Hierarchy of management that covers different levels of management
OERs: Educational Fad or a Substantial Contribution to Educational Provision?
1. Reykjavík: November 21st. 2011.
Helen Lentell
Fellow in Distance Learning, University of Leicester, UK
2. The term OER is wide and all embracing – it
includes different kinds of digital assets: full
courses, course materials, content modules,
learning objects, collections, even books and
journals that reside in the public domain or have
been released under an intellectual property
license that permits their free use or re-
purposing by others.
Definitions often also include the software tools
that support the creation, delivery and use of
OERs.
For the purposes of this talk an OER is taken to
be something substantial e.g. a course module or
a full course .
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 2
3. Millions of learning objects exist, but accessing and making
use of these objects is highly problematic.
Complete courses/modules, more likely to impact on
educational up-scaling than small bite sized objects.
Education is more than the delivery of knowledge and
information.
Education is a formal and structured learning process that is
assessed and accredited.
Access to bite sized OERs does not solve the problem of
scaling up educational provision. (But access to the resources
of others might help individual teachers. )
The decision to utilise OERs is transformative to pedagogy
and the systems that support teaching and learning
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 3
4. Why are universities giving
away their intellectual
property?
Do their reasons matter?
How can we use their OERs?
What must we do?
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 4
5. OERs are provider led – counters what we
know about designing courses for learners
Learning from the past:
◦ COL/WADE and the review of masters courses in
DL– courses very different
◦ TESSA
◦ Staff Development in Distance Education for
Caribbean, African and Pacific Universities
Policy issues – e.g. structure, assignments,
up-dating, embedded copy right,
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 5
6. Needs analysis
Effective identification of target learners
Defining effective learning outcomes
Developing objectives & ensuring content matches
Revising & rewriting content
Creating appropriate learner activities for context
Integrating appropriate media
Developing assignments & assessments
Adapting from one format to another (e.g. F2f to e-
learning)
Sourcing OERs (use of repositories and OER search
engines)
Financial planning
= NEW WAYS OF WORKING
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 6
7. Collegial working with people with different
but complementary skills
Project management – curriculum processes
have to be managed
The rebirth of the instructional designer
Transformational to pedagogy
Leadership and Management
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 7
8. Sharing resources – not new
Sharing teaching resources between teachers is not a
game changer
Universities that share resources are not doing this
for the betterment of the world but might be a bi-
product
It’s never as simple or as cheap as some like to think.
The game changer is OERs that are substantial – e.g.
whole courses/programmes. And
Skills to adapt and contextualise OERs to users
needs. Which means
New ways of working, and institutional leadership
and support for those working with them
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 8
9. Takk fyrir
Helen Lentell. Reykjavik, Iceland 21/11/2011 9
