OpenEd: Notes from reading week 2, Giving Knowledge for Free

September 23, 2007, [MD]

I just finished reading through the three required readings for the last three weeks. Since I was moving from Norway to Toronto, and starting all my courses and my TAing here, I have not been able to keep up, and had to do a major skippertak (from mummimamma: “Norwegian has a word for this, skippertak, the skipper’s haul, which means doing something concentrated in very short period of time […]”), and this weekend I read all three readings and am writing the reflection blog post. I took quite a few notes, mainly from the first reading, and I thought I’d post them here. They were taken for my own benefit, so they don’t necessarily make much sense to you, but since I already wrote it down I might as well put it up.

 

 

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (OECD, 147 pages)

OER - challenge and possibility for universities

blurring separation between formal and informal education

for all - especially non-traditional groups of students, lifelong learning

why?

role of teacher changing? teacher can expect students will compare curriculum with others available online. teachers role as supplier of reading list diminishes. accelerate change in traditional teaching, evolution of more independent learners. increase in non-formal and informal learning -> increase demand for assesment and recognition of competencies gained outside formal system

user-producer vs co-producer model (collaborative)

cost-recovery models:

plethora of digital learning - methodological diversity - individualization of the learning process

4 challenges to higher ed:

OER makes teaching content and processes within individual institutions visible

term: learning object

OER or open learning resources, education too much in formal settings?

why should you be sharing? push and pull factors. incentives and threats.

MERLOT only 14% of material has been reviewed - workflow has to be rethought, quality assurance is not something done for learners, but something learners do for themselves

how to get faculty to use open textbooks?

problem with finding resources - the cost of attaching meta data is higher the smaller the learning object.

how to ascertain quality? peer-review, difficult and costly. institutional brand. bottom-up ratings etc, because quality is not an inherent part of the learning content, but contextual.

many learning resources locked up inside LMSes… SCORM?

from e-courses to e-learning, student centered instead of school/course/test centered… creating online learning communities (aren’t we a great example)

ethical quandary of using outside commercial providers locking down data etc. data preservation and archiving.

i want to read more about assessment! but says - established higher ed organizations may well turn into assessment organizations and do less teaching

Stian Håklev September 23, 2007 Toronto, Canada
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