Open Education Resources

Overview of the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services program (OLCOS)

The OLCOS state aim "at building an (online) information and observation center for promoting the concept, production and usage of open educational resources, in particular, open digital educational content (ODEC) in Europe." According to the report on the OLCOS,Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012, published in January 2007 the purpose is to "carry out a set of activities that aim at fostering a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Education Resources---(OER). The following overview will define the terminology associated with OER and OLCOS, identify the range of sites that provide open education resources, the development of WEB 2.0, Web 3.0 and the benefits and challenges associated with OER. This report address the need 'to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency based educational framework."


OER is defined as access to open content, including meta-data that is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners. It is intended that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favorable free from restriction to modify, combine and re purpose the content, consequently that the content should ideally be designed for re-use in the open content standards. The development of Web2.0 complimented OER very well. OER is based upon the collaboration of teams in reviewing and ensuring the quality of resources. Given that Web 2.0 is various defined in this article by O'Reilly as fundamentally user driven, collaborative, user designer, interactive, and dynamic. Further definitions of Web 2.0 can be found in Wikipedia, expanded by the advent of personal learning environments which is defined as: systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to set their own learning goals,manage their learning; managing both content and process,communicate with others in the process of learning, and thereby achieve their learning goals. Guides such as this; Web2practice maybe helpful in further defining the role of Web2.0 in teaching and learning. "Web2Practice is a site which provides guides to emergent technologies and innovative practice," retrieved from the website.

OER provide benefits to the following stakeholders: Instructors, learners or students, and employers
Personal Learning Environments are further defined here by Graham Atwell as recognizing that learning is ongoing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognizes the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations and will not be provided by a single learning provider. Linked to this is an increasing recognition of the importance of informal learning.

Open education resources and learning object repositories provide access to resource which a learner can use for creating his/her own personal learning environment in order to achieve certain learning outcomes. OER may include free and open textbook sites, learning object repositories, documentary and video sites, document sites, etc. A list of some of these is as follows;



Open Education Resources:

iBerry is a non-profit making, private website providing information and resources for learners, educators, researchers and anyone else with an interest in Higher Education.


Learning object repository:

Merlot: a leading edge, user-centered, search-able collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

New Media Consortium maintains this directory of learning object repositories on the web.



Online books and textbooks:

FlatWorldKnowledge: Our peer-reviewed books are written by experts, professionally developed and supported by supplements. There the similarity to traditional books ends. Our books are free online in multiple formats (softcover, audio, self-print versions) and open-source so you can modify them to fit your course.

OpenTextbook: Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation



Video:

Top Documentary Films: TDF offers full watchable documentaries and information on documentaries by quoting reviews from trusted sources. In case you decide to buy your favorite documentary film, or you want to get some more information on some of the docs (documentaries) there is a store available for that. Documentaries are classified in categories and you can easily find what you are looking for.


The Internet archive: Welcome to the Archive's Moving Images library of free movies, films, and videos. This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download


Snag films:

is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve.

SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web. With a library of over 850 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free.

Virtual reality:

Virtual body: Just found this one today!

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The goal of the project is to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore aspects of Chinese culture and history


Second Life sites such as: Frank Lloyd Wright Museum,


Semantic Web Initiatives such as

Folksemantics


Aardvark

Twine

Olnet.org To search out the evidence for use and reuse of open educational resources.....stated purpose from the website; the aim of OLnet is to tackle gathering evidence and methods about how we can research and understand ways to learn in a more open world, particularly linked to Open Educational Resources (OER) but also looking at other influences. We want to gather evidence together but also spot the ideas that people see emerging from the opportunities.

Discussion resources for The World is Open

The World is Open How Technology is Revolutionizing Education By Curtis Bonk

Books such as Bonk's nudge education towards change, perhaps nudge is not the right word, but if education moves a nudge it's a huge leap. Education maybe open but it's definitely not flat..there are tall peaks and low valleys..the peaks being new initiatives such as the University of the People, Peer 2 Peer and, of course MIT. What Bonk has done is to take a systems view of these initiatives. Each of these, viewed individually may not seem so disruptive on its own. Taken as whole these initiatives are rapidly changing traditional education.



