Exciting New Frameworks for Creating Open Educational Resources (OERs)
Two recent developments for educators using Open Resource technologies have a lot of potential; how they eventually pan out needs to be seen
On Oct 15, the 20 Million Minds Mix , a platform
that enables teachers or anyone for that matter to custom-make textbooks by
editing, revising, creating and reusing material in order to provide free/more
affordable learning material to students was launched. It has access to over 5
million units of material from
Connexions, a collection of OER and more than 140 academic publishers. The
platform helps in speedy composition, pricing and delivery, besides a real-time
copyright clearance for articles/textbooks. Dean Florez, president of the foundation
states, “We strongly believe that giving
educators a space that provides an abundance of resources and the flexibility
for building low cost textbooks is the perfect recipe for making substantive change
in the textbook industry."
Google’s Course Builder which was
launched in September this year is an open source application to custom build courses.
A comprehensive online tool for building learning resources with scheduled
activities and lessons, basically to provide an online education. There is also
a provision for ‘Hangouts on Air’ for live teaching. However basic skill with
JavaScript, HTML and the Google App Engine is required. It is therefore perhaps more aimed
towards institutions looking to put
large courses online rather than individual instructors. According to Google, Stanford
University, Indiana University, UC San Diego and Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) among others have shown an interest. It is
experimental in nature and in line with Google’s other educational initiatives
like Google Apps for Education and Google in Education.
Introductory video of Google Course Builder
These two developments are huge steps forward and hopefully will give a boost to the generation and sharing of more accessible educational resources. They will definitely be a help in creation and construction of new knowledge by serious educators and its more accessible delivery to learners. Of course, they are both too new to be evaluated critically at this stage. Many factors like quality assurance, technical knowledge required, ease of use, acceptance by primary users will determine what shape and form they take in future.
For a detailed report you can read :
I have recently read a survey from UNESCO concerning Governments’ open educational resources policies. It seems that in respect of OER we have a “bottom-up” planning as this movement of providing free and more affordable learning material to educators and students, is gradually becoming a field of interest for different stakeholders at a decision making level. Although a lot of people, including me, are quite suspicious when a productive and widespread idea coming from individuals attracts the interest of politics, in that case we cannot deny the fact that this could be useful at least for making people more aware about the concept of OER.
ReplyDeleteThe survey indicates that there is an increasing interest in OER across different regions all over the world. Several countries have expressed their desire to become more involved in the OER movement and to develop OER policies. At this point the majority of the participants in the survey defined the OER activity is limited in initiatives by institutions and engaged individuals. Nevertheless a lot of them, including African and Latin America countries are funding to a large extend these kind of initiatives. However, according to the survey it appears to be a lack of understanding of the OER concept as well as lack of current research around the field. Furthermore important issues such as the quality assurance, as you have already mentioned need to be taken into account. Finally many countries appeared quite confused in terms of understanding and applying licensing options as well as using and spreading free digital materials.
It seems that initiatives like 20 Million Minds Mix and Google’s Course Builder are indeed steps forward. Yet, make people aware of the concept around them, as well as how to use them is also a challenge.
The whole UNESCO’s survey can be found here:
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/themes/Survey_On_Government_OER_Policies.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/deanflorez You can check here slides on the initial idea of 20MMM.
ReplyDeleteThe initiative in itself is brilliant.
It gives a partial solution to ecological issues also. Since the books can be replaced with digital learning material. From this perspective we shouldn't ignore that all the emerging technologies are also a huge waste of energy and bring a considerable damage to the environment. Still in the future let's hope to only find few devices that incorporate all the apps and possibilities.
What considers OER, there are big doubts about how fast and how big will this movement grow. Lack of time and skills together with the absences of a reward system are among the other demotivational factors in using OER in teaching. Also lack of interest towards innovation is one of the reasons why many educators refuse using those.
The phenomenon – that individuals and institutions give away learning resources for free – seems counter intuitive and difficult to explain within the old economic and educational context.