Abstract
The central concept behind Open Educational Resources (OER) is opening up the access to educational resources for stakeholders who are not the usual target user group. This concept must be perceived as innovative because it describes a general economic and social paradigm shift: Education, which formerly was limited to a specific group of learners, now, is promoted as a public good. However, despite very good intentions, internationally agreed quality standards, and the availability of the required technological infrastructure, the critical threshold is not yet met. Due to several reasons, the usefulness of OER is often limited to the originally targeted context. Questions arise if the existing quality standards for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) actually meet the specific requirements within the OER value chain, if the existing quality standards are applicable to OER in a meaningful way, and under which conditions related standards generally could support the exploitation of OER. We analyze quality standards for TEL and contrast the life cycle model of commercial learning resources against the life cycle model of OER. We investigate special demands on quality from the context of OER and, taking the former results into account, derive emergent quality criteria for OER. The paper concludes with recommendations for the design of OER and a future standard development.
Highlights
The concept of openness in education has attracted substantial attention (Downes, 2005) with support from national and international institutions and organizations, e.g. the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, UNESCO, MIT and the Open University UK; “Openness” in this context is related to sharing educational resources as well as experiences and knowledge between all stakeholders in the educational sector
This paper focuses on the usability of Open Educational Resources (OER) as a source for special quality demands
In the context of Visionary Workshops (VWs), which we held in German schools in order to promote the portal of the Open Discovery Space project (ODS), we investigated a school with a focus on inclusive education
Summary
The concept of openness in education has attracted substantial attention (Downes, 2005) with support from national and international institutions and organizations, e.g. the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, UNESCO, MIT and the Open University UK; “Openness” in this context is related to sharing educational resources as well as experiences and knowledge between all stakeholders in the educational sector. Peter and Deimann (2013) introduce the long history and role of the concept of openness in education and Atkins, Brown and Hammond (2007) comprehensively describe the development of the OER movement and discuss some key-achievements. In the context of Visionary Workshops (VWs), which we held in German schools in order to promote the portal of the Open Discovery Space project (ODS), we investigated a school with a focus on inclusive education In this school, pupils with special needs are jointly taught with mainstream pupils; just that they get differently designed learning materials and are individually supported in the class by an additional teacher. In contrast to educational scenarios where all learners are at least considered having similar demands for resource design and content, the special needs of disadvantaged pupils in inclusive classes differ on individual level The teachers in this particular VW reported that they mainly use OER for their education because the usually used printed books cannot provide the required flexibility regarding the different needs of their pupils. They found that the time efforts required to find and select suitable OER were generally perceived as a barrier
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