How useful were the OER repositories?

[Activity 8]

In common with many of my classmates, I found this an extremely frustrating exercise - probably made subjectively worse because I could write/produce many of these materials quite quickly myself (I teach TU100 - My Digital Life, and messaging/security companies have been previous employers/are current clients).

I probably didn't spend as long as I should have done in each repository - I daresay once I'd got used to the best way to search one of them, I'd find better quality materials more quickly. I did find a US government website through Merlot - and I could have done the whole course using materials from there without bothering to look elsewhere.

Some of the issues were simply those of presentation or a level of inconsistency in terminology. The bigger problems were when the resources had been written for a specific purpose and it didn't meet the needs of my audience. I had in mind an introductory course for those who would be studying online courses to make sure their technical skills were up to the task, and although I hadn't included such things as word processing or the use of imaging software, I did think the topics I'd picked would be easy to work with.

I found, though, that it was quite difficult to pick out the relevant bits and discard some of the specific. For example, I found some materials on the use of Skype in education - but they were written for teachers, not learners... and assumed you already knew how to use Skype and just wanted to find out how it could help teaching and learning.

I did find I was very tempted to modify the contents of my course to fit the resources I could find - although the topics would still need to be relevant and useful. I would be less likely to do that if I was creating them myself.

Journeys to Open Educational Practice: UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report A cumulative evaluation and synthesis of the entire HEFCE funded intervention in OER

[Activity 7]

(McGill, L., Falconer, I., Dempster, J.A., Littlejohn, A. and Beetham, H. Journeys to Open Educational Practice: UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report. JISC, 2013 https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/60338879/HEFCE-OER-Review-Final-Report)

Accessibility issues

For resources to be accessible, the technology required must be readily available - and potential students must be competent to use it.

On a course I teach, we are encouraged to develop teaching materials that every tutor can use. The idea is a good one: collectively we can do more than we can as individuals. In practice, though, I find the process very challenging. Course materials designed to be used without any discussion on how they will be used and online tutorials designed to make sense when recorded and viewed later do not lend themselves well to interactive community engagement.

The open learning landscape has in this period moved definitively beyond content-based resources. Open online courses provide a context in which learning content is relatively less important than the interactions, reactions and emergent properties of the community itself.

Recognition

There is potentially a conflict between what educators may believe to be the most effective and appropriate pedagogy and what student's [sic] actually demand. This is illustrated by some of the UKOER projects reporting that students felt concerned about paying a fee and then seeing lectures being made freely available to non-payers. [Section 2.iii - Motivations of Individuals]

People pay for a course because it is far more than just the content. Students can ask questions, obtain feedback and be graded on their performance. Freely available materials are great when learning about something for interest or for something immediately relevant in my work. I either do not need to prove my competence or will demonstrate it practically. The situation is different when I need formal proof of attainment.

This has been addressed to some extent by the introduction of badges (see http://www.openbadges.org/), but it is not clear how widely these are recognised.

Continuity (and sustainability)

Money - or lack of it - is not the only factor influencing people's perceptions of OER. Time is also a consideration. There is the time it takes to create resources compared to the time it takes to re-purpose existing ones. These constraints influence what an institution is able to provide, both today and into the future. The providers of OER need to be able to sustain their provision - even if that is maintenance of existing resources rather than producing new ones. There may be other institutions and individuals (teachers or learners) relying on those resources.

In addition, embarking on a programme that relies heavily on OER may mean a reliance on increasing provision - so that the level 1 course can lead to a level 2 course and so on. Learners may begin by wanting to study a single course, but end up by wanting to obtain a qualification. Some mechanism needs to be in place to enable the learning based on OER - especially self-directed learning - to be validated as a stepping stone to further education.

Just how easy is it to reuse materials someone else has created for a different purpose?

[Activity 6]

The Reusability Paradox

Yes, it does indeed fit with the single-sourcing concept in technical communication. You sometimes end up writing quite small fragments so that they work in whatever context they are placed (a tutorial, a reference card, a step in set of instructions) and there is a lot of skill in doing so. Many technical communicators with a lot of experience can't do it - it's not something I do a lot of, so my own skill is probably somewhat lacking - and certainly isn't something a subject matter expert (SME) is likely to be able to do.

Three objections to learning objects and e-learning standards

Terminology has to be sorted out before you can get anywhere. I once spent a week having long discussions (e.g. arguing) with another clinician deciding how best to implement a feature required in a software application before we realised that we were actually agreeing and were talking about the same thing, just using different terminology.

A lot of e-learning standards discuss the technology and compatibility but forget to mention anything about learning. I personally don't see this as a huge option - we've already covered that in the umbrella topic of "learning", that has as subordinates "classroom learning", "distance learning" (possibly using books) and "e-learning" among others.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should...

Large budgets and ability to create anything using e-learning does not mean that is the best approach. E-learning is great for some things - but isn't necessarily the best approach, especially if the e-learning approach is more costly, more time-consuming and less effective.

Brian Lamb discusses learning objects

This highlights one of the key problems - throw money at it, and hope for the best. Without someone taking some sort of control, you end up with organised chaos. I'm not proposing that anyone should "take control", but elearning has a long way to go to catch up with (for example) the Dewey classification system that is established for libraries (the traditional repositories).

Other thoughts

There appears to be a choice, as well...

In the "traditional" sharing module (printing multiple copies of a book and putting them in libraries), you can guarantee that getting a copy in one library is identical (highlights and margin notes notwithstanding) to any copy in any other library. Multiple copies, unchangeable.

In the "electronic" sharing module, a choice has to be made:

• One copy, multiple access - potentially access problems (millions of people trying to access the same server at roughly the same time
• Multiple fixed copies in various places - mirror sites
• Multiple copies that people can amend - all of a sudden copy A in one place is NOT the same as copy B that exists elsewhere - like open source software

The case for learning objects

[Activity 5]

Read Downes (2001), Learning objects: resources for distance education worldwide

This article is highlighting the benefits of reusable learning objects. It's a little old now (July 2001) and SCORM, although still in popular use, is not the only option (I believe... need to check).

The discussion centres around what is now really known as the Agile software development methodology to ensure rapid development and deployment that meets needs.

The rest of the discussion really centred on the use of XML. Discussion on the use of FrontPage is a bit outdated, and even DreamWeaver isn't necessarily the application of choice for elearning materials. I suppose it depends what you want to do... and whether or not the materials have to interface with an LMS.

I expect the issues in practically implementing learning objects are similar to those of single-sourcing in my world. Although theoretically possible, you would need someone who fully understood the concept to implement it - if I'm working on a single-sourcing project, the granularity has to be such that a "chunk" makes sense in whatever context it is used, or the context is clearly defined when that is not possible.

In addition, once a traditional resource - a text book - has been published, the onus is on the user (or teacher) to ensure accuracy and to amend when necessary. As the article points out, many courses don't use a single text book in its entirety. Instead, teachers pick and choose, possibly because some bits are less relevant and possibly because some bits are out-of-date. The same is not possible with learning objects. Either the teacher identifying a problem has to notify those responsible - which puts a cost back on the provider, not the user - or takes a copy and changes it, defeating the object as there are not two copies, each slightly different.