{"id":358,"date":"2019-04-14T12:06:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T19:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/?p=358"},"modified":"2019-04-16T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T21:58:14","slug":"lrnt-526-unit-1-activity-2-team-oer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/lrnt-526-unit-1-activity-2-team-oer\/","title":{"rendered":"LRNT 526 – Unit 1 Activity 2 – Team OER"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"ImageForsythe, G. (2012)<\/span><\/p>\n

Team OER<\/strong> – Brandon Carson, Chad Flinn, Phyz Wilkes and Joyce Wimmer<\/p>\n

The digital age has brought forward innovative methods in teaching and learning. Faculty are always facing the challenge of how to effectively teach the diverse student population in an ever-changing learning environment. Therefore, \u201c[t]his requires more focus on teaching methods that provide support for learners, more individualization of learning, and more flexible delivery\u201d (Bates, 2015, p. 36). Over the past few years, there have been new developments in teaching strategies especially in open learning (Bates, 2015); therefore, the delivery technology that will be focused on is open educational resources (OER).<\/span><\/p>\n

What have we learned and where did we learn it?<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

Brandon:<\/b> Throughout the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology (MALAT) program, I have read several academic journal articles that touch upon Open Educational Resources (OER). OER provide many benefits to faculty and students, including a variety of digital formats to use, financial savings through lowering or eliminating the cost of textbooks (Bates, 2015), increased engagement with course material (Jhangiani, Pitt, Hendricks, Key, & Lalonde, 2016), and improved student success metrics (Colvard, Watson & Park, 2018). In order for more faculty to adopt OER into their teaching practices, faculty need to be aware of the concept of OER and have evidence of their similar quality to commercial textbooks (Allen and Seaman 2014). Recently, I have become more interested in learning about faculty perceptions of Open Educational Resources due to my new role as Program Manager – Business OER at eCampusOntario. Higher Education Faculty Perceptions of Open Textbook Adoption by Jung, Bauer and Heaps (2017) examines the cost savings, learning outcomes, different uses of resources and faculty perception of the quality of the open textbooks. The work of Jung, Bauer and Heaps (2017) is an excellent starting point for a better understanding on faculty views of OER, and has encouraged me to explore the topic more throughout the LRNT 526 \u2013 Inquiry into Contemporary Issues in Learning Technologies course.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chad:<\/b> \u00a0Since first learning about Open Educational Resources (OER) at the beginning of the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology (MALAT) I have found myself fascinated and drawn towards the philosophy and practice of their use in my practice. \u00a0When first researching into different ways OER could be used in my classroom I was directed towards finding certain \u201ctoolkits\u201d that would help give me a basic idea of what OER was and some of the intricacies that go with their use. It was through these toolkits that I learned that OER was not just about giving our students free resources. \u00a0As Donner & Chandler (2017) stated, \u201c<\/span>The research shows that OERs not only reduce student debt, they also (when used appropriately in a course) improve student learning\u201d (p. 2). \u00a0The idea that OER could improve student learning fascinates me and is an area that I continue to research and pursue. Other toolkits that have been helpful in my journey into OER and subsequently Open Pedagogy have been the Faculty OER Toolkit (Moist, 2017) and the College Libraries Ontario OER toolkit (n.d). \u00a0Both are full of informative resources and tools that help guide someone who is interested in pursuing more information regarding the creation and use of OER.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joyce:<\/b> During the Digital Pedagogy Lab 2019, there was an opportunity to network with other educators and facilitators who have worked with open pedagogy, OER, inclusion in the digital environment and other innovative technology used in teaching. Some of the takeaways on OER during discussions and extra readings are that they are freely available; they do not have to be incorporated in all as<\/span>pects of a course\/program \u2013 it is\u00a0up to the facilitator; they need to be well designed; they currently are not available for all topics; and they can be remixed, reused, revised, retained and redistributed (Wiley,\u00a02014; Stacey,\u00a02018).<\/p>\n

Teaching in the Digital Age by Tony Bates is one of the digital resources that was introduced to us in the MALAT program. Bates (2015) mentions that OER comes in many different formats such as online textbooks, YouTube clips, digital graphics, lecture notes in Powerpoint slides or pdfs and more. Educators\/facilitators can take OER from other sources and adapt them into their courses, create their own resources and allow others to use it, or construct their course around certain OER, and in turn, have learners find their own material for problem-solving and exploration (Bates, 2015).<\/span><\/p>\n

Phyz:<\/b> Open Educational Resources (OER) encapsulates a broad spectrum of materials and requires users to understand the fundamentals of what governs it. UNESCO (n.d.) defined OER as \u201cteaching, learning and research materials in any medium \u2013 digital or otherwise \u2013 that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions\u201d (para. 1). These resources range from maps, videos, podcast, applications, textbooks, etc, (Commonwealth of Learning, 2011) which can be used by educators, students or any user, to enhance and transform learning, teaching or training. Likewise, OER\u2019s are created with a license that permits users to re-use the author\u2019s material freely without seeking approval. For this reason, open license provides credit to the author\u2019s ownership of the material or content created (OECD, 2007). The license associated with OER\u2019s is the creative commons copyright licenses. \u00a0This license authorizes \u201ceveryone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work\u201d (Creative Commons, 2017, para. 1). In that case, the creative commons license allows users to participate in the 5R activities which refer to \u201cretain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute\u201d (Wiley, 2014, Chapter 14, para 1). Moreover, OER provide numerous opportunities for educators and students to transform their learning and teaching while building and capitalizing on the abundance of open resources available.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things that make us go hmmmm (Questions we will explore)<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

Faculty perception of OER<\/b><\/p>\n