Education 2.0 & 3.0

Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives remain high on the agenda across US campuses. A report released earlier this year by Ithaka S+R surveying faculty members in the United States includes a particularly interesting set of key findings. I strongly encourage exploring this report, as the data and analysis stretches across various aspects of higher education. One of the findings that I thought was particularly surprising is the percentage of faculty that expressed an interest in using OER in their courses, specifically,

I’ve already written an overview and some thoughts on the ALTC keynotes, this post is an additional reflection on some of my personal highlights of the conference. 

I was involved in three sessions this year; Wikipedia belongs in education with Wikimedia UK CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid and UoE Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew, Influential voices – developing a blogging service based on trust and openness with DLAM’s Karen Howie, and Supporting Creative Engagement and Open Education at the University of Edinburgh with LTW colleagues Charlie Farley and Stewart Cromar.  All three sessions went really well, with lots of questions and engagement from the audience.  

These days, students and their parents expect information to be immediately available. And while the internet has a wealth of resources, users are rightfully not always confident in their accuracy. Furthermore, many works are protected by copyrights, which prevent them from appearing online in their entirety. So educators must find creative ways to meet students’ expectations of easily accessible digital resources while still adhering to copyright laws and strict budgets. As a result, open educational resources (OERs) are gaining popularity among teachers and students. Here we look at five questions you may have as you evaluate open educational resources to help you consider the best way to provide materials to use in your classrooms.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are any type of educational material that are freely available for teachers and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse.

Initiatives have been taking in the industry in favor of OER usage.

OER or Open Educational Resources are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. It is the leading trend in distance education/open and distance learning domain as a consequence of the openness movement. The eBasta platform is one such example of the initiative taken by the Government of India under access to open educational resources.

From the About section: "A State University of New York (SUNY) initiative to provide affordable educational alternatives to traditional textbooks. A service to assist SUNY faculty, librarians, and staff to identify lower-cost, electronic, free, and Open Educational Resources (OERs.) A California State University-MERLOT partner benefit service"

"How can you use OERs in your classroom to improve your teaching? What does it mean to incorporate open pedagogy in your course? Here are some suggestions to make collaboration and sharing an integral part of your teaching."

"UNESCO coined the term ‘OER‘ back in 2002 to describe an initiative intended to bring about educational resources that were universally accessible. Open Educational Resources are described as ‘learning, teaching, and research materials in any media, digital or otherwise, that belong to the public domain, or have been released under an open license permitting free access, use, and adaptation, as well as redistribution by others without restriction.’"

Open educational resources have gone global and may help make learning more accessible, equitable and inclusive around the world.

So says the new Educause Horizon report, which identifies technologies and trends that are changing higher education.

This year’s forecast was created by nearly five dozen higher education experts, a third of them from institutions outside of the U.S. OER was one of six “emerging technologies and practices” the panelists highlighted as most likely to significantly influence postsecondary teaching and learning in the future.

• We specialise in delivering effective learning experiences for adults which fit around their lives, whether it’s a busy mum in London working toward her degree, or a primary school teacher in a remote area in Kenya, improving her classroom practice. Over 70% of our students remain at work while studying.
• We use appropriate technology to break down barriers – for those with disabilities, isolated or economically challenged. 
• We are open – we aim to remove all barriers to education and set no entry qualifications. 
• We use a mixture of business models (free, fee, and donor support) to provide scalable and sustainable solutions.
• We deliver quality learning experiences on scale to over 170,000 students. Of the UK learners, 61,000 are eligible for financial support and 44% start undergraduate study without the entry qualifications they would need at a conventional university.

If your students want to find free images for whatever awesome projects they’re working on, there are plenty of choices. That said, we’ve taken at least some of the guesswork out of that search with this post. Today we’re sharing 15 of the open source image resources that caught our eye recently.

Explore the world of free digital materials available through open licenses, and celebrate the four Rs: reuse, redistribute, revise, remix.

Open Educational Resources (OER) have yet to cozy up with the more orthodox academics and pushy print publishers of the world. Advocates praise their accessible low-prices and ability to meet students on digital devices. 

Research into practice: evaluation of Skills Hub content and implications for library staff development in the creation of video OERs