Open-Educational-Resources

Here’s one of the proposals I submitted for Open Ed 2010: The most naïve kind of hype around open educational resources (OER) says that OER are more effective pedagogically than proprietary educational resources (PER). Can we justify this claim? First, it is critically important that we understand that “effectiveness” is not characteristic of an educational resource. Without a proper conception of the origin of “effectiveness” we cannot ask meaningful questions about the comparative effectiveness of OER and PER – because we will not know where to look. ...

The California bill I covered a few weeks ago, authorizing the establishment of “a pilot program to provide faculty and staff from community college districts around the state with the information, methods, and instructional materials to establish open education resources centers” has inspired me to do finally do one of those things on my “one of these days…” list. As we drafted the language for the Cape Town Declaration’s Strategy 3 on Open Education Policy, I worked to champion the idea that ’taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources.’ This is the line of argument that helped secure legislative funding for the Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance. This language and other great ideas did eventually make it into the Strategy: ...

A very brief post today. I’ve lately heard some people express regrets that that the Cape Town Declaration focuses exclusively on open educational resources. In fact, it doesn’t. The “Cape Town Open Education Declaration” talks about “Unlocking the promise of open educational resources,” saying explicitly that: Open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning. Understanding and embracing innovations like these is critical to the long term vision of this movement. ...