Category: OERRH
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Open educational resources: A bridge to formal education?
The relationship between open educational resources and formal education is complex and multifaceted. In the early days of OER, detractors of the OER movement cautioned that universities could suffer financially from releasing free content – a vision of OER as in competition with formal education. To date, OER Research Hub (OERRH) research…
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Can OER break down barriers to participation in education?
Are open education models leading to more equitable access to education? The OER Research Hub (OERRH) has spent the past few months gathering evidence around this question in connection with OERRH hypothesis C – ‘Open education models lead to more equitable access to education, serving a broader base of learners than traditional…
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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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First OERRH Fellow Arrives
I have the pleasure of being the first OER Research Hub (OERRH) fellow – in other words the guinea pig — as someone kindly pointed out. In spite of being first, the team couldn’t be more welcoming or organized. Simone and Claire have taken care of every imaginable need from…
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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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MOOC Evaluation & Disruptive Technologies
The OLDS MOOC (Open Learning Design Studio MOOC) evaluation report by Simon Cross has just been published and I thought it was worth a quick look. OLDS MOOC, based at The Open University, was a learning design MOOC that ran between January and March 2013. The course was structured to…
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What Makes Openness Work?
Here are our slides from today’s project presentation at the Institute of Educational Technology. A podcast for the event can be accessed here: http://podcast.open.ac.uk/feeds/iet-public/20130718T112336_oer_tcm20130717.m4v There is also a Cloudworks page for the event which includes more detailed slides on TrackOER. What Makes Openness Work?
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"O" is for… Open?
…Or could it be “Orioles”?! Seriously though, besides checking out my first baseball game, the time in Baltimore to date has been a great opportunity for follow-up research and has generated some interesting data about Bridge to Success post-project. Whilst my colleague Rob has been working largely in the DC…
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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…