Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
for different reasons, are constraints in course design in many universities in the
developed countries as well.
In testing the reality of this framework and the theory of course construction
using OER, a number of early conclusions have been formed.
(1) Course design using OER is in a different sequence of activities from most
“conventional” (i.e. “designed from scratch”) courses. The key
generic
areas of
importance for the OER course (or module) need to be identified first, with suf-
ficient clarity to enable a coherent set of educational “lessons” (or key concepts)
to be constructed, but not in such firm detail that the selection of the potential
OER for re-use is unduly restricted.
(2) A thorough and comprehensive search of web-based resources and other open
access resource repositories needs to be undertaken. A considerable number of
such sources currently exist, but web browsers and tagging to search specifi-
cally for OER are in their infancy. The identification and contextualisation of
open-access, peer-reviewed, academic journal articles may be particularly time
consuming.
(3) Appropriate resources that can be used to assist the intended learning process
are then grouped under the initial generic topic headings and in this manner a
robust learning structure can be slowly developed through the re-use of existing
learning resources.
(4) Naturally, not all of the resources that are appropriate for every course may
be found in this manner, and at some stage it may be necessary to generate
new learning resources, or to “wrap around” a (new) contextual explanation
around the (pre-existing) learning resources in order to adapt the resources
to the required context. It is expected that these new learning resources
would then be added to the publicly accessible common pool of learn-
ing resources—perhaps by tagging them as “creative commons” resources
(
http://creativecommons.org/
), etc.
(5) At this stage, having assembled the array of learning materials to be used on the
course, decisions need to be taken on the presentational format of the course.
We have so far used an interactive wiki, an open course repository in portable
document format (pdf), and a simple MS Word document (all available open
access via the web) and a hard copy version (CD) to enable learners in a vari-
ety of geographical locations to access the common pool of (open) learning
resources.
(6) Consideration needs to be given to the issues of copyright (even with Creative
Commons licenses) and what can be re-used, with or without modification. In
this context there are pros and cons to providing external
links
to open access
resources (avoids copying, acknowledges sources, consistent versioning, but
requires constant checking for broken links) versus
embedding
the OER within
the new document (more streamlined, self-contained, but may create multiple
versions and may infringe copyright)
(7) Experiences with users has so far indicated three main types of users of open
access courses: (i) independent learners and/or staff who use (download or read
