scholarly journals Open Educational Resources in Canada 2015

Author(s):  
Rory McGreal ◽  
Terry Anderson ◽  
Dianne Conrad

<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>

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
N. G. Sosnina

The aim of research is to describe the foreign experience of open educational resources implementation in higher education on the example of Canada. The concept of open education in this country requires federal and regional support from the government. Currently, there is a number of initiatives, aimed at maximizing the development of open educational resources. An increasing number of open educational resource initiatives in Canadian universities offer free courses to both Canadians and international students. National open education initiatives include the following projects: “Open Data”, the federal government “pilot” project; support of Canadian Council of Ministers of Education within 2012 Paris Open Educational Resources Declaration; and the Creative Society of Canada. British Columbia and Alberta support open educational resources as a part of the most important open education initiatives at the regional level. However, a number of problems prevent the full development of the open education system.Materials and methods of research include discourse-analysis of domestic and foreign scientific sources, devoted to the problems of open education. The methodological basis is the study of the legal framework of open education, a retrospective analysis of the open education development process in Canadian universities and the analysis of existing open educational projects.The results of the study show that the need to implement the policy of open education imposes new requirements to the process of determining the level of educational programs development and the formation of a unified system of formal credits.Conclusion. The Canadian examination of open educational resources regulates all sectors of education and training in the country. This examination is a review of the results of open education principles implementation at the national and regional levels. The article discusses the features of both regional and foreign projects functioning. The advantages of open educational policy for different segments of the population are described.


Open Praxis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Rolfe

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 4867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Tlili ◽  
Ronghuai Huang ◽  
Ting-Wen Chang ◽  
Fabio Nascimbeni ◽  
Daniel Burgos

The concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP), regarded as two pillars of the broader open education movement, have been evolving since the concept of OER was first coined in the 2012 Paris Declaration. Several research studies have been conducted to investigate the impacts of OER and OEP adoption and implementation in universities. However, most of those studies have focused on western and developed countries, and little information is known about developing countries, especially Asian ones. Particularly, China was one of the first Asian countries to adopt open education and its related strategies following the MIT OpenCourseWare conference in Beijing in 2003. This study conducts a systematic literature review to investigate the current state of the art of OER and OEP in China. The findings show that several governmental, organizational, and institutional initiatives have been launched to facilitate OER adoption in China. They also show that while several OEPs have been implemented, there is still a continuous need to work on these practices and further investigate their impacts on learning outcomes and behaviors, as no current reviewed study has done so. Finally, a generic framework of OER and OEP challenges is presented along with recommendations to further enhance the adoption of OER and OEP in China.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Quail ◽  
Sarah Coysh

Catalyzed by the passing of the York University Open Access Policy last year, a recognition has been growing at York University, like most other institutions, about the value of Open Educational Resources (OER) and more broadly, open education. This heightened awareness led to the formation of a campus-wide Open Education Working Group in January 2020. The group advocated that faculty members who receive internal funding for teaching innovation projects through York’s Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) should include a Creative Commons license on their grant outputs to facilitate the re-use, and potentially re-mixing, of the content by educators inside and outside of York University. A copy and/or link to their grant output would also be deposited into York’s institutional repository, YorkSpace. To support the 71 funded projects in achieving these lofty goals, an open education and open licensing curriculum was developed by two of the librarian members of the Open Education Working Group. This session describes how the librarians created the training program and participants will leave the session better understanding: How to develop learning modules for adult learners and apply these best practices when teaching faculty online (synchronously & asynchronously); How to access York’s open education training program and learn how they can remix the content for their own institution’s training purposes; The common types of questions and misconceptions that arise when teaching an open education and Creative Commons licensing program for faculty. Originally the program was conceived as an in-person workshop series; however, with the COVID-19 campus closure, it was redesigned into a four module synchronous and asynchronous educational program delivered via Moodle, H5P and Zoom. Modeled after the SUNY OER Community Course and materials from Abbey Elder’s OER Starter Kit, the program gave grant recipients a grounding in open educational resources, searching open course material repositories, copyright/Creative Commons licensing, and content deposit in York’s institutional repository, including OER metadata creation and accessibility considerations. The librarians modeled best practices in the use and creation of Creative Commons licensed resources throughout the program. Qualitative feedback was gathered at the end of each module in both the synchronous and asynchronous offerings of the program and will be shared with participants. The presenters will also discuss lessons learned, next steps, and some of the challenges they encountered. https://youtu.be/n6dT8UNLtJo


