So we into our second week of this discussion, and so far there's been lots of good discussion. Much of it seems to be coming from people already immersed in the topic. I'm wondering if there are others for whom this is very new and who may have questions on things that get passed over pretty quickly.
Are you new to OER? What was your first thoughts when you saw the seminar description? Is this what you were expecting? Has this discussion been useful to you? Are there questions you have that you are not seeing addressed?
Please ask away!
Thanks, Scott, for providing an opening in the conversation for me to weigh in. I am one of the consummate SCoPE lurkers, Karen Baker. I used to teach at Morehead State (KY-USA) but have relocated to TX-USA after following my husband for his new job. Presently, I am job searching in deep east TX.
Yes, I am new to this topic. Because my graduate teaching area is higher education/student affairs administration and college student development, I find it difficult to find good media resources to incorporate into my online courses. If I am lucky to find one, it’s usually so expensive that it is out of reach.
For an applied field for educators working in postsecondary education settings, as far as I know, there are few low cost or freely useable repositories of supplemental curricular resources available. There may be two exceptions. There is the syllabi depository collaboratively sponsored by the American Educational Research Association Postsecondary Division (AERA-J) with the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) (http://www.higher-ed.org/syllabi/index.html)/. The other is the College Student Educators International (ACPA) Syllabus Clearinghouse (http://www.myacpa.org/syllabi/) which is accessible only by its members (so how "open" is that?).
But beyond syllabi sharing, if there are OERs for postsecondary educators, I am sure many of them would appreciate direction to them. This particularly is true for supplemental resources for teaching online courses where copyright infringement issues are particularly grey mine fields. For these reasons, the idea of OER appeals to me.
Karen, welcome! I'm hoping your question does not prove to be a stumper, but for me the field of "higher education/student affairs administration and college student development" is a bit of a foreign one. That said, I am enlisting the help of my network on twitter and hopefully will have some good news soon. I know there are a few profs of education in there who might know a thing or two...
That said, my first instinct was to turn to the OER search engine I built at http://freelearning.ca and see what it found. It did manage to turn up
http://cnx.org/content/m13677/latest/ and http://cnx.org/content/m14588/latest/ from the Connexions collection which *might* be of some use. I expect if you tried it yourself, using search terms more specific than the general ones I used, you might find some useful things. The Intute Gateway in the UK also seems to point to a number of collections of Education-related resources that might help.
I'll keep searching, can anyone else help Karen out?
That said, my first instinct was to turn to the OER search engine I built at http://freelearning.ca and see what it found. It did manage to turn up
http://cnx.org/content/m13677/latest/ and http://cnx.org/content/m14588/latest/ from the Connexions collection which *might* be of some use. I expect if you tried it yourself, using search terms more specific than the general ones I used, you might find some useful things. The Intute Gateway in the UK also seems to point to a number of collections of Education-related resources that might help.
I'll keep searching, can anyone else help Karen out?
This isn't a direct source, but there are a couple sites that have pointers to other professional assoc/listservs/websites, many of which have a lot of free PD resources for either new professionals/grad students (eg NASPA, NAFSA) that might be able to be adapted for use?
http://studentaffairs.com/index.html
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204795643
http://studentaffairs.com/index.html
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204795643
Thanks, Scott, for your response and request to others on my behalf. The two references you provided on Connexions are in the right ball park. If I may take a moment to explain, my area prepares graduate students for leadership positions for post-secondary or tertiary education institutions rather than elementary and high schools. These graduate programs provide knowledge and teach the applications of the history and philosophies of higher education in the U.S. (primarily), organizational and leadership theories, adult student development and support services, and multicultural issues impacting leadership and influencing the ways in which we work with adult students.
Because the U.S.A. has a fundamental value that every citizen should be able to go to college, our system of postsecondary education is diverse to meet the needs of an even more diverse population. The Intute Gateway reference you also listed is interesting because it provides me a peek into what postsecondary leaders in other countries do and how they administer at their colleges, universities, polytechnics, vocational schools, etc. I hope this further explanation is helpful. For additional data on the U.S. educational system, see: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/progressing.doc.
Dear Scott, Sylvia and all of you out there,
I am just excited to find OERs as alternative to proprietary software. The population I deal with in Africa and among those in the Diaspora have several financial issues to deal with on daily basis. I could see the desire to get trained and learn more about e-learning, ICT and technology generally among teachers, students and even government officials. Yet, there is always the issue of affordability.
Even though we are not visible when it comes to sharing ideas on creation and usability of OERs on this forum, we are always reading and gleaning from your wonderful contributions. Thank you all for the interesting postings so far.
I hope you may find the following link on the top 100 open courseware projects useful. I just stumbled upon it this morning: http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-open-courseware-projects. Enjoy!
Prince