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Monthly Archives: May 2013

Invitation… Challenges, opportunities with MOOCs in Higher Education

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

Following on from the successful Open Minds Seminar series in 2012, a Community of Practice has been established for Otago staff to share experiences and ask questions about what it means to be an ‘open scholar’. Over the course of our two-monthly meetings we might debate questions like:

  • Are MOOCs the greatest opening up of education ever or just an ivy league branding exercise?
  • Could I run my own class like a MOOC or use one within mine?
  • What does open access publishing mean for me?
  • What’s all this about governments decreeing that research outcomes must be made open?
  • What happens if I put my data ‘out there’?

In the first meeting we will be exploring the opportunities and challenges for higher education presented by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Together we will discuss the principles of MOOCs, share experiences and look at the possibilities MOOCs present for Otago in more depth.

June 10, 1pm

University of Otago Central Library Conference Room 3

Some resources you might find useful to get you started:

Feel free to bring your lunch and come along with any ideas for future topic.

New OER Resource

Thursday, May 9th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

From the Commonwealth of Learning … a new publication about OERs
…

 Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning:
Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice

Rory McGreal, Wanjira Kinuthia and Stewart Marshall, Eds. May 2013

Published jointly by the Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University, Canada (UNESCO/COL Chair in OER) as CC-BY-SA and freely available to all: www.col.org/psOERIRP. Available in PDF and epub formats.

This book is one in a series of OER resources published by COL. It describes the OER movement in detail, providing readers with insight into OER’s significant benefits, its theory and practice, and its achievements and challenges. The 16 chapters, written by some of the leading international experts on the subject, are organised into four parts by theme:

  • OER in Academia: describes how OER are widening the international community of scholars, following MIT’s lead in sharing its resources and looking to the model set by the OpenCourseWare Consortium
  • OER in Practice: presents case studies and descriptions of OER initiatives underway on three continents
  • Diffusion of OER: discusses various approaches to releasing and “opening” content, from building communities of users that support lifelong learning to harnessing new mobile technologies that enhance OER access on the Internet
  • Producing, Sharing and Using OER: examines the pedagogical, organisational, personal and technical issues that producing organisations and institutions need to address in designing, sharing and using OER

Instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational technologists, teachers, researchers, students, others involved in creating, studying or using OER: all will find this timely resource informative and inspiring.