OERandtheLiberalArts

What are the Key Challenges for the OER Movement?   With the great support of Rob Farrow we were able to put together a first draft of 10 key challenges. Our aim is to come out, by this Friday (14 Oct) , with a final list of key challenges to add to the Evidence Hub (EH). These challenges will be used as "Higher Level Questions" that we present to the community and under which we would like to cluster the community generated challenges/issues. This means that every time a user will add a new challenge/issue to the EH he will have the option to say to what "key challenge" it is related to. Another objective of this exercise is also to offer some key "entry points" for new users to explore the Evidence Hub contents.

"The second thing that Khan has made more accessible is the value of openly licensed educational resources. All material on Khan Academy is licensed under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license, which ensures that these resources, and any subsequent improvements, will remain freely available. Because of the enormous generosity of Salman Khan, and the resources he has marshalled into this effort, the world now has an enormous body of good quality material that can be used to learn about a broad range of subjects. The body of material within Khan Academy can be used to replace large sections of traditional textbooks. The support of high-visibility donors has given these resources a credibility that other openly licensed materials, for whatever reason, have never enjoyed. Salman Khan's effort and vision in building a large body of openly licensed material has shifted the way people think about open content. Partnerships with SmartHistory, and the plans to include community-created material within Khan Academy, will widen the breadth of content within Khan Academy, while ensuring that this new material remains freely available, freely modifiable, and freely reusable in perpetuity. Potentially, Khan Academy will be accessible enough that people will realize that textbooks provided by the publishing industry are an unnecessary expense we can all live without."

"OER Research The body of work collected here represents the combined efforts of organizations worldwide. During the last ten years, as the Open Educational Resources movement has grown, so has the body of research being produced on the topic. "

"Wikiwijs literally translates as Wikiwise. In a nutshell: Wikiwijs is an open, internet-based platform, where teachers can find, download, (further) develop and share educational resources. The whole project is based on open source software, open content and open standards."

"The OER Impact Study was a JISC-funded research project examining the impact of Open Educational Resources on teaching and learning in UK higher education. It was part of Phase 2 of the JISC/HE Academy Open Educational Resources Programmme. The study was undertaken jointly by TALL and the Learning Technologies Group of Oxford University Computing Services. "

"The aim of OLnet is to gather evidence and methods about how we can research and understand ways to learn in a more open world, particularly linked to Open Educational Resources (OER) but also looking at other influences. We want to gather evidence together but also spot the ideas that people see emerging from the opportunities."

"Tufts University is committed to active citizenship, trans-institutional collaboration, and internationalism, and is proud to share its scholarly work by providing free open access to high quality resources from all its schools, including research centers and hospitals. Whether you are an educator, student, or self-learner, this website is your portal to Tufts' resources."

"The time is right for higher education to pursue "best for the world" strategies enabled by the strategic use of information technology to improve learning productivity by serving more students more effectively while simultaneously creating a privately and publicly affordable, stable financial model for learning-securing education's future as an affordable first priority imperative for students, families, donors, employers, and governments."

"Open Educational Resources: Inquiring into Author Reuse Behaviors Lisa Petrides, Lilly Nguyen, Anastasia Kargliani and Cynthia Jimes"

"In presenting the case studies, this report aims to advance the field at large by contributing new knowledge as a basis for reflection on models and methods for project sustainability. Within the broader aim of knowledge-sharing, the specific goals of this report are two-fold. The first goal is to increase understanding of issues that are common across OER projects, such as engagement of online communities, collaborative content creation, and financial sustainability. The second goal is to facilitate synergistic networking possibilities for field-building and leadership development."

" Project Start Date: 2006 A wide range of individuals and organizations are actively involved in the development of free-to-use open educational resources (OER). Because the field is so new, there have been few opportunities to share learnings and advances across projects and boundaries. Little is known, for example, about how projects are facilitating the adaptation of open content by diverse users, what structures they are instilling to support peer production, and how they are attempting to inspire community engagement. Our Role: ISKME has worked with six projects to help them build capacity to track, analyze and share key developments in open educational resources (OER), and in the practices and models that play a role in project sustainability. The aim was to enable projects to discover unknown or untapped potential, to facilitate decision making around which practices to change or maintain, and to learn how other OER projects have overcome similar challenges. In addition, it sought to advance the field at large by contributing new knowledge on which others can build. The participating OER projects include: * CurriculumNet (Uganda) * Curriki (United States) * Free High School Science Texts (South Africa) * Mission 2007 Training Commons (India) * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (United States) * Teachers' Domain (United States) "

"This paper provides a summary and assessment of the current development of open textbooks and describes a possible direction for future development and funded support of open textbook projects. This paper provides answers to the following questions: Why do we need open textbooks? What are open textbooks (in their various forms)? How are open textbooks developed and distributed? And finally, when will open textbooks be produced? As these questions are addressed, other dimensions relevant to the Open Education Resource (OER) movement are also revealed and discussed."