Talk:Open educational resources

Help

I am PhD student (Veterinary Microbiology) and interested in the Open Education Resources. I want to develop the multiple choice questions for student evaluation for Biology. Can you please suggest a software/website to create them? Nirajrm Δ | [sign plz] 21:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Definition can not be confirmed in mentioned source

Thats the wrong source: Geser, Guntram (2007-01). "Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012". Salzburg, Austria: Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group. p. 20. Retrieved 2010-11-06.

E.g. the term "API" does not appear on the linked website. The website by it self makes no contribution in finding a well definition. In contrast it could be seen as advertisment for a certain campaign or group of researchers who do want to stand in the light of providing a definition. There are two other PDF resources linked where the provided definition does not appear neither. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nise81 (talk • contribs) 18:52, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

UNESCO claim over OER

Any comment on this?

"The term "open educational resources" was first adopted at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

• Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
• Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
• Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content."

Troll site?

Is the site referred to here at cross purposes with the stated mission? California Open Source Textbook Project links here and the content suggests this may be a front for individuals who are opposed to the idea of open textbooks, possibly running interference and even collecting government money using plausible arguments. I would like more people to look into the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.68.193 (talk) 21:11, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Government sponsorship

Why aren't open educational module being developed by the state's Departments of education? Tax dollars pay for the creation of curricula, so that curricula should be licensed (owned) by the state and made freely available via the internet.

Are there any movements to open american curricula?

Yes, and you can find several. However, sometimes the low-level curriculum is tied to bits of proprietary information (textbooks). Michigan has Open Michigan and Indiana is adopting Moodle with other content statewide. In Ohio, there are lots of people thinking about it, but I know of know active projects.

I disagree with the poster who said "wikipedia is not a directory". I believe that those lists of projects by state should be mentioned on the main page.

Is there a way to get first class lectures on algebra and calculus as free video on demand?

Who are the opponents to open curricula? What is keeping the states from doing this?

Open educational resources projects

removed section per Wikipedia is not a directory. Wikipedia is not a repository for lists, directories or Advocacy of commercial products and/or websites. NPOV requires views to be represented without bias, this applies not only to article text, but to companies, company lists, products, external links, or any other material as well. --Hu12 15:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

This reads like an advertisement. Not that anyone's against OER. Just saying. 67.161.190.82 (talk) 05:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[User:ArmyOfFluoride]

Why QTI is uniquely important

There are hundreds of open formats and microformats for educational documents of all kinds, but QTI is the only thing coming close to an open standard for assessments. To see why this is important, please look through any of the "free" and "open" courses on http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses and note that they all exclude quizzes or any other sort of assessment. 75.55.199.5 (talk) 23:44, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

OER must be Accessible

Hi all, since OER is intended to be shared (hint: the open license), let's make sure the intro paragraph of this article is accessible! It would be great to more concisely define OER and use simpler language. Further, I think some of the more technical jargon can be integrated into the Definition section.

Let me know if anybody has strong thoughts here!

Mattsenate (talk) 19:28, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Definitions of Open Source and Shared Source

I do not agree to the statement about the definition of Open Source versus Shared Source, given at the end of "Other Definitions". But I am not an expert in this, so I do not delete it by myself. Ulisp (talk) 17:40, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Hewlett definition

The Hewlett definition has changed. The change is one word, but the word is a conjunction ("or" to "and") so is not trivial in meaning. I edited the article to reflect that. My concern is that the section is now more verbose than it has to be; however, I was hesitant to remove the previous reference to the old definition seeing as it was a publication with multiple authors while the current reference is a simple webpage where Hewlett has defined OER in a small paragraph. --Janeatcc (talk) 17:42, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the important update, Jane! I have no strong preference about whether or not to include the old definition, but I think your approach is well reasoned. -Pete (talk) 16:58, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that there's far too much detail about the Hewlett definition there. The difference between conjunction and disjunction is obvious, and since the article is about OER rather than about what Hewlett thinks OERs are, I'd prefer to leave out the details. I'm going to take them out now, but of course, if you disagree, let's discuss!192.160.216.52 (talk) 17:42, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree to tone down the reliance to Hewlett's definition.. I'm trying to find a cite-able definition that encompasses format as well as license. It seems to me to be a major oversight by the leading proponents of OER, as format prevents access and reuse just as often as copyright does. I realise they might like to keep it simple so as to encourage adoption, but without at least mentioning it, it seems to me the rest can quickly become meaningless. While on this horse, I'm surprised that a stronger association to free culture licenses isn't insisted on in OER. Non Commercial and No Derivatives are in direct contradiction to ideas of reuse in just about every space that derives from the concept of open. Leighblackall (talk) 04:59, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

My review of this article

I am a staff member at Creative Commons.

I am reviewing this article according to the instructions at WP:Communicate OER.

