Adapting OER is a viable strategy for improving student success at the course and program-level through improving affordability and access, encouraging local perspectives, and empowering innovative pedagogies. Experienced practitioners will share processes, workflows, tools, and frameworks that have helped them better meet learners’ needs by adapting openly licensed content.
The power of adaptable digital content is apparent all around us. Waves of public & philanthropic investment have resulted in millions of adaptable open educational resources (OER). Adapting OER is now a viable curriculum strategy for improving student success at the course and program-level.
In addition to improving affordability and access, adaptable learning materials invite educators to localize content to fit the unique needs of learners and the communities where they live, work, and learn. Adaptation also empowers educators to accomplish specific learning objectives while trying out innovative pedagogies. However, technical barriers, underestimation of the work required, and misunderstanding learners’ actual needs can all pose challenges to successful adaptation.
In this panel session, experienced practitioners will share processes & workflows they have developed and tools & frameworks that have helped them better meet learners’ needs by adapting openly licensed content.
The goals of this session are to 1) highlight the positive and practical aspects of adapting Open Educational Resources to create a better learning experience for students and to 2) make the audience aware of common pitfalls so that their future adaptation efforts will be most likely to achieve the outcomes they desire. It will center the panelists’ expertise and experience in the hopes of helping participants feel more prepared to adapt existing open content to solve the challenges they face, no matter the type or size of institution they serve or the specific cultural environment(s) they are working within. Our intention is for panelists to present an honest accounting of successes and struggles, with an emphasis on practices and tools the audience can use and frameworks or heuristics that can help guide their efforts to produce adaptations that meet the particular needs of learners in their diverse settings.
The moderator will begin the session by inviting attendees to introduce themselves via chat, and providing short panelist introductions. They will ask the attendees a few ‘raise your hand’ type questions to gauge the audience’s current understanding and experience level with the topic. Following this introduction, each panelist will be invited to share timed remarks (<5 minutes) describing adaptation projects they’ve been involved with and a description of their goals and impacts. Attendees will be encouraged to share their questions for the panel and comments on the topic throughout, in the chat, and during a dedicated Q&A slot in the final minutes of the conversation.
The moderator will ask panelists to respond to a small number of pre-written questions and will ensure panelists have equal opportunities to contribute. We will reserve time for participants to answer attendees’ questions at the end of the session. The moderator will share a distributable document with pre-collected resources from the panelists once the session is over