Group Admins
Description
Session Description
In the last decade, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) has incrementally gained prominence in several educational discourses. The concept of OER is based on a solid theoretical and empirical ground while the OER movement extends gradually. Using and creating OER can promote and encourage collaborative and participatory teaching and learning arrangements. By now, manifold OER repositories have been created, mainly multidisciplinary, institutional and predominantly based in Europe or the USA (Santos-Hermosa, Ferran-Ferrer and Abadal, 2017). Repositories enhance and facilitate access to and use by the main practitioners: teachers and students. Notwithstanding these substantial achievements, little attention has been paid to the subsequent – or concurrent – step, which is spurring the prevalence and diffusion of the practical usage of OER in all fields and levels of education. One decisive factor is the provision of training for multipliers and teachers on how to engage in the 5R activities – retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute (Wiley, Bliss and McEwen, 2014). Hitherto, research circles around defining OER, content and forms of OER, technological features of OER and the importance of the issue or lack thereof. Important aspects like the notion of the adoption of OER by users remain underdeveloped. Mishra utters concerns that to sensitize teachers and students regarding the adoption of OER – the use and creation of OER, including the integration of OER in teaching and learning – is crucial as they are the most important stakeholders in the OER ecosystem (2017). In order to shed light on the question of how to adopt OER in education, findings of a meta-study are presented which critically reviewed 25 state-funded OER-projects located in Germany. All projects were focused on enhancing the visibility, strengths and potential of OER through training competence for educational and advisory staff in at least the following four sectors:
• finding OER
• using OER
• creating OER
• sharing and providing OER
Target groups of the projects comprised educational and advisory staff at all educational levels, such as school, university, continuing and vocational education. All projects were reviewed and clustered based on their target achievement, target groups, measures and impact regarding OER. Factors are identified that hamper or facilitate the adoption of OER. As a further output, design recommendations are derived on how to implement and promote training about OER.
References
Mishra, S. (2017) ‘Open educational resources: removing barriers from within’, Distance Education. Routledge, 38(3), pp. 369–380. doi: 10.1080/01587919.2017.1369350.
Santos-Hermosa, G., Ferran-Ferrer, N. and Abadal, E. (2017) ‘Repositories of open educational resources: An assessment of reuse and educational aspects’, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 18(5), pp. 84–120. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3063.
Wiley, D., Bliss, T. J. and McEwen, M. (2014) ‘Open educational resources: A review of the literature’, in Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology: Fourth Edition. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 781–789. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_63.
Session content
As my empirical research findings are intended to inform on how to implement and promote training about OER in various fields of education, my goal would be to create a dialogue with the participants about concrete design recommendations for the adoption of OER in education. Hopefully other similar projects in the field of OER can benefit from the lessons learnt that I will present.
References
Mishra, S. (2017) ‘Open educational resources: removing barriers from within’, Distance Education. Routledge, 38(3), pp. 369–380. doi: 10.1080/01587919.2017.1369350.
Santos-Hermosa, G., Ferran-Ferrer, N. and Abadal, E. (2017) ‘Repositories of open educational resources: An assessment of reuse and educational aspects’, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 18(5), pp. 84–120. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3063.
Wiley, D., Bliss, T. J. and McEwen, M. (2014) ‘Open educational resources: A review of the literature’, in Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology: Fourth Edition. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 781–789. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_63.
