Wayne Mackintosh

Thanks John, good advice. Working in the OER arena which advocates reuse and remix we should eat our own dog food and avoid the temptation of reinventing old wheels. 

Hi Joyce,

Thanks for your feedback -- which is well aligned with how we are implementing the OERu collaboration.

Since our inception, the OERu consortium has agreed that we must ensure equivalence and parity of esteem for qualifications gained through the OER university network when compared to local credentials.

You're right -- the OERu gives tangible expression to the OERu partner's agendas of social inclusion while maintaining brand and accreditation status. 

Hi Christine,

eCampusAlberta have an impressive set of quality assurance resources. Are any of these resources available under a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license which the OERu could consider adopting and modifying for our own purposes.

If not, would eCampusAlberta consider relicensing these resources under an open license. All OERu process outputs are available under open license and you are most welcome to use anything we produce.

Working together is more productive than working alone.

Mika,

I think you're right, I don't think it is possible for us to develop a single set of standards to satisy everyone's needs. We also need to be mindful of ensuring pedagogical neutrality. 

I do think our network will be able to aggree "standarised elements", for example the "optimal" size of a micro course so that it fits the different credit systems which use notional learning hours as oppossed to competency-based frameworks. As you indicated in an earlier post, this will support the scalability of the model.  

Mika wrote:

I agree that a strength of the OERu model is that partner institutions issue their own credentials, so if a given course does not meet the standards required for a given institution (or its accreditors), that institution can simply choose not to recognize it for credit.

As an aside, there is also a "competitive" element within the network which fuels quality. Individual partners would be concerned if their quality standards are not recognised for credit by another OERu partner. The open development model also contributes to continous cycles of improvement and innovation.  So we work hard at producing the best we can. The experience gained from OERu course development using open design models is ploughed back into institutional design models for their own closed courses.