Posts

Thank you, Bunker Hill Search Committee

Thank you, Grace Mah, Swati Kelkar, Wesley Fiorentino, and Michael Combs for a kind and helpful interview. On Friday, the day after our meeting, I posted this OER reflection on LinkedIn ; it comes from thinking further about a question raised in our conversation: what is the real value of OER?  I really enjoyed meeting you all. I found the conversation invigorating and the ideas we touched on full of promise.  I sincerely hope we get a chance to talk further and to one day be colleagues. Nick

Resources for Faculty and Student OER Development

OER Project Authoring Community The Open Faculty Patchbook is a community ‘patchwork’ of teaching skills and experiences. Each ‘patch’ has been written by a professor in higher education and is focused on one particular pedagogical skill. Together, these patches create a how-to-teach manual for higher education that is openly licensed and available to anyone. As mentioned, each chapter covers one pedagogical skill. We began our search for pedagogical skills to cover with the University of Michigan’s High Leverage Practices, but the scope of the patchwork does not end there. It is dictated by those who want to contribute their skill. Read more at:  http://openpedagogy.org/textbooks/the-open-patchbooks/ A place for students to contribute, The Open Learner Patchbook:  https://openlearnerpatchbook.org/

Workshop Idea 1: Small OER as an Intro to OER

Back to the Future, Exploring OER as a Course Supplement Description Almost all faculty have already used open educational resources (OER), although they may not have used that phrase to describe the resource. Before the Internet, faculty would put books, journals, or magazines on reserve in the library. Film strips would be brought into classes and threaded through projectors. Math and science students would head into the world to observe, measure, calculate, experiment. Art and literature and history students would visit museums, writers' homesteads, or historical sites. All these options may have been open and educational, and so OER options have always existed to supplement required textbooks and course materials.  What’s changed as the Internet and Web accessible educational technologies have matured is that OER can now, for many courses, move from a supplemental to a central role in the course. The contemporary OER movement offers wonderful alternatives to tradi

Workshop Idea 2: Students, OER, and Reading Online

Reading and Annotating Online -- Mindful OER Engagement Description Online delivery makes the growth of OER possible. And while there are often options for low cost print on demand for OER texts, as OER grows more sophisticated and Web native, those print options will be less attractive. More students will be reading from and with devices. Reading in this new context means not just text, but studying from videos and learning animations, working in Web-based math labs and science labs, students visiting on their own sites such as Kahn Academy and Purdue OWL, taking courses that use open adaptive learning technologies and content print cannot replicate. This workshop focuses on strategies for note taking and study using digital tools when learning in digital settings. It will help not only students using OER, but also students working in other digital settings such as publisher textbooks sites, Moodle classrooms where teachers post notes, PDFs, and links, library data bases, and mor