Serendipity35

Open Educational Resources (OER) are part of what is changing and will be changing education at all levels. But if you don't know what OER means, then a new course being offered may be a good entry point for you.

OER-101 is an open, self-paced online community course that has been
built to demonstrate how to find, adapt, and develop OERs step-by-step. These OERs may then be licensed via Creative Commons, printed and bound, and integrated into any type of learning environment.

The goals of OER-101 include: defining OERs, demonstrating how to create and interact with them, and exploring how to include them in the teaching and learning processes. The course materials have been designed and chosen with practicality, simplicity, and applicability in mind.

I like that the participants in the course are strongly encouraged to submit the OERs they develop to an OER repository under a Creative Commons license.

The course is organized into five “pursuits,” each of which represents one facet of the world of OERs. Participants are encouraged to complete all of the pursuits by following the suggested course progression, but each pursuit can also be completed individually.

The course will be offered through Blackboard’s CourseSites and participants may self-enroll in the course by creating a free account from https://opensuny.coursesites.com. Use the LOGIN button at the top of the page. The course opened January 16, but materials are due to be available on the 23rd.

The providers are also exploring the possibilities of offering badges in open courses. For evaluation and feedback, OER-101 will employ a badging system powered by Mozilla Open Badges. The badging experiment is funded by a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant. Participants will earn badges by completing the course pursuits and will receive a "master badge" for course completion.

The course will utilize a community learning model informed by a facilitation method established by Philyse Banner at the American Public University System.

The results from this course will be documented within the SUNY Learning Commons.





                   Here's a fun (and open) "trailer" for the course.

Open Education Week is March 11-15, 2013.

The goal is to raise awareness about open education and open educational resources.

Participation from around the world, in multiple languages, is encouraged.


Submit proposals at http://tinyurl.com/openedweekproposal no later than January 18.

There are many ways to get involved:

- Provide a Project Showcase highlighting some aspect of open education in your project, organization, region or country
- Offer a webinar or virtual Question and Answer session on a topic of interest
- Create or share basic resources about the open education movement
- Host a local event during Open Education Week
- Form a Working Group to address a common problem or opportunity
- Propose another activity—we invite you to be creative!

Contribute your skills to creating, organizing, coordinating or spreading the word about Open Education Week.

For more information, see Contributor's Frequently Asked Questions at http://tinyurl.com/OEWconrtibutorsFAQ

You can follow on Twitter at #openeducationwk, on Facebook at facebook.com/openeducationwk, or contact them at info@openeducationweek.org

Udemy, the company that allows any us to create and sell courses through its online platform, also has "The Faculty Project." This part of their site is devoted to courses by professors from some of the country's elite institutions.

Udemy is a for-profit, but The Faculty Project offerings from Colgate, Duke University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, Dartmouth College and Vassar College are free.

Obviously, their goals with the project are to get you in with a free course in the hope that you will pay for another course, and those top schools help elevate the brand.

Some of the courses seem to be a collection of informational lectures, which is not my idea of a good online "course" but you can certainly learn from them. There have been mentions online of plans to administer quizzes and grades/badges. You don't submit work and you don't get feedback. its anticipated droves of students, which may number in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

It might be worthwhile for other colleges to look at their courses as a model for developing quality courses on a budget. Udemy says it is developing the Faculty Project courses at $500 apiece.

I have been an advocate for open textbooks. I think they are a good way to cut costs and put more textbooks in the hands of our students. But I'll admit that they are not widely used.

There are a number of possible reasons for that. They aren't easy to find, even though there are a number of sites that collect open and free titles. Instructors don't always trust that titles are "as good" as commercial textbooks. It also takes time to review titles for adoption.

The University of Minnesota has started its own online catalog of open books. In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development created the catalog to be reviewed by faculty members. The books are all released under a Creative Commons, or similar, license, and instructors can customize the books to fit their course needs.

Students can access free digital versions or purchase low-cost print copies of open textbooks. The university will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books, and professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500. (The money comes from donor funds.)

They hope to address faculty concerns about locating texts and having quality control over titles that have been peer-reviewed. They have almost a hundred books in the catalog.

Although it is encouraging that UM is working to get open textbooks used on campus, I find it discouraging that they need to duplicate the efforts of other repositories that are collecting textbooks and reviews on a larger scale.

What do you consider the most important criteria in choosing an open textbook for use in your teaching? Check my list and vote here.