This document contains a summary of an open educational resource (OER) workshop. It discusses how OERs allow teachers to fully develop courses without copyright restrictions and share them freely online for anyone to use or modify. An example is provided of a teacher who was able to enrich their teaching by having students participate in real-world scientific activities and receive feedback from experts online. The document also notes that students often save significant amounts of money by using free OERs instead of expensive textbooks. Statistics are presented showing higher levels of engagement with OERs in northern countries compared to southern countries.
10. “This course has been fully developed from scratch without
[copyright] restrictions and is released free on the web for any
teacher or student to use or remix. As a result, it belongs
to the class and to the world. This also means
that you are encouraged and expected to contribute to its
development and improvement…”
12. “[Using VS] has made my teaching that much richer because it
allows me to provide my students with some kind of outside
real world activity. They get to be scientists. They get to go online and
when they get to see their published work back, that’s when it’s ‘oh cool!’. And
then when they have the people from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute
commenting on their stuff, then they’re like ‘oh, no way!’, and then they get into
the commenting thing back - and then they want to go back and take more
pictures.”
“How can I provide real world opportunities in
my classroom at a low expense?”
15. “Some of the course textbooks
can be over €50 and I really
can’t afford to buy them on top
of everything else. I’d rather
borrow from friends or
photocopy pages than spend
that much money on a book that
I’ll only be using for one
semester”
Photo by Wesley Fryer, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/5SKqpZ
Source: http://collegetribune.ie/irish-students-estimated-to-spend-e11000-in-college-expenses-this-year/
22. 80
39.8
16.2
28.8
23.2
13.8
76.1
38.1
12.7
22.8
24.3
14.6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
I have adapted open educational
resources to fit my needs
I have created open educational
resources for study or teaching
I have created resources myself and
published them on an open license
I have added a resource to a repository
I have added comments to a repository
regarding the quality of a resource
I have added comments to a repository
suggesting ways of using a resource
South
North
Engagement with OER