Open Educational Resources (OERs) was a new term that I had never touched before. I think it is fresh and I really want to figure out how it is open? Who is it available to? Is it free? Is it legal?
After reading the articles on topics 2 and 3, I clearly resolved the question I had on the first day of class: “open” is not the same as “free”. All OERs are free, but not all free content is OER. For example, many “large open online courses” (such as MOOCs) are free, but not open. MOOC content may be available for free, but it is only OER if its content is allowed to be open or in the public space. This perception is extremely important to me.
As I learned that OER can be freely saved, reused, modified, remixed, and redistributed (shared with third parties) without violating copyright laws (Jhangiani. R & DeRosa. R, 2017). I realized that openness and communication are the most important essential features of OER, providing great convenience for teachers and learners. And I think it will be of great help in my study and future work.
Following the OER is the OEP, which means Open Educational Practices. Of all the examples, the point of “Facilitate student-created and student-controlled learning environments” was particularly attractive to me. As the article states: Learning management systems (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, etc.) assume that all student assignments are disposable, as all assignments will be deleted when a new course shell is imported the next semester (Jhangiani. R & DeRosa. R, 2017). As a UVIC student, we use Brightspace, where we can communicate with each other on the “Discussion” page, but only until the end of the course, and then there are no records to be found. Last semester I took an art class and I felt it was essential for students to be able to operate their own pages and manage access to their work. Great work could be set to “public” for the whole class or even the whole school to view, thus leading to discussions about the work, the course, and even the major. While we can collect the professor’s notes before the end of the course, it would be nice if our study system could collect the notes we want directly, so that we can access them from anywhere, using any electronic device.
Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community.
– Read Chapter 1: Open Pedagogy
ruobingbai
Hi, Susie
Thank you for sharing, I agree with you. As you mentioned, openness and communication are the most important essence of open educational resources. For example, the content of learning is not prescribed by the textbook, but is selected by the student, or the teacher is determined according to the needs of the student. The learning space can go out of the classroom, out of school, or into the virtual world of the web. You can conduct independent inquiry, practical experience, and problem discussion in a variety of ways.
Ruobing Bai
rbanow
Thanks for the post, Susie! I really like how you start by presenting some questions and then proceed to explore and answer them in your post. You also make good use of references to strengthen your explanations.
Your comments on MOOCs reminded me of an open course I taught in 2015. We referred to it as a TOOC, which stood for Truly Open Online Course. Our course was meant to be truly open by using all OERs and by allowing institutions to use our course as part of their credit courses (if you look at the fine-print for MOOCs, students are not allowed to take a MOOC as all or part of a credit-course at another school). It was a neat experience.
Did you end up working outside of Brightspace in your Art course? If not, was it due to the instructor saying no? Might you be able to convince them now based on your learning in this course?
Thanks!
boyue
Hi Susie, I really agree with your point. MOCC and OER can provide more opportunities and saving cost. It is really helpful for students.