The scenario given for the topic 2: Open learning-sharing and openness clearly describes the challenges of sharing and accessing open educational resources (OER). The week 2 was moderated by Carina and me. It was a nice experience to collaborate and work together. I personally liked the group work and I feel that the team helped me to enrich my knowledge about OER. Our final work was presented to the ONL community through the Miro, online platform.

Webinars on exploring nuances of open education practices with Dr. Maha Bali and workshop on creative commons licenses with Jörg Pareigis were very insightful in understanding diverse perspective of OER and different practices. The workshop really helped me to understand different types of Creative Commons licenses and how to find and apply them in my work. These two sessions really value to the week 2 topic.

According to me OER means sharing or accessing educational materials with the intent of teaching and learning without any barriers. I also like the definition of OER by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2017) that states “Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge”.

Our team looked at four focus points like open learning through open access to learning resources, quality and pedagogical impact, creative common license, and broader collaborative community. Subsequently, we framed questions for each of the focus points to investigate further and shared with the team members.

I chose the focus point ‘open learning through open access to learning resources’ to investigate further. The phrases ‘open learning’ and ‘open accesses’ democratize the learning. In this context, the learning becomes more inclusive and not exclusive. In an open learning environment, the learner should have equal opportunity to access the learning resources without any barriers. I would agree with Naidu (2016) that the open educational practice (OEP) dimensions proposed are very relevant to OER, such as open access, open learning, and open scholarship.

The digital information age truly paved the way for sharing the learning resources globally. OER is a collaborative effort, creating universally available educational resources to improve teaching and learning. This requires a wider participation both individual and institution level in creating resources and developing polices on how to share OER. Another important aspect is how to optimize resources available through different types of licenses (Mishra, 2017). Institutions should encourage build a culture of using OER in local contexts.

I belive that OER will help to address the national and global issues.

 

References:

Mishra, S. (2017). Open educational resources: Removing barriers from within. Distance education, 38(3), 369-380. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1369350

Naidu, S. (2016). Editorial: The case for open educational practice. Distance Education, 37(open in a new window), 1–3. Retrieved from doi:10.1080/01587919.2016.1157010.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (2017). Open educational resources. Retrieved from http://www.hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/