...and all I can say to this is 'Amen!' I am with you on this Gina, this should be all that needs saying. Unfortunately, in my experience, it's not, either with individual educators or with institutions. But I agree, let's never loose this thread; it is important not to simply accept the premise that "education is [strictly] a business" and allow that to become the only frame for this kinds of discussions.
Scott Leslie
Posts made by Scott Leslie
Thanks one and all for a great opening week. It was a pleasure to read all your introductions, see the different perspectives and backgrounds, and start unpacking some questions around finding and using OER. I encourage all of you to keep going in any of the existing threads if you have questions that remain unanswered or issues you wish to explore further.
But this week I'd like to change the perspective slightly to questions around 'Creating OERs' and the first one seems simple, but I'd warrant deceptively so.
Why? Why create and share Open Educational Resources? I am interested first off to hear your own personal reasons.
But just as important, I am extremely interested to hear good arguments that can be put forward to the institutional powers-that-be or funding bodies by people trying to start new OER initiatives. What do you think are some convincing reasons why? How about the uncoventional or not obvious ones.
For instance (but then, maybe this *is* obvious, to others - I know it wasn't always to me), I remember when I last cast around for good arguments for openness, a few folks from the Open University helped me understand that open educational resources actually helped increase the size of the institutional 'footprint' in different search engines. Sure, I had always understood that there was a potentially 'promotional' aspect to OER projects, in showcasing an institutions' best online resources, but have never really thought of it in these literal 'search engine optimization' terms (indeed had very much seen the term 'SEO' in only a perjorative sense). And by using various webmaster/web marketing style anayltics they could show a direct benefit to the overall institution from referrals from the OER site.
I cringe to think that we are reduced to appealing to only rationales such as these to support sharing, but I do think coming up with them is pragmattic and important. So what others can you think of?
But this week I'd like to change the perspective slightly to questions around 'Creating OERs' and the first one seems simple, but I'd warrant deceptively so.
Why? Why create and share Open Educational Resources? I am interested first off to hear your own personal reasons.
But just as important, I am extremely interested to hear good arguments that can be put forward to the institutional powers-that-be or funding bodies by people trying to start new OER initiatives. What do you think are some convincing reasons why? How about the uncoventional or not obvious ones.
For instance (but then, maybe this *is* obvious, to others - I know it wasn't always to me), I remember when I last cast around for good arguments for openness, a few folks from the Open University helped me understand that open educational resources actually helped increase the size of the institutional 'footprint' in different search engines. Sure, I had always understood that there was a potentially 'promotional' aspect to OER projects, in showcasing an institutions' best online resources, but have never really thought of it in these literal 'search engine optimization' terms (indeed had very much seen the term 'SEO' in only a perjorative sense). And by using various webmaster/web marketing style anayltics they could show a direct benefit to the overall institution from referrals from the OER site.
I cringe to think that we are reduced to appealing to only rationales such as these to support sharing, but I do think coming up with them is pragmattic and important. So what others can you think of?
Sylvia, thanks for this, tons of good stuff here. I see you are another diigo convert - I am still holding out in delicious, partly out of stubbornness but partly because that's where my network still is (and still functions pretty well).
Glad you found the Hippocampus site. They are part of the Montery Institute for Education's National Repository of Courses project; it is very high quality stuff, though some of it raises eyebrows as to its 'openness' (though not, if I seem to remember correctly, the stuff in Hippocampus which is the one part of their offering that is really 'open').
Thanks finally for the tip on the OWL OER portal, that was new to me and I plan to explore it a bit.
Glad you found the Hippocampus site. They are part of the Montery Institute for Education's National Repository of Courses project; it is very high quality stuff, though some of it raises eyebrows as to its 'openness' (though not, if I seem to remember correctly, the stuff in Hippocampus which is the one part of their offering that is really 'open').
Thanks finally for the tip on the OWL OER portal, that was new to me and I plan to explore it a bit.
...and to answer a part of my question - as I look closer, it seems clear that the site I cite doesn't even meet the 'legal' sense of openness, as at the bottom it states clearly "Columbia Interactive is being provided to you for your own use.
Any copying or distribution of Columbia Interactive materials is prohibited." So 'open' in the social/access sense only.
Still think this question of the availability ot the source materials is interesting and worth discussing, hopefully more next week, but I realize now this wasn't a great example to choose.
Any copying or distribution of Columbia Interactive materials is prohibited." So 'open' in the social/access sense only.
Still think this question of the availability ot the source materials is interesting and worth discussing, hopefully more next week, but I realize now this wasn't a great example to choose.
to pick up on a point here (and sort of as a segue to next week's discussions on 'Creating OER')...
I was looking at an OER site of video from Columbia University today - http://ci.columbia.edu/ci/. It is very good, nice little video snippets surrounded by an attractive frame, but they were all RealVideo clips that I had to watch in the context they were already embedded, i.e. there was no obvious way to download them or even link to them outside this frame.
Should this matter? Does it matter to you? To what extent were these maybe not full open? Is this maybe a case where they were open on a some of the axis that Paul points to (social, legally) but not technologically? Are there more subtle ways in which we can understand technological openness?
I was looking at an OER site of video from Columbia University today - http://ci.columbia.edu/ci/. It is very good, nice little video snippets surrounded by an attractive frame, but they were all RealVideo clips that I had to watch in the context they were already embedded, i.e. there was no obvious way to download them or even link to them outside this frame.
Should this matter? Does it matter to you? To what extent were these maybe not full open? Is this maybe a case where they were open on a some of the axis that Paul points to (social, legally) but not technologically? Are there more subtle ways in which we can understand technological openness?