Open Educational Resources (OER)

This case study presents the extent of transformation that Open Educational Practices (OEP) have brought to higher education in Australia. In the early stages of the transformation, open access policies, funding, support and infrastructure were introduced by the national government. Initiatives that uncovered the transformative potential of OEP were then undertaken. The scope of transformation of OEP in Australia has since expanded, influencing and impacting institutions in several aspects, leading the sector to a better position worldwide. However, many challenges still remain. Restrictive copyright regimes and a lack of national and institutional policies and funding are among the barriers faced
by OEP in Australia. If these barriers are removed and policy enablers are further developed, the higher education sector in Australia could fully benefit from the transformative potential of OEP.

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project “Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures–EduArc”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed within the digital transformation of ten different Higher Education (HE) systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Following a comparative case study approach, we investigated issues related to the existence of policies, quality assurance mechanisms and measures for the promotion of change in supporting infrastructure development for (O)ER at the national level in HE in the different countries. The results of this mainly documentary research highlight differences and similarities, which are largely due to variations in these countries’ political structure organisatio...

Student as Producer
Student as producer and open educational resources: enhancing learning through digital scholarship
Sue Watling 
Sue Watling, Centre for Research and Development, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS, swatling@lincoln.ac.uk 
Biography
Currently a teaching and learning co-ordinator in the Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD), Sue has over 20 years’ experience in education: in adult and community education, social services and for the past 12 years at the University of Lincoln where she supports staff in the use of virtual learning environments. She has a particular interest in the social impact of the internet and issues of digital inclusion. Sue has MAs in gender studies and open and distance education and is currently undertaking doctoral research based around teaching and learning in a digital age. She has professional accreditation as a learning technologist with the Association for Learning Technology (CMALT), is a member of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA).
Abstract
At the University of Lincoln, the student as producer agenda is seeking to disrupt consumer-based learning relationships by reinventing the undergraduate curriculum along the lines of research-engaged teaching. The open education movement, with its emphasis on creative commons and collaborative working practices, also disrupts traditional and formal campus-based education. This paper looks at the linkages between the Student as Producer project and the processes of embedding open educational practice at Lincoln. Both reinforce the need for digital scholarship and the prerequisite digital literacies that are essential for learning in a digital age.

Flexible, inclusive and accessible provision of education and training online can provide a supportive learning environment to the students studying fashion with the help of blended, flipped classes or online courses. Also the employees working in the fashion domain might be exposed to the on-the-job training activities through e-Learning courses for instance on learning about corporate history, culture or new safety regulations. This research investigates the role of new media in education in the field of fashion, harvesting existing online courses and categorizing them according to subdomains so to provide a clear overview of the field. More than 60 available online training platforms related to the fashion domain are analysed. Results may be considered as a first picture of the e-Learning domain related to the fashion industry.

Herzlich willkommen zum thematischen Screencast „Snychrone Beschreibung der deutschen Sprache“. Der Screencast ist an die thematische Ausgestaltung des gleichnamigen Seminars im Bereich der Germanistik an der CAU zu Kiel gebunden – das soll dazu gesagt sein, da man sich sonst möglicherweise etwas über die Themenauswahl wunderte, die sich aber aus dem Curriculum des BA-Studiums der Germanistik in Kiel ergibt. Der Screencast ist, auch wenn er thematisch zugeschnitten und für das Curriculum in Kiel angepasst ist, Open Educational Resource und kann in anderen Kontexten verwendet werden. Er steht und der Creative Commons Lizenz. Das Seminar ist im Wesentlichen thematisch in zwei zentrale Bereiche aufgeteilt: Die Modellierung syntaktischer Strukturen und Sprache im Gebrauch. Das Thema Modellierung syntaktischer Strukturen fasst genauer die Vorstellung des Konzeptes der Valenz und darauf aufbauend der Dependenzgrammatik und der Konstituentenstrukturgrammatik. Mit Sprache im Gebrauch beschäftigt man sich dann, wenn man neben verschiedenen Modellen zur Bestimmung der Bedeutung sprachlicher Einheiten in der Semantik sich vor allem auf pragmatische Ansätze ausgehend von der Sprechakttheorie stützt. Im Seminar werden das in der Anwendung auf geschriebene und gesprochene Sprache die Textlinguistik und Gesprächsanalyse sein. Ebenso wären die Themen Varietätenlinguistik und Diskurslinguistik hier anzusiedeln, die aber Gegenstand anderer Seminare sind. Der Screencast zur "Synchronen Beschreibung der deutschen Sprache" geht regelmäßig ab 2015 mit neuen Folgen parallel zum Seminar online.

