23.1 Amee godwin - on doing oer  (Page 3/5)

Furthermore, ISKME has developed a set of OER case studies by studying how a range of other OER projects form, change, and evaluate their own progress, and has created an OER How-To Manual that aims to offer practical assistance to anyone looking to start or evaluate their OER efforts. ISKME’s case study work has revealed that a key element in “doing OER” has been to include face-to-face training, mentoring, and working with peers and experts. In one of the cases,, it was clear that high-quality resources don’t just happen online on their own. In this grassroots project based in South Africa, a highly collaborative and participatory infrastructure was built over time to bring authors together both online and in person, and to organize their workflow, establish quality criteria, reward their input, and deploy their “finished” publications.

Through the OER Commons initiative, our educative role is to identify and construct models that support a mindset about evolutionary change through OER collaboration, knowing full well that simply distributing OER content alone won’t dig us out from old models. New models for teaching and learning are a necessary part of the doing, especially in terms of facilitating problem-based inquiry and data sharing, mentoring and cycling through feedback with peers.

Perhaps through considering examples of OER in action, we might have a chance to reflect on the “promise of OER” and ask if we getting any closer to it through the way that we are doing it.

Further readings:

• B. Collis and J. Moonen, Flexible Learning in a Digital world: Experiences and Expectations (London: Kogan Page, 2001)
• S.E. Metros K. and Bennett, “Learning Objects in Higher Education,” ECAR Research Bulletin 19, (Boulder, CO: 2002)
• L. Petrides and C. Jimes, “Open Educational Resources: Toward a New Educational Paradigm,” iJournal Insight into Student Services 14 (Oct. 2006).
• Y. Benkler, Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials (Utah: Utah State University, 2005) (pdf)
• L. Petrides, Turning Data into Knowledge: What’s Data Got to Do with It? (Phoenix: League for Innovation in the Community College, 2004)
• L. Petrides and T. Nodine, Anatomy of School System Improvement: Performance-Driven Practices in Urban School Districts (San Francisco: New Schools Venture Fund, 2005).

Comments

1. ken udas - march 4th, 2008 at 5:56 am

Amee,

First, thank for this fantastic (interesting&thought provoking) posting. There are a lot of ways of approaching the topic of “doing OER,” and posing the types of developmental questions that you have takes us beyond the topics of licensing and storage. Looking at the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium’s use of problem spaces that you cite in the posting, for example, I think points us down a path not unlike the use of participatory action research for the development of curriculum, which I think is pretty exciting.

I have been involved in various roles with a number of institutions, principally in higher/tertiary education, that do a lot of distance and online education. Most of those organizations had adopted pretty traditional curriculum and course design and development process. The processes have tended to group in two general areas: