23.1 Amee godwin - on doing oer

Modeling “the promise” of open educational resources

The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) has created an online network that aggregates open educational resources (OER) within a social networking environment, for the purpose of stimulating engagement of diverse populations in accessing and using OER worldwide. OER are most often thought of simply as content—that is, teaching and learning materials that are freely available for downloading, sharing, and remixing.

However, the value of OER is best described not through their aggregation as static resources, but through their potential to engage a wide range of teachers, learners, practitioners, and other stakeholders in resource transformation, cross-pollination of ideas and expertise, and collaborative knowledge building.

Research about digital media has shown that the development, use, and adaptation of resources can serve as a catalyst for engaging diverse teachers, learners, and practitioners in sharing their expertise, building their knowledge, and otherwise providing leadership in their fields. This is similar to organizational research that has found that continual improvement and enhancement often emerges from knowledge sharing among practitioners. In other words, OER is an invitation to improve teaching and learning processes.

But what comprises “doing” OER? Does it take a new belief system? Are we doing it already? What examples are there to show off models for active engagement with OER?

The phrase, “the promise of OER,” resurfaces often around the nascent movement for ready-to-modify learning materials. If OER is seen as merely rewritten curriculum, it’s not surprising that the movement might produce a few yawns. “Doing OER” is meant to embrace much more than this, starting with an evolutionary mindset about learning content and the learning itself.

Searchable, web-based resources with clear conditions as to how it can be used represent a platform for collaborative “mutation” or remixing. They are meant to be integrated into ways we are already engaging in collaboration and knowledge building, and in the process, incrementally to be part of growing new ways of teaching and learning that are more participatory, community-based, and bottom up.

Those of us lucky enough to have a dependable broadband internet connection already IM, email, skype, poke, post pictures, edit wikis, blog, post in forums, share bookmarks, video conference, tag, rate, review, and recommend favorite things to both friends and strangers, as part of a digital lifestyle. The knowledge-building potential is enormous and growing due to repurposeable materials and the collaboration possibilities that surround them.