Monday, November 14, 2011

Things to think about if you want to turn your stuff into open educational resources (OER)

One of the things I am working on at the moment at Otago Polytechnic, in my role as program developer in the Educational Development Centre, is turning our teaching certificate (the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching) into an open program ie people from anywhere in the world can access the program online...for free. So....you will be able to follow the courses in the program for free but if you want to enroll, do the assessment and gain the qualification, there will be a fee as per normal.

Before we're able to do to this, I have had to carry out a literature review to find out what exactly open education and open education resources (OER) are, and what are the key issues that we need to take into consideration during this work. I also want to see what research questions crop up that we can address in this project.

Here is the literature review that you may find helpful in you're in the same position as me, and thinking about putting your teaching materials and course into an open, online environment: 
http://ia600209.us.archive.org/14/items/Oer-LiteratureReview2011/OerPractices_2.pdf

Here is the research question that we have come up with from the literature review that we would like to investigate as we progress in our OER project:

How can an open facilitated course using a four tier model of funding (from free to formal enrollment) be designed so it is sustainable and attracts revenue?

Have you had any experience of OER? What are the key issues as far as you are concerned? What research questions do you think need to be answered with regard to OER?


Image: 'ShriRamSchoolWikiEducator - 04'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40299872@N00/4032897339


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