A study of the current state of play in the use of Open Educational Resources in the Asian Region

Introduction:

This project should make a significant contribution to the knowledge and practice of distance education within the Asia region.

Through this proposed study, the network will look into the use of Open Educational Resources (OER’s) in the region especially with the view to encouraging the development of an OER community that would share learning resources across institutions and nations. A fortuitous coming together of pedagogy ( i.e. recognition that effective learning can be best engineered by creating small biteable chunks of content referred to as Learning Objects) and technology, since the early part of this decade, permitted digitizing of content which then allowed for their movement through the web and the net, with considerable ease. These developments help to further enhance increasing access to learning, improve the quality of the curriculum, reduce the cost of creating learning resources and increase the greater use of learning technologies. While the OER's can generally enrich and enhance the delivery of education sector wide, it has particular significance to provisions of distance education (DE) simply because it can help in achieving economies, given the hall-marks of DE, which are scale and reach. OER’s in DE has the potential to improve the quality of DE through the seamless portability of content, across boundaries of one kind or another.

The term ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER’s) was first adopted at a UNESCO forum in 2002. These resources are ‘digitized [learning] materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research’[1].:.OER’s includes

• Learning Content: Full courses, courseware, content modules, learning objects, collections and journals.
• Tools: Software to support the development, use, re-use and delivery of learning content, including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools and online learning communities.
• Implementation Resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing materials, institutional agreements, design principles of best practice, and localization of content.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

Survey:

• Proposal
  
• Survey Instrument
• Take the survey online

Research Team

Workshops:

Workshop I: 25th October 2010 - Vietnam National University (VNU)

Programme

Presentations

• OER Panel (sub project 7 briefing)
• 24th AAOU Pre-Conference Panel Discussion
  
• Chinas Approach to OER
• COL Perspective
• OER in HK
• VOER
• OER in the Philippines
• OER Movement in Japan
• OUJ in Japanese OER Movement
  

Workshop II: 28th,29th April 2011 – Wawasan Open University (WOU)

Programme

Presentations

• University of Madras Case Study
• OER Project Meeting 2 (current status)
• OER Moving Forward
• OER Project Meeting 2 (data analysis)
• OER Project Meeting 2 (Malaysia data)
  

Workshop Report

Resources

• Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Giving Knowledge for Free: THE EMERGENCE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
• OECD study of OER: forum report
• Beyond OER Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices
  

Workshop III: 16th, 17th April 2012 – Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK)

Programme

Presentations

• Country Report: OER in Hong Kong
  
• Prospects and Challenges of the Introduction of OER in Indonesia
  
• Country Report Malaysia
• Application & Development of OER in China
  
• Focus Group Topics

Workshop Report

Findings:

• OER in Asia
• Open Educational Resources in Asia
• OER in Asia Pacific: Trends and Issues
  
• OER in Asia: Trends and Issues (summary report)