This conceptual article explores self-directed localized open educational practices for a decolonized South African higher education curriculum. From the historical context, language demography and especially due to student protests regarding the curriculum the need for a decolonized South African curriculum is evident. In this article, an overview is presented about the context-specific issues in relation to decolonization and language. It is proposed that in order to move towards a decolonized South African curriculum, there should be a self-directed learning approach to open educational practices which would involve carefully planned and supported localization efforts. This process also implies acknowledging both internal and external localization as done in a structured or even student-driven manner. Furthermore, localization means drawing on translations study theories pertaining to specifically dynamic equivalence. This approach would require increasingly accommodating languages other than English in the higher education context and as such language attitude planning efforts are needed. Finally, open educational practices would require an open ongoing process which provides agency to South African teachers and students to use the language of their choice to engage with content applicable and relevant to their contexts. In addition, this would imply including indigenous knowledge in order to address the needs of a decolonized curriculum. In conclusion, this article presents some practical recommendations towards self-directed localized open educational practices for a decolonized South African higher education curriculum.

This article describes trends of open data development and a new discipline, which was formed largely due to the fact that the data have become available and open on the Internet. The authors provide a brief overview of the main directions in the development of open data and data journalism: educational projects, interaction with the community of developers using data management platforms, development of business community on open data basis. The article also discusses Russian educational projects dealing with open data and data journalism.

Almost everyone in India is conscious of the importance and urgency of the Challenges in Education and these are reflected in several other parts of the world as well. Some of these are the challenge of numbers, of relevance, of Quality, of access, of costs and of speed. There is sometimes a sense of paralysis at the enormity of the challenge and the apparent impossibility of managing conflicting expectations. But we need a change in direction, as suggested in the scenario painted by Edward de Bono. “Imagine a ship at sea that is in trouble. The lights keep going out. The engine is faltering. The rudder is unreliable. The first mate is drunk. The crew is very demoralised. The service is appalling. The passengers on the ship are very dissatisfied. Then a new captain and first mate are brought in by helicopter. Very quickly everything changes. The morale of the crew is lifted. Service improves. The engine is fixed. The rudder is fixed. The lights stay on. Everything is fine. But the ship is still heading in the wrong direction.” The solution to these multiple challenges probably lies in a number of disruptive innovative solutions. These include inculcating self-learning (building on meta-cognition), measuring learning, collaborative and co-operative learning, personalisation of learning and learning analytics. However, in addition to new systems or technologies, we need a fundamental change of perspective. Education is seen as the responsibility of the State and the system is based on authority and licenses and permissions to allow education to be transacted in modern times this is unlikely to work. As Henry Maine had said ' as society progresses, it moves from status to contract'. So must the educational system build contractual relationships between the learner and providers of learning as more important than statutory authority. A very promising technological and pedagogical model that has received a lot of attention during the last few years and adoption by Stanford, Harvard, Duke and almost 100 of the world's top ranking Universities to teach millions of learners is that of the MOOC. The MOOC is considered on the one hand as a panacea for education and on the other as a defilement of the sanctity of the higher education tradition. The truth will probably lie somewhere in between and we must explore the potential of MOOCs to create a model of simultaneously teaching on-site and off-site learners, using synchronous and a-synchronous teacher learner interactions to deliver high quality learning to large numbers , maybe evolve a model for a classroom of 10,000 learners. This event is a step in that direction. We are experimenting here with mounting 10 MOOCs in a variety of subjects, for different target groups delivered by a team of Internationally renowned resource persons. We will be exploring several technological platforms and pedagogical models to find answers to a few interesting questions:
 What is the right size of a learning cohort that is empowered with technology?
 What is the right price for tuition?
 What would be the most appropriate technology platform for mass education?
 What is the best way to cope with linguistic diversity?
 What course programs are best delivered as MOOCs?
 What skill sets must learners have to benefit most from MOOCs?
 What skill sets must educators acquire to teach effectively with MOOCs?
I welcome and thank all those who are contributing to make this unique exploratory endeavour a success.
M.M. Pant

Zusammenfassung In diesem Kurzbeitrag wird dargestellt, warum freie Bildungsressourcen für die Hochschule von morgen eine Notwendigkeit darstellen. Nach einer Begriffsdefinition werden Argumente für die Stärkung von OER vorgestellt. Darüberhinaus kann gezeigt werden, dass bereits auf viele existierende Ressourcen zugegriffen werden kann bzw. wie diese selbst genutzt werden können.

