Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Open Educational Resources and Practices This article by Sandra Schaffert and Guntram Gesert appeared in the 2008 Feb. issue #7 of elearningpapers. The full article is available in pdf format. The authors provide an important perspective on what has been happening in the field and what needs to happen. I'm especially impressed by the wide range of stakeholders that they speak to in their formulations (from OER creators to learners). ____JH _____ "Open Educational Resources (OER) can be an important element of policies that want to leverage education and lifelong learning for the knowledge society and economy. The urgency of the lifelong learning agenda in Europe and beyond makes OER initiatives targeted at driving participation particularly welcome. The OLCOS road mapping work was conducted to provide decision makers with an overview of current and likely future developments in OER and recommendations on how various challenges in OER can be addressed. In particular, OLCOS emphasises that besides offering OER it is crucial to also promote innovation and change in educational practices. Because delivering OER to the still dominant model of teacher-centred knowledge transfer will have little effect on equipping teachers, students and workers with the competences and skills to participate successfully in the knowledge society and economy. Teachers should change their role from dispensers of knowledge to facilitators of open educational practices that foster learners’ own activities in developing competences and skills. Today the digital environment offers many opportunities for a creative and collaborative engagement of learners with digital content, tools and services in the learning process ("elearning 2.0" instead of "click & learn"). One such opportunity is the collaborative creation, evaluation and sharing of open content and learning experiences. A new generation of easy-to-use Web-based tools and services, e.g. Wikis, Weblogs, platforms for content sharing, RSS-based content provision, makes this easier then ever before." 11:32:17 AM    COMMENT []