Over 75% of university faculty report little or no knowledge of Open Educational Resources. Let’s change that! In this workshop, you’ll learn about OER, where you can find them and how they can help better align learning outcomes with your course goals, improve your teaching and save students money.
What do UNESCO, the federal government and Amazon have in common? They’re all supporting the quiet revolution of Open Education Resources. But like any good revolution, awareness can take some time to spread. And OER has a bit of an identity problem.
So what exactly are OER? Much more than free information on a web page.
From OpenContent.Org:
"Open educational resources are educational materials (e.g., course textbooks, research articles, videos, assessments, simulations, etc.) that are either:
(a) licensed under an open copyright license (e.g., Creative Commons) or
(b) in the public domain. In both cases, every person in the world enjoys free (no cost) access to the OER and free (no cost) permission to engage in the "4R" activities when using the OER:
- Revise—adapt and improve the OER so it better meets your needs.
- Remix—combine or "mash up" the OER with other OER to produce new materials.
- Reuse—use the original or your new version of the OER in a wide range of contexts.
- Redistribute—make copies and share the original OER or your new version with others.
These Rs are the big differentiators for OER. This allows maximum flexibility, sharing and more open teaching.
More open to Open now? Then let’s go!
In this Express Workshop, you will be able to:
- Analyze your curriculum and select one course to convert to OER
- Locate and evaluate (using devices) credible learning objects, aligning materials to your course’s assessments and outcomes
- Collaborate with peers in small groups to evaluate materials
- Prepare and present to full group your new OER materials and their alignment in your course
Workshop Format/Activities/Materials:
To model the successful active learning method, this workshop will include interactive feedback from the groups on OER that will be compiled in a shared Google doc. Small groups will likewise work together on shared documents that will live beyond the workshop, serving both as a record of the work and a dynamic collection of resources to be collectively updated.
Materials to be used in the workshop and submitted to conference proceedings: PowerPoint presentation and the crowdsourced documents from the session, as well as a shared, living document with OER resources.