scholarly journals OER as a Tool for Sustainable Development: The Ukrainian - Latvian Experience of Forensic Science Experts

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Karina Palkova ◽  
Olena Agapova ◽  
Aelita Zīle
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Open Educational Resource ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Modern Learning ◽  
Forensic Expert

One of the important factors influencing the quality of modern education is Open Educational Resources. The new form of education was recognised by UNESCO and become an important element in achieving the main goals of Sustainable Development in the field of Education. Open Educational Resources play transformative role in the cases of supporting both regular and specific fields of education. The paper examines the role of Open Educational Resources in the field of such a specific industry/occupation as forensic experts. Forensic experts’ learning process has several levels that start from the access to higher education. The requirements to receive forensic expert’s certificate stems from the national law. And these requirements could vary from country to country. Open Educational Resources represent an opportunity for a great number of learners in various study fields. Nevertheless, those resources are not used in forensic expert education. To clarify the possibility to use Open Educational Resources in specific forensic expert education field, a research on forensic expert education in Latvia and Ukraine has been conducted. Open Educational Resources can improve the quality of education on at least two levels. The first one is the quality of teaching content and the second is the modern learning environment, providing access to all necessary researches that are necessary to pass the forensic expert examination. Authors found out that nowadays Open Educational Resources are not applied in forensic experts’ education. As the research reveals, the main resources are legal documents and practical knowledge provided by academic staff. From the authors perspective it is suggested to create an Open Educational Resource that could provide forensic experts with the information necessary to pass the examination and to improve both practical and theoretical skills. Nevertheless, Open Educational Resources in such a specific field can met several challenges.

scholarly journals Web Strategies for the Curation and Discovery of Open Educational Resources

Open Praxis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Rolfe
Keyword(s):  
Search Engine ◽  
Life Science ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Open Educational Resource ◽  
Educational Resource ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
The Uk

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009–2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery.This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.

scholarly journals Open Education for a Better World: A Mentoring Programme Fostering Design and Reuse of Open Educational Resources for Sustainable Development Goals

Open Praxis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Urbančič ◽  
Anja Polajnar ◽  
Mitja Jermol
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Online Mentoring ◽  
Educational Materials ◽  
Development Goals

An international online mentoring programme Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) has been developed to unlock the potential of open education in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The programme provides an innovative approach to building Open Educational Resources, connecting developers of educational materials with experts volunteering as mentors. The model of the programme has been carefully designed and tested in two subsequent implementations in years 2018 and 2019. Results have proved the model to be useful for building capacities in open education, while producing concrete educational materials with great potential for social impact. Analysis of results has been used to suggest further improvements needed for enabling the program to be used on an even larger scale. The paper presents the development of the OE4BW model, its main characteristics, implementation results and guidelines for the future.

scholarly journals The use of a publishing platform to facilitate the adaptation and development of Open Textbooks: A Pilot Report

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Nixon ◽  
Katya Henry
Keyword(s):  
Academic Staff ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Student Feedback ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Perceived Benefit ◽  
Course Material ◽  
Open Textbooks ◽  
Specific Unit

After a successful proof of concept to expand the university’s commitment to Open Educational Resources (OER), a pilot program was launched to facilitate the adaptation and development of Open Textbooks by academic staff for students as well as broader audiences. The pilot involved the use of the publishing platform Pressbooks as a mechanism to raise awareness of Open Educational Resources, and to provide a university-supported tool with which to develop Open Textbooks. Commencing in Semester 2, 2020, participants in the pilot received vendor training from Pressbooks, as well as support from learning and teaching and library staff. Pilot participants used the Pressbooks platform in a number of ways. Academics created textbooks as course material in a single unit, academics adapted open textbooks for Australian contexts over a number of units, and academics created open textbooks based on their research and not for a specific unit of study. Of the 13 pilot participants, five open textbooks were created, with one still in development. Responses to the pilot were mixed. Student feedback on the use of Pressbooks indicates that they enjoyed the structured and easy-to-read course material. Other students expressed frustration with the higher workload expectations of consuming material online prior to participating in synchronous classes. Students appreciated the zero cost of engaging with an open textbook. Academic feedback was also mixed, with some appreciating the flexibility and engagement that they can achieve in Pressbooks. Others were discouraged by the amount of time spent on creating material for little perceived benefit. The majority of academic staff who developed a textbook using Pressbooks would like to continue to use the platform.

