OER Information About this document: This document is a collection of relevant and useful information relating to Open Educational Resources. This document is managed by ​
Dr. Sherri Restauri ​
from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, under the Online Learning & Educational Outreach initiative. Please contact her with any questions, or to have items added to this resource list. Definition: Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re­share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. Additional definition: ​
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The Hewlett Foundation defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re­purposing by others.” This definition comes from a meeting of developing world nations at UNESCO in 2002, where the name “Open Educational Resources” itself was also adopted to describe such content. Source & additional information here. Open Education Week March 7­11, 2016​
: http://www.openeducationweek.org/resources What are Learning Objects (LOs)? The broadest definition of learning objects seems to be, "any digital resource that can be reused to support learning." http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CIE/AOP/LO_what.html According to LOAZ, "There are many characteristics of learning objects, the common ones are: accessibility, interoperability, adaptability, reusability, durability, and granularity." http://www.loaz.com/learning­objects/learning­object­characteristics.html What role do learning objects play in Moodle? If we accept that any reusable, digital resource can be a learning object, almost any resource or activity we use in Moodle qualifies. After all, you can import and export resources and activities between courses pretty easily. Links to OER’s & Digital Libraries: ** Indicates Best OER’s in higher education Academic Earth​
­ Academic Earth was launched on the premise that everyone deserves access to a world­class education. In 2009, we built the first collection of free online college courses from the world’s top universities. The world of open education has exploded since then, so today our curated lists of online courses are hand selected by our staff to show you the very best offerings by subject area. We also make sure there is something for everyone: whether you want to explore a new topic or advance in your current field, we bring the amazing world of academia to you for free. AMSER​
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“AMSER is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use.” Blended Learning Toolkit​
­ “This Blended Learning Toolkit is a free, open resource for educational institutions interested in developing or expanding their blended learning initiatives.” Canvas Commons​
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Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources. A digital library full of educational content, Commons allows Canvas users to share learning resources with other users as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course. ​
Note​
: Commons is available in all Free for Teacher (FFT) accounts. Free for Teacher users are limited to finding, importing, and sharing public resources. Center for Open Education at Hokkaido University​
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Center for Open Education is a department to leverage OER to accelerate online learning around Hokkaido University. Center for OE develops OERs in blended learning to improve student engagement and learning outcomes for both on its own campus and on the consortium by public universities in Hokkaido region. These OERs are for undergraduate courses, special­education programs and international programs. Center for OE collaborates with Center for Engineering Education Development (CEED) in the School of Engineering at Hokkaido U. Faculty eCommons­​
Developed by ​
Academic Partnerships​
, Faculty eCommons is a social learning ecosystem for faculty across the world to work together to improve online education. The site offers industry research, guidance, best practices, and professional development, with a focus on national quality standards. ICT integration with OER­​
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CT integration in education is an approach to integrate various resources in day to day teaching learning of an academic institution. This includes the best of the industry resources used worldwide in different academic institutions. The resources are as diverse as content, software activities, skill development, educational games, logical and analytical software to help students learn from various perspective. And, most important to all, the resources are developed collaboratively with the support of community worldwide. Open Courseware Consortium​
­ We are a global network of educational institutions, individuals and organizations that support an approach to education based on openness, including collaboration, innovation and collective development and use of open educational materials. The Open Education Consortium is a non­profit, social benefit organization registered in the United States and operating worldwide. We promote, support and advance openness in education around the world. Open Education Database​
­Fairly large collection of "open" sources to be used across multiple disciplines. Includes partnerships with a number of large name universities, as well as access to thousands of free open online courses. Open. Ed­​
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​pen.Ed at the University of Edinburgh showcases Open Educational Resources created at the University. The site provides: guidance on best OER practice; aggregates blogs from some our prominent open practitioners; highlights best practice and OER exemplars; up­to­date news and information; and a calendar of OER workshops and events across campus. The OER vision for University of Edinburgh has three strands, each building on our history of the Edinburgh Settlement, excellent education, research collections, enlightenment and civic mission. OER Commons​
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“OER Commons is a dynamic digital library and network. Explore open education resources and join our network of educators dedicated to curriculum improvement.” Jorum​
(UK)­ “The UK's largest repository for discovering and sharing Open Educational Resources for HE, FE and Skills.” Temoa​
­ Browse resources by subject, audience education level, provider, genre, media type, etc. Open Learn​
(UK)­ “The Open University provides high­quality distance learning for all, so join the many thousands of students who have already begun their life­changing journey.” Browse by course. MIT Open Courseware​
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“OCW makes the materials used in the teaching of MIT's subjects available on the Web.” Openstax College​
­ “​
