Dr Liz Archer, Dr Judy Henning, Prof Rory McGreal, Prof Pam Ryan and Prof Peter Havenga.
 OER & Mobile Learning at Athabasca University  Part 1 Part 2 |
Unisa has recently had the good fortune to host the COL/UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources, Professor Rory McGreal, who hails from Athabasca University.
Professor McGreal spent four days at Unisa meeting different portfolios, having crucial conversations with academic and professional staff, delivering two lecture presentations in the Senate Hall and meeting with the Pro Vice Chancellor, Professor Narend Baijnath and his OER Steering Committee.
Professor McGreal’s presentations can be accessed by clicking on the pictures at the bottom of this post.
I would like to mention here some of the key moments I took away from the four day visit. Here followeth a few of Rory McGreal’s choice quotations (not quoted verbatim, I hasten to add):
- Be satisfied with “good enough”: if course material has been prepared by a number of experts in the field, let that be good enough for your students’ use. This was said in the context of Canadian academics not trusting or wanting to use course material issuing from the United States and bearing in mind that open-source materials can be adapted by the user to suit local conditions.
- Be wary of proprietary materials. Always go for the open source. This was said in the context of educational materials that have been designed by ‘for-profit’ organizations, which then place heavy restrictions on how, when and where the material can be used.
- Make sure that you use the Creative Commons license for your open source materials. This simple action allows others to use your material freely but, depending on what conditions you insert in the license agreement, also allows for your name to be lodged as the owner of the material. This is sensible advice especially in a context in which academics are sometimes jittery about allowing their intellectual “property” to be made open and free. The word “property” is encased in quotation marks to indicate the absurdity in the idea that knowledge can be owned. But there it is!
- We are on the side of the angels! This is my favourite Rory aphorism, said at a dinner, but emphatically stated. I like this because it picks up on the altruistic fervor which OER practitioners feel and demonstrate by being part of an awe-inspiring and revolutionary educational movement, one which speaks so forcefully to a socially responsive agenda; one which truly wants to change the world.
You go, Rory!
Pamela Ryan
I am really excited about the development irs OER’s at Unisa. Where the College of Education is busy developing a new PQM, one of the principles is that all programmes will use open education resources as far as possible. OER’s will be the first option and only if there is not any appropriate oer resource available will other resources be considered.
Not only will we be using open resources, but we also want to contribute material to be used as open resources.
It is really wonderful to see that CEDU is engaging with OER to such an extent. Please keep us up to date on the progress.
It is an exciting time to be at Unisa and engaging in OER.
It was great meeting with everyone and I was impressed by your university’s commitment to OER. You are in a position to be world leaders in OER. This week the EU announced that that there is 80 billion Euros for research and it will only be distributed to researchers who open their research and deposit it online. So, many countries are moving to open resources. We are on the right track for the future.
Remeber that OER are important not only because they are FREE, but because with the growth in accessibility to digital content using tablets, ebooks, mobile phones and other devices, learners will be able to have full access to the world’s knowledge using the internet. Unfortunately, this knowledge is being closed off with “walled gardens” created by proprietary content owners. They purposely “cripple” these new devices by disallowing copying, highlighting, sharing, format shifting and other educationally useful features using Digital Rights Management (DRM). The owners also believe that when you use their content, they have a right to “invade” your device and plant monitoring systems and other spyware. Their licensing is also so restrictive that it becomes a crime to use their content in collaboration with other learners and they reduce your “ownership” of the content to a rental agreement for a limited time in a limited geographical area for limited uses that they control. Because of these restrictions on proprietary content it is essential for educational institutions to switch to OER that are open to whatever use we want, whether that be format shifting, mixing, mashing or augmenting. With OER can we even make the learning materials better.
I am excited for this particular movement. OER is the way for ODL. It was an very informative presentation on how to use OER in teaching and learning especially when we want our students to become self-directed learners in this digital space.
Adapt or vanish!!