Open Educational Resources (OER)What I learned spring 2015

What and When are Open Educational Resources? Educational material or materials used to enhance education In public domain or licensed to permit free use & re-purposing Any medium is possible Available on-line so use… whenever Can upload your work on line…whenever

Who makes OERs?Who uses OERs? Anyone! Schools have set website of free courses to educate anyone in the world Individuals, including students can license their work http://creativecommons.org/

Where can you find them?

Easy to use site abound depending on type of materials desired Check out http://www.openwa.org/find-oer/

Hit the down arrow on the screen and a wealth of open texts appear

Check out Project Gutenberg for classic books http://www.gutenberg.org/ Check for “public domain and creative commons licensing on other sites

Benefits of OER…other than already listed

Accessible by the entire world! Quick circulation of new projects Decrease cost$$$ for learners Ties alumni to institutions Contributes to free lifelong learning

Augments regular in classroom

Drawbacks of OER

Verifying material are truly open access resources Keeping OER texts, videos, images current with state of the art teaching

What is the free content is poorly written, presented, or downright inaccurate? Dependent on grants and soft donation sources for updates

On-line learning with no opportunity for student teacher interaction Cultural or language barriers/misunderstanding with world learners Technical issues- some students may have poor internet connectivity Courses may require software students cannot afford