Marc wrote:
At Thomas Edison State College, we have taken one of the courses that seemed to be partly developed and, in consultation with the original developers, we have been working on completing it so that we could develop an assessment that our students could use for credit. I worry that we will come up with a completed program of study that leads to the BGS degree but will have no actual path for students to follow to pursue that degree.
I'm very excited by TESC's efforts in taking Unisa's Critical Reasoning 2012 prototype nomination, adding value to the course structure and design and developing an assessment for your students. This is another excellent example of the potential efficiencies of the OERu model.
I suppose hindsight is a more accurate science, but I think there are a few valuable lessons we can draw from this inititative as we progress.
- It would have been helpful if the course material redesign was conducted openly. My understanding is that TESC will host the course materials on Google Sites (which is fine for TESC) but restricts effective reuse by others. During the early phases it may have been possible to script an early version for more flexible reuse. Not sure what technologies you used for development.
- I appreciate that it would not have been feasible to develop the summative assessment openly for obvious reasons.
- The OER Foundation will not be able to host the resultant course materials using proprietary technology. So extra time and effort will be needed to convert the course into open formats.
- Unisa is a Sakai campus, so it will be hard for them to integrate the course within their own learning management system for their students.
- Unisa and the OERF are keen to have a micro format version of this course - was the course structured in way to enable delivery in micro format?
I offer this thoughts - -not as criticisms, but reflections on how we can improve OERu operations and effectiveness.
For the future, I think we have a very exciting opportunity to host an OERu open online version (in micro format) of this course with parallel versions being available for full-fee registered students at the respective institutions studying in parallel with the free OERu learners. I think this would be a very powerful prototype for the network to explore.
Keen to hear your thoughts on these ideas.