scholarly journals TrueLearn: A Family of Bayesian Algorithms to Match Lifelong Learners to Open Educational Resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (01) ◽  
pp. 565-573
Author(s):  
Sahan Bulathwela ◽  
Maria Perez-Ortiz ◽  
Emine Yilmaz ◽  
John Shawe-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Recommendation System ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Learning ◽  
Lifelong Learners ◽  
Knowledge States ◽  
Wide Range

The recent advances in computer-assisted learning systems and the availability of open educational resources today promise a pathway to providing cost-efficient high-quality education to large masses of learners. One of the most ambitious use cases of computer-assisted learning is to build a lifelong learning recommendation system. Unlike short-term courses, lifelong learning presents unique challenges, requiring sophisticated recommendation models that account for a wide range of factors such as background knowledge of learners or novelty of the material while effectively maintaining knowledge states of masses of learners for significantly longer periods of time (ideally, a lifetime). This work presents the foundations towards building a dynamic, scalable and transparent recommendation system for education, modelling learner's knowledge from implicit data in the form of engagement with open educational resources. We i) use a text ontology based on Wikipedia to automatically extract knowledge components of educational resources and, ii) propose a set of online Bayesian strategies inspired by the well-known areas of item response theory and knowledge tracing. Our proposal, TrueLearn, focuses on recommendations for which the learner has enough background knowledge (so they are able to understand and learn from the material), and the material has enough novelty that would help the learner improve their knowledge about the subject and keep them engaged. We further construct a large open educational video lectures dataset and test the performance of the proposed algorithms, which show clear promise towards building an effective educational recommendation system.

scholarly journals Human-Centered Design as an Approach to Create Open Educational Resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7397
Author(s):  
Carles Garcia-Lopez ◽  
Enric Mor ◽  
Susanna Tesconi
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Human Centered Design ◽  
Lifelong Learners ◽  
Content Organization ◽  
Future Work

Open educational resources (OER) play an important role in teaching and learning, especially in lifelong learning. Educational resources should be created in a way that addresses lifelong learners’ needs. Human-centered design (HCD) is a design perspective and an iterative process that involves users in all phases of the process. Thus, an HCD approach can provide relevant advantages when creating OER for lifelong learning. This work presents the Design Toolkit as a case study of digital open educational contents for design education that has been created following an HCD process. The orientation of the Design Toolkit is to provide users OER in a tool format rather than in a traditional manner. The main goal of this research is to contribute to the understanding of how HCD impacts OER creation. The research focuses on teachers, assessing the Design Toolkit content organization and analyzing teacher adoption and usage of the resources. The HCD approach fosters teachers’ satisfaction, promotes OER adoption and provides new design requirements for a future iteration of the HCD process. The results show that designing OER involving users through an HCD approach sets the focus adequately on their needs and limitations. Teachers feel satisfied with the Design Toolkit, fostering the adoption of OER in different educational contexts. Finally, users’ involvement in the whole HCD process points out design and educational requirements for future work.

scholarly journals Open Educational Resources as a Catalyst for Innovation and Lifelong Learning: A Question of Human Rights and Social Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebba Ossiannilsson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Education For All ◽  
Building Capacity ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Opening Up

A milestone in the achievement of UNESCO’s Sustainability Goals, Education for All (SDG4), was passed when the organization’s recommendation for the implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) was uniformly adopted in 2019. Now it is time to move from the awareness of OER to their mainstream implementation at all levels, micro, meso, and macro, including all stakeholders, such as governments, institutions, academics, teachers, administrators, librarians, students, learners, and the civil service. The OER Recommendation includes five areas: building capacity and utilizing OER; developing supportive policies; ensuring effectiveness; promoting the creation of sustainable OER models; promoting and facilitating international collaboration; monitoring and evaluation.OER are valued as a catalyst for innovation and the achievement of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of education for all, lifelong learning, social justice, and human rights. The implementation of the OER Recommendation will contribute to the achievement of several other SDGs. Because access to quality OER concerns human rights and social justice, this recommendation is vital. In 2020, the effects of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated the importance of opening up education and the access to internationally recognized, qualified learning resources. This article describes and discusses how the promise of resilient, sustainable quality education can be fulfilled in the new normal and the next normal.

Barriers, incentives, and benefits of the open educational resources (OER) movement: An exploration into instructor perspectives

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Henderson ◽  
Nathaniel Ostashewski
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Instructional Materials ◽  
Institutional Policy ◽  
Open Educational Resource ◽  
Educational Resource ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Major Benefit

Open educational resource (OER) barriers, incentives, and benefits are at the forefront of educator and institution interests as global use of OER evolves. Research into OER use, perceptions, costs, and outcomes is becoming more prevalent; however, it is still in its infancy. Understanding barriers to full adoption, administration, and acceptance of OER is paramount to fully supporting its growth and success in education worldwide. The purpose of this research was to replicate and extend Kursun, Cagiltay, and Can’s (2014) Turkish study to include international participants. Kursun, et al. surveyed OpenCourseWare (OCW) faculty on their perceptions of OER barriers, incentives, and benefits. Through replication, these findings provide a glimpse into the reality of the international educators’ perceptions of barriers, incentives, and benefits of OER use to assist in the creation of practical solutions and actions for both policy makers and educators alike. The results of this replication study indicate that barriers to OER include institutional policy, lack of incentives, and a need for more support and education in the creating, using, and sharing of instructional materials. A major benefit to OER identified by educators is the continued collegial atmosphere of sharing and lifelong learning.

Open Educational Resources

2012 ◽  
pp. 287-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pradeep Kumar Misra
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Viable Option ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Initiatives

All over the world, governments, societies, and researchers are looking for ways to keep the ageing population active and engaged. The need of the hour is in looking for the tools that can help in making ageing engaging. OER supported lifelong learning with the aim of improving knowledge, skills, and competence can be a viable option for improving the wellness of ageing population. Following this approach, the present chapter discusses: global initiatives to keep ageing population active and engaged; using lifelong learning to make ageing population active, productive, and healthy; possibilities to use OER for offering lifelong learning; making ageing population competent to share their knowledge with society by using OER; key possibilities and challenges in offering OER supported lifelong learning; and potential strategies to make ageing engaging through OER supported lifelong learning.

ACCESS TO EDUCATION WITH ONLINE LEARNING AND OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: CAN THEY CLOSE THE GAP?

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Geith ◽  
Karen Vignare
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Global Education ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
Education Gap ◽  
The Right ◽  
Compare And Contrast

One of the key concepts in the right to education is access: access to the means to fully develop as human beings as well as access to the means to gain skills, knowledge and credentials. This is an important perspective through which to examine the solutions to access enabled by Open Educational Resources (OER) and online learning. The authors compare and contrast OER and online learning and their potential for addressing human rights “to” and “in” education. The authors examine OER and online learning growth and financial sustainability and discuss potential scenarios to address the global education gap.

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