This book is written in order on conceptualize the following: We All Learn

W: Web Searching in the World of EBooks
E: E-Learning and blended learning
A: Availability of open source and free software
L: Leveraged resources open courseware
L: Learning object repositories and portals
L: Learner participation in open information communities
e: Electronic collaboration
A: Alternative Reality Learning
R: Real time Mobility and Portability
N: Networks of personalized learning



What follows is a short list of resources which I found on the web that I felt related to each of Bonk's key points. I was excited to find some semantic resources for one or two of these. One that I did not include here is Twine which I discussed in an earlier post.



Web Searching in the world of eBooks


Access Text Networking:

The AccessText Network facilitates and supports the national delivery of alternative electronic textbooks to higher education institutions for students with documented disabilities.

AccessText provides these textbooks by leveraging an online database powered by Intuit QuickBase^® and incorporating publisher-provided information on thousands of textbook titles.

Open Textbook Initiative

Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Connexions

a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc

. Anyone may view or contribute:

• authors create and collaborate
• instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
• learners find and explore content

Examples of Affordable, Free and Open Textbooks

This page contains a vetted list of affordable, online educational resources that might be used in place of an expensive, commercial textbook. The focus of this list is usability; each resource was recommended by at least one professor who has assigned it. For links to other more extensive collections and repositories, see our links section.

http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement.asp?id2=37833

eLearning and Blended Learning

There are a variety of eLearning resources, free, open and with paid subscriptions on the internet.

Blended Learning: This page provides links to some resources on blended learning - that is a learning solution created through a mixture of face-to-face and online learning delivered through a mix of media.

Bonk referred to Notschool.net in the book which is: an international 'Online Learning Community' offering an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to engage with school or other complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units.

eLearning according to Wikipedia may be defined as: a term which is commonly used, but does not have a common definition. Most frequently it seems to be used for web-based distance education, with no face-to-face interaction. However, also much broader definitions are common. For example, it may include all types of technology enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process.

There are resources available such as eLearning Guild for professionals in the field of eLearning design.

ELearn Magazine


Availability of Open Source and Open Software

Open Source: Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.


Leveraged resources open courseware

John Hopkins OpenCourseWare Initiative: project provides access to content of the School's most popular courses. As challenges to the world's health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public's health and their potential solutions.

The most current development in this area is folksemantic semantic website that pushes your education interests and needs to you. According to the website for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning Folksemantic is:

"a project to create tools that increase the impact of open education resources by helping people find, filter, collaborate around, and remix them. As part of the project, work is underway to integrate the OCW Finder, OER Recommender, and Luvfoo. Plans are to improve these tools and add collaboration, personalized recommendation, widgets, and publishing features. COSL is holding an online meeting on March 26 to describe the Folksementic project and solicit input."

Learning Objects repository and portals

Flexible Learning Toolboxes (Toolboxes) are high quality, cost effective interactive e-learning and assessment resources featuring scenarios, images and activities. They are designed for use by training providers, industry and business and support online delivery of recognised training packages for the vocational education and training sector.

Learning Objects, Learning Activities: LOLA is an exchange for facilitating the sharing of high-quality learning objects. It contains materials for use across the curriculum, with a particular focus on modules for Information Literacy

Museums: an exhaustive list of museums on the web



Learning Participation in Open Information Communities

Students/learners creating learning objects such as YouTube videos, flickr, and scribd docs. These types of sites seem to proliferate on the web.

Electronic Collaboration

According to the Business Dictionary this is the: Process of monitoring, critiquing, and cooperating in a project or program by using internet, emails, groupware, etc.



Alternative Reality Learning:


Innovative learning games: alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive experience that uses the real world as a platform to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions"Alternate reality games leverage social technologies to some degree or another for game designers (known as puppetmasters) to provide information to participants, and for participants to communicate with leash other during the process of the game. ARGs are sometimes described as the first narrative art form native to the Internet, because their storytelling relies on the two main activities conducted there: searching for information, and sharing information."


Virtual reality education website

Real time Mobility Learning and Portability

Define as fromWikipedia: Mobile learning is: Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Mobile learning institute: Nokia, a world leader in mobile communications, and the Pearson Foundation sponsor the Mobile Learning Institute, which delivers engaging, personalized, project-based learning right to classrooms and community centers across the United States


Networks of Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning Space

This space is for folks interested in the idea of making learning (online, blended, or hybrid) more personalized. This includes not only learning design and instruction, but also the tools and technologies that can be used to make learning more personal.

