This past couple of weeks I was part of a team project that took an existing OER and adapted it. It was an enjoyable experience. The co-creation with fellow students brought different perspectives, different skills, and different strengths. What really got me thinking is how important the collaborative process was. We often would be in a google doc, google slide deck, and slack (sometimes all at the same time), adding content, editing, formatting. Being part of the process was invigorating. To talk with my partners, ask questions, offer suggestions; sometimes synchronously and sometimes asynchronously.

At the end of the process, we were left with an artifact that we all could be proud of. Something that we could continue to work on down the road when we had time. As we were preparing for the presentation of our experience I realized how interactive the process of creating the OER was yet for the most part there it sits, a static document on the interwebs. Yes, it had interactive elements, but it lacks the “conversation”. How much more powerful could the OER be if there was a feedback loop? As David Wiley (2019) mentions in his latest blog post, “Students who have more opportunities to practice, receive feedback, reflect on that feedback, and practice again learn more than students who don’t have as many of those opportunities”.

I am going to put this question out to the ether, how can we make our OER more collaborative? How can we turn some of the OER we create into a conversation and less of an online document with hyperlinks? How can we offer a feedback loop for the learners who are using the resource? How much more beneficial would that be to the learners who use it?

References

Wiley, D. (2019, May 8). From Static to Interactive and From Open to Free: Consequences Both Intended and Unintended. Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6001