The government of Tanzania has been embracing information systems specifically websites to enlarge access to government services, lower administrative costs, and to increase public participation in decision making. As a result, almost every ministry, department, and agency (MDA) has developed a unique website. However, most of existing websites were developed without sufficiently considering users’ needs which indicates that they do have some usability and accessibility problems. This study used the SortSite tool to evaluate accessibility and usability of government websites taking a sample of 22 websites. The report from the SortSite tool was then checked against the W3 WCAG accessibility standards and Section 508 guidelines, and usability issues based on the US Federal (Usability.gov) guidelines. The results show that most of websites have many accessibility and usability problems that hinder citizens from using them. This study provides recommendations on how to improve usability and accessibility of these websites.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic affected all economic sectors and disrupted many areas of our lives, especially education. More than 1.7 billion learners in over 200 countries around the world were affected,
and these numbers will continue to increase in 2021 and beyond. Therefore, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic must be understood in order to be better prepared for future disruptions. There is a need to
recognize that education is an investment in rebuilding. The key lessons learned are that the future of education needs to be rethought without forgetting the past. Certainly, there is room for improvement in the technical area, but most importantly, it is critical to recognize the social dimensions of learning and education. This conceptual chapter provides a review of the literature on several global initiatives to shape the futures of education by focusing on resilient open education for all in the context of social justice, human rights, and democracy.

This paper presentation will be of interest to English language teaching practitioners interested in exploring the issue of openness in relation to data-driven language learning, looking specifically at the use of open content and open tools that require no subscription fees for access.  Oxford-managed corpora and Oxford-created Open Educational Resources (OER) in the form of lecture podcasts will be discussed in relation to their reuse in international English language education contexts. The promotion of different open resources will be discussed in the context of developing teacher training and autonomous learning support interventions for the useful uptake of these open educational resources (OER) in learning and teaching.

One project that successfully manages to link open and proprietary content is the Flexible Language Acquisition Project (FLAX). For example, in the Learning Collocations collection in FLAX, large language collections based on linguistic content derived from Wikipedia, Google n-gram and Open Access research article corpora have been linked to proprietary corpora such as the British National Corpus (BNC) and the British Academic Written English (BAWE). This project enhances existing proprietary resources like the BNC and BAWE by linking them to open and dynamic resources like those found in the Wikimedia suite of OER.

As a takeaway, participants will leave this paper presentation with a clear understanding of the resources available and information pertaining to support networks for encouraging good practice with the use of OER among their colleagues and students at their home institutions.

The TOETOE International OER project with the University of Oxford, the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). For further reading on the TOETOE International OER project with the University of Oxford, please see the following case study: https://alannahfitzgerald.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/toetoe_international_flax_weaving_with_oxford_oer.pdf

This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.americananthro.org/ and our parent organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Please refer to the website for a complete table of contents and more information about the book.

More and more governments are considering Open Educational Resources as a public good that requires being legislated and considered when funding education. Moreover, higher education institutions and bodies are also reviewing their existing educational policies to integrate OER in them, by changing the types of licensing, participating or creating OER repositories.

The CKLN and the Caribbean NRENs were supported through the ACP Connect Project, from April to October 2013, with the aim to successfully launch them, linking through C@ribNET, to each other and to the international research and education networks. To fully achieve this, it is fundamental to have dedicated high capacity broadband networks in place, at national and Caribbean level, supported among others by ICT, ODL and OER Policies.
The Caribbean suffers from a double ultra-peripheral situation, islands away from mainland and separated from each other, posing enormous challenges to their economic and human development.
In the Caribbean region, the use/development of Open Educational Resources is still in a very embryonic stage.

The open educational resources (OER) repositories facilitate access to knowledge, creating opportunities for academic institutions to share pedagogical materials that can enhance the teaching and learning experience in higher education. They can be reused, translated or modified, and even disseminated through social networks, making these multimedia materials accessible anywhere at any time, without economic and copyright barriers, thereby encouraging active participation in the democratic education movement.

Screencast zum Seminar "Diachrone Beschreibung der deutschen Sprache".