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eseta Tualaulelei

This paper reports preliminary findings of a pilot project at an Australian regional university where students in an online multicultural education course created open educational resources as an assessment task. Designed as action research, the project transposed early years educators’ concerns about professional learning and resources into an assessment task. Students created resources in response to the task, and these resources were collated into an open educational resource. Based on a range of project data, the paper presents preliminary findings that show the assessment task had many benefits for students including increased engagement, practical learnings and pride in sharing their work. The paper concludes with implications for practice and suggestions for related research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Katz

The increasingly high cost of textbooks coupled with the pedagogical opportunities presented by Creative Commons licenses has provided fertile ground for the development of Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives as an impactful practice for improving student success. Librarians are leading advocates for OER, yet little is published on how librarians learn about OER or how faculty use OER in Library and Information Science (LIS) programs. In this study, I surveyed LIS faculty about their awareness and usage of OER as well as the role they imagine for future librarians in open education. LIS faculty, current and future librarians, and those interested in open education can glean insights on the usage of OER from the almost fifty respondents. Approximately half of the respondents regularly use some OER and the other half have heard of OER. Of those who have heard of OER, half of the respondents mention them in their teaching. Respondents believed that future librarians’ role in OER ranged from traditional librarian roles of finding, providing metadata, and curating resources to developing and leading OER initiatives. Given that several organizations offer training and certifications for librarians in OER, LIS programs can help meet this need in a variety of ways.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Reed

This research investigates the current awareness of, and participation in, the open content movement at one UK institution for higher education. The open content movement and the open educational resources can be seen as potential methods for reducing time and cost of technology-enhanced learning developments; however, its sustainability and, to some degree, its success are dependent on critical mass and large-scale participation. Teaching staff were invited to respond to a questionnaire. Respondents (n59) were open to the idea of sharing their own content and, similar to other studies, demonstrated existing practices of sharing resources locally amongst colleagues; however, there was little formal, large-scale sharing using suitable licenses. The data gathered concurs with other research suggesting a lack of awareness to the Creative Commons licenses as well as a lack of participation in large open educational resource repositories.Keywords: open educational resources; staff attitudes; sustainability(Published: 22 October 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 18520 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18520


Author(s):  
Jane Brückner

Die Nutzung und Bereitstellung von Open Educational Resources (OER) sind mit vergleichsweise hohen Unsicherheiten und Herausforderungen verbunden, die in der deutschen Bildungslandschaft zu einem erhöhten Bedarf an Qualitätsausweis für freie Bildungsmaterialien führen. Die Debatte um diese vermeintlich geringer-wertigen Unterrichtsmaterialien reisst nicht ab und qualitätssuggerierende Entwicklungen begleiten die Nutzung von OER in der Schulpraxis: Verlage und Hochschulen geben cc-lizenziertes Material an die Lehrkräfte in allen Bildungsbereichen, Plattformen für OER versuchen Qualitätsnachweise über Nutzerbewertungen, Bildungsinstitutionen entwerfen Qualitätskriterienmodelle für OER. Bei allen Unternehmungen dem Bedarf an Qualitätssicherung und Qualitätsausweisen nachzukommen, wird vernachlässigt, dass gerade OER und die konsequente Praxis von Open Education die Nutzer als autonome, kreative und kompetente Lehrenden und Lernenden versteht. Vor diesem Hintergrund steht ein kritisches Hinterfragen der aktuellen Implikationen des verwendeten Qualitätsbegriffes aus, sowie des Beteiligtenkreises für den Aushandlungsprozess von OER-Qualität.


Open Praxis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Urbančič ◽  
Anja Polajnar ◽  
Mitja Jermol

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.


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