I suggest changing the article in the following ways:

• I don't see how referencing social media at the end of the first paragraph is particularly relevant, especially without discussion that 'OER' itself is a branding of a wide swathe of openly licensed materials.
• In fact, I think the article should address the branding efforts/element. OER is defined as a thing from the opening sentence, but IMHO OER is more descriptive of a movement and a brand.
• "OER include different kinds of digital assets." I take issue with the fact that OER is limited to digital assets. Of instance, if a physical product, eg. an educational handout, carries a CC BY license notification on it, is that not an OER?
• OER Initiatives section is not comprehensive and it seems rather arbitrary the projects chosen to be highlighted there. Perhaps we should consider all OER related projects and revise that section with community consensus. Here are some more listings of initiatives: http://creativecommons.org/education, http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies, http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies/United_States.
• Licensing section is a bit obtuse and could be simplified for better understanding (by a lay reader).
• Institutional support section should be updated with new supporters of innovation in education especially around open
• International programs should also be updated with consideration of input from community, eg more initiatives documented at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies'
• Criticisms - one that can be added is the criticism that having another term for people to understand (OER versus just open and free content) is just another hurdle for people to go through. Why not just open or free education or knowledge, research, etc.? Why a movement around an acronym?

Thank you for your attention. Janeatcc (talk) 23:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you regarding the social media sentence, which I've removed. Even worse than its irrelevancy was the fact that it was cited to a source which didn't support it. Stating that some OER users are involved in social media requires a source that says that some OER users are involved in social media. A source which says "hey, we use OER and social media" is a primary source for the statement that was in there and its use for this purpose constitutes original research.208.54.4.205 (talk) 16:04, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Well-endowed universities

I mistakenly stated in my edit summary that there wasn't a source to say that the supporters were well-endowed. The NYT article from which this sentence was (a little too closely) paraphrased does say that the early supporters were "wealthy" institutions. However, I still think the adjective should be left out for the other reasons I gave in my edit summary. This is the diff in question.208.54.4.205 (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Aspirations of OER proponents

This sentence: "The aspirations of OER proponents range from a desire to reshape the captive market of textbook publishers[5] to the aim of creating "a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge."[6]" from the "Aspirations" section is not properly sourced. Each of those two aspirations is sourced to a person whose aspirations they are. That makes those primary sources for the claims. The sentence itself, about the range of the aspirations of the proponents, is not reflected in the sources, neither of which specifically discusses the range of such aspirations. I'm going to remove it now, but there's more to explain than I can fit into an edit summary. 208.54.4.205 (talk) 19:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

This deletion seems like the right choice to me, thanks for that effort. It seems like the kind of synthesis of primary sources that is discouraged here. I do think it would be worthwhile to summarize the Cape Town Declaration and include something about its aspirations here, but this was not the right way to do it. -Pete (talk) 03:37, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Collecting definitions of OER

The Creative Commons wiki has a great collection of the varying OER definitions - Hewlett, OECD, more.

• http://wiki.creativecommons.org/What_is_OER

Is the article adequately capturing these? - Snarfa (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

This is a good collection of sources of OER definitions. It should be updated with the Paris 2012 declaration. Also, it would be interesting to derive a draft definition that captures the core of these differing definitions and the areas that differ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.12.39.60 (talk) 19:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Great -- there's also a page on WikiEducator that collects and compares various definitions, which may be useful: http://wikieducator.org/Educators_care/Defining_OER

Of course, the Creative Commons and WikiEducator lists are both wiki-based, which makes them less-than-reliable sources per Wikipedia's reliable sources guideline. But these can at least be a good place to start in collecting ideas, and finding links to more reliable sources. -Pete (talk) 19:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue of Reusability/Adaptability

Someone at the Open Ed 2012 conference pointed out that "reusability" (or "adaptability") of content is often the point of contention re whether OER is in fact "open" - but this article hardly addresses the issue, and a previous OER reuse article (whether aptly named or not) has been redirected to "OER" by an anonymous user. I'd encourage those with more expertise in this area to look at this. - Snarfa (talk) 23:18, 18 October 2012 (UTC) with WP:COMMOER

Re-working Structure of Main OER article

Pete Forsyth provided the Creative Commons Education team an overview of the Communicate OER project yesterday. As part of that session Pete emphasized the need for some context setting for the OER article overall. Certainly the existing OER article needs to be reworked and made more comprehensive. Rather than trying to edit a small piece of the article I thought I'd make a stab at suggesting a more comprehensive overall structure for the article. Once there is some agreement on what that is we can begin the process of authoring editing the sub-sections. Here's what I suggest as an overall structure:

History - origin of the term, relationship to open education, relationship to reusable learning objects, relationship to DIYU (iTunesU, P2Pu, Khan Academy, …).

Principles - underlying principles and similarity to other open initiatives such as open source software and open access, OER declarations, UNESCO OER Guidelines

Economics - the financial business case for OER. Public funding results in a public good. Private sector OER business models.

Legal - OER in context of copyright and fair use. Licenses used for OER.

Policy - international, national, and regional examples of policy that authorize and encourage OER use and development.

Technology - open file formats, interoperability standards, meta data, repositories

Content - open content (open licensed text, images, audio, video) used as assets in creation of OER, OER by field of study and grade level - K-12, post secondary, vocational, OER types - open textbooks, open courseware, open assignment banks, ...

Authoring OER - instructional design considerations, online/hybrid/on campus considerations, licensing strategy, authoring solo vs. authoring collaboratively (authoring hackathons), continuous improvement strategy, students as authors

Finding OER - use of search engines, referatories, repositories, and other web sites

Reusing/Remixing OER - open license terms, derivative works, attribution

OER Challenges - discoverability, quality, measuring usage and ROI

Open Practices - instructional design, pedagogy, sharing, reuse, remix, quality

World Wide Initiatives - OER development/distribution initiatives, OER research initiatives

Pstacey (talk) 18:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)Paul Stacey