News | Online Education

New tools can help educators evaluate open educational resources

by admin on 2/21/2012 • Category: Online Education

Technology is becoming increasingly important not only in the way that course content is delivered to students, but also in how the effectiveness of these techniques is assessed. As open educational resources (OERs) begin to play an increasingly important role in many academic establishments, social networking and online tools can help educators evaluate the success of OERs in academia, according to Campus Technology.

Adequate assessment of OERs is important not just for colleges and universities making use of such systems, but also for developers. Michael Cottam, associate dean of instructional design and new program development at Rio Salado College in Arizona, told the news source that increasing the availability of analytical tools could help both faculty and instructional designers create more engaging academic experiences.

"We need to leverage social networking tools more widely," said Cottam, as quoted by the news source. "The peer evaluation that happens naturally in an online social environment could inform instructional designers and faculty as they build courses. In a sense, it's the collision of OERs with social networking online that's going to make this work."

OERs have grown from a relatively small movement within the education sector to an increasingly common and important approach to disseminating information to students. According to Education Week, large-scale OER initiatives are underway in countries such as South Africa, Holland and Vietnam. Lisa Petrides, the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), said that the growth of OERs has been almost unprecedented. Such advances have largely been due to developments in internet technology.

In addition to working to advocate for the use of OERs, the ISKME is also the founding organization of OER Commons, a global repository of information and guidelines for educators seeking to introduce or develop an OER. Such initiatives have been aided by the prevalence of social media, and could be further improved as social networking becomes a more important part of the higher education landscape.

Sharing and access to information are two concepts at the core of OERs. Faculty can access more than 31,000 educational resources to begin their own open learning initiatives, and educators are encouraged to contribute resources to the project by submitting links for peer review. As learning becomes increasingly social, the prevalence of OERs in academia could be the next step in the evolution of education.

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