It’s innovation in education. And the time is right. OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer­reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low­cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today’s student budgets.” Khan Academy​
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“Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. We tackle math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. Our math missions guide learners from kindergarten to calculus using state­of­the­art, adaptive technology that identifies strengths and learning gaps. We've also partnered with institutions like NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer specialized content.” Includes great mobile app. COERLL​
­ “COERLL seeks to promote a culture of collaboration that lies at the heart of the Open Education movement. In addition, COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilingualism and/or multilingualism. As such, all COERLL resources strive to represent more accurately language development and performance along dialectal and proficiency continua.” PLOS Open Access Comprehensive site with an extensive list of OER resources and articles/seminars. Source of links & additional information here. Pros & Cons of OER’s: Pros ●
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Cons Increased interaction with a wider community: users are provided an easily accessible forum for collaborating with others from all over the world. More variation in materials for users​
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o select from: with many providers of content contributing out of personal and professional want, there is a breadth and depth to the content that will provide an ease of use from others in the community Improved quality of materials: with so many contributors providing information, feedback, approval, and ●
The two main challenges are in quality assurance and financial sustainability. ○ Most consumers remain skeptical of "free" materials. This skepticism tends to be eased when the OER has established some sort of peer­evaluation system to rate and approve sources. With these resources being free to users the long­term financial sustainability of OER sites is questionable. As usage increases in this area, there seems to be a shift from a primarily donation­based financial plan to more institutional support. These include, ●
revisions, the material is often improved upon and provides the best material to users Decline in cost of materials: sharing resources in this forum cuts the cost to both users and producers as the are easily able to create material and with a few clicks, share this information globally but would not be limited to, higher­education institutions. This has already been seen as MIT provided nearly $8 million to OER. Source of Pros and Cons Best Practices/Principles for Developing and Managing OER’s: Best Practices Online/e­Learning Operations­​
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​everaging our proven experience spanning over 3 decades of pioneering and operating online programs with University of Phoenix and other online institutions, CMSquared offers to serve as go­to resource for institutions of higher learning looking to launch and/or expand online modality. OER Management and Delivery: Seven Best Practices OER Strategies and Best Practices as Success Factors in Open Access Initiatives in Higher Education
Examples of Best Practice in Open Educational Resources Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Course Ware Finding and Adopting OER with Canvas, Openstax, and Saylor A Guide to using OER in the Classroom Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects OER Pilot Project WCET Blog: What Colleges Should be Doing with OERs, at Scale! Access to open educational resources (OER) is growing but not for all. Not only do the online educational materials need to be freely available and with permission to use, the OER needs to be designed so people with disabilities can use the OER for their teaching and learning as well. The California State University (CSU), MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching), Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC), the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), and Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE) have partnered together on a joint mission to enable the community of accessible technology experts, advocates, and users to build an online community and collection of open education resources that can improve universal learning by facilitating the contribution and sharing of accessible technology information, expertise, and accessible online teaching and learning materials.​
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​ttp://oeraccess.merlot.org Development: Challenges when Developing OERs OER Teaching and Learning Portal Open Education Handbook/Creating and Developing OERs OER Handbook #2 Ten Years Later: Why OERs Have Not Noticably Affected Higher Education, and Why We Should Care
University Examples of OERs/OCW Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon Institute:​
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​ttp://oli.cmu.edu/ There are some interesting studies done with their OLI's classes: http://oli.cmu.edu/get­to­know­oli/see­our­proven­results/ MIT:​
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​ttp://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm MIT covers a very broad range of courses, varying from intro level to upper graduate level. The time the courses were recorded varies from 2001­Current. They offer 2100 courses. Each course costs from $10,000 ­ $15,000 to cover everything. The majority of views are students and self learners. NCLOR​
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service offered by the ​
North Carolina Community College System​
(NCCCS), that provides a central location to manage, collect, contribute, and share digital learning resources for use in traditional or distance learning environments. The NCLOR is available to all K­20 teachers across the state and provide vendor and peer resources for users. NCLOR participants include the 58 colleges from the ​
North Carolina Community College System​
(NCCCS), ​
University of North Carolina​
(UNC ) System, North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (36 private institutions), the ​
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction​
(DPI), and North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). Based on the Equella technology, and integrates with Moodle and Bb through their LOR configuration. Website, ​
http://explorethelor.org/​
, provides great additional information on how such a large­scale, private system can be managed within a state or unique educational region/group. University of Massachusetts University of Minnesota UT Austin University of Edinburgh Recently published articles and blogs on OERs, LORs, etc. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/02/16­oer­sites­every­educator­should­k
now.aspx