Die Videos dienen der Vorbereitung der Sitzungen mit "Inverted Classroom" ("Inverted Classroom Model" / ICM auch "Aktives Plenum" oder "Flipped Classroom") im Modell "Introduction // Exercise // Evaluation" (IEE).

Ausführlichere Überlegungen zur Umsetzung der Modelle in der akademischen Lehre stelle ich hier zur Verfügung: http://goo.gl/dbcnY.

In the scientific literature of the past 15 years it can be found numerous research initiatives and experiences related to the adoption of new technologies in education. Technological innovations have been constant, often accompanied by educational innovations, but the pace of adoption of the same is not as intense as its development. Furthermore, not only changing technologies and methods, students and learning objectives also change, which in many cases cause many conflicts and difficulties. This paper proposes as a research proposal to analyze and promote technological innovation of teachers based on the adoption of the open education model focused on Open Educational Resources. A study of the elements that make up this ecosystem is made and a methodology and a research driven by models of technological innovation is proposed, refered to important concepts of the ecosystem of Open Educational Resources, innovation and technology adoption models.

Η ιδέα της ανοικτής εκπαίδευσης σε συνδυασμό με τα περιβάλλοντα μάθησης στο Διαδίκτυο έχουν εξαπλωθεί σε εκατοντάδες ιδρύματα της τριτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης σε όλο τον κόσμο. Στο νέο κόσμο που ξεδιπλώνεται, αναδύεται παράλληλα η ανάγκη σχεδιασμού ή επανασχεδιασμού μιας ολοκληρωμένης θεώρησης νέων «διδακτικών» πρακτικών.
Οι τεχνολογίες του Διαδικτύου καθιστούν δυνατό το μεγάλης κλίμακας άνοιγμα της επιστημονικής γνώσης στο σύνολο της κοινωνίας, πρακτικά σε οποιονδήποτε επιθυμεί να διευρύνει, να ανανεώσει ή να επικαιροποιήσει τις γνώσεις του μέσω αυτο-εκπαίδευσης. Τα Πανεπιστήμια ενισχύουν τον εκπαιδευτικό ρόλο τους στην ευρύτερη δημόσια σφαίρα, ενώ παράλληλα έχουν τη δυνατότητα να προβάλουν το υψηλού επιπέδου εκπαιδευτικό και ερευνητικό έργο που παράγουν ενισχύοντας τη θέση τους στον παγκόσμιο εκπαιδευτικό χάρτη.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are dramatically restructuring, reshaping, and redefining the vast landscape of teaching and learning across the globe. With MOOCs' ubiquity, openness, and accessibility, they have become a new platform for teacher professional development. Utilizing a co-constructed narrative inquiry, this paper aimed to examine aspects of our memories, perspectives, and experiences in successfully completing Teach English Now! a 150-hour online Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Certificate Course from Arizona State University, United States of America via Coursera (www.coursera.org) as the MOOC platform. Acting as reflective practitioners and as teachers-as-researchers, we unpacked how we traversed the massive information superhighway in our quest for teacher professional development, what it was like to be an online learner, how we saw our role, why we believe what we believe about MOOCs' potential, and how we think all of these affect our decisions and practices in our classrooms and contexts. Data from our individual journals, individual reflections, and peer discussion revealed how MOOCs' features such as 'openness' and 'flexibility' as afforded by ubiquitous technology, sound course design, and strong learning community support have influenced us personally, socially, and professionally, making it a practical platform for teacher professional advancement particularly in developing countries such as the Philippines. Andragogical and pedagogical implications are provided in the light of our MOOC experience.

This article explores the possibilities provided by self-directed learning by means of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Afrikaans literature teaching. The National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement provides a basis on which self-directedness can be motivated and the use of technology such
as OER be supported. From the scholarship on literature teaching, clear links exist concerning self-directed learning. However, in order to foster self-directedness, it is essential that learners are central to the teaching context and that aspects such as active learning, cooperative learning, motivation, metacognition, the communicative approach, problem solving as well as an openness to text choices be considered. Finally, it is also evident from the literature review in this article that OER can provide clear opportunities toward the enhancement of self-directed learning in Afrikaans literature classes. However, despite some initiatives, there is a great need for expanding further online resources such as OER in this context.

