Group items tagged

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license. These resources may be used free of charge , distributed without restriction , and modified without permission. In 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 2337 that directed the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create a collection of openly licensed courseware aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and conduct an awareness campaign to inform school di stricts about these resources. The Legislature saw this as an opportunity to both "reduce the expenses that districts would otherwise incur in purchasing these materials" and "provide districts and students with a broader selection of materials, and materi als that are more up - to - date." As a part of th is legislative mandate , OSPI conducted a review of OER in high school mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) that built on the work of the 2013 WA OER R eview . Teams evaluated full - course Geometry/Integrated Math 2 and units in 9 th - 10 th grade ELA. In addition, an OER Algebra 1 course unavailable for review in 2013 was examined. The review process, conducted durin g February and March , 201 4 , made use of existing review instruments designed to gauge alignment with the C CSS and overall OER quality . Minor revisions to the 2013 process were informed by feedback from the first cohort of reviewers. The results from this r eview enable educators and content developers to tap into the most powerful feature of OER : the ability to freely adapt and redistribute materials ."

"Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review" Javiera Atenasa,b* and Leo Havemannc Abstract Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content - in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development. Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assurance "

"EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products)is an initiative of the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The objectives are two-fold: Increase the supply of high quality lessons and units aligned to the CCSS that are available to elementary, middle, and high school teachers as soon as possible; and Build the capacity of educators to evaluate and improve the quality of instructional materials for use in their classrooms and schools. EQuIP builds on a collaborative effort of education leaders from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island that Achieve facilitated. The outcome of that effort was the development of the "Tri-State Rubrics" and a quality review process designed to determine the quality and alignment of instructional lessons and units to the CCSS."

Review, shared with me by Liz.

"Guide to Piloting CK-12 Quick Guide to Doing a Pilot All of CK-12 Foundation's resources (FlexBook System, FlexMath, INeedAPencil, BrainGenie, and studyHELP) are free and open for use by everyone, anywhere. We do, however, invite our administrator and teacher users to initiate a more formal exploration of our offerings in the form of a pilot. Below is a quick guide to doing so with questions to consider. The actual implementation will be a joint effort by the school and CK-12 (pilots@ck12.org) CK-12 Pilot - the systematic implementation of CK-12 resources as part of an official exploration to fully incorporate the content and services into a school or class curriculum with structured feedback and data being provided to CK-12 for improving our future development OVERALL PILOT DEFINITION How many schools, students and teachers will be involved in the pilot? What subjects will be explored (e.g. Physics, Algebra)? What are the content needs (e.g. standards-alignment, lesson plans)? What CK-12 offering best meets your needs (e.g. FlexMath for Algebra I)? What are the technology needs for presenting content to students (e.g. projector, laptops, tablets, print)? What is the pilot duration? TACTICS FOR IMPLEMENTATION Select a project manager to oversee and define roles and to coordinate across schools and teachers Establish a main point of contact for corresponding with CK-12 Assign roles for customizing CK-12 content for your school and compiling and uploading finalized materials Have editors and reviewers view online training materials and attend webinar(s) to familiarize themselves with the CK-12 platform CK-12 SUPPORT Set up accounts at www.ck12.org Create a timeline for editing content and coordinate editing collaboration Set up training schedule (online and/or onsite) with CK-12 for your school / district Weekly/monthly check-in meetings to ensure progress with pilot PILOT RESULTS & NEXT STEPS

Continuous Improvement of the QM Rubric and Review Processes: Scholarship of Integration and Application

"Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects The following rubrics represent an evaluation system for objects found within Open Education Resource s . An object could include images , applets , lessons , units , assessments and more. For the pu rpose of this evaluation, any component that can exist as a stand - alone qualifies as an object. T he rubrics in this packet can be applied across content areas and object types . In general, the rubrics should be applied to the smallest meaningful unit."

"Using a Conversational Tone in your eLearning Courses Thursday, 02 October 2014 14:50 Written by Ruth McElhone In my last blog post, I explored the Modality Principle from the book Elearning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer. In this post, I've decided to examine another principle in the book - the Personalisation Principle in Chapter 8. The chapter examines 3 types of personalisation principles but I'm just going to review the first principle. The first Personalisation Principle in this chapter supports using a conversational style of writing in our online modules. Using a conversational writing style can help explain the content in simple, plain English. "Based on cognitive theory and research evidence, we recommend that you create or select e-Learning courses that include some spoken or printed text that is conversational rather than formal." (Clark and Mayer, 2011) There has always been some debate that if we put content in a conversational or informal style, this can 'detract from the seriousness of the message'. Just because you are using an informal style does not mean that the content should be sloppy or use slang terms. It's all about keeping things simple. It should feel like a conversation, not a lecture while still feeling professional."

"First Principles of Instruction M. David Merrill For the past several years the author has been reviewing instructional design theories in an attempt to identify prescriptive principles that are common to the various theories. This paper is a preliminary report of the principles that have been identified by this search. Five first principles are elaborated: (a) Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. (b) Learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. (c) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. (d) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner. (e) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner ' s world"

"April 29, 2014 Achieve Webinar: Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's Common Core State Standards Implementation Strategy Achieve hosted a webinar on integrating EQuIP into Common Core State Standards implementation plans. Alissa Peltzman, Vice President, State Policy and Implementation Support, Achieve and Sasheen Phillips, Achieve's new Director of EQuIP and OER, provided an overview of the available tools and resources developed through Achieve's EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) initiative, designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the CCSS. We then heard directly from leaders at the state and district level who have put the EQuIP resources into use to support their efforts to identify quality and aligned instructional materials to advance implementation of the CCSS, including Merri Ann Drake, Idaho Core Coach, Idaho State Department of Education; Elissa Farmer, Curriculum Specialist, Seattle Public Schools; Terri King-Hunt, Gifted Support Specialist, Atlanta Public Schools; Linda Schoenbrodt, Elementary Mathematics Program Specialist, Maryland Department of Education; and Amy Youngblood, Founder, Eduoptimus. Please see below for resources shared during the webinar. Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (PowerPoint slide deck) Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (audio recording)"

"This policy brief provides concrete, actionable recommendations for state policymakers. There are five key issues in the iNACOL State Policy Framework: 1.Create Competency-Based Education Systems 2.Improve Student Access and Equity 3.Measure and Assure Quality from Inputs to Outcomes 4.Support Innovative Educators 5.Support New Learning Models Through Connectivity, Data Systems, and Security"