OER1131e Short Paper (Part of Symposium OER1131) pptx

Developing an OER Resource for Methods Teaching

Isabelle Brent, C-SAP, University of Birmingham

Conference Theme: Collaboration and communities

Abstract: This paper will report on work so far on this JISC-funded project that started in September 2010. The project is concerned with issues of discovery, dissemination and quality appraisal in open educational resources in social research methods. In particular the project plans to use some Web 2.0 technologies to bring together automated methods of resource discovery along with people-based approaches to making judgments about appropriateness and quality.
There are two challenges here that the project will address. First is which of the Web 2.0 technologies are best suited to this kind of dissemination support – Wikis, Blogs, discussion boards, database interrogators, book marking systems etc? The project is examining and piloting various approaches and seeking to obtain feedback from potential users about suitable approaches. The second challenge is the issue of linking this material with the resources themselves found on different websites and inside repositories. Our key objective is a better informing of the process of using OER to support research methods teaching, and improving the discoverability of research methods resources.
This paper will report on our early work using both expert focus groups and surveys to discover the major ways potential users find out about resources and make judgments about appropriateness and quality. It will also offer some preliminary results about appropriate technologies.