Refer back to Folksemantic

Bradwell's Edgeless University

Peter Bradwell identified the term edgeless university. It seems that something comes up daily that moves us closer towards identifying further trends towards what Bradwell defined as the “Edgeless University.”

What is the Edgeless University? It is identified as follows:

“that the function they perform is no longer contained within the campus, nor within the physically defined space of a particular institution, nor, sometimes, even in higher education institutions at all.”

Bradwell, the author of “The Edgeless University,” for DEMOS identified the following trends that will, , impact education these include, I also added one or two to the list:

1. Open repositories of online content

2. Social Media Networks like Facebook, Twitter

a. Increased collaboration of people who are not geographically co-located

3. Semantic Web tools

4. Use of Virtual Learning

5. The economy

6. Increase in numbers of students

7. Open course ware/open education resources

8. Open and free universities

9. New ways of accrediting learning

10. Open scholarly journals: information is now more searchable

Taken one at a time how have these trends, tools or circumstances moved education closer to the concept of the “Edgeless University?”

1. Open repositories of online content have been around for years with the advent of Merlot.org in 2000. Now you can do a search for open course ware in general or discipline area specifically and find a plethora of resources.

a. Some of these are as follows with their mission or state purpose following:

i. Lecture Fox

1. Lecturefox is a free service. You can find high-quality classes from universities all over the world. We collect without exception lectures from official universities, and we have a special interest in lectures from the faculties physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. In the category “faculty mix” you can find miscellaneous lectures from other departments like electrical engineering, biology, psychology, economics, history and philosophy.

ii. Academic Earth

1. Academic Earth is a repository of video lectures from educators at Yale, MIT, Stanford, UCLA. Their mission is, in part; Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world class education.

iii. Flatworld knowledge

1. From their website they state: We preserve the best of the old - books by leading experts, rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head. Our books are free online. We offer convenient, low-cost choices for students – softcovers for under $30, audio books and chapters, self-print options, and more. Our books are open for instructors to modify and make their own (for their own course - not for anybody else's). Our books are the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other.

2. Social Media, networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace

a. Defining their roles in education has been blogged about, research however I believe they have yet to be applied enough by a critical mass in education in order to determine their effectiveness in education.

b. That being said the number of users demonstrates that the use of these sites is gaining ground every day. While this may not necessarily mean that users consistently use the sites but more importantly that they have access to and the skill level to be able to use them in some manner for education or a tool similar to them.

i. A list of the sites and the number of registered users can be found at this Wikipedia site.

3. Semantic Web Tools:

a. Sites such as Twine

b. A full listing of Semantic Web Tools is here at Sweet Tools

4. Use of virtual learning

a. Growth in online

i. Affordability and availability of learning management systems

b. Online Education Database

c. Virtual Worlds for learning

d. Increased informal learning

e. Mobile learning

i. Studywhiz

ii. Brainhoney

iii. Driven because of ubiquity

5. Economy

a. Having a well educated population facilitates the economy of a country/nation

b. Improves quality of life

c. Secures the country’s role on the global stage

d. Improves a nation’s ability to work its way out of a recession

e. Also reduces a university’s ability to work raise funds for capital projects

6. Increase in the number of students

a. Driven by the economy and a demand in increased technical skills we will see people commit to lifelong learning more than ever before.

7. Open Courseware/Open content

a. MIT’s open courseware initiative

b. Open Education Resources : OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.

c. Open Courseware initiative

8. Open and Free Universities

a. Peer 2 Peer

i. From the website: Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses.

b. University of the People

i. From the website: University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality, low-cost and global pedagogical model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring collegiate level studies to even the most remote places on earth. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.

9. New and acceptable ways of accrediting learning

a. Certifications

b. Assessment

c. Projects/activities

d. ePortoflios/Portfolios

e. Employer certification

10. Open Scholarly journals/research

a. Directory of Open Access Journals

b. Open Access Journals in Education

c. Highwire Press Stanford University

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it does illustrate the bits and pieces of Bardwell’s Edgeless University being in place and coming together. The resources are available for a university to become edgeless, to be global, to be open ..how they harness and organize this is fundamental to future success.