1.1 Open educational resources
Names quickly become loaded: distance learning, supported self study, computer-based training/computer-aided instruction,
home study and flexistudy, to name but a few, have all been used to describe self instruction or self study and many of these
terms are thought wanting. The UK Open University is sometimes described as a ‘distance-learning institution’ yet the support
that students receive from their tutor through telephone, email and face-to-face tutorials and through correspondence tuition
by commenting extensively on assignments is often greater than a student receives at a ‘conventional’ bricks-and-mortar university.
The Open University prefers to use the term Supported Open Learning, and you can find out more about its approach at http://www.open.ac.uk/about/ou/p5.shtml. Furthermore the use of the word ‘instruction’ rather than study or learning implies training over education and a narrower
focus.
Similarly, Open Educational Resources (OERs) as a term is often used interchangeably with but can be distinguished from ‘Open
Content’ and OpenCourseWare.
Briefly, according to the OpenCourseWare Consortium, a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions,
‘An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organised as courses.’
In 2001 MIT was the first university to work on putting many of the teacher-defined support materials from its undergraduate
and graduate courses online.
(see http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm)
The term Open Educational Resources was coined by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)
in 2002 (Caswell et al, 2008) and it embraces OpenCourseWare but would also include any educational materials, technologies
and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. OpenLearn
is an example of a collection OERs. The term ‘open content’ was first used by David Wiley, an academic now working at Utah
State University and a key figure in OERs (read his Open Content blog at http://opencontent.org/blog/), and the term tends to refer to all types of materials (music, video, text and so on) which are available for use under
an open, ‘some rights reserved’ copyright licence that enables people to use, adapt and share the materials. So open content
may not necessarily have an educational purpose. There are a number of different types of open license and so the content
may be ‘open’ but not necessarily free to use as one would like. A good review of open licences can be found on the Commonwealth
of Learning website – see http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/4765 – and this is discussed in more detail later.
Rather than spend more time looking at differences in terminology, we will now look at some examples of Open Educational Resources
(OERs) to investigate their purpose and structure. Specifically, we will consider some different examples from this OpenLearn
site, which in the LearningSpace are usually extracts from a course. Even though a unit is not a whole course, these OERs
use different elements such as text, pictures and audio-visual elements that are together known as ‘assets’.
Activity 1
You should allow 3 hour(s), 0 minute(s).
Have a detailed look at the following OpenLearn units. For each one, consider and write brief notes on paper or in your Learning
Journal about:
- the intended learning outcomes;
- the activities that learners are asked to do;
- the range of media that are employed;
- the teaching sequence.
E500_10 Play, learning and the brain
MU120_1 Maths everywhere
AS208_1 Europe's awakening
Now read the discussion
Comment
As you look through these units you will have seen a range of activities that learners are asked to engage with. Some, such
as E500_10 Play, learning and the brain, use Flash to animate diagrams and to set up quizzes. The MU120_1 Maths Everywhere unit uses video to exemplify mathematics being used in an everyday setting and has audio clips too to talk the learner through
some pictures of ‘mathematical musings’. The History of Science unit (AS208_1 Europe's awakening) uses a guided reading approach. It is clear that assumptions have been made about the intended learner. For example, E500_10
was written for a teacher or helper working in something like a nursery or similar education setting, so it has a professional
focus. MU120_1 is from a very introductory course for those adults who may feel have felt in the past that mathematics is
not for them. AS208_1 is targeted at a learner who might typically be in the second year of a university course, and assumptions
are made about their academic skills and reading level.
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