Opening the World of OER-Enabled Learning

This week I read another research article, and several articles written by David Wiley (here, here, and here) about the difference between open education and Open Education Resource-Enabled learning.

Side note: I love the way in which Wiley writes. It is all of the good, scholarly stuff minus the hard-to-understand scholarly lingo. It’s accessible, which goes right along with the spirit of OER.

Wiley spends a good amount of time clarifying definitions of what his vision of “open” is. He calls it “OER-enabled learning” and defines it as “the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions which are characteristic of OER”.

Quick reminder of what the 5Rs are:

• Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).

• Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video).

• Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).

• Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup).

• Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend).

The takeaway of this week’s reading is that, although we may be initially drawn to using OER to save money on expensive textbooks for students, OER-enabled learning offers so much more. It can dramatically change the way in which we teach and learn in the classroom. Just using a free OER textbook does not dramatically affect learning. It is like driving an airplane on the road with the cars. The airplane (OER-enabled learning) is missing a bigger opportunity by staying on the road. If we apply the same mindset that we used to create the OER—that of sharing, building on others’ ideas, collaborating, and learning by doing—our airplane can take flight and soar above the old way of classroom learning to new heights.

This week’s readings gave lots of examples of this in action. There are so many exciting ways to implement OER-enabled learning as “renewable assignments”, like

* Students create test bank of questions in first year for future years’ students

*Students take a troublesome area within the year’s study and recreate better artifacts for learning

*Students summarize in video or written presentations the historical background of literature pieces, exemplify literary connections like symbolism that are used and improved upon in future classes

*Students take a concept in one area (like the earth revolving around sun) and use it in a different setting (ferris wheels, carousels, tires, beaters on a mixer, sprinkler heads)

*Students could adapt openly licensed texts for new textbooks or create Wikipedia articles

More studies need to be done to see which types of “doing” assignments best engage students, but clearly OER-enabled learning opens the door to more engaging and student-led assignments and learning.