Wednesday, December 07, 2005

UNITAR Open Educational Resources Courseware Directory This guideline directory was developed by Zaid Ali Alsagoff of Malaysia's UNITAR (http://www.unitar.edu.my/) in response to the UNESCO Virtual Conference on Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Higher Education. "I have tried to capture some of these great resource sites (OER or learning object repositories) out there and simply index them A-Z." When the Directory first appeared in December 2005 it included 98 sites and included both repositories of OERs and guideline sites or referatories to OERs; the online display can be easily updated and edited. The alphabetical listing includes the Name of each site, the sponsoring Institution, a short Description of a site's contents, and the site's URL. Zaid plans to add search capabilities and a categories in the future. Adding categories and subcategories to the compilation will be helpful to instructors and students looking for resources because now the A to Z Index does not clearly discriminate between general repositories, discipline-specific repositories, and guideline or referral sites. Nor is there a clear discrimination among sites for different educational levels or purposes. However, even with these limitations, the UNITAR Directory does provide a service; the simplicity of the A-Z organization yields a quick overview of directions to explore permitting viewers  to spot new sites to visit.  ______JH 6:04:07 PM    COMMENT []