2007年9月23日 星期日

OpenEd: Week 4

QUESTIONS: What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently? What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did? Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why?

These overviews talk about open educational resources, and try to give readers an brief picture of OER based on descriptions from different areas, such as the basics concepts of open educational resources, the teaching and learning issue, technology availability, copyright, the model, etc. Those overviews bring readers a variety of sub-issues in relation to OER, and it seems OER is broken down to a variety of pieces. However, we may find that the central idea of these overviews is that doing something good to people, and OER was initiated based on this good idea at the beginning.

Based on the central idea, basically, each part of the overviews is trying to exploring new ways or methods to improve the development of OER, the availability of OER, and the sustainability of OER from the perspectives of education, society, technology, and humanity. In addition, how to overcome difficulties and challenge some tough things is also an important concern. In general, the central goal that how to continue OER and makes it sustainable and brings more benefits to human kinds is the common part for the overviews.

As for the different emphasizes, I think it will be the way that they talk about OER. OER is addressed from different perspectives. For instance, you will consider how OER would have an impact on instructors and learners, what functionality should be improved for technology, what is the role that the government should play, what kind of copy right issues that OER comes about, what the influence of OER for global learning, what is the impact of OER to science learning, etc. We can find that those reports are written in different ways which lead readers to a broaden views of OER. Each chapter that focuses on different topic is part the issue of OER. It talks about OER from the concerns of society, education, technology, humanity.

Week 2 reading entitled giving knowledge for free mainly talks about the emergence of OER, and bring readers to a brief overview of OER related issues. Week 3 reading talks more about OER. It pointed out the necessity for OER to move on, and the competences that OER can bring to us in the knowledge society, especially for life-long learners. In addition, it indicates some models of OER, and recommendations for learners, teachers, policy makers, etc. This week focus mainly on the challenges and new opportunities for the future.

What is interesting to me is about the influence of OER on life-long learning. The article indicated OER will be a future trend for life-learners. I am curious about this topic. I think OER will be a good benefit for life-long learners since it is free and most of them have high-quality. People who have left school or are in the workplace have more opportunities to get more free resources from OER based on their own needs. Self-directed learning will be dominant in this kind of learning situation. Learners can learn by their own steps, and it will be more flexible for them to learn something that they are interested in. However, I might wonder if there is enough feedback for learners since there are no instructors who need to answer your questions. Similarly, there are no instructors who will push you to finish some contents based on the schedule that has been arranged. So how can we adjust the learning performance from learners? I am wondering, but maybe it's not the main point. What we must concern is that how OER can bring more benefits to people.

2 則留言:

opencontent 提到...

You said, "However, I might wonder if there is enough feedback for learners since there are no instructors who need to answer your questions. Similarly, there are no instructors who will push you to finish some contents based on the schedule that has been arranged. So how can we adjust the learning performance from learners? I am wondering, but maybe it's not the main point. What we must concern is that how OER can bring more benefits to people."

YES! YES! It is a main point. Who will help these people? Is education going to become a simple downloading of materials? What about a teacher and/or classmates to ask your questions to? How can we provide these experiences to people using open educational resources? Do you have any ideas?

Lucinda 提到...

As for answering the questions, I think the instructor will not have the responsibility to reply you since you are not in his/ her class which is registered. But I might think that if possible, the professors might have their teaching assistants to help with the solving of questions from online learners?? If teaching assistants have difficulty answering the questions, they can pass those questions to professors, and it may lower the burden of professors. In addition, some valuable questions might be pointed by those online students, and professors can also get some ideas from the online learners. It is good for both professors and online learners.