OER@UCT

We are having our second round of seminars on using and creating open educational resources (OER) at the University of Cape Town.  Looking back on our first seminar is an interesting way to gauge how far we have come and how much has changed in terms of our own understanding of the OER movement and how we share it with our colleagues.  

The digital age has rung in profound changes for the higher education endeavour – not least of which has been a revolution in the way teaching materials are generated, shared and re-appropriated by means of alternative licensing on the internet.

The OER movement is a worldwide community effort providing a framework for sharing teaching materials via the internet. The term ‘OER’ refers to all learning materials offered freely and openly, and includes learning content (from full courses to lecture notes) as well as learning tools (such as software).

In 2008, UCT joined the move towards openness in education by becoming a signatory to the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. The initiative to cement UCT’s place in this global sharing community has been furthered by the establishment of the OER UCT Project in the Centre for Educational Technology.

Supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the OER UCT Project aims to showcase the teaching efforts of UCT academics by encouraging the publication of teaching materials as OER and establishing a directory listing the UCT Collection of OER.

If you would like to know more about this realm or are interested in attending an introductory seminar on OER please leave a comment on this blog and we will contact you.

The seminar will run this Thursday September 29 at 1pm.  Refreshements will be served.

Open Teaching in a Digital Age
Hoerikwaggo 3A, 13h00 - 14h00
Sign up: http://teaching.cet.uct.ac.za/events/signup/222

Creative Commons Image by frozenchipmunk

Recently I mused upon the differences between OER and e-learning.  I found that many of my colleagues had blurred the lines between the two which can present challenges in motivating and understanding one from the other.  

Certainly e-learning has any number of different explicit definitions depending on who you ask.  From learning online, to learning with electronic resources, to an online learning pedagogy … e-learning is a term rife with meaning.  My understanding of e-learning is learning which is meant to occur while interacting with a computer.  

OER should not replace e-learning as a term similarly rife with ambiguity.  It is tempting to create electronic resources and label them OER, but in fact OER extends well beyond the realm of simply ‘electronic’ resources.  The key components of OER are that they are shareable online and freely available to use, reuse, and adapt.  Whereas they must be shareable online, they do not necessarily have to be made use of online.  They could be materials that need to be printed out for a class activity.  

OER must be made shareable through open licenses such as Creative Commons.  This ensures that others will know what can be done with your teaching and learning material (Attribution Always!)  E-learning material does not necessarily get licensed in the same way and is therefore definable from OER.

Currently we are seeing a great deal of e-learning material coming at us, which authors want to designate OER.  This requires us going back and looking at the material, checking for licensing conflicts. (e.g. copy written pictures used within, etc) This process of vetting the material and replacing copy written material clears the material for sharing as OER.    

There are however great similarities between OER and e-learning.  Both should be driven by a pedagogical need or driven by the needs of curriculum.  We aim to have people design electronic teaching and learning materials with “open” in mind, which will lead to it becoming an OER as well as an e-learning resource in its most basic sense: an electronic learning object which helps a students come to a better understanding of some aspect of our world.