Tag Archives: OER

White Paper on Open Educational Resources

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The Hewlett Foundation has released a white paper on Open Educational Resources (OER). The paper explores the potential of OER to enable “anyone to tap into, translate and tailor educational materials previously reserved only for students at elite universities.” The paper explores infrastructure investments that will move OER adpotion to the mainstream and “deliver high quality content, promote supportive policies, and develop practical standards for OER materials.” See also the related report on OER ecosystems (PDF).

Link: http://www.hewlett.org/library/hewlett-foundation-publication/white-paper-open-educational-resources

George Mason University Announces Free Online Curriculum Hub

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George Mason University’s Institute for Humane Studies has launched EDvantage, a free online curriculum hub for educators. The curriculum hub provides educators with a portal that curates educational videos, articles, and other resources for classroom instruction. Additionally, teachers also have the option to contribute their own content to the site and grow its collection.

On Quality and Open Educational Resources

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David Wily argues that “because quality is not necessarily a function of copyright status, neither traditionally copyrighted educational materials nor openly licensed educational materials can exclusively claim to be high quality.” He suggests that traditional textbooks publishers often use the term quality to mean presentation and graphic design of the resource but that the only true measure of quality is how much students learn when using the materials.

Link: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2947

Report on the Assessment and Accreditation of Learners using OER

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The Commonwealth of Learning has published a report on the findings and lessons learned from an investigation into the “economics of disaggregated models for assessing and accrediting informal learners within the OER University consortium.” The report examines potential models to address assessment, certification and accreditation issues for formal and informal learning contexts using open educational resources (OER).

Link: http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=458