Offene Bildungsressourcen (englisch Open Educational Resources OER) erlauben zahlreiche Verwendungen in der Bildungsarbeit, die bei herkömmlichen Materialien durch die Urhebergesetze ausgeschlossen sind, wie z. B. die Modifikation und Wiederveröffentlichung vorhandener Materialien. Im Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Rolle OER derzeit im Bereich der deutschsprachigen Weiterbildung, also insbesondere in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz spielen. Obwohl dem Thema Digitalisierung in der Weiterbildung in der Schweiz ein hoher strategischer Stellenwert eingeräumt wird, spielen OER eher eine untergeordnete Rolle.

Learning happens for human being mostly through physical, cognitive, and emotional interactions with the external envi-
ronment. With the aid of information technology, interactions have gone beyond the limit of working on a desktop
computer, usinga mouse and keyboardto interactwith windows,icons, menus,and pointers,in whichtangibleuser interface
(TUI) is gaining increasing attention. This article will provide an overview of TUI, discuss its functional characteristics, present
some application cases, and discuss design and application issues for TUI in education.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are increasingly being promoted by enthusiasts in the field of education
as a solution to the challenges of access, quality and cost of digital content worldwide. The National Policy on Information
and Communication Technology by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (2012), in its
policy goals discusses about creating an environment for collaboration, cooperation, sharing and promoting universal,
equitable, open and free access to ICT. The most important aspect of openness is the free availability of resource over
the Internet, and recurrence of as few as possible restrictions, in the form of licensing activity, on the use of resource by
the users. Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), National Council of Educational Research and Training
(NCERT) and Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government
of India has launched National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER), which is a digital repository of
open educational resources offering resources for all school subjects and grades in multiple languages. The resources
are available in the form of concept maps, videos, multimedia, interactive objects, audio clips, talking books, photographs,
diagrams and charts, articles, lesson plans and textbook pages. This research paper provides a glimpse to the
NROER with special reference to the subject of Science with special emphasis on Physics content of Elementary and
Secondary school level. It is an attempt to provide an overview to the complete methodology of development of Science
content in the form of concepts, concept maps and multiple resources on the NROER, including the suggestive use of
NROER by the Teachers, Teacher educators, Pupil teachers and students.

This paper discusses the general thesis that massive open online courses (in short MOOC), open educational resources (in short OER) and learning analytics are an impactful trio for future education, especially if combined. The contribution bases upon our practical experience as service providers and researchers in the department "Educational Technology" at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in Austria. The team members provide support to lecturers, teachers and researchers in these addressed fields for several years now, for example as host of the MOOC platform iMooX.at, providing only OER since 2015. Within this contribution, we will show, against some doubtful or conflicting opinions and positions, that (a) MOOCs are opening-up education; (b) learning analytics give insights and support learning, not only online learning, if implemented in MOOCs; and (c) that OER has the potential for sustainable resources, innovations and even more impact, especially if implemented in MOOCs.

Open educational resources (OER) are an important emerging genre of teaching and learning materials with the potential for providing significant learning support on a global scale. OER have the capacity to enhance the availability of quality reading and learning materials to audiences who are not currently accessing traditional print materials.

However, the particular supply and demand features of OER give rise to questions about how they could best reach some of the least-resourced target audiences. This report aims to investigate these questions, particularly as they relate to the potential use of OER for helping to meet basic education needs in low-resource environments of Africa. The report draws primarily on three types of data: a review of written sources
on OER in Africa, interviews of eight OER supply organizations, and interviews of thirteen teachers, headmasters and leaders of small NGOs in four countries of Africa. This data indicates that, while there is an abundance of OER available, the demand side is much less robust for a range of reasons.

Based on analysis and discussion of the data, the report makes several recommendations for enhancing OER use among the target audiences. A set of specific actions is also offered to OER stakeholders for their consideration, in order that the impressive gains in managing supply may be leveraged to provide maximum benefit to the ‘least served’.

A special recognition at the Affordable Learning Solutions Faculty Recognition Luncheon for my participation and especially my presentation at the CSUDH Technology in Education Conference.  My ongoing professional development efforts and especially my contribution to helping other faculty learn about OER use for student success is very much appreciated.

This chapter deals with the intersections of technology and IK systems within the context of facilitating SDL. An overview is provided of relevant theoretical concepts of SDL, technology and IK systems as well as an interpretation of these issues in the South African CAPS at the school level. The empirical part of this chapter involves a critical literature review with a focus on operationalising aspects of learning and teaching in IK systems through technology. In conclusion, technological interventions for IK in teaching practice are suggested.