Open Educational Resources (OER)

Increasing Access While Improving Quality

Catherine M. Casserly

CEO

Creative Commons

Fred Mednick

Founder

Teachers Without Borders

Asha Kanwar

Vice President

Commonwealth of Learning

Catherine Ngugi

Project Director

OER Africa

Hal Plotkin

Senior Policy Advisor

Office of the Undersecretary, U.S. Dept of Education

Kathy Nicholson

Associate Program Officer, Education

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

What are Open Educational

Resources?

- teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use, distribution and revision by others

Top 5 Benefits of OER

1. The ability to make continuous improvements to enhance learning

2. The ability to localize content

3. Accessibility for all

4. Greater learning efficiencies

5. Radically reduced costs

EASY TO ADAPT, OER ENABLE

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

“OPEN” = LOCALIZATION & PERSONALIZATION

OER: ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALL

http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/publications/71

LEARNING EFFICIENCY:

FEEDBACK LOOPS

REMIX & REUSE OF OER ENABLE

RADICALLY REDUCED COSTS

OPEN TEXTBOOKS

Workforce Training:

Virtual University of the

Small States of the

Commonwealth

(VUSSC)

I have been able to see new possibilities and change my paradigm about open content. I don't think before being a participant of this I would really have considered just putting content online for anyone to use and change. ..Now I see that I can move from providing training for a few persons in my country or becoming a teacher of many, across nations. I have gained new skills, a new perspective, a vision of what is possible and how limitations of size, money and distance can be overcome if people are willing to work together and share resources…

- Singapore VUSSC boot camp participant

Workforce Training: Health OER Network

Teacher Training & PD: India

CSU Long Beach and Lucknow University

Teacher Training & PD:

Mexico

“Easy and free access to open resources means that I don’t have to worry about budgeting for my professional growth. I can also use and reuse the resources … I am more creative as a teacher because I can build on the work of other teachers. I learn from their work, but I can also make it better fit my students’ needs … now I have more and better tools that will allow me to generate meaningful learning experiences that will let my students build their knowledge on their own and develop the competence that the 21st century society demands.”

Gladys García, a high school social studies teacher from Saltillo, Mexico

Teacher Training & PD: Kenya

Egerton University is also developing a dialogue with national and regional policy makers on TESSA and its impact on the national curriculum, which is now undergoing reform. The first workshop was held a few weeks ago, attended by 47 policy makers from the national and district levels.

Benefits of the TESSA OER for Teachers

• Redefines the role of a teacher as a facilitator/guide /moderator/consultant and NOT an absolute source of knowledge

• Helps teachers to be more resourceful in developing learning resources

• Provides teachers with resources that are adaptable hence easy to use in different contexts

21Fred N. Keraro, Egerton University

Benefits of the TESSA OER for Teachers (cont.)

• Gives guidance on how active learning can fit into the needs of the National curriculum

• Encourages sharing of resources and team work which can motivate and enthuse colleagues

• Schools develop resources that improve the quality teaching and promote a culture of active learning

22Fred N. Keraro, Egerton University

Teacher Training & PD:

Ghana

24

Open Educational Resources encourage active learning in the classroom

25

Open Educational Resources encourage sharing of resources and team work

TESSA Project Activities

Ghana: Adapting TESSA for national Early Childhood Curriculum

Sudan: Writing new Teacher Practice Guides using TESSA OERs for both students and supervisors

Nigeria: Developing model TESSA demonstration school

Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania: creating 15 study units in the science curriculum area (3 modules each of 5 study units), drawing on existing high quality OERs

www.tessafrica.net

Kenya: Developing dialogue with national and regional policymakers on TESSA and the national curriculum

South Africa: Organizing action research by B.Ed student-teachers using TESSA OER

Contributing to African Teacher Education OER Network

OER in the Classroom: Vietnam

Circuit Construction Kit simulation

OER in the Classroom: Brazil

• Developing a Teacher Education Space on OER Africa

• Working with

The Catholic University in Mozambique, the University of Pretoria, the University of the Witwatersrand, and Rhodes University

– To use OER in teacher education course design, and/or

– To release newly developed or adapted materials as OER.

the South African Department of Basic Education to conceptualise

– A virtual National Institute for Curriculum and Professional Development with teacher development courses and materials available as OER for South African teachers.

• As part of the DETA (Distance Education and Teacher Training in Africa) Conference organising committee [http://www.deta.up.ac.za/ ]

– Working to form a Special Interest Group on OER for Teacher Education at a pre-conference workshop in Maputo in August 2011.

Saide/OER Africa project activities

Post Disaster Emergency Education: China

• Five 200 page learning guides• Four sets of readings to support learning

guides• 29 audio clips of interviews and classroom

events• 23 video clips - issues and debates from the

modules and methods in action in classrooms

Saide ACEMaths project: focus on adaptation through course design rather than versioning

Existing distance material (UNISA module) with some adaptation • Reuse (Site B): Single unit as a whole, un-adapted, used as reference material.

• Reuse (Site A and C): Single unit as a whole, un-adapted, used as course material.

• Reuse (Site D, E and F): Full set of units, un-adapted, used as course material.

• Remix (Site C): Combination of unit(s) (un-adapted) with other material, used as course material.

• Remix (Site A): Combination of unit(s) (adapted) with other material, used as course material.

• Rework (Site D): Full set of units, adapted, used as course material.

1. Facilitate sustainable implementation

• Create incentives for development and re-use

• Remove barriers to OER adoption

• Fund infrastructure to increase access

2. Encourage openness as a component of public policy

• Require all publicly funded materials to carry a public license

• Publish educational research through open access journals

• Make more data publicly available

• Support open source software

HOW CAN OER BE INTEGRATED INTOPROGRAMS TO SUPPORT EDUCATION?

Recap

1. Open Educational Resources can be used to help achieve education development goals in a scalable, practical, and cost-effective way

2. We need to increase awareness that resources exist and that they are freely available

3. To integrate OER into the mainstream, agencies can encourage open licenses via grantmaking programs, support infrastructure projects, and engage in partnerships

Want to know more about OER?

1. Handbook, CD of resources or OER List at: http://ci.olnet.org

2. Visit the web sitesCommonwealth of Learning www.col.org

Connexions http://cnx.org/Creative Commons www.creativecommons.orgOER Africa www.oerafrica.orgOER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/Open Learning Initiative http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/Physics Education Technology http://phet.colorado.edu/South African Institute for Distance Education http://www.saide.org.za/Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa http://www.tessaafrica.net/Teachers Without Borders www.twb.orgVietnam Foundation http://www.vnfoundation.org/WikiEducator http://wikieducator.orgThe William and Flora Hewlett Foundation www.hewlett.org

3. Email: knicholson@hewlett.org