scholarly journals Comparing quantitative and comment-based ratings for recommending open educational resources

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Hanna ◽  
Abdolreza Abhari ◽  
Alexander Ferworn
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Recommender Systems ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Open Education ◽  
User Comments ◽  
E Learning ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Open Education Resources

The recent application of recommender systems for educational resources and e-learning has facilitated online and accessible education on social networks. However, there are currently few studies about the methods for evaluation and performance measurement of these recommender systems in the complicated environment of educational and social networking platforms. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the effectiveness of using sentiment analysis methods for educational resources based on user comments and compare it with the quantitative approach based on user rating to recommend best open learning resources (OER) available through online OER repositories. The quality of the OER will be justified by comparing the user rating and the users' reviews. The quality of users' reviews is based on calculating the term frequency for selected positive and negative terms, then determining the similarity among the comments. Comments with positive or negative words confirm the high and low ratings respectively. Keywords: Open Education Resources, OER, Recommender Systems, Sentiment Analysis.

scholarly journals Open Educational Resources in Canada 2015

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory McGreal ◽  
Terry Anderson ◽  
Dianne Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Open Data ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Open Educational Resource ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Paris Declaration ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
Education Initiatives

<p class="Abstract">Canada’s important areas of expertise in open educational resources (OER) are beginning to be built upon or replicated more broadly in all education and training sectors. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in OER initiatives and open higher education in general in Canada, providing insights into what is happening nationally and provincially. There are growing examples of OER initiatives from several Canadian institutions offering free courses to Canadians and international learners. National open education initiatives include the federal government's Open Data pilot project and the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC) support for the Open Educational Resource Paris Declaration, as well as Creative Commons Canada. Regionally, the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta are supporting OER as part of major open education initiatives.</p>

scholarly journals Examining the Usefulness of Quality Scores for Generating Learning Object Recommendations in Repositories of Open Educational Resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (13) ◽  
pp. 4638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo Gordillo ◽  
Daniel López-Fernández ◽  
Katrien Verbert
Keyword(s):  
Recommender Systems ◽  
User Study ◽  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Learning Object ◽  
Personalized Recommendation ◽  
Effective Learning ◽  
Pedagogical Quality

Open educational resources (OER) can contribute to democratize education by providing effective learning experiences with lower costs. Nevertheless, the massive amount of resources currently available in OER repositories makes it difficult for teachers and learners to find relevant and high-quality content, which is hindering OER use and adoption. Recommender systems that use data related to the pedagogical quality of the OER can help to overcome this problem. However, studies analyzing the usefulness of these data for generating OER recommendations are very limited and inconclusive. This article examines the usefulness of using pedagogical quality scores for generating OER recommendations in OER repositories by means of a user study that compares the following four different recommendation approaches: a traditional content-based recommendation technique, a quality-based non-personalized recommendation technique, a hybrid approach that combines the two previous techniques, and random recommendations. This user study involved 53 participants and 400 OER whose quality was evaluated by reviewers using the Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI). The main finding of this study is that pedagogical quality scores can enhance traditional content-based OER recommender systems by allowing them to recommend OER with more quality without detriment to relevance.

scholarly journals Comparing quantitative and comment-based ratings for recommending open educational resources

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Hanna ◽  
Abdolreza Abhari ◽  
Alexander Ferworn
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Recommender Systems ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Open Education ◽  
User Comments ◽  
E Learning ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Open Education Resources

The recent application of recommender systems for educational resources and e-learning has facilitated online and accessible education on social networks. However, there are currently few studies about the methods for evaluation and performance measurement of these recommender systems in the complicated environment of educational and social networking platforms. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the effectiveness of using sentiment analysis methods for educational resources based on user comments and compare it with the quantitative approach based on user rating to recommend best open learning resources (OER) available through online OER repositories. The quality of the OER will be justified by comparing the user rating and the users' reviews. The quality of users' reviews is based on calculating the term frequency for selected positive and negative terms, then determining the similarity among the comments. Comments with positive or negative words confirm the high and low ratings respectively. Keywords: Open Education Resources, OER, Recommender Systems, Sentiment Analysis.

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