories account for only a small percentage of OERs.
- Licensing
Licensing regimes inhibit the reuse of many resources. Many contributers are still unaware of the importance of the use of enabling licenses such as Creative Commons.
- Culture of reuse
There has been little research into the culture of reusing materials produced by others. Anecdotal evidence points to significant national differences in cultures.
- Contexts of use
the value of educational materials depends on teh context in which they are being used. As yet we have no means of tracking such contexts.
- quality
Traditional means of measuring quality - such as peer review - maybe inadequate andn inappropriate for OERs. quality could be said to be dependent on context of use.
- Sustainability
Models for ensuring the sustainability of OERs are still in their infancy and are problematic
- Learning environments
Traditionally OERs have been used in an institutional setting. However, user surveys suggest many individuals are accessing OERs for non formal learning. How can such use be supported?
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