Evaluating Open Educational Resources: Results of a Collaborative Evaluation of Crowdsourced Lesson Plans
1. Evaluating Open Educational Resources:
Results of a Collaborative Evaluation of
Crowdsourced Lesson Plans
2019 AECT International Convention
Tuesday, October 22nd
1:00 Convention Center | Pavilion 11
5. Our mission is to provide service-
learning opportunities for
instructional designers to help
nonprofit organizations create the
solutions necessary for effecting
positive change.
Designers for Learning’s
Charitable Mission
6. Multifaceted Project
Current Project
Phase 01 | Expert Review
Current Project
Phase 02 | Expert Design Teams
Research GSA Observers
Prior Years
Instructional Design Service-Learning Projects
8. 10:00 Wednesday | Ballroom B
Phase 01 | Expert Review
Phase 02 | Expert Design Teams
Research
GSA
Observers
Expert
Design
Team
&
Research
9. Expert Review Team
● Managed by Designers for Learning
○ Coordinated Call for Volunteers
○ Volunteers selected based on needed expertise
● Team included:
○ Subject Matter Experts in adult basic skills education
○ College faculty and students with interest and expertise in:
■ Instructional design
■ Open educational resources
■ Evaluation
10. Expert Review Team Members
● Jennifer Englund
University of Minnesota
● Royce Kimmons
Brigham Young University
● Jennifer Maddrell
Designers for Learning
● Cherise Moore
American Institutes of Research
● Jessica Resig
Penn State University
● Emily Tolzmann
Chinese Mutual Aid Association
14. Evaluation Aims
Efficacy
Examined the extent to which the
instructional presentation, learner
practice opportunities, and
embedded guidance or feedback
within the OER designed by service
learners are likely to positively
influence student learning.
Efficiency & Usability
Considered the ease with which
learners should be able to interact
with the instruction, including
issues of accessibility, user
instructions & support.
18. Crowdsourced Evaluation Sprint
5,533 emailed +
Social Media
Call for
Volunteers
170 people
responded
Responded to
the Call
205 evaluations
by 70 volunteers
Completed
Evaluations
November 2018 December 2018 January 2019
Mailchimp +
Facebook, Twitter &
LinkedIn
Google Forms Google Forms
20. Evaluation
Instructions
Google Doc with instructions to
select a lesson plan from list and
how to complete the online
evaluation form. Sent to
volunteers via Mailchimp.
21. List of
Lesson Plans
Google Sheets roster of lesson
plans with evaluator signup and
link to online evaluation form
28. Lesson Description Evaluation
● Machine analysis of lesson descriptions versus requirements:
○ 16.7% didn’t include any of the required headings,
○ 21.3% were missing more than half of required headings, and
○ 64.8% were missing two or more.
33. Lesson Plan Quality
● Lesson plan quality was rated with a 3.4 average (1 = major
revisions; 5 = no revisions; SD = 1.1), with a mode and median
of 4 (or 28.6% of all lesson plans), suggesting that most were
of good quality but required some minor attention in focused
areas.
● Only 6 lesson plans (5.7%) yielded an average overall rating of
5, and 17 (16%) had an average score of 4.5 or higher.
Source: machine analysis, note taking, and the completion of evaluation form
Determined by WebAIM’s WAVE tool
Each lesson plan averaged 18.8 errors and 64.3 alerts, but
When interface elements were removed to control for system-level accessibility errors inherent in the hosting platform error counts were significantly reduced
In addition, many of the resources were not available “openly” in the sense that users had to create an account with OER Commons and login even to download the resources, thereby introducing an access barrier
Many lesson plans excluded detail on how student work would be evaluated or how the instructor would interact with students while doing classroom activities.
Activities tended to encourage students to apply knowledge to completing assignments, which were often authentic in nature.