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Integrating Open Educational Resources in the Classroom |
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Collaborative Development of a College Course in OERBy Peter Levy January 2010 |
Open Educational Resources (OER) are fast becoming an essential tool for teachers to use in the classroom. The open source nature of this content makes it easy for teachers to find and integrate into their classroom activities, without needing to gain approval for the purchase of expensive proprietary materials. What’s more, since many OER allow for users to modify the resource, teachers are easily able to differentiate instruction to address the specific and diverse needs of the varied students in any particular class. Through the generous support of the Hearst Foundation, Curriki was funded to develop a college-level course on the integration of open educational resources. Executed collaboratively by a team of top tier academics, the project took place during 2009. The specific goals of the project were to:
- Develop and share a set of introductory modules about the use of open educational resources.
- Produce an e-textbook on open source instructional design for use in teacher professional development programs or in teacher-training programs.
- Build capacity of pre-service and in-service teachers in instructional design and open source curriculum development.
- Include teacher colleges in the evaluation of open source curricula materials and its impact on achievement.
As the largest open and shared content community, Curriki’s recruitment network is quite extensive. Our call for participants was distributed to lists of teachers colleges and universities, through professional associations and through a viral marketing campaign on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. By getting the word out through all of these channels, we garnered a significant number of interested and highly qualified candidates. Although we initially thought the project would involve just three professors, six applicants impressed us with such distinction, that the project was modified to engage all of them. The six professors came to the project with a deep understanding of both teaching with technology and extensive knowledge of open educational resources. Their experience and current teaching assignments included work with both pre-service and in-service teachers as well both face-to-face and online environments. All of the professors have published widely on topics ranging from OER to technology integration to educational theory and design.
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Dave Fontaine Instructor of Education Graduate School of Education University of Rhode Island
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Cynthia Gautreau, Ed.D. Assistant Professor Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education California State University, Fullerton
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Chris Penny, Ph.D Associate Professor of Educational Technology West Chester University
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Michael Searson, Ph.D Executive Director Center for External Education & Development Kean University
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Brett E. Shelton, Ph.D Assistant Professor Dept. of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences Utah State University
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David Wiley, Ph.D Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology Brigham Young University
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On the initial phone meeting, the six fellows introduced themselves to their new colleagues and were provided with a deeper overview of what to expect over the next several months. During the one hour session, they were given details on their Phase 1 assignment, which was to create a unit of study that provided 4-6 class sessions of instruction. The professors were given broad license on the topic as long as it provided an overview to Open Educational Resources.
Working independently, the professors each created their Phase 1 project, which was sometimes referred to as their mini-unit. Four of the six professors created lessons that served as a general overview of the use of open educational resources. These four sessions each provided students with background on the OER movement, provided details on licensing and then frequently tasked students with developing and sharing an open educational resource. Dr. Wiley chose to focus on copyright in his mini-unit, while Dr. Penny’s unit was a classroom-tested lesson on the development of WebQuests. Links to each of the mini-units are available here:
- Dr. Shelton – Technology and its Role in the Transformation of Education
- Dr. Wiley – Copyright & Copyright Law
- Dr. Gautreau – Integrating Open Educational Resources
- Dr. Penny – WebQuest Unit
- Mr. Fontaine – Introduction to the OERI Movement
- Dr. Searson – Socially Constructed Knowledge
At their only in-person meeting, the Fellows developed a structure for the online course. Upon returning to their universities, each professor worked independently and then received feedback from their peers. The Fellows then returned to their chapters and made any necessary revisions based on the peer review. The professors posted their content to the Curriki group and considered this phase complete. Below is a table of contents for the final semester-long course:
Chapter 1 – Introduction: Getting Started with OER
Chapter 2 – Licensing: Knowing Your Rights
Chapter 3 – Find/Search: Making the Internet Your Best Friend
Chapter 4 – Create: Contributing Your Best Material
Chapter 5 – Use: Integrating OER into Your Classroom
Chapter 6 – Remix/Reuse: Making it Your Own
After the professors completed both the Phase 1 and 2 content creation portion of the project, they were given the choice as to which of these two units to implement in the Fall 2009 semester. In either case, Phase 3 of the project served to educate and engage pre- and in-service teachers around the topic of OER. Student assignments yielded additional content for the Curriki repository. These students received feedback not just from their professors, but also from the master teachers engaged by Curriki as a part of the Curriki Review System.
The Curriki team was pleased with the final product that the professors produced. Many lessons were learned in the development process. Curriki’s Chief Academic Officer Anne Schreiber said, “One major take-away for me is that in a large, in-depth collaboration like this, there needs to be a leader. All the participants look to that leader to really define the process and the outcome. In this case, Curriki was the leader and no matter how much freedom we gave the group, what they really wanted was Curriki to provide more guidance in what we wanted the outcome to be. It turns out that collaboration needs one person or organization in the leadership role.”
Curriki believes that one of the greatest opportunities to improve the efficacy of teachers is for schools of education to offer courses in instructional design that integrate open source curricula development and support a deeper level of collaboration in an interactive community. We further believe that learning to incorporate technology and collaboration as part of curriculum development process and classroom teaching will give teachers a higher level of confidence and enhance their status and professionalism. The completion of this project provides an initial set of resources that schools of education can use to help advance each of the goals outlined in the original proposal. All of the course content is freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution license and Curriki is engaging in a range of outreach efforts to spread awareness of these course materials. We encourage all interested parties to use this material in their courses.
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