Category: evidence
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The financial benefits of OER
Many people around the world continue to think of the primary benefits of OER being in cost savings for both providers and consumers of formal education. These claims have perhaps been best substantiated with respect to the savings made by students making use of open textbooks in the USA. A…
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'Through a glass darkly' Part 3: OER, critical reflection and educators' improved practice – some early evidence
Do OER prompt critical reflection by educators who use them, resulting in improved practice? Part 3 of my blog series on reflection moves from abstract theorisation to concrete evidence around OER Research Hub (OERRH) hypothesis E, which raises this very question. JISC (2013) suggest that the use of OER ‘encourages open educational…
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Motivation for Informal Learners
Mozilla Foundation continues to lead the way in developing the infrastructure to support earning and displaying badges. We are likely to see first the wider implementation of badging pilots along with other forms of alternative credentialing. The promise of badges remains great but whether they will be accepted as valid…
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Snapshot: OER Policy
OER Policies are typically established in order to drive change, and there are now clear examples of where policy is being used as an instrument to drive OER. The Creative Commons OER Policy Registry lists 40 policies which reflect the ways in which policies supportive of OER and open access have…
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NOVA Focus Group: Initial Thoughts
On Friday I visited Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) to run an OER focus group with instructional designers and teachers. We’ll be using the data collected as part of the project’s ever-increasing dataset, but I thought it would be worth gathering some of my initial reflections here. I was a guest…
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Flipped or flipped open?
PHOTO: CC-BY B. de los Arcos Claire Walker and I were scheduled to present at FlipCon13 last Wednesday, June 18th. Sadly, we never made it, as this silly Spaniard single-handedly decided it would be better fun to visit the local hospital, and not exactly to research their use of OER,…
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Data Visualization Tools
There’s a nice list of data visualization tools available on netmagazine. I think it would be really interesting to experiment with a few of these in the context of the redevelopment of the OLnet Evidence Hub in the OER Hub project. Modest Maps could be used instead of Google Maps to provide geolocation for organisations, input…