Étiquette : OER

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OER in practice: Organisational change by bootstrapping

“In this paper, we investigate an approach to institutional change that aims to establish open educational practices (OEP) in a university and inculcate the use of open education resources (OER) as part of its curriculum work and teaching practice. Traditional practices that involve delivering knowledge resources for individualised learning within semester-length units of study are becoming increasingly ill-adapted to the demands of a dynamic and global educational landscape. OER offers a sustainable and equitable alternative to such closed arrangements, with the potential to meet the emerging demands of distributed learning settings. Nevertheless, changing educational practice remains a formidable challenge, and adopting OER is a radical break from legacy institutional practices. Our focus in this paper is on the starting point for embedding OER in curriculum work and teaching practice. We investigate change through emergent initiatives rather than a top-down program at La Trobe University in Australia: we ask what connections are necessary to establish open practices in a university. We trace three instances of OEP in one university that together build capacity in OER. We draw on Bardini’s strategy of bootstrapping, as an iterative and co-adaptive learning process that connects good practices in situ with institutional structures in order to build the groundwork for emergent change. These cases demonstrate how disparate innovations can be connected and re-purposed to establish a network of nascent OEP.”

URL : OER in practice: Organisational change by bootstrapping

Alternative URL : http://journals.uoc.edu/index.php/rusc/article/view/v11n3-hannon-huggard-orchard-stone

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Information Literacy in Open Courses

“Open education is changing the landscape of higher education.  There are many aspects to the open education movement and the authors of this paper focus on open courses.  Librarians and educators who teach information literacy must adapt their instruction to courses that are open, instead of using the same strategies that are employed in traditional education or distance education settings.  In this paper, the authors discuss the theories of connectivism and social learning theory and how the both theories apply to information literacy and its foray into open courses.  Additionally, the concept of lifelong learning is crucial to open education and its close ties to information literacy are examined.  The authors conclude by discussing the content of information literacy courses in an open environment.”

URL : Information Literacy in Open Courses

Alternative URL : http://journals.tdl.org/pal/index.php/pal/article/view/6982

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Case Studies of Openness in the Language Classroom…

Case Studies of Openness in the Language Classroom :

“The present publication arose from the two-day conference “Learning through Sharing: Open Resources, Open Practices, Open Communication” organised jointly by the EUROCALL Teacher Education and Computer Mediated Communication Special Interest Groups at the University of Bologna (Italy) on 29-30 March 2012. The main objective was to showcase the many ways in which practitioners in different settings are engaging with the concepts of open resources and practices, and to provide ideas for language teachers who might want to dip their toes into the Open Educational Resources/Open Educational Practices world, or experiment further.”

URL : http://research-publishing.net/publications/2013-beaven-comas-quinn-sawhill/

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Open access scholarly publications as OER This…

Open access scholarly publications as OER :

“This article presents the rationale, common practices, challenges, and some personal anecdotes from a journal editor on the production, use, and re-use of peer-reviewed, scholarly articles as open educational resources (OER). The scholarly and professional discourse related to open educational resources has largely focused on open learning objects, courseware, and textbooks. However, especially in graduate education, articles published in scholarly journals are often a major component of the course content in formal education. In addition, open access journal articles are critical to expanding access to knowledge by scholars in the developing world and in fostering citizen science, by which everyone has access to the latest academic information and research results. In this article, I highlight some of the challenges, economic models, and evidence for quality of open access journal content and look at new affordances provided by the Net for enhanced functionality, access, and distribution.
In the seventeen years since I graduated with a doctorate degree, the climate and acceptance of open access publishing has almost reversed itself. I recall a conversation with my PhD supervisor in which he argued that publishing online was not a viable option as the product would not have permanency, scholarly recognition, or the prestige of a paper publication. His comments reflect the confusion between online resources and those described as open access, but as well illustrate the change in academic acceptance and use of open access products during the past decade. The evolution from paper to online production and consumption is a disruptive technology in which much lower cost and increased accessibility of online work opens the product to a completely new group of potential users. In the case of OER these consumers are primarily students, but certainly access to scholars from all parts of the globe and the availability to support citizen science (Silvertown, 2009) should not be underestimated.”

URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1531

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The Openness of the University of the Philippines…

The Openness of the University of the Philippines Open University: Issues and Prospects :

“This paper is a self-reflection on the state of openness of the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU). An exploratory and descriptive study, it aims not only to define the elements of openness of UPOU, but also to unravel the causes and solutions to the issues and concerns that limit its options to becoming a truly open university. It is based on four parameters of openness, which are widely universal in the literature, e.g., open admissions, open curricula, distance education at scale, and the co-creation, sharing and use of open educational resources (OER). It draws from the perception survey among peers, which the author conducted in UPOU in July and August 2012. It also relies on relevant secondary materials on the subject.”

URL : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/26

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On the role of openness in education A…

On the role of openness in education: A historical reconstruction :

“In the context of education, “open(ness)” has become the watermark for a fast growing number of learning materials and associated platforms and practices from a variety of institutions and individuals. Open Educational Resources (OER), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), and more recently, initiatives such as Coursera are just some of the forms this movement has embraced under the “open” banner. Yet, ongoing calls to discuss and elucidate the “meaning” and particularities of openness in education point to a lack of clarity around the concept. “Open” in education is currently mostly debated in the context of the technological developments that allowed it to emerge in its current forms. More in-depth explorations of the philosophical underpinnings are moved to the backstage. Therefore, this paper proposes a historical approach to bring clarity to the concept and unmask the tensions that have played out in the past. It will then show how this knowledge can inform current debates around different open initiatives.”

URL : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/23

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Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes…

Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes :

“This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative Commons license. This decision was based on the accessibility and flexibility in the delivery of course content provided by open textbooks. More students accessed digital open textbooks than had previously purchased hard copies of textbooks. Higher grades were correlated with courses that used open textbooks.”

URL : http://www.eurodl.org/?article=533