Intro to SCoPE OER Seminar

Scott LeslieManager, Shareable Online Learning Resources

BCcampusJanuary 19, 2009

Outline

• OER – They’re Everywhere! Really!

• The Challenges I See

• Proposed Structure for 3 weeks Discussions

• What do YOU want?

What’s an OER?

• Isn’t that kind of like asking “What’s a Learning Object?”

• Nooooo!!!!!! (that means, “yes, exactly”)• OER refers to “educational resources

(lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaption and sharing”

– “OER Handbook for Educators” http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one/Introduction/Defining_OER

OER “Movement” 10 Years Old

• Wiley’s “Open Content” – later “Open Publication License” - 1998

• Term ‘officially’ originated in 2002 at UNESCO's Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries

Clearly, it’s even older than that

Let’s try that again…

HUGE Amount (and Growing) of ‘Formal’ OER

Hundreds of Smaller Projects

As well as MANY ways to find them

There’s an Even Larger Pool of ‘Informal’ Open Content

BUT…

• Often the “formal/institutional” OER projects were done on “soft” money that is drying up

• Often adopted a “publishing” model in which content was made open after the course, as a supplementary (and thus less sustainable) act

• Maybe overly focused on “content” which is clearly only a portion of what education involves

• No one is sure what’s getting used, what effect it is having

• …

What I’m hoping we can discuss in the next 3 weeks

Week 1 – Finding/Reusing OERSome questions I’d love to discuss• What are OER's? What does ‘Openness’ mean

to you?• Where do you currently go to find OER?

Problems and Advantages?• How much time do you spend looking for

appropriate OERs? When you find them, where do you store them?

• Have you ever modified someone else's work for your own use? If not, why not? If so, how did it work out? Were there things that made it easier?

Week 2 – Creating OERQuestions I’d love to discuss• Why create and share OER?• How do you currently author your course

content? Would it be easy to share your course content now without a lot of additional work?

• Why is creating your own course content in a way that is easily shareable and reusable a worthwhile goal for your own purposes?

• How to sustain OER efforts?

Week 3 – Sharing/Sustaining OERQuestions I’d love to discuss• Where have you tried to share your OE Resource? • What's been your experience in trying to share an

OER? What's stopping you from sharing? • How can we change so our educational practices

(not just the content) to become more open? • Licensing - which license would you consider, and

why?• How to make OERs more useful to people of

different languages and cultural situations?• What is your ideal future for OER?

But what is it about OERs that YOU want to talk about or learn?