This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
This is what large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are doing to OER. Next generation OER will not be open textbooks that were created faster or more efficiently because LLMs wrote first drafts in minutes. That’s current generation OER simply made more efficiently.
Given the rise of OER (of which I am a fan ), an increasing array of business models, questions about the degree of alignment to state standards and assessments, claims of effectiveness, and interoperability concerns, the instructional materials procurement decisions facing school districts have never been more complicated. Image credits.
Has your school district started to use open educational resources (OER) yet? But has your school district considered K-12 OER textbooks? Printed textbooks have been used for centuries, and while they still work, there are many reasons why school districts are transitioning to OER versions. .
Indeed, the often unspoken relationship between OER and educational technology can be fraught with misplaced assumptions, red flags, value conflicts, and licensing complications. That the U.S. You can read some of the highlights of this work in my interview (“ How can technology advance open educational resources?
tl ;dr – If a resource is licensed in a way that grants you permission to engage in the 5R activities, and grants you those permissions for free, it’s an open educational resource (OER) – no matter where you find it or how it’s being used. I have an obsession with definitions. It’s been true for decades.
I recently wrote a brief essay about the wonderful new UNESCO OER Recommendation. For those of you who don’t want to read the full analysis below, here’s the key takeaway: Imagine what would happen if making copies of OER was illegal. Under the definition of OER now adopted unanimously by UNESCO member states, it can be.
David Wiley, a pioneer of open education resources who co-founded Lumen Learning , a for-profit company that supports OER efforts, sees one place where textbooks could actually be vanquished by openly licensed alternatives: community colleges. He writes software one time and you just sell it, sell it, sell it. We publish in journals.
In response, open educational materials, or OER, have emerged as an alternative to expensive textbooks that disproportionately affect low-income students. But as more open materials become accessible, advocates for open education still see room for improvement. Those are prohibitive, and really create a barrier for access for learners.
Recently I’ve been doing both more thinking and more roll-up-your-sleeves working on continuous improvement of OER. And this process of making OER more effective every semester – also known as “continuous improvement” – is where we see some of the most exciting opportunities to collaborate with faculty.
I’m going to write a post or three about some of the friction that exists around using OER. There are some things about working with OER that are just harder or more painful than they need to be, and getting more people actively involved in using OER will require us to reduce or eliminate those points of friction.
In describing her coining of the phrase “open source software” in 1998, Christine Peterson wrote : The introduction of the term “open source software” was a deliberate effort to make this field of endeavor more understandable to newcomers and to business, which was viewed as necessary to its spread to a broader community of users.
What I do want to comment on (in greater than 140 characters) is the practice of ‘openwashing:’ what it is, why I believe not being able to go beyond a pro-OER elephant test for organizations and service providers is untenable in practice, and some thoughts on what we can do about it. The Pro-OER Elephant Test.
Emerging technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, open education resources (OER), coding, and adaptive learning tools are moving more into the mainstream in some schools. Image credit Expectations are also changing in a knowledge and information-based society where information can easily be accessed from virtually anywhere.
Last week I posted the middle section of the presentation, How Generative AI Affects Open Educational Resources , in which I described how we need to move beyond narrow thinking about how generative AI impacts our work with traditional OER and begin thinking more broadly about the power generative OER.
Have you ever considered creating your own open educational resources (OER)? Because these resources are open to use, when you share an OER, other educators across the globe can access it and use it in their classrooms. Types of OER you can develop for K-12. Why you should develop OER for K-12.
provide students access to technology resources they may be lacking by virtue of being located in rural, remote or underserved areas. making instructional resources widely available via open educational resources (OER), which may include supporting school districts in using OER. .”
My recent post about the cost trap and inclusive access prompted responses by Jim Groom and Stephen Downes. Back in 2012 – 2013] I was impressed (like many others I’m sure) with how Wiley was able to frame the cost-savings argument around open textbooks to build broader interest for OERs. I fear it is OER wanting it both ways.
How We Got Here In 1998, when I launched the OpenContent project and the first open license for educational materials and other creative works (that weren’t software), I encouraged anyone and everyone to openly license anything they were willing to openly license. And that’s essentially where innovation stopped.
I spend most of my time doing fairly tactical thinking and working focused on moving OER adoption forward in the US higher education space. In this vision of the world, OER replace traditionally copyrighted, expensive textbooks for all primary, secondary, and post-secondary courses. My end goal isn’t to increase OER adoption.
Back in February, an EdWeek Market brief reported that Amazon Education was starting to beta-test a new platform with educators, helping teachers navigate the jungles of open educational resources (or OERs, for short). Tory Patterson, co-founder of Owl Ventures As far as calling itself an OER platform, that is somewhat correct.
The secret to its swift entry into publishing was OER (open education resources). One notable feature of Knewton’s approach is the price: Each online textbook costs $44 for two years of access, or $9.95 Knewton’s pitch is that its mix of OER and an adaptive-learning system will set it apart. Nothing can stop that,” he wrote.
The tl;dr: Supporting effective OER adoption at scale has its problems. If OER adoption were to become widespread among the majority of faculty, it became clear that someone would need to do something more than create OER, post it on a website, and give conference talks about it. Background and Some Problems.
And some credit it for helping kick-start a trend—now known as open educational resources, or OER—that has sent shockwaves through the traditional publishing industry. Yet the nonprofit is also developing its own software designed to undercut the courseware industry, charging just $10 per student. colleges use at least one.
Commit to Ensuring Equity in Access and Opportunity. Equity in access, from broadband to devices is a concern and something that districts need to work to meet head on. “ Equity in access, from broadband to devices is a concern and something that districts need to work to meet head on. “
And focusing on digital makes the secondary textbook market even less attractive, since students have to buy access directly from Pearson to get course materials. A bundle that includes access to its other online tools, including MyLab and Mastering, costs about $79. But the company is not cutting the cord with print.
Earlier this week I read an op-ed – sponsored by Pearson – titled “If OER is the answer, what is the question?” OER often shine in their variety and ability to deepen resources for niche topics. ” The article poses three questions and answers them. Below I share some thoughts prompted by the article.
It offers a large number of students access to study high-quality courses online through video streaming. Anyone can access these courses and there is no minimum qualification to take them. It is a software application that helps you create, track, and report training programme or educational courses anywhere using any device.
I’ll be writing a range of essays this year reflecting on two decades of work toward opening the core intellectual infrastructure of education (textbooks and other educational materials, assessments, and outcomes / objectives / competency statements) in order to increase access to and improve the effectiveness of education.
This means that you can write your own textbooks, share them, or use them as you would any other OER or open education resource. What is the Mathematical Association of America and what K12 resources can I access? These are accessible, findable online. What makes Expii unique? Follow the hashtag to learn more. 00:06:00].
It started out as a question about OER, but has moved on to a conversation about the purposes of open more generally. If you start with my github repo, you can build an LMS, a web site, an online teaching system, and even a camera ready textbook ready for printing using 100% free software. It’s got everything you need.
Though users can give each item a star rating, the vast majority of resources in the collection have no ratings, since only a limited audience has access to the beta site. My sense of publishers is that they’re in this mode of dismissing OER entirely, and it’s a crazy mistake,” he adds.
Are they denied access? Both of these products wrap significant additional functionality around OER. It wraps pre-assessments, in situ formative assessments, and summative assessments around OER. Like Waymaker, OHM wraps these and other features around OER. Are they denied access?
…the true benefit of the academy is the interaction, the access to the debate, to the negotiation of knowledge — not to the stale cataloging of content. When we look at common definitions of Open Educational Resources or OERs (e.g., When we look at common definitions of Open Educational Resources or OERs (e.g.,
At the #GoOpen Exchange on Friday, everyone was talking about OER and the need to curate. But it was clear to our little group, that to the larger majority of the participants, we were not even on the OER radar. Some OER background: Launched in October, GoOpen is a U.S. What are OER? We made an impact.
The June issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) is dedicated to Open Educational Resources (OER). Several of the studies focus specifically on OER and student learning outcomes. Certainly one of the main advantages of adopting OER is lowering the costs to students.
As the title of the document makes explicit, the framework aims to contribute to the conversation about the sustainability of OER: “Toward a Sustainable OER Ecosystem: The Case for OER Stewardship” It’s a valuable contribution to that conversation. I struggle to see how this will be possible.
To “ungate” in software is to allow a user to proceed to the next level or into a new section. In some software, gating is a way for teachers to lever up or hold back individual students so that they can surge forward if they are high achievers or remain with a group. By LeiLani Cauthen. Imagine that.
Since closing their doors in the spring, students lost access to schoolbooks. Without an easy licensing service, it would be inefficient for school districts to purchase, distribute and recover potentially thousands of additional copies of the required works for those students without access to e-book editions.
Cengage recently announced a new offering called MindTap ACE that includes OER and is now available in pilot. I haven’t had access to review the offering yet, but you can see some screenshots in the video linked above. The video clearly shows Cengage content listed for each topic, followed by some OER.
There was a lot of discussion at OpenEd17 about the relationship between OER and value-added services like platforms. Both the wider internet and the narrower education space are filled with companies and organizations that provide value-added services around openly licensed software and content. Pressbooks (Book Oven Inc.
The report defines self-paced courseware as being accessed on a desktop or laptop and spanning the K-12, higher education, corporate training, and privately marketed software (such as that produced by language-learning company Rosetta Stone) sectors. market is the trend toward open and free educational resources, or OER.
For over a decade, plenty of time and dollars have been poured into encouraging the use of open educational resources (OER). In 2007 the Hewlett Foundation’s funding helped create OER Commons. From my experience, the answers usually are: OER resources are in silos. Last year, the U.S. Many of the silos are poorly organized.
But how do they compete with resources like MOOCs and OERs that have made high quality course content from respected university professors available for free? Wikipedia defines the subscription model as a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. a semester.
In summary, their results suggested “no noticeable improvement” in standardized test scores (PISA) for reading, mathematics, or science in countries that heavily invested in classroom technology; thus, they do not believe expanding access to high-tech devices (1:1 Chromebook programs) will abate falling test scores. .
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 34,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content