This workshop will guide educators and professionals through the process of evaluating OER for their own usage. It will introduce OER, acknowledge the challenges in adopting OER, and then guide the audience through a distillation process to determine what they need from OER, so they can effectively evaluate OER.
Introduction
Open Educational Resources, such as open textbooks and journals, appeal to faculty in higher education because many students who may otherwise lack resources to purchase learning materials, are able to access these. However, there have been conversations in the academy about the accuracy, efficacy, and quality of OERs. This workshop will guide educators and professionals through creating an individualized rubric to evaluate OER, based on professional, institutional, and course requirements.
Purpose
This workshop will guide educations and professionals through creating a rubric to evaluate OERs, based on individual, institutional, and course requirements.
Intended Audience
The target audiences of this workshop includes:
- Educators (from p-12 through graduate education)
- Human resource professionals and trainers from the business sector
- Instructional designers from all sectors
Learning Outcomes
The learning outcomes from this workshop will be individualized to each participant. The workshop will guide learners through a process to distil their OER needs, primary evaluation and quality concerns with OERs, and to use the needs and concerns to create a rubric they can use to evaluate learning materials. When participants leave this workshop, they will have a better understanding of what evaluation characteristics matter most to them, and they will also have a rudimentary rubric they can use to begin the evaluation process.
Features
This workshop is designed with a hybrid delivery method, blending elements of Sit-N-Git workshops with Hands-On Technology workshops. Attendees will be asked to use computing devices or smartphones to participate in the workshop activities. In order to achieve the instructional goals, this workshop will begin with an introduction to OERs, a presentation of a case study on OER success, and an introduction to rubric design and creation (including websites that can make rubric creation easier). Workshop leaders will present ideas for evaluation criteria, and walk participants through a distillation process of creating their own rubric criteria and levels.
Agenda
5 minutes: Introduction to OERs
5 minutes: Case study in OER usage success
5 minutes: Questions of OER Quality
5 minutes: Introduction to OER Rubric Creation
10 minutes: Activity--Distilling Evaluation Criteria
10 minutes: Activity--Building your Rudimentary Rubric
5 minutes: Troubleshooting and Q & A
45 minutes total delivery time
Materials Provided
Each participant will be provided with a hard copy infographic that contains:
- 5 benefits of OER adoption
- 5 tools for rubric creation
- 5 tips on OER evaluation (with an example of OER Rubric used)
Each participant will also receive a hardcopy list of all core level OERs that have been adopted by our case study at the university level.
Participants will not be provided technology for use, and will be asked to use their own computing devices (including smartphones) to fully participate in this workshop. If for some reason participants are unable to use their own technology, this workshop will still function well for those individuals as a Sit-N-Git session.
References
Allen, I. E. & Seaman, J. (2016). Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2015-16, 31. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2016.pdf.
Herron, J. (2016). Writing Commons: A Model for the Creation, Usability, and Evaluation of OERs. Composition Forum, 33.
Hussain, I., Chandio, J. H., & Khan Sindher, R. H. (2013). A Study on Attitude of University Academia towards the Use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education. Pakistan Journal Of Commerce & Social Sciences, 7(2), 367-380.
Murphy, Angela. 2013. "Open Educational Practices in Higher Education: Institutional Adoption and Challenges." Distance Education 34(2), 201-217. ERIC, EBSCOhost (accessed May 21, 2017).
Nikoi, S. K., Rowlett, T., Armellini, A., & Witthaus, G. (2011). CORRE: a framework for evaluating and transforming teaching materials into open educational resources. Open Learning, 26(3), 191-207.
Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects. (2011). Retrieved from https://www.achieve.org/files/AchieveOERRubrics_1.pdf .