Hi Valerie, Excellent questions as always :-)
I think demand driven OER is what is ultimately going to change and effect real social change in the world (with the traditional academy slowly catching up.) Personally, i wouldn't say that the top 50 enrolled courses are the ones who need OER the most -- but they're a powerful lever to nurse conservative decision makers in understanding the magnitude of the significant waste of capital by continuing to support closed models. In parallel, I think we also need to think of the economics of the long tail. Here the OER Fundation is also tackling a project called the OER Course Collaboratory which is designed to demonstrate how institutions can expand and diversify curriculum offering in small enrolment courses using OER. So we have demonstrator projects on both sides of the equation :-). I think we need both demand push and supply driven initiatives working in parallel with each other in order to build and foster the ecosystem. Open peer teaching models need to figure out how to credentialise -- I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but the token value of a university or college credential helps people get jobs in the real world. The peer collaboration "production" models are far more nimble and agile at producing content which meets community needs -- because they're scratching itches. CollabOERate is an attempt to bring the demand and supply networks close together. In a scarce resource environment we need to figure out how to prioritise our efforts. I hope that CollabOERate may help us get this right in the shortest possible time :-) I'm trying to keep things simple on the OER front ... not easy given that I've been an academic for most of my life. So here are my two questions: - Who is going to do it? and - Where are we going to get the money to do it? As we say -- OER is a sustainable and renewable resource -- lets do it! Cheers Wayne On 30 March 2010 17:52, valerie <[email protected]> wrote: > Is there a way to work from the demand side? Are there unmet needs > that collaborative OERs can address most quickly and effectively? > > Who will use OERs? What topics are most needed? Can we find some > specific end users of the collaboratively built OERs? Are there some > important courses topics without course materials? > > Who wants to collaborate? What is your subject expertise? > > I wonder if any of the 1000s of instructors teaching the top 50 > enrolled courses are the ones who need OERs most? Are they the most > likely to use and benefit from these collaborations? > > Just asking... > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "WikiEducator" group. > To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org > To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator+ > unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE > ME" as the subject. > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
