OER1160 Oral Presentation ppt

Thursday 12 May 12.00 Breakout Room 4/4a

Designing OERs for Reuse

Beverly Leeds, University of Central Lancashire

Conference Theme: Academic practice and digital scholarship

Abstract: This paper discusses the nature of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and outlines a model for developing these in a format that maximises reuse. It explores the use and reuse of Open Educational Resources for employability and work-based learning developed by three publicly funded projects at a UK university. The reusable resources for employability were created by the E-Evolve project funded by HEFCE and open access to these as OERs was developed by the JISC funded EVOLUTION project. The OERs for work-based learners have been developed by the JISC funded TELSTAR project. Based on research undertaken into reusability the projects developed OERs that can be reused and repurposed in a variety of ways within a module or programme of study or as stand-alone resources.  The OERs are available to download for use, reuse or repurposing from both the UCLAN OER repository www.employability.org.uk or the Jorum repository www.jorum.ac.uk
As a principal of design the three projects followed the principals of re-sability of learning objects to facilitate the re-use of the OERs. Hernandez et al (2008) recommend that to make an object reusable and appropriate for an e-learning setting some standards should be followed.  These were identified as autonomous, accessible, available, interoperable, durable, shareable and finally at a level of granularity that allows small, reusable chunks of resources to be packaged but also available decomposed into their constituent parts to increase the speed and efficiency of reuse (Wiley, 2000). For some users of OERs the most value will be gained by using a pre-assembled resource whereas others will want to assemble their own OER from sub-assemblies of other OERs.
After outlining the design model for the the reusable OERs the paper highlights activities undertaken by the projects to encourage use and reuse. These include free workshops,  the provision of all component parts and stand alone mini-lectures as well as packaged OERs all made available  in the the open Jorum repository. The paper explores the use and reuse of the OERs through a review of the literature and anaysis of data from interviews and surveys with academics. It examines the barriers and enablers to use and reuse of the projects OERs.

Keywords: reuse; oers; rlos; repurposing

References:

Wiley, D. A. (2000). Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects: Online Version. Retrieved March 1st, 2010 from: http://reusability.org/read/chapters/wiley.doc

Hernandez, N. , Mothe, J. , Ralalason, B. , Ramamonjisoa, B. , and Stolf, P. A Model to Represent the Facets of Learning Objects Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects Volume 4, 2008