Chapter 11: Exploring OER Open Education Resources and their implication on Education

 Chapter 11: Exploring OER Open Education Resources and their implication on Education 

Date/Time: 9th May 2024 Thursday 12:38 am - 10th May 2024 Friday 4:43 am

This is an interesting post about OER Open Education Resources. I came across OER while skimming through content of module 7 of the ISTE online course on Student Standards. Though I might have heard the term before, I could not remember much. This post will highlight the purpose of OER and how useful these can be for both students and teachers. Let’s begin exploring OER.

OER basically means online resources that are freely available for use on a public domain, these can be in different formats that include videos, text, audio, tutorials etc. These resources can be used for research purposes, for teaching and learning purposes also. These resources are free of cost, can be easily accessed online, repurposed, adapted and distributed online. It is a form of sharing information and knowledge and making it accessible to a wider audience. The issue with some digital resources is the subscription attached to them, and so not everyone can get access to the resources. For example, mostly newly published papers or articles have a cost attached to them, thus making it accessible to only people who can purchase them. Consider if digital resources were available free of cost with no licensing concerns, how much value would it add to the teaching and learning process.

OER are licensed using creative commons, that means they are available free to use without a cost but with certain guidelines about how to reuse them. OER keeps the owners' rights saved. Resources that have copyrights are not OER resources. Online books available in a digital library that have a subscription attached are also not included in OER. Online apps, websites , software that have a subscription fee attached are also not included in the OER. OER refers to resources available to users in a public domain and not a private domain. The purpose of keeping it public is to ensure access to a wider audience. 

While exploring some OER resources online I came across a website CK12 and it has some wonderful resources for teaching and learning. But it does require you to create a free account or login using your Google credentials. Once you have logged in you have complete access to the resources, these include video tutorials, digital books, animated videos, simulations, text explaining concepts, lesson plans with activities , practice exercises and a lot more. The practice exercises are interactive and provide feedback to  the user about the response. It also provided a solution to the problem. The student can do the exercise at their own pace, as many times as they want too. I tried a simulation about a bow and arrow. The bow and arrow simulation explored where the bow gets energy from?The interesting thing was that it was interactive, students can change the values of stretch distance and elastic constant to see the impact on force. If you apply more force, the firing speed is high and vice versa.

Another interesting simulation was about reflection from a mirror. The student could adjust the distance to mirror, length of mirror and source or rays. And every time the variables change it affects reflection from the mirror. When you change the size of the mirror, the reflection shows a different size of the person standing in front of the mirror. It seems a difficult concept that could be easily explained using this simulation. You can find some very interesting simulations about concepts in chemistry including changes in states of matter, diffusion, saturation, compounds etc. An interesting simulation was about checking whether the water boils at the same temperature around the world? When you increase the altitude, the boiling temperature is reduced and vice versa. It is a great way to visually explain the concept of boiling water and how it changes in different places on earth.

Another OER I found while skimming through the content of module 7 ISTE course on Student Standards was OER Creative Commons. There are some good lesson plans with activity templates for reuse available, simulations, student guides, syllabus, textbook, lecture notes etc. Though I had difficulty in searching the lesson plans, amidst the fact they are categorized into subjects. One of the the lesson that I found interesting was the “100 People - A world portrait” lesson. It was very detailed with videos, lesson templates, and worksheets. The project asks students to celebrate someone who inspires them in their community and who is a citizen of their country. They will take a picture and write about their country (exploring community members, religion, rituals, cultural heritage etc). The interesting part is that the assignment can be buried, either the whole class talks about a single person in the community or each individual talks about different members in the community. They can create an image digitally or even take a photograph or draw. It is a great opportunity for learners to know people in their community and the space that they occupy. I would definitely want to work on the project, and would need to explore a little more. 

Another interesting OER that I came across was the OER commons. It too had a lot of digital resources in different formats, these included lesson plans, textbooks, lecture notes, syllabus, interactive activities, syllabus etc. It was also categorized into different subjects. I came across a lesson plan for explaining weather changes to students of preschool and lower primary, it was a complete lesson plan spread over four days. The lesson plan had video links and activity links. It had links to activities in Khan Academy related to weather. The teacher had used Curriki studio and students were supposed to draw a picture in their science journal about a rainy day. The good thing was that the lesson was differentiated and the tasks moved from simple to complex tasks. The only concern was that the link was not working. These need to be either updated or replaced. When I checked the Curriki Studio online it requires a signup and has a subscription option attached to it. So this activity could be done in any other tool or drawing app online. 

Similarly I found another interesting lesson plan that was about weather changes with a different set of activities, and this lesson was for grade 2 students. It was a very detailed lesson plan with detailed activities, worksheets and a scoring rubric. The students explore weather, explore instruments to measure weather, set up a weather station, gather data, and finally answer the question about when to plant fruits and vegetables based on seasons. I also found a resource for science simulation, it had a wind simulator , water cycle, earthquake etc. I tried working on the simulation but due to lack of guidelines on how to play the simulation, I ended up looking for other resources free to use. The concord consortium also has simulations that can help students understand different concepts like the impact of wildfire on different zones (plains, mountains, foothills), by adjusting the different variables like wind direction and speed. It also shows the vegetation and drought index. CLEAN is another interesting resource that shows real time wind speed and direction changes above the earth surface, ocean currents and ocean surface. It is an animated map showing live movements of wind. It can help understand wind, direction and speed. 

I also liked another simulation about coral bleaching (was a new concept for me but the animation helped understand visually). The user can use the plus and minus buttons to adjust the temperature of water and pollution level. The user can also click on another button to start a storm and see the impact of all these changes on the coral reef. It was interesting to see the higher the pollution levels, the higher the temperature and the storm badly affected the coral reef and vice versa. Something which cannot be comprehended by just reading or looking at images. An interactive simulation or an animation could well explain complex and difficult topics in a very easy way.

The good thing about OER was the type of resources available for use for both students and teachers. This included lesson plans, simulation, assignment tasks, lecture, lecture notes, interactive activities, data sets, diagram/illustration etc. It makes it easy for the teacher to find the relevant type of resources. The user can search accordingly to different media formats , these include video, text, images, downloadable docs and audio. The content is available in four different languages, these include English, French, German and Spanish. There are different types of licenses available for using the material. The user can choose from unrestricted use, conditional remix and share permitted, only sharing permitted and read the fine print only option. The concern was that some web links had either expired or were removed. These need to be updated. The teacher can find differentiated content about a topic and can customize the learning experience for the students. 

Overall it was a great experience exploring the OER resources online and I am sure people who get to read the post will gain tons of valuable ideas from the post. 

Happy Reading 🙂

Regards and prayers

Sheeba Ajmal