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Active 7 years, 7 months ago
Description
At a North Carolina Community College in the United States, an instructional designer began the journey of implementing OERs. “Open educational resources and open education practices have the potential to lower costs and increase participation in higher education” (Murphy 2013). However, in higher education, open educational resources have “. . . not yet reached the critical threshold which is posing an obstacle to a seamless provision of high quality learning resources and practices for citizens’ lifelong learning efforts” (OER Knowledge Cloud). The instructional designer conducted a qualitative study, which entailed surveys to identify the positive and negative challenges on the community college’s campus per the coordinators, deans and vice president of instruction. At the beginning of the workshop, participants will be asked to express their individual fears of technology (real or imagined) and how they can be resolved. This activity will be called Fear in a Hat. The participants will be asked to write their fears on sticky notes and categorize their fears (by placing their sticky notes on the wall by categories) based upon themes created by the participants. After the discussion, the participants will attempt to transform their fears into either pitfalls or successes. Participants will transition into OER Land. OER Land is similar to a childhood board game. Obstacles such as administration and /or faculty resistance, bookstore concerns, equipment failure, community buy-in, financing and lack of technology exist at every turn. However, successes may be obtained by maneuvering wisely by attaining grants, library assistance, administration support, training, conferences, and networking. The board game would consist of tokens, actual board game, drawing cards, and dice. After the board game, participants will evaluate the session by completing a Ticket out the Door through an actual document or online through a QR code.
The purpose of this workshop is to empower anyone (instructional designers, librarians, administrators or faculty) who wish to implement OERs. Each participant will exit the workshop with a handout listing essential references and practical advice concerning the challenges that exist when implementing OERs.
Workshop Format
- Introduction of Workshop – OER or not OER? That is the Question? And Introduction of Presenter (2 minutes)
- Icebreaker – Fear in a Hat (10 minutes)
- OER Land (20 minutes)
- Discussion of Perceptions and Misperceptions of Implementing OERs (10 minutes)
- Show results of Presenter’s Survey Research (3 minutes)
- Discussion of successful ways to Implement OERs on higher education campuses (15 minutes)
- Evaluation of the Workshop Session – Ticket out the Door (2 minutes)
Murphy, A 2013, ‘Open educational practices in higher education: institutional adoption and challenges’, Distance Education, 34, 2, pp. 201-217, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 14 November 2016.
OER Knowledge Cloud, Beyond OER: Shifting focus to Open Educational Practices. Available from: https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/OPAL2011.pdf. [14 November 2016].
