OER Resources

Sean Michael Morris sez "Coursera is silly" - same-old, same-old beast not far away from the correspondence course of the early 20th century or the educational TV of the 1960s

The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences. It contains these parts: - a description of the MOOC, what it did, and what was learned - a description of the element of MOOC theory learned in the offering of the course - practical tools that can be used to develop that aspect of a MOOC - practical tips on how to be successful Contribute to this Book You are invited to contribute. If you participated in a MOOC, add a paragraph describing your experience (you can sign your name to it, so we know it's a personal story). If you know of resources or can add information about an element of MOOC theory, add to or edit the text that already exists. If you know of tools, provide a link to the tool, a short description, and your assessment of the tool. If you have a tip, add the tip. In order to participate, please email or message your contact details, and we'll you to the list of people who can edit pages. Send your request to stephen@downes.ca

Mike James urges programmers to adapt gaming techniques to allow the regular-Joe academic expert to include a simulation quickly and easily into a learning experience (instead of videotaping them as they present it via words or pre-produced visuals)

Open field notes for a book to be written for Johns Hopkins Univ Press on trends in education, inc. MOOCs. One post is entitled: "the real disruption isn't online courses, it's their business model" George Siemens, Bonnie Stewart, and Dave Cormier have been contracted to write for Johns Hopkins University Press, and they expect the book to be published in mid-2013. They started the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs), together with Stephen Downes, in 2008.

A terrific checklist for anyone looking to "build" a course: 1. Plan for 30 minutes 2. Develop content without technology (clarify goals, assumptions about students, objectives, assessments, learning outcome artifacts, sequencing, validation) 3. Implement your content using technology (inc prep to evaluate the efficacy of your course) 4. Pilot with your target audience

9 week free, open and online course designed for higher ed community but may also be of interest to secondary educators or home schoolers. Expecting people to dedicate 3-10 hrs a week starting January 10 and running through March 13, 2013.

a table of contents: 1. Three major OA announcements from the UK on the same day 2. Some recent history as context for these announcements 3. Basics of the new RCUK policy 4. Basics of the Finch recommendations 5. General agreement between the RCUK policy and Finch recommendations 6. Appreciation of the large-scale shift to OA in the UK 7. Some consequences for journals and authors 8. Responding to publisher fears of green OA 9. Objections and recommendations 10. Announcements from Europe the day after the UK announcements

Contradicts the Fitch Report (http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/finch/) and AHA response (http://blog.historians.org/publications/1734/aha-statement-on-scholarly-journal-publishing) re inequities for the pay-for-publishing strategies now trending: "According to the 2011 Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP), the APC is usually paid by the author's funding agency (59%) or employer (24%), not by authors out of pocket (12%)"

South Africa - teaching portal, learning portal, community portal

Creative Commons (CC) has received a small grant to create an "OER Policy Registry." The Open Education Resources (OER) Policy Registry will be a place for policy makers and open advocates to easily share and update OER legislation, OER institutional policies and supporting OER policy resources. We have begun to enter OER policies into the registry, but we need your help to make it a truly useful global resource. ... Will you please: (1) Contribute any OER policies you know about on this form. http://goo.gl/9TmUV We are collecting both legislative AND institutional (non- legislative) OER policies from around the world. Your form submissions will be added to this draft list of OER policies. (2) Review the draft list of OER policies. http://goo.gl/i6i9W If any entries need to be fixed, please email us at oer@creativecommons.org

Tom Caswell's presentation on Washington State Technical and Commity Colleges' Open Education initiative from the #elifocus11 session, Day 1.

A Report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, Washington DC - 2009 - includes definition of OER, issues re copyright, trends

he OER university is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions [Australia, New Zealand, Canada] committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit. The OER university aims to provide free learning to all students worldwide using OER learning materials with pathways to gain credible qualifications from recognised education institutions. It is rooted in the community service and outreach mission to develop a parallel learning universe to augment and add value to traditional delivery systems in post-secondary education. Through the community service mission of participating institutions we will open pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credit and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit.

The CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign is designed to enable faculty to choose and provide quality educational content that is more affordable for their students. CSU students typically pay over $800 per year for their books. By reducing their expenses, we believe we can provide better access to a quality CSU learning experience. We are launching this campaign in 2010 and will be continuously improving the services to CSU faculty and students each semester. The Affordable Learning Solutions website is designed to: - Make it easy for faculty, staff, and students to find no/low cost course content that can substitute for more costly textbooks Enable faculty to be recognized for their efforts in reducing costs for students - Share practices for using no/low cost digital content in CSU courses - Support campuses in customizing their strategies to enable affordable learning solutions For example: As part of a three-year partnership with Nature Publishing Group (NPG), publisher of the world's leading scientific journal Nature, CSU faculty guided and advised the development of NPG's Principles of Biology - the first in a series of interactive "born digital" textbooks. The text will be incorporated into courses for students at the Los Angeles, Northridge and Chico campuses starting in the 2011/2012 academic year.

Pachyderm, MERLOT, Connexions, SoftChalk, AcademicPub

This calculator is based on research conducted in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology and the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling at Brigham Young University in conjunction with schools in the BYU Public School Partnership using open textbooks originally provided by CK12.org. This research was funded in part by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Cost information in the Calculator is based on pricing from Lulu, who we found to be the best option for printing open textbooks. For additional information about the Utah Open Textbooks Project, visit http://utahopentextbooks.org/.

Professor Jim Taylor, from the University of Southern Queensland, points out that the OER university will create a parallel learning universe to augment and add value to traditional models of delivery through open collaboration networks. "This is not theoretical speculation, it is entirely viable." said Jim Taylor. In this keynote address, Jim: Refers to the "gales of creative destruction" associated with technological change where old industry can be swept away and replaced by new ones. However, the OER university concept provides opportunities for "creative construction" for universities in a digital age. Demonstrates that conventional supply of education using traditional delivery methods will not the meet the demands for access to higher education. Consider, for example: the need for 18 million new teachers the doubling of post-secondary students in the next decade the need to build roughly one new university per week in India alone to meet the future demand for learning. Points out that we already have a critical mass of open access materials, but we don't have open curriculum, open student support, open assessment and open accreditation. Indicates that the OER university concept will provide a stairway to credible credentials based soley on OER.

Featured by Sarah Cunnane, writer for the Times Higher Education, as a unique example of a university trusting its own students, staff and faculty - wow, a sad commentary on our higher education community

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awesome